Fibre art cards

My series of fibre art cards is one of my favourite ideas I have come up with this year.  Each one is like a mini-fibre art piece, but small enough for some relatively fast project-completion satisfaction!  They've happily been pretty popular on my Etsy shop, so I've recently made another set of cards, which I'll start listing later today.


Here's how I make them:

First of all, I make small pieces of felted fibre using my embellisher.  I use all sorts of fibres - silk, wool, bamboo, soy, flax - as well as scrim, scraps of velvet or cotton fabric, ribbon, nepps and threads.  Here's the latest batch hot off the embellisher:

I use plain square white cards, to set off the colours - but I mount each fibre piece on a small background square of paper or fabric.  I choose each one according to each fibre piece:

I've used hand-dyed cotton fabric, mulberry paper, mulberry tissue paper, abaca tissue and scrim.

I mount the paper or fabric backing onto the card first, and whilst that is drying I embellish the fibre piece.  I used hand embroidery, beading and couching working with the individual characteristics and contours of each piece.

Here's a couple of pieces before:

and after:

Glass bugle and seed beads, with seed, colonial knot, detached fly and buttonhole bar stitches:

again glass bugle and seed beads, this time with drizzle, seed and colonial knot stitches and some couched thread:

13 in total in this lot - phew!