Something a little different 1.

 Over the last couple of weeks when we've been enjoying our holidays I've been trying something a little different - hand stitching into a paper story book.

I've been following an 8 week online course with Karen Ruane called 'Stitching Stories', and whilst my work is very different, as you'd expect, it's been seeded and drawn along by her suggestions and what she has been doing in two books.

This first page shows two cut outs with blanket stitch and running stitch around them, and three stitch emellished additions.

 The second page has another cut out, this time filled with my take on 'wispy mist', the ladder (from the motion drawing of the propeller) and five shiny beads for the water drops - the text and illustration clearly informing my choices.

If I had my time (and a pristine book!) again I'd put the stitch orientation of those holding the beads vertical instead of horizontal.

 Here is a button stitch emellished 'heavy' drop, with the remains of it (blue and pink mirror card circles) tumbling down.

A few more embellished shapes on the left.  One of the best things that I learned was to think about how to attach items to the page so they were neat and relevent from the front, but workman like without being messy from the back.

 This was a fun page to work on, as it had 'hide' in the text, so I created some hidding spots.

Punched holes in the covering, with button hole stitch around them again, and beads over one of the background holes.

You have to gently move them forward to reveal the text, which is just glimpsed though one of the holes when the screening pieces are in repose.

It isn't fast work - much slower than stitching through fabric - but it's a really enjoyable thing to do as a change.

More pages to be shown next week, I hope!