Upcycled Storage by Karen

Happy New Year! Have you made any resolutions? Mine are based around decluttering and tidying so I started with part of my craft stash. It was getting hard to find things or even to look without setting off an avalanche of things falling in all directions: Time to get organised!
The 'before' photo:

I do like the small wooden trays that we often buy satsuma or clementines in at this time of the year. They are fairly strong, stack easily and are not too big for things to hide in. I had all ready collected a few and I pulled off any loose labels and gave them a coat of white Gesso to try to smooth out imperfections and cover metal staples before giving them a coat of bright Eco Acrylic Paint.  I wrote on each box what they would be used for in black paint and roughly edged round the front of the box to frame this section.

Each box was then treated to a layer of stenciled Design-It paste in Pewter, Aquamarine or Copper and left to dry before I organised my pots and bottles back in to the correct box.

I also gave the writing and borders some white paint highlights which you can see in this photo. This helped make the colours pop and the writing to stand out. You'll also see a fourth box that I decorated to go with the original three and I have another two boxes put aside to do for more supplies.

I still have a way to go to get everything organised but this simple project has been quite a transformation so far: It is so much easier to find things and put them back tidily. I think it will help me use what I have and save time too!
Wishing you a happy, creative 2020!
Karen
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Design-It Relief Paste

Eco Acrylic Paint

white gesso

Golden haired nylon brushes

Christmas Decorations by Karen

I decided it was time to make some new Christmas decorations! I bought some wood slices and other supplies and put together some snowy scenes with the help of a few ColourCraft products.

I sprayed the sisal trees with Sea Green Brusho Mist Spray, turning them to spray from all angles. You can see the neturalcolour on the right alongside the colour when sprayed. There was so much colour on my craft sheet afterwards that I mopped it up with white card to keep for another project.

When dry, I gave the ends of the branches a touch of gesso to help stop the green bleeding in to the white and then repeated this with white paint for a snowy look. I sprinkled the trees with Brusho Sprinkle-It 'Flash' for some sparkle letting it cling to the wet paint.

To get an old brown-gold colour, I mixed a tiny bit of Prussian Blue in to the gold paint. The deer were coated with gesso to help the paint adhere and then given a coat of this paint mix.

I glued the trees and deer on to the wood slices, trying to make sure they looked good from different angles. Expand-It was the applied round these with a painting knife and then heated to puff up and look like snow on the ground.

To finish, I gave the Expand-it and and wood parts still showing a thin coat of white paint with a little white Pearl powder mixed in. This gives everything a lovely shimmer but still lets the wood grain show through. Unfortunately I don't think this shows in the photos.

We now have these on show in our house but they would also make nice hostess gifts at this time of the year.
Have a great end to the year. I'll be back with a new project on New Year's Day!
Karen
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Pearl Powder Pigments Lustre	EXpandit 3D expanding medium	Brusho Mist sprays	Plastic Painting Knives	Eco Acrylic Paint
white gesso	Heat Gun	Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint

Botanical Textile Art

I'm so excited to be part of the Colourcraft Design Team. As a textile and mixed media artist, fabric and/or thread are involved in most of my projects, but not always. My first blog shows how I have coloured fabric to create a Botanical fabric picture.

I just love seeing all the flowers in my garden right now. On a sunny day, I’m even tempted to take my sewing machine outdoors, but usually, our climate is such it’s safer to just take hand sewing outside so you can quickly move inside in if it clouds over. This piece involves both machine stitch and hand stitch for the flowers, so we are good whatever the weather.

The first stage is to prepare the canvas.

For a vintage feel, I took three floral pieces from my fabric stash and joined them together.
It is worth remembering the golden ratio. This rule of thirds states that if you divide any composition into thirds, vertically and horizontally, then place the key elements of your image either along these lines or at the junctions of them, you’ll achieve a more pleasing arrangement and more interesting and dynamic compositions.
So I didn’t have any of my patchwork divisions in the centre (vertically or horizontally) and the botanical focus of my final composition is in the is about two thirds up and left. I include a pattern to print and use if you wish.

Once I had my fabric patchwork piece, I wanted a more subtle floral vintage background so painted on white gesso.

To avoid brush marks, and for speedy application, I used a foam brush

Gesso is an excellent base coat primer and is non-yellowing and non-cracking. One coat is enough and dries quickly. Previously I have tried building up the effect I wanted with diluted leftover white matt emulsion paint, but this wasn’t as quick to apply or to dry.

The bonus of the primer is that it stiffens the patchwork too so you don’t need to use an embroidery hoop when sewing. As long as you haven’t got a fine needle in your sewing machine, it works just fine.

If you want a distressed look you can scratch away some of the dry primer with either a piece of sandpaper or a metal pot scourer.

For the flower petals I used some old cotton lining. (just wash new cotton fabric well if you are using new) and after laying it on a plastic sheet I sprayed it with water and then sprinkled on my chosen Brusho colours. Spraying with some more water created the mottled hydrangea petal effect I was wanting. Hydrangeas are more blue or pink depending on the soil but with art, you can choose to have both.
You could use the BrushoMist Sprays instead in violet, rose red, ultramarine for example.

I dried and ironed my cloth ready for the later stage of creating the flower head.

Draw out your composition or print my design. The final design will be a mirror image.
I traced the design onto Stitch N Tear, although because of the primer, you don’t really need the stabilising properties and could use paper. I find it easier to tear away than paper though. 

Having the design on the wrong side, I did my first machine stitching along the outline of the vase on the wrong side. I chose to do this with grey thread (top and bobbin) and without the feed dogs. I love the freedom of this free machine embroidery but it is worth practising if you are new to this technique. I do run workshops in South Yorkshire if you are interested.

I then turned the canvas over and repeated stitching the vase, using my first stitching as a guide.

I chose to add a couple of light highlights to the vase to create the reflection on the glass. I used a light variegated blue, white yellow thread and a satin stitch.

You could use paint to create these instead.

I used a watered down blue Brusho to fill the bottom of my vase with water.

The next stage was to add flower stems and leaves.
These can be made from fabric (trace onto Bondaweb and apply to the wrong side), by stitching the outline (as I did for the vase), or by printing the leaf onto the canvas (with a stamp).

More free machine stitching adds vein details to the leaves.

The hydrangea flower head was next. I poked a few pins through from the wrong side, using the pattern to guide where the flower head would be.

Having applied some Bondaweb to the reverse of my petal fabric and removed the paper, I cut 1.5cm squares.

These were placed face up (Bondaweb down) on the right side of the canvas in the marked flower head area. I left areas of canvas showing through my overlapped square arrangement. Placing baking parchment over, I ironed these in place with my mini iron.

On the wrong side of my canvas, I stitched around the hydrangea heads. This is easiest done as two figure of eights returning to the centre. I used a variegated thread ( top and bobbin) in hydrangea colours. The idea of this bottom layer is to give the impression of depth of the flower head, and you will find that the flowers don’t match up with the squares, but that is fine because there is a top layer to add.

For the top layer, I cut 2cm squares from my fabric (no Bondaweb this time). I folded each square in four and then held the smaller square at the point where each fold meets, to cut away either side making a curved petal shape. When you let go, you have a four-pointed flower shape. I saved my offcuts as I think they will be great for a future buddleia botanical project!

Using my cut out flowers and my variegated (purple, blue, pink) thread, I sewed the top layer of flowers on by hand with a cross in the centre and further stitches in between. I added beads too for further dimension. There are some lovely hydrangea Indian beads for this. I also used the white beads and green embroidery thread for the gypsophila stem. It’s great when the weather obliges and I can sit and hand stitch in the garden, but whatever the weather, I can get a flower fix by botanical textile art. A great feel good kick!

I tried out several frames for the hydrangea and used this silvery Ikea frame. You can use a frame you have and add a metallic finish as I did recently for a recent felted project.

I would love to see any floral projects you have been doing, please share them.

Here’s to time in the garden

Helen x

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Mixed Media tag by Karen

Hello all! By coincidence my tag today uses similar techniques to the Valentine heart that Sarah made here. As I've used black gesso on my project, it also shows you how fabulous the Brusho Acrylic Shimmer Sprays are on black as well as the white that Sarah used.

I started with a wooden tag (Tim Holtz etcetera) and used Soft form relief paste (now called DesignIt paste) through a stencil and added more lines and dots directly with the spatula to give the surface some texture.

Once dry, this was covered completely with black gesso and left to dry again.

The decorations were gathered together: A band of thin metal mesh, which I cut in two and then cut to get rid of the straight edges, a corrugated card heart, metal wings and some recycled corrugated card.

I splattered some gold Aztec metallic paint on to the heart and then dragged the brush across the corrugated paper so that it just hit the ridges.

The almost dry brush was then wiped over the tag so that it highlighted the texture in gold.

I then switched to the Brusho Acrlic Shimmer Sprays to add a beautiful sheen, first in gold...

and then in Copper to add warmer tones similar to the wings I planned to use.

Once these were dry, I glued on the decorations, layered for texture and depth.

I hope you like this project. If you haven't tried the shimmer sprays on black yet, I would urge you to: The effect is quite spectacular!

Thanks for passing by today
Karen

Soft Form Relief Paste	Brusho Shimmer Sprays	Eco Acrylic Paint	Plastic Painting Knives	Heat Gun
Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint