Stenciled and foiled Birthday Cards with Karen

It's that time of the year when I need several birthday cards for male friends and family.
I gathered several sheets of white card and spread Design-It paste through a stencil on each one. I used Ocean Blue, Shimmering Aquamarine and Copper.

These were left to dry before sprinkling them with Brusho Crystal colours and spraying with water. I used Turquoise, Sea Green and Cobalt on two and a mix of Sea Green and Sandstone on the Copper stenciled piece.

These pieces were trimmed to size once dry. The sentiment was cut from double-sided foam and Transfoil was stuck on to the correct side before sticking these to the panels.

The panels were stuck on to card bases and I used Flexiglue to stick on small wood stars. This held these in place while I added more glue to their surfaces and left this to dry until tacky. I then added Transfoil scraps to give the stars a matching shiny surface. This photo shows one finished (left) and one in process (right). The blue version is still in progress as I ran out of stars and need to find other embellishments.

So, a few more cards full of shine and texture ready to send off.
Thanks for stopping by today.
Karen
x

Design-It Paste	Clear Spray Bottle	Transfer Foil	Plastic Painting Knives	Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set
15g brusho

Burst Bag

This week I've been adding surface layers to decorate a canvas bag. The techniques could be used to decorate a canvas, cards, a quilt block,  a baseball cap ...

The medium I used was EXpandIT 3D Expanding Fabric Medium which I coloured with  a couple of Adva-Print concentrated fabric colours 

I used the TCW287s Mini Burst stencil to create the design.

My bag was new so I washed it and then ironed it when dry.

Before you start decorating a bag, it is good to add some thick card inside the bag, to stop it from sticking together and also having the design seep through to the other side. This way you can decorate both sides independently if you wish.

First I added EXpandIT mixed with a little golden yellow using a sponge brush. Here you can see that I didn't cover the whole stencil design. 

Without waiting for this to dry, I added fluorescent orange to the coloured EXpandIT and added that to the rest of the stencil design. 

I then hung the bag up to dry.

Once dry I used a heat tool to expand the 3D medium paint. Keep moving the heat tool around to avoid overheating/scorching the medium. You can watch my burst design expanding here

I wanted to add a little sparkle to the burst design with foiling.

First I added some flexi glue holding the bottle at 45 degrees and gently squeezing. I put some on top of the expanded medium and a little just at the edges of the burst design.

I let this go tacky, then laid a foil sheet over the top. I used two different transfoil sheets, summer rainbow and rose gold.

You can see my transfoil technique here

Here is my finished bag design. What do you think?

What would you decorate using these techniques?

Mixed Media Mushrooms By Karen

I love all the wonderful wild mushrooms that pop up at this time of the year and they inspired me to make my decoration.

I had bought a wood base and I gathered up some cardboard pieces and rolls to recycle and create the mushroom shapes. Two tubes were cut in height and along their length and rolled narrower to make the different sizes. I filled the tubes with pieces of cardboard to make them more stable and give a bigger surface area to glue at the top and bottom.

To decorate the lower parts, watercolour paper was coloured with Brusho Crystal colours in Burnt Sienna and Light and Dark Browns

Cardboard boxes were used to cut caps for the mushrooms. Red, Yellow and Leaf Green Acrylic Paints were mixed to make a red-brown and, although they are unlikely to be seen, I painted over the cardboard with this.

Once dry, I cut up the watercolour paper to fit around the mushroom stalks and to create the gills of the mushrooms. These were accordion-folded and then sprayed with Copper Shimmer spray for the smaller mushroom, gold for the middle size and bronze for the larger one.

Lutradur and Tyvek fabrics are wonderful in the way they react to heat, shrinking and getting lacey effects so I wanted to use these for the tops of the mushrooms.

Pieces were cut to size: One Tyvek circle and two Lutradur circles for each mushroom. These were sprayed with Shimmer spray and left to dry.

Once dry, the watercolour paper was stuck on to the mushrooms using Flexi glue:

The Lutradur and Tyvek papers were heated to get those wonderful lacey, bumpy textures...

 and then glued on to the tops of the mushrooms with Gel Medium, Tyvek first followed by the two Lutradur layers:

The wood base was washed with Dark Brown Brusho Crystal mixed with water to match the mushrooms. I also used some Aztec Metallic Paints to rub over the raised parts of the Lutradur to enhance the texture and shine.

Finally, for some contrast on the tops, I added some Leaf Green Brusho Crystal colours to the bits of paper left over and reactivated them with water and gold Brusho Shimmer Spray. I used this to die-cut some leaves and glued these and some sequins to the tops of the mushrooms.

I particulalry love the stalks and gills though: Quite lifelike!

I hope this inspires you to make you own Autumn decoration. Please leave a link, or any comments and questions, below.
Karen
x

Tyvek Light Weight Fabric	Brusho Shimmer Sprays	Lutradur	Gel Medium	Clear Spray Bottle
Eco Acrylic Paint	Heat Gun	Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint	15g brusho

Manicure with Transfer Foils

I have been trolling Instagram for some distressed nail designs that I could try doing myself. What caught my eye was a variety of transfer foils applied to nails using a special glue (you know, everything for nails is special and expensive). Some of the foils were marbles, some floral, and some looked like distressed gold - it's the latter that made me think... can I pull the look off using Bronze Transfoil and Flexi Glue?

I started by brushing on a thin coat of the Flexi Glue onto my chosen nails (I didn't want to cover them all).

I cut a small rectangle out of the Tranquil sheet while waiting for the glue to become tacky.

Put the foil over the one nail at a time and firmly press to make sure the foil adheres to it.

It worked!!!

3 out of 5 nails are now covered in a layer of distressed brassy coat!

The last step is to use a topcoat to make sure the design lasts - it doesn't matter what type you use as long as it's see-through.

I absolutely love how they turned out!!!

Till next time!

Ewelina