{Spotlight Project} Shirley Creates Designs for Cushions

Like my new cushions? I had them made up from that stencilled sheet on the seat there. It all started when I was making this card for the November CUTplorations challenge:

See the stencilled background? It started life like this. PaperArtsy Infusions through the Autumn Falling stencil.

So, of course there was a load of spritzed colour sitting on my stencil. And in a moment of madness, instead of lifting the stencil off, flipping it and blotting it onto another piece of mixed media paper, I placed the clean mixed media paper down on top of the wet stencil, which still had the first sheet under it, and blotted it down. Well, of course, it blotted the leaves as well, and this is what I got:

A bit too abstract to be useful. So I placed the cleaned stencil back over this second sheet, slightly offset so that I would get a white edge, and sponged coordinating Distress Inks over the leaf shapes.

And drew around the leaf outlines, and added some veins. What a difference! And it was so nice, I didn't want to cut it up to use on a card.

In the November issue of Craft Stamper Magazine, the lovely editor, Trish Latimer (who is one of our guest designers today for the Giving Thanks Blog Hop) did a feature on using your own artwork to produce personalised products via online printing companies. I decided to have two cushions made from my artwork. I chose the sections I wanted to use,

uploaded them, paid my money, and back came these two gorgeous cushions.

The cushions measure 17 inches square, and the backs are plain. I could have had smaller cushions (11 inches square) but this called for big and bold! Here's a pic with the stencilled sheet so you can see where the sections came from.

You do need to be careful about copyright when creating products like this, especially if you are using stamps, because you could be infringing copyright. Always check the Angel Policy of the stamp producer first.

If you try out any of the techniques from our Spotlight posts, add your project to our Spotlight Project Showcase.