Make your own shi-sha mirrors

Necessity is the mother of invention they say... DIY shi-sha mirrors! How? Hang on, and I'll tell you. I always wanted to embroider shi-sha mirrors onto something, but could never find the little things in France nor did I want to spend a lot of money ordering them somewhere. One day I had a brain movement, and decided to make some out of an old CD. This worked really well as you can see by the fabric book page I'm posting today. But before you try this, a few words of caution: Be careful when cutting apart one of those freebie CDs you have lying around. I used old but still relatively sharp scissors, and I was wearing glasses to protect my eyes. Cut slowly, while turning the CD with your free hand. Also, make sure you get rid of any little plastic splinters you make while doing this, especially if you have toddlers or pets or if you like going barefoot at home :o) If I haven't scared you off, let me tell you that this was easy! The little circles you make may not seem perfectly round to you, and their edges may seem a little ragged, but once you embroider around them you can't tell. By the way, these little faux shi-shas being made of plastic, I hope that I don't have to tell you NOT to iron over them when you're done embroidering. On this particular block I was REAL careful not to do this, which didn't stop me from ironing over the bottom portion of this fabric page and burning away part of the sheer green fabric. Duh! I thought I was going to pass out with the iron still smoking in my hand, but then I noticed that it actually looked really interesting. Whew! A good thing for Margie who received this block. Her theme was Journaling with Friends. Anyway, perhaps you're wondering how to do shi-sha embroidery after reading this. I found a good tutorial here:
http://www.classicstitches.com/know_how/know_how.cfm?how_to_id=200&how_to_cat=Techniques
Have fun, and let me know if you try this!

Comments

[Kajin]

You are doing amazing things! I admire your talent. And using old CDs to make shi-sha mirrors? Brilliant :-D

[Maureen]

Great idea! I've used those large sequins too.

[Marieke]

You make beautiful things, I especially love this one and the one called "Into_the_forest2". Did you stamp the "labelgirls" onto the fabric? And the Into_the_forest2 one, is the basic fabric painted like that or did you paint it yourself ?

[Sandra]

Hi Marieke,
Thanks for the compliment! I have been admiring your blog and the pretty things you make. The girls/label was printed on t-shirt transfer paper and then ironed on the fabric. The blue forest fabric is printed that way. You can't really tell on by the photo, but it's a cotton (Hoffman?) print with silver highlights.
Sandra