Parchment craft

I spent last week on a parchment craft course with Alison Yeates and Christine Coleman. I haven't done very much before although I started many years ago, and the given projects really stretched me because they were largely geared to colouring with different media, whereas my preference is for whitework. Besides, I don't have an artistic bone in my body and rate my skill as on a level with a backward two year old! We started 5 projects but had only 4½ days so most will be completed at home; these two were the smallest and I finished  them today.

The pumpkin was coloured using polychromos pencils, which are excellent for blending. Quite a lot of what you see here was Christine's work - despite watching her demonstrations closely and thinking I was doing it just the same, she took an eraser to much of my efforts and with a deft touch showed me again what it ought to look like! :) I did enjoy perforating and cutting the border though: much more my style! The panel is mounted on copper mirri card which complements the orange pumpkin very well.

The second piece, apart from the border, isn't true parchment craft but it does make quite an attractive card: the motifs were cut from a paper serviette and stuck onto parchment. The pink colouring round the peacock was done with a polychromos pencil softened with a blending medium and the whole overlays a piece of shaded blue card.

I apologise for the crooked scans - I'm not sure if it's good or bad that they are tilted in opposite directions...

Now I plan to finish the largest project which shouldn't take me too long, so I hope to back blogging very soon.