Thursday 23 May 2013

A bit of a "catch-up"!

I haven't blogged for ages, and I apologise!  Life just gets in the way sometimes.

Here are three projects that I have completed recently but not had time to blog about:

I started decorating this little shadow-box house last Autumn, during a workshop at Redditch Craft Club.  I went with a "sewing" theme, which isn't really relevant to me these days, but I wanted it to be quite generic, as I thought I might eventually sell the thing.  The paper I used is from an old pad called "Nostalgia Warm" from Papermania.


I've had this Kaiserkraft 9-drawer chest for ages!  I bought it to house my 36 Distress Inks and their foams, but I didn't have a proper place to keep it, so I left decorating it until I had cleared a crafting-space in the spare bedroom.  I've used the same paper as I used for the shadow-box house, also book-pages, Distress Inks, Archival inks and my Tattered Florals and Tattered Leaves dies.  I up-cycled some old beads for the centres of the small flowers and for the knobs, and for that special "something" I have used 4 buttons from last Autumn's Button Swap on UK Stampers for the centres of the largest flowers. The two at the top were made by Pat Beaumont (out of polymer clay?), and the bottom two were made by Kay (Galaxy Girl) and are ceramic.  My thanks to both ladies!  I haven't decorated the top of the unit, as I thought I might buy a second one to stack on top. Currently the shadow-box house is sitting on top, accompanied by an Art Parts UFO, part-decorated with the same paint and paper.



My crafting stash is in a chaotic mess at the moment, as I am part-way through the process of moving it all upstairs and into the spare bedroom.  I keep mislaying things that turn up months later, and usually in the wrong box!  One of the stamps that turned up was Paper Artsy "Kids 6", which was very handy, as it was the stamp I needed for my postcard for the May swap on UK Stampers.  There isn't a theme this month, but we were asked to make something "that made us smile".  These little children's cheery faces remind my of the "Sunny Smiles" photos we used to buy at school back in the 1950s. They definitely make me smile!


I used a piece of coated card from Clarity Stamps.  I masked off a border, then made a background of "Soothing Sunset" Big&Juicy ink, which I brayered onto my Splodge Mat. I brayered the pink end of the inkpad, cleaned my brayer, brayered the yellow end of the inkpad, cleaned my brayer, then brayered over the middle on the mat to re-blend the colours.  This gave me an area on my Splodge mat that was the same length as the inkpad and had exactly the same blend of colours, so I could brayer it onto the card without making streaks and without wasting ink.  Whoever thought of the Splodge Mat was a genius!!

I stamped the main image as a second-generation with black Versafine ink, which took forever to dry, even after using my heat tool! I bleached the Big&Juicy out of some areas of three little portraits, using thin bleach in a water-pen.  I had intending stopping at this stage, but the postcard looked too plain, so I stamped two of the boys in sepia Versafine onto ordinary card tinted with "Old Paper" Distress Ink, and tore round the edges of both portraits.  I stuck them onto the card with multi-medium.  The Versafine was still slightly wet, so I blotted the postcard umpteen times with copy paper, then I gave the whole thing a good blast of aerosol fixative.  That finally cured it!

5 comments:

  1. Fab projects... I love the little house...

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  2. Great projects, your drawer set looks lovely! (my problem is that I put stuff in front of the drawers so I can't open them!). Love your bright and cheery postcard, perfect!

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  3. Fab selection of projects - the chest of drawers looks lovely.

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  4. The chest of drawers looks wonderful and will be great once your craft room is straight. Love the other 2 projects as well - thanks for the trip down memory lane with the postcard.

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  5. Wow... fantastic projects - well worth waiting for! The drawers look simply amazing... Lovely to see you back, and I hope life has been busy in a good way in the meantime.
    Alison x

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