Paper piecing at 4am in the morning - for CHF

I woke up early this morning and just could not sleep - so got up, let my chickens out of their run which looks much like this in the stamped image, then headed for my studio and experimented with paper piecing for the Cornish Heritage Farm challenge which is taking place this summer.

I haven't been able to do any crafting or much else this week - so it was really good to have a play again.



This stamp is from their Rummage Bin range, and I just had to have it!

Paper piecing is when you stamp on different sheets of paper with the same stamp, and then cut out different elements of each one to form one picture.

I stamped a number of times on a 12x12 sheet of Basic Grey 'Perhaps' which has large stylised flowers on it in 'blobs' of shades of pink, also 'blobs' of greens and browns and blues.

Because of the intricacy of this collage stamp, I found it really difficult and tricky to cut out and around each part of the image. Ditto the tee-shirts - and trying to cut out that wording - took so many attempts!

For instance - either side of the chicken wire fencing in the background - very hard to cut around their heads and arms with out lopping off something I shouldn't and to get it to butt up tight to their faces and heads and arms, and to layer it all so that it looks seamless and 'flat' was quite a challenge for me - but I felt a buzz of achievement when I finally finished it.


The first stamped image was on textured cream card - although it looks white in my photo tsk. I coloured the arms and faces in a pale pink blusher and shaded them.

The chicken run is a darker brown than in the photo - and this I cut out after stamping on a plain sheet of brown paper.

All the other pieces are from the Basic Grey sheet. The backing paper is K&Co printed on Vellum.

I used floristry antique gold chicken wire to mount it on - but I am not sure that it works.


This is the 'naked' version - which do you think is best.

The challenge is just a bit of fun - but there are prizes each week - I am not holding my breath for any of those LOL - pop over and take a look at the gallery with the entries in - my there are some extremely talented ladies on there.

What this is doing, is getting me to make the effort to try different things with my limited CHF stamps, and to do something every week!