Goldfish Primps for the Fair

I haven't stitched anything this week on the wizard because the county fair starts Sunday night. This means I am busy putting the finishing touches on the two projects I'll exhibit at the fair--Squiggee's goldfish piece and Lani's Autumn Leaves.

The photo above is all the framing supplies for the goldfish. You can barely see the gold shadow box that he will go in on the left. On top is the spool of metal braid trim right above the paper xerox of the canvas I cut out to use as a pattern, the acid free foam core mat with a hole in the middle that will be covered in the blue fabric you see, and a piece of craft foam and a very thin sheet of metal that will go under the canvas.

Let me explain further. Framing is expensive so I headed to the local crafts emporium to pick up supplies in a standard size. The goldfish has pearls for his bubbles, so any frame needs to have depth so I can put glass over them. (I always glass my framed pieces since we live on a dirt road and don't have air conditioning. Dust is constantly coming in the open windows in nice weather.) So I bought an 8x10 shadow box frame, picked up an 8x10 scrap of acid free foam core, a spool of thin gold metal braid, and bought a packet of thin metal for embossing in the scrapbook section. I had the shop cut a hole in the middle of the foam core the size of the goldfish. All this cost me about $36, not too bad for framing.

I lugged it all home and got to work. First I cut a piece of fabric about 12x14, large enough to cover one side of the foam core, ironed it well, and glued it right over the foam core (I put glue only on the back as it bleeds through the fabric). Then I took my best embroidery scissors and poked a hole in the fabric over the hole in the foam core. Cutting carefully from the center of the hole towards the outside edge, I made an X and then more cuts to have a series of petals I could fold to the back side and tape down. Once that was done, I had to let everything dry (it's all glued to the back of the foam core) overnight.

I concentrated on making a very nice Chinese knot in one end of my trim. The trim I choose is made from real wire bits and it unravels itself if you don't put Scotch tape over the ends, so this was a bit tricky. The best instructions for a simple knot I found are here.

http://www.satincord.com/knots/buttonknot.htm

The next night was gluing the braid all around the center of the hole and then cutting my metal sheet (with scissors you use for paper, it is very thin aluminum that cuts but will dull your good scissors) to the size of the design. I also cut out a piece of acid free foam that is used for signs (cut red letters from it and glue to a green sheet of it and you have a sign for a kid's bedroom door) to the same size. Then I glued the metal circle to the foam circle. This will go behind the goldfish to give a mirror-like effect behind him with a lot less weight and expense than a real mirror. The foam is padding that raises the "mirror" and holds it in position against the NP.

The next step will be to tape the NP canvas to the foam core covered in fabric, put the mirror and its padding behind the canvas, then drop the mat/goldfish/mirror with padding stuff in the back of the shadow box frame and put the cardboard backing on.

And you'll have a goldfish in a frame!

The finished photo will be revealed tomorrow. The sky is too cloudy to take a good photo of the finished piece today. Tonight I'll work on Autumn Leaves.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow