The Craft Room 13th August 2016 – Parchment shades revisited

Oh Wow, just loving watching the Olympics, not just because GB doing so well but also so many countries are winning their first ever medals. This is what the Olympics is all the about. These smaller  countries send athletes to the games every 4 years but dont have the money to invest in training programmes or facilities and to the athletes just competing at the Olympics is an achievement so for any of these athletes to come a way with a medal of any colour is just a dream come true and brilliant to see.

It is also very distracting with the Athletics being on while we are crafting lol.

I thought we would revisit a project we did back in November last year. We had just started out on our Parchment journey with the new “Groovi”® system from Clarity Stamps, and had just go the hang of the basics, remember these?

Well that was eight months ago and I am pretty sure that our skills have improved a little since then. Back then we concentrated on the circular shade, although I made templates for both circular and square shades (you will find the templates in the templates folder at the top of the page if you would like to download and have a go), so this time we will give the square shade a go.

The square shade template will fit on 1 A5 sheet, though you will need two pieces to make the shade. as this was our first attempt at this shade we just used pain 140gsm parchment but I know they will look amazing using coloured parchment too.

Place template behind the parchment and tape in place using removable tape. If you are going to use the template just as it is you do not need to watch where you a positioning the template, but if you want to add a frill or extra edging to the bottom of the shade you will need to position as above to leave a little extra at the bottom.

Once cut out (dont forget to leave the bottom edge adding and extra edging)  mark the score lines at the top and bottom of the lines using a fine ball tool or white pencil. We also found it a good idea to mark  the bottom edge of the template if extending the bottom edge as this will give you a line to work from.

Using a plate that has a straight edge score the fold lines in place. Remember, as you always score from the back, this will now be the back of your work when you come to do more embossing work etc.

You will need to repeat this for your second piece, making sure you have the piece the same way round  as the first piece when you mark and score your lines in. We found it easier to remember if the tab edge was on our right hand side we were working from the back

I had pretty much decided on this weeks project a couple of weeks ago and had been looking through the Groovi plates to see which parts would be good for framing and edging when what did Barbara Gray do but launch a brand new set on Hochanda last week.

Very different, OOH LA LA and absolutely just what I was looking for lol

There is a matching bra plate too, but as soon as I saw this I just knew it would work for the shades because of the slight curves and so many different edgings, perfect!

The top of the frill gives a perfect curved line to the bottom of the shade

Then you can pick your edging for the bottom edge.  The bottom stitch line of the knickers is perfect to put along the top edge of the shade too. love these plates, so many uses.

Once you have you edgings in place it is just a case of deciding how to decorate the inner panels. Fancy with flowers, Initials, birds, patterns, grid work???? Decisions decisions….

This is where some of the ladies manage to get to this afternoon

There is still a lot of work to do – white work, pricking, cutting and colouring, but they are going to look fab when finished

I did start mine earlier in the week as I wanted to at least give them an idea of  where they were heading when they started theirs.

Still not quite finished as I would like to layer up the butterflies and maybe add a little shimmer here and there but I love the shape of this shade and will definitely have to make some more. It certainly gives you plenty of scope for practising your skills.

The templates are in the templates tab at top of the page and are free to download. This is a lovely project to have a go at what ever skill level you are at. I would love to see what more experienced parchers could do with them  and would love to upload any pictures to give more inspiration to novices like myself.