In a previous post I mentioned I was working on a curtain for my son Alex. Well, I finally finished it and this is the end result.

I'm quite happy with it and so is he

These are the templates I used although I made a few changes when I built my appliques. Please click here for the fish and here for the jelly fish and submarine templates. The sea weed was free cut.

Definition of collage according to the Collins English Dictionary:

 "an art form in which compositions are made out of pieces of paper, cloth, photographs and other miscellaneous objects, juxtaposed and pasted on a dry ground."

This is the card and envelope I sent to one of my Flickr contacts together with the crochet flowers below.

Collage is a fun technique which allows you to mix all sorts of materials. On the card I used, once again, text and images taken from books on gardening and woodlands. These were bought at my local charity shop and cost between £1 and £1.50. Now, that's very good value . I also used some yarn on the side of the card. On the envelope I used a strip taken from a paint colour catalogue and an image from one of the books mentioned above.

Tip: Next time you go into a DIY store, see if they have paint colour catalogues or cards like the ones below. These are great to use on your projects, you can use them as they are or punch out shapes with your paper punches.

These are my first collage cards.

The 2 above are for a swap and they are already on their way, one is staying in the UK and the other one is crossing the Atlantic to go to the U.S.A. The 3rd one is for a friend who hasn't been well lately and it's a sort of Get Well/Cheer Up pack. I've included a small envelope with a tea bag inside. Hope she likes it.

The background texts and the images come from 2 gardening books I bought at my local charity shop. They were already written on and some pages were torn so I don't feel so guilty at cutting the pages up.  Both books have beautiful drawings of flowers, trees, birds, butterflies, etc. which are just perfect for this kind of project.

If collage is something you'd like to try there are some nice free images on the Internet or you can have a look at the used books for sale at your local library, charity shop, car boot sale, etc.

Here are a few links for you to explore:

Vintage items for collage (on Flickr)
Victorian graphics
Vintage images
Vintage resources

...I could make time stand still so I'd be able to finish all my WIPs (Works In Progress). My last post was 2 weeks ago and that's because I've been busy making these felt bookmarks.

They are gifts for some of the staff at my son's school. I also made little Thank You notes to go with the bookmarks inside the personalized envelopes, all 7 of them! Not that many but time consuming.

Also, I've set myself a challenge which is to try and come up with some nice designs for tall cards. It was only recently I realised I make mainly square or C6 cards, the square ones being my favourites. To see my most recent cards, please click here.

As for WIPs, I'm working on a curtain for my son's bedroom, it's navy blue and it's going to have a sea theme with lots of fish, sea weed, boats, submarines etc. made out of felt. Then I'm going to make some curtains for my bedroom also with appliques but I haven't decided on a theme yet.

Also, I've entered this competition to make either a Christmas gift or decoration so I need to decide what I'm making as the deadline is the end of September. If you'd like to enter the competition, join the Christmas Gift Projects-arts and crafts group on Flickr.

I like embroidered cards, they are different, special, delicate and make beautiful keepsakes. I made a few embroidered cards recently and plan on making some more using some beautiful free drawings I found on the Internet and in embroidery magazines. If this is something you'd like to try, I put together the instructions and the photos below to help you get started.

1 - Choose your embroidery pattern and the cardstock you're going to embroider on. Decide on the size and shape of your project, I went for a tag shape which I cut with my Fiskars tag templates.

2 - Align the embroidery template with the front of the cardstock and fix using Blue Tack or a similar product so they remain together during piercing.

3 - Place the cardstock with the template on a piece of foam and pierce using a pin. There are piercing tools available on the market but you don't need to spend money on them unless you really want to, of course.

4 - After piercing, remove the template and you're ready to start embroidering. Don't tie knots, instead use adhesive tape to hold the end of your thread in place. Start from the reverse of the cardstock and go all the way around your design using the backstitch. For flowers, use the daisy stitch.

After you've finished your embroidery you can either leave the edge of the cardstock as it is or go around it with the blanket stitch or any other appropriate stitch. I chose the blanket stitch.

When embroidering on cardstock remember to:

- Work slowly;
- Always hold the cardstock near the hole where the needle is going to go to avoid bending, creasing the cardstock.

If you're like me and you can't draw there are many free embroidery patterns available for download on the Internet. Click here to get some patterns for your embroidery project.

Have fun.