Rock Pool Art Plaque with Katie Lamb

Hi all

I am guest designer for ColourCraft this week and I have a mixed media plaque to share. I wanted to go with a rock pool look so i kept the focus around the edges of the project so it looked like it was clinging to a rock.

I used 

Aztec Eco Metallic Lustre Paint 

Eco Friendly Readymix paint 

Art Balls

Resin shapes

Crackle Paste

Clay

Silicone Moulds

Moss

MDF Plaque 

Seed Beads

Pearls

Start off by covering the plaque with crackle paste and leaving it to set.

Then paint over with blue paint and let that dry before adding a light layer of  Metallic Luster.

Glue net to the base, i used fruit packaging as it happened to be the right colour!!.

I used paper clay with a mould to create the sea urchin and shells, which i then painted with Eco paint and then dry brushed on a layer of the metallic paint. I placed everything into position first before gluing it down so once i was happy with it i added the moss and then glued down the chunky bits.

I then added the smaller bits like beads and art balls around the focal points. The last layer is a sprinkle of micro beads and art sand. 

Thank you for visiting

Autumn Colours Layered Journal

Good morning!!! I'm Teresa and I am thrilled to be guesting here on the Colourcraft blog today. Autumn is one of my favourite seasons, I love the changing colours in the trees and the drifts of leaves washing up at the side of the roads. I wanted to create something reminiscent of that and came up with this beautiful layered journal cover.

Colourcraft sell an amazing range of products (many of which I have never seen anywhere else!) and I wanted to try out their Tissuetex, as I was intrigued to see how I could colour it with Brushos. It has the look of tissue paper, but doesn't disintegrate when wet, making it perfect for water based colours.

I cut several lengths of Tissuetex and used Brusho powders to colour them. I spritzed each piece with some water, sprinkle the Brusho colour over it and spritzed again before scrunching the Tissuetex to get the colour all over. (Tip: wear rubber gloves if you don't want orange hands!!) I used a mix of colours on each piece and love the random colour blends that occur.

Tissuetex can be torn along the length, so I tore strips approximately 1 inch wide ready to create my layers.

I cut a piece of cotton fabric for my base. To get the right size, I placed my sketch book on the fabric and cut the fabric slightly taller than the book, and allowed enough on each side to fold inside the covers to create a 'pocket'. I used pinking shears to cut it so I didn't need to hem the fabric.

Then I layered the strips across the fabric base and sewed them in place using a straight stitch on my sewing machine. Make sure each strip overlaps the previous one slightly so that the fabric doesn't show through.

Fold the ends in and stitch in place top and bottom to create the pockets that the covers fit inside. I added some coloured seam binding to create a tie closure. Now it was time to add the extra details. I glued a selection of sequins randomly over the cover and stamped affirmation quotes using Sepia Archival ink. I used a fine brush to splatter some gold acrylic ink for a little extra subtle sparkle.

I added a stamped tree inside the journal and highlighted the image with dots of gold ink.

I love how this turned out, the wonderful warm colours, and crumpled texture really captured the essence of autumn for me. I hope you are inspired to try out the Tissuetex - it was such a wonderful product to work with.

Thanks again to the Colourcraft team for letting me play with some of their great products, you can find more from me on my blog: www.thefatcactus.co.uk 

Check out my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/TeresaMorgan

Getting messy with CraftyRoo

Hi everyone, 

Kym here, I am so excited to have been asked along to Colourcraft blog it is such an honour. So, I am relatively new to Brushos but I just love their inky goodness and I have been wondering how they work with fabrics????

Well I got messy! Very messy and had a play, sorry I mean I experimented! And this is what I came up with.....

Now lets get the boring bits out the way first, if you want to be able to wash your fabrics then you need to treat them with fabric medium. But if like me you you have no intention of popping your creation through the washer then go right ahead.

First up I found some lovely cream fabric and an old embroidery hoop. My hoop measured just under 8 inches so I cut my fabric 12 inch square. And then I cut a number of smaller pieces that I would colour for my flowers.

    
I covered my work surfaces then I popped some Lemon, Gamboge and Crimson into a paint pallet and added water to each to make a very watery paint. Starting in one corner and working diagonally I started with the Lemon, then moved onto Gamboge and finally Crimson.

As I moved onto the next colour I sprinkled more Brushos over the fabric until all of my fabric was coloured.

I sprtized the sprinkled Brushos until I was happy with the results. I finally added Leaf Green over the Lemon to look like foliage and Purple over the Crimson to look like an intense Sunset. My fabric was really wet, so I popped it outside to dry on top of the plastic mat.

Next I started work on the green for the foliage. For this I took 2 pieces of fabric and wrapped them tightly (like you would for tie dyeing). Mixed up a a small bowl of Leaf Green Brusho and water. Attached a paper clip to each of the fabric bundles and submerged them into the bowl - the paperclip stopped them from bobbing up to the top. I left this the soak for about 45 mins.

I then removed it from the water, unwrapped them and laid them down on kitchen roll. The colour wasn't quite as bright as I had hoped so I sprinkled them with Leaf Green Brusho and crumpled them up in kitchen roll to dry them a little, then I left them to dry.

The next technique I decided to try was to soak my fabric until it was dripping wet then pop it on top of a protected surface and sprinkle Brushos over the top and spritz until I was happy with the piece of fabric. Again I left this to dry a little before moving as it was really wet.

When my backing fabric was dry enough to handle I removed it form the plastic mat and hung it to dry. I went back to tidy up and found this.....

I couldn't waste that so I quickly pulled 2 prints from it to use another day!

(I did this to with the blue and orange pieces too!)

When all of my pieces of fabric were dry I gave them a quick iron.

Starting with the background I pulled out my permanent inks and stamps. I used our Junes Monthly Make set, our Chicken wire and Harlequin texture stamp. First up I randomly stamped the Distress panel stamp down both sides of the fabric remembering to rotate my stamp and us 2nd and 3rd generation images.

I positioned the hoop over the background and lightly marked the outside edge. I then stamped the Harlequin texture in the top right hand corner and the Chicken wire in the bottom left. Along the bottom edge I stamped our Funky Flowers Amazing image and Funky Flower Happy in the top left.

Onto the pieces of fabric I stamped the flower heads again and cut these out and started to sew them into place. Before I had sewn them all on I stamped some small Butterflies from Junes Monthly Make set and solid butterfly and left these to dry.

I finished sewing the flowers into place, once I was happy with the background I ironed it on the reverse and stretched in the hoop.

I then stamped some more flowers and leaves using our Beautiful and Grace stamp sets.

Theses were then cut out and positioned onto the hoop, when I was happy with the lay out I started attaching the flowers and leaves into place. And embellished it using beads.

For the butterfly I folded a piece of purple netting and secured it to my glass mat, then stamped the detailed butterfly stamp onto it. I then stitched down the centre of the butterfly to join all the pieces together. The butterfly was then removed from the board and cut around leaving a small border it was then stitched to the hoop.

Once everything was attached the the hoop I re-stretched the fabric and tightened it up again and trimmed around the edge. With the pieces I trimmed off I cut these into strips, frayed the edges and tied them around the fastening on the hoop.

Well, a big thank you for join me for my project I really hope you enjoyed as much as I did!

Alysha Sheridan - Guest Designer - Fly away Butterfly

Hi everyone, Alysha here as a guest designer this week for the fabulous ColourCraft. I was absolutely delighted and thrilled to be asked to create a project of the blog and jumped at the chance!

At the moment I am very much into butterflies and creating single layered backgrounds so decided what better project to do than this with the amazing Brusho powder pigments.

 To begin I created a simple tri-fold card base with some quality super smooth white card stock. I then cut three panels to the correct size, slightly smaller than each of the sides of the tri-fold.

I then sprinkled and spritzed the card stock using Gamboge, Red, Yellow, Orange and Sunburst Lemon Brusho.

I have then built up the stamping "layers"  with various stamps and ink pads to create a collaged effect. To finish I edged all three pieces to add depth with a black inkpad and added a butterfly and sentiment that I thought was appropriate to the images used. You could easily change this to a happy birthday and change up the colours to make it male or female orientated, after-all who does not love a butterfly?

I hope you have enjoyed my project as much as I have enjoyed creating it and I hope to be asked back to create for ColourCraft again some time in the future!

Please feel free to visit me at Simply Angelic Crafts

Have a wonderful day, hugs Aly xx