Gifts under a tenner at The Craft Barn

Good morning everyone.
This week over at The Craft Barn Blog we are continuing our gifts theme with gifts for under £10.00
As someone who loves my art journalling and knowing that a lot of folks feel the same way I thought that doing a journal for a crafty friend would be a great little gift.

I use the A5 Artco Bluebell journals a lot as I like the size so I used that as the base and created this

 I used a sheet of chipboard from Tando and cut it up into strips and then into various sizes before hauling out my stamps and beginning to play.

 By limiting myself to just two stamp plates (these are Paperartsy and Tim's mixed media ) and just a few colours to keep a sense of cohesion I took each piece of chipboard and started layering with tissue tape, and some background stamping. Inbetween each layer I used gesso to fade them into the background.

 Once that was done I used elements of the stamps to add more detailed stamping in archival inks before adding colour with Distress Stains and then edging the tiles with Walnut Stain Distress ink pads and the blending tool.

When I was happy with each tile the last thing I did was add 3 layers of clear UTEE to give a lovely ceramic tile feel to each tile and adhered them to the cover with strong double sided tape.

Hope you like it and give it a try too. You can use this to cover lots of notebooks, diaries and more. By choosing stamps that are themed to a subject you can make the cover relevant to the recipients interests too!

Blue Bell journal

Paperartsy stamps (LPC009, LPC011)

Tim Holtz mixed media stamps

Archival ink - Jet Black, Olive, Plum, Coffee)

Distress Stains - Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans, Peeled Paint)

Clear embossing ink

UTEE clear

Double side tape (extra strong)

This week again we have a prize draw feature across the blog, newsletter, Facebook and Twitter 

Three vouchers are up for grabs: £25, £20 and £15.   

It’s easy to enter, simply place an order on line with us.  Everyone who places an order between 16th and 22nd November will automatically be entered into the draw and at the close three lucky people will be drawn at random to win the vouchers