Monday 23 June 2014

Not enough hours....

Good morning friends.
My personal crafting has taken a bit of a back seat recently with one thing and another so I haven't really got a lot that I can share at the moment. Currently I'm gearing up for some overseas family arriving tomorrow for a few weeks which will be lovely so though I will try to squeeze in some crafting I may not be able to so if it stays quiet on here please bear with me, I will be back, I promise! Today, though, I do have a project I can share with you.
My little box of Hopes and Dreams.

 I started out with two wooden flat boxes from The Craft Barn and glued them together as seen. I added some textural details with a mask and Grunge Paste and then started to play around with the Tim Holtz Frameworks dies. I love these shapes and I folded them over the edges, around corners, using some of the inside pieces too, until I was happy. It took a little lime to glue them as I had to hold them in place for a while to stop them springing off but hey, it was worth it in the end.
 I cut the words out of thin card using Tim's Time Out strip die which is another of my favourite alphabet dies and glued them down too.
 Obviously by this stage there was no way to open the boxes so I had to carefully cut any pieces that were over the lid joins.
I added some flowers made from the Tattered Garland strip die to add further dimension before painting in a selection of colours, blending them as I went to achieve a more subtle tone.
When the paint was dry I then added a bitumen mix to darken and age everything and used a damp cloth to wipe areas away to reveal more of the colour below. Lastly, I used white and grey paint to add some dry brush details.
 For the inside I inked card with Distress inks and stamped in Archival using Tim Holtz stamps
 So there you have it, a little box of Hopes and Dreams. I may add a couple of little journals to write in or perhaps just do a bunch of loose cards to remind myself of my Hopes and Dreams....... not sure yet.
Take care folks and I'll try to be back soon.

Thursday 12 June 2014

Playing with Pebeo.....

Good evening folks.
Thought I'd nip on and share a couple of pics with you. Today was a rare treat where I had the opportunity to join some other Tutor/Demonstrators and staff at The Craft Barn for a bit of a teaching day with Ashleigh from Pebeo.
Though the products have been around for a long time and are very popular in many places; they are, perhaps, not so well known here in England so I for one definitely appreciated learning about them and  the opportunity to "give them a go"!

 We all started out with a canvas that had been pre prepared with texture sand and resin patterns to which we chose and adhered a butterfly.
 Time to add some colour, Helen decided to pour it on while the rest of us played it safe and used a brush....
 So, this is what it looks like after a liberal covering of Vitrail paint, which is a glass paint but works well on other non porous surfaces.
 I then decided to echo the circular design of the top resin and used a tissue to remove colour in a circular motion which came out nicely.

 We had a bit more of a play by dripping some lightening fluid onto the paint which gave an interesting effect which you may be able to see in the next photo.
 It gives an effect similar in some ways to that achieved with Alcohol Ink. What is not too clear here is that We've added some gold foiling over some of the areas which looks pretty cool too and the lighter areas are fantasy moon paint.


We did add some other bits but I forgot to take some pictures. It was a bit of a case of throwing everything at the canvas and I was pretty happy in the end with the result so I thought I'd finish it off properly tomorrow before I show that to you.
We had the chance to mix up and test the resin which has to be one of the things that really impressed me. The texture medium was lovely too, full of grit and it can be coloured with paint too so that opens up some fun distress ideas in my head..
Things to consider, most of the paints are solvent based so you need to clean them with spirits rather than water and work in a ventilated area. Pretty easy to clean though. and I will definitely be working with them more.
All in all, a fun day and a real treat too.
I'll catch up later, enjoy what's left of the evening.........

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Let's make a Wonky House Book (Bookmaking part 1)

Good morning folks
 I hope you are well and hopefully, like me, you are enjoying the sunshine. I thought I'd take some time to share with you a few of the steps I took to make my Wonky House book Cover. The basic cover kit contains 2 plain covers, a spine and one detailed laser cut design.
To make a traditional cover you will need to add some binding cloth or fabric to adhere the two covers and spine to each other.
 Cut your fabric slightly larger than the spine (I tend to add approx 2cm)
 Use something like DecoArt Faux Finishing Medium to glue the spine and covers in place as seen, leaving a gap of around 3 to 4 mm between the spine and cover.
Flip the cover over and fold and glue the top and bottom in place. (Just a quick note, because these small covers do not have a double layered cover; if you do this kind of cover I would suggest that when it is all dry you glue a piece of card (either plain if you are painting over, or patterned.) to cover the edge of the binding)
 Right, back to the book......this book has a matching mask available (sold separately) which comes in handy for the next bit

Take the mask and position it onto the cover, making sure it is facing the same way you want the design to be and use yellow paint to add "light" to the windows.
Repeat with red paint to highlight the doors and walls etc. Yes, it looks messy now but don't despair.

Use the mask to add green paint too. Then, remove the mask and paint your covers with a few blue paints. You can see here that I painted the spine in the same colour too. Add some random stamping and allow to dry.
Add colour to the main element as desired. Glue in place onto the cover, lining up with the masked painted areas.
End result, Lights on! I think it looks cool. To finish off I added a layer of Triple Thick Glaze to the base, some flowers add a detail and a small sentiment.
So, there you have the cover....hope you like it and it makes sense lol
I'll do a separate post another day for the inside as this has turned out to be a pretty long post already.
Take care and I hop you have a great day.

Monday 9 June 2014

The Craft Barn Extravaganza 2014.....Sunday

Good morning friends
I hope you are well. This weekend gone was the annual extravaganza weekend over at The Craft Barn, For day one's post see HERE if you missed it and this post is all about Sunday; there's a reasonable number of photos to follow so make yourself comfy and grab a cuppa......
 All set up and neat and tidy, Gelli Plate at the ready, with a bit of time till kick off I took the opportunity to take a wander and snap some pics.
 The lovely Helen was ready and waiting......
 Lindsay Mason with her table stuffed full of gorgeous and cheerful samples.
 I love the owl stamp.
 Pauline was also ready and waiting to go.

 These delightful scenes were new from Tando; you can either buy a Christmas or Halloween kit or just the blank base and I have loads of ideas with those already!
 Also new from Tando Creative were masks and stencils designed by the delightful Gio from Italy. These are some of the gorgeous samples she had done.
 My personal favourite is this lovely medley stencil which is high on my must have list.
PaperArtsy were doing their usual gorgeousness. These are simply fabulous backgrounds.
 Then, back to me (LOL) I had a great time creating prints with the Gelli Plate and showing how I work in layers of paint to create my backgrounds etc
Here I was working with masks cut from dies and opaque paint over a transparent layered  collage print.
I snaffled this print from Helen's blog. I didn't even know she had taken it.
Gabbie snapped this one, this is a packing tape print.
It was also exciting to see my new book cover kits all packaged and ready to go. Thank you to everyone who came to let me know they liked them and had popped them into their shopping bags. Now I'll leave you with a few pics of some of  the prints, I made loads to I look forward to using them and sharing the results with you, take care and hope you have a lovely day and week.




Sunday 8 June 2014

The Craft Barn Extravaganza 2014 (day one)

Good morning folks.
A nice early post from me this morning. Before I head off for another day at The Craft Barn Extravaganza I thought I'd share a few pics from yesterday.
Arrived nice and early to begin setting up and getting myself organised in the marquee. It was nice to grab a moment to catch up with Di from Tando Creative and meet a few new people too.
 Here we are; all set up and ready to go.  It all looks neat and tidy doesn't it?

Before I could sit there though, I had the first morning mini class; working with PaperArtsy, Cosmic Shimmer and Tando Creative to fun to a set of coasters. Everyone seemed to have a good time and even the newcomers to crackle glaze got fab results so happy faces all round LOL
 Don't they look cool? Just adding some words here as a finishing detail.
 Then it was time to get cracking with the demo, showing all the cool stuff you can do with the Distress Marker Spritzer. Some of which is shown here by Mr Fancypants..... I love the airbrush effect you get with the mask, the ability to "fade" the colour out and the control you have over where you add colour. All the masked blue detail was added last working really close to the stamped image which you wouldn't be able to easily do with other spray inks or even Distress ink pads.


 Here I was just "colouring" in a Lynn Perella image with the Spritzer, again, I love the effect it gives which is softer than straight colouring with the markers.
 Blink and it was the end of the day. Of course, my table was no longer neat and tidy! But, look, you can just see some of my new book cover kits which launched, I get such a thrill seeing them all packaged up.
Some of he aftermath of the demo, lovely papers ready to work on.....
Now, I get to do it all again today, aren't I lucky. It looks like it's going to be a beautiful sunny day so if you can, do come on over, there's inspiration to be had by the bucketload by some amazing people, a shop crammed with crafting goodies and friendly staff and a really cool atmosphere!
Details of where we are and who is there today can be found HERE.