LOVE

Hopefully this will be a vague step by step guide to how I decorated these MDF letters from The Works.

First apply gesso with either a brush or a sponge

Then apply White Pebeo Ceramic paint to the top side

and whilst wet dribble on Vitrail, and Prisme (or Moon) paints and then add in some ceramic paint
and run a kebab stick through the paints to mix them

When dry apply ceramic paint to the other sides and let dry in between the sides.  (I also applied a coat of resin over the top of this set.)

Finished Letters

I also did a set to which I applied Black gesso and then applied red vitrail to the top

Whilst  red Vitrail is wet drop on some Pebeo Fantasy Moon
 with a kebab or cocktail stick

then dribbled on some Carmine Fantasy Moon, and some antique white ceramic

Finally drop in some more red vitrail (sorry about quality of picture, but you can see
the drops of red vitrail) and then draw a kebab stick through to mix

When dry apply the red vitrail to the other sides/edges

Finished letters

Finished letters

and do you remember this set?  

 

Done the same way, but black gesso first and black Ceramic paint
The bonus with HOME is that the letters are reversible - so I did different colours
on the front and bakc

That Halloween canvas again

You may remember that I wasn't quite "happy" with this canvas two days ago, and thought I might add some Pebeo Ceramic paint to the cat.  Well I did, BUT I also added some Fantasy paints to the eyes of the owl and the cat, and then added resin to the Owl and also the Cat, but wasn't paying attention because I hadn't allowed the black ceramic paint to dry, and the finish was a bit "weird".  

However, I like the textured finish to the cat - so not even going to try and remedy it - it's what we call a happy accident!


Thanks for popping by.

Mags

Birthday Card

Men's cards are difficult aren't they?  

Hope my son in law liked this one I made for his birthday yesterday.

Halloween Canvas

sneaky peek

I don't "DO" Halloween as a rule, but I was set a little challenge to come up with something,

I started with an 8 x 8 Pebeo canvas board to which I had alrady applied black Pebeo Gesso.  (as you can see it has been lurking in the Den for a while and had got a bit tatty)

applying the sencil

I then attached a mask from my stash (I won a set from Splodge Away) and with a palette knife applied Pebeo Modelling Paste over it.  (It is not really a cobweb, more the grain of a slice of wood)

Oops some of the paste went under the mask but no matter - I wanted it to look a bit like a cobweb!

Painting and adding letters

Once the modelling paste had dried, I painted the whole canvas with a mix of Pebeo Black and Pebeo DYNA Blue/Black

Next I applied Pebeo Silver Gilding Wax to the "web" with my finger, and gave it a polish,  Again with a finger I applied Pebeo Phosphorescent Gel (gree) to the web.

In my stash I had some Hessian stick on letters so I used those for the wording, and painted them with Pebeo iridescent gold DYNA paint, and then over-painted it with the phosphorescent gel.

I then used some wooden cutouts from my stash - and owl and a cat, and painted the Owl wit a mixture of DYNA paints - Bronze, Red/Blue, Gold, and Precious Gold, sponging on the colours to try and get some shading.  I also put some texture into the paint with some rubber "paintbrushes/modelling tools" that I have in my stash (see picture below).  The Cat was paint with the same colours as the background Black and Blue/Black.   Eyes were painted with DYNA yellow/green and then both pieces had more of the phosphorescent gel.

Products used

My Rubber paint brushes/modelling tools  (from The Works)

Finished Canvas

I am now waiting to see if the fluorescent effect shows up in the dark!

I am not completely happy with the cat - I might do something to him and paint him with some Pebeo black ceramic or Pebeo vitrail, and some Pebeo Fantasy paint for eyes to make him stand out more.  I might even try another owl with Fantasy paints!    Watch this space!

More Chirstmas Groovi

Sorry about using the "C" word - but it was so miserable and wet and cold yesterday - more like Autumn than Summer, so I got the Groovi Board out and had a play.  If this weather keeps up I shall have finished the Chrimbo cards by the end of August!

I think I am gradually getting the hang of the Groovi Board, and using my pencils.  The only thing I fouled up on was trying to punch the dots on the partridge one - but we learn by our mistakes! However, I am realy pleased with the shading with the pencils.

Playing with Xmas Groovi

I had planned a ME day in the Den today, bit wasn't to be - it has been raining all day.  (I don't really mind too much as the garden desperately needs the rain, and I was feeling a tad below par - think I overdid the gardening earlier in the week - well that's what my back is telling me!)

I decided to get out the Groovi board and plates and play.  Very restful and relaxing, and the colouring in even more so.  I am gradually getting to grips with Groovi

The most difficult part is how to attach the parchment to the card - I opted for a smidgen of red liner tape, and some green adhesive stones to camouflage it - seems to have worked ok.

Thanks for popping by

Mags

Doggone Card

Just a quick post today - a card I made for my hubby's birthday yesterday!

Thanks for dropping by.

Little Box

Having had the request from granddaughter No 3 to paint the little box that I shared yesterday, Granddaughter No 4 piped up as I was leaving the other week that she would like a box painted too!

When asked what colour she would like the reply was blue and pink!

I happened to see this little box in The Works when I was buying the desk tidy, and decided it was just about the right size for a three year old!

So blue it was - mixing a very pale blue/grey with a metallic blue.  (It is actually not quite as deep in colour as the photo), and for the pink element I sponged some pink Pebeo iridescent on it.   So far so good, but how to finish it?

Out came my Pebeo paint fusion paints, and I decided to paint a rose on the top and on the front side.

View of Top

Once again I hope, like the one I did for her sister, that she likes it.  Happy customers, in particular the ones that are my grandchildren, are such a pleasure! 

Box and Desk Tidy

Granddaughter no 3 chose the little box on the right some time ago from my stash, with the idea that she would come and paint it.   Well she decided that she wanted me to paint it instead and asked for the colour to be purple.

The background was painted in a pale purple (lilac) and then "sponged" with purple metallic and Pebeo iridescent pink with a scourer.

During the week I bought this little desk tidy, which matched perfectly.   So she will have a nice surprise of two items.

The desk tidy has removable wooden hearts, so did a little paint fusion daisy on a purple background. The little box had a perspex heart, and I managed to paint a matching design on that.

Hope she likes it, as I do like happy customers!  

Wedding Card

My daughter-in-law's sister is getting married today, and this is the card I made for her using CAP2.  I gather the wedding theme is "rustic" so I am hoping I have captured a little of the theme with this card.

Powertex Canvas - finished!

You remember my indecision as to how to finish off the canvas - well I finally made a decision and applied black gesso over the material and then dry-brushed it with Blue/Black Pebeo iridescemt DYNA acrylic paint.

It really shines in the sunlight - and I am pretty pleased with the end result, as it turned out just as I had envisaged in my mind.

Thanks for popping by.

Garden Flowers

Life has got in the way of being creative over the past couple of days ....

.....  .... and today I was having trouble walking after a visit to the chiropodist (very unusual, as I normally walk on air afterwards) so I sat quietly and put together a couple of pages of pictures of flowers in the garden that I had taken over the past few days.

A bit of Groovi Board Parching

I couldn't get up in the Den today to do more to my "canvas" project, so I had a little play with the Groovi Board and some parchment.

It is still a bit of a learning curve, and am restricted to what I can do until my Christmas boards order arrives from Create and Craft (and they seem to be a bit slow this week! - I would have bought them elsewhere, but I had a £10 off voucher and it would have been rude not to use it!)

There is also the question of how to "fix" the parchment, and I would normally use brads, but with postage costs being what they are I wanted to keep the finished result as slim as possible.   I found a corner punch in my stash that I had forgotten I had, and used that -  but it wasn't quite right.  I don't really like the fancy corner it cuts, and I had to colour the slot with a black promarker, as that looked a bit weird with the cream of the card showing through.  It looks like a search of the net is in order to find a suitable corner slot punch.  (Let me know if you know where there are any for sale.)

The piece above was my second effort and below is my first - wouldn't have been too bad if I hadn't mucked up the snowflake.  But onwards and upwards as they say.

If anybody has got any good ideas as to how to fix parchment to a card without brads, please do let me know.

Work in Progress

I meant to have started to share this project the other day, but forgot.

Planning the layout

I have a polystyrene "canvas" that I have been wanting to play with for some time.  I made some roses and leaves from Hearty air drying clay  (ignore the colours I was just using up clay).

2nd stage

I then set to with the Powertex and some strips of t-shirt material and created the basis of the canvas

2nd stage different angle of view

Today I started on the painting using Pebeo DYNA iridescent paints and some primary element pigments mixed with Pebeo Gel

Leaves painted

Flowers painted (picture taken in sunshine)

Flowers painted (picture taken in shade)

The big dilemma now is how to finish off the material - Do I leave it black, do I paint it some sort of blue, do I dry brush it with a colour, or do I add gilding wax?    Any thoughts dear followers?

I like the black, but think it needs "lifting".  I am toying with the idea of using the Pebeo Blue/black iridescent paint.   Decisions, Decisions - so I have dipped another piece of material in Powertex and am waiting for that to dry to try out some effects on it as a sample.   Then hopefully I can finish the project.

I also have to decide what to do with the hole in the middle - I am thinking something mirror-like, but as this is probably going on garden wall, I don't want the sun reflecting on the mirror too much.    I am thinking another piece of material stuck behind with Pebeo mirror foil finish to it.  We shall see - watch this space!

Granddaughters Macrame Bracelets

I was child-minding youngest granddaughter today, and when her two sisters arrived home from school, they made some bracelets.  I had promised them that this week I would take the necessary materials for them to make bracelets, as they did so well making the cord dolls last week.

So here are the results - they even decided to put beads on too.  C's (6 years old) is the red one, and B's (9 years old) is the blue and black one.one.

Didn't they do well?  All their own work.  The only help from me was to help them adjust the fit of the loop and button fastening (well you can't exactly do it on yourself can you) and I then used the zapper to seal the ends for them (elf and safety and all that).

The only downside is the fact that they thought I was really clever making my bracelets ..... and now they know how easy they are!

Box Book and Faux Leather

 It started off like this:

in the beginning - stage one

A bit of a tatty mess with watered down pva and crumpled serviettes, a technique I wanted to try. ( Note I was very good and removed the hinges before starting!)

When dry, I used sandpaper on the edges to remove the excess tissue and then gave it a coat of red Pebeo acrylic pant, and over-painted that with various Pebeo DYNA iridescent paints: red/blue, bronze, golds, orange/yellow, yellow/green, and a bit of plain brown acrylic. Some applied with a brush, some with either a sponge or scourer.  I just kept going until I was happy with it.  The edges had two shaded of Pebeo gold gilding wax applied.

For the pages, I applied a pale cream acrylic and then with a scourer applied brown and gold DYNA paints, and also a bit of gold gilding wax - also applied with a scourer.  I also painted the inside with cream acrylic.

getting there

and hinges back on with a little gilding wax over them

I created some faux leather with some of Sheena Douglass's embossing folders and die cut some owls from the wood-grain "leather" using Joanna Sheen's owl die.

wood grain faux leather

The leaf folder faux leather was coloured with DYNA iridescent paints - green/yellow, blue/green, green/blue, orange/yellow, bronze, two shades of gold and a smidgen of brown until I was happy with the effect.  Again some applied with a brush some with a sponge or scourer.

leaf faux leather

The owls had various shades of brown distress ink pads applied, before I painted them with a mix of red/blue, bronze, orange/yellow and gold DYNA iridescent paints, with finally a little gold gilding wax applied.

Finished "book" box

There is actually a perspex cover for the centre part, but it caused too much reflection to photograph it with it in situ.

The whole project was sprayed with Crafter's Companion Spray and Shine inside and out to seal it and give it a nice shine.

Thanks for popping by to read about my experiment.

Slate Hanging Plaque

I have had this little slate plaque hanging in the Den for some time begging me to do something with it; so yesterday was the day it had some paint applied.  (I can't even remember where I bought it from - possibly The Works, although it might have been Hobbycraft.)

Painted first with a coat of black Gesso and then paint-fusioned using Pebeo paints  Wasn't sure what word(s) to put on it as I have no particular recipient in mind, so just went with the word Home.

Finished off with a quick spray of Crafter's Companion Spray and Shine.

I love it when an idea works!

Suddenly remembered I need to make a card for a forum friend.  Male cards are so hard to do, so decided to use one of my Craftscape Digikits.

I then had this idea - I love the Barbara Gray word square idea, but I don't have the stamps - only the Groovi board and I wasn't working in parchment - so I wondered if I could create the same effect using the shape tool in CAP.  Well it worked!   so chuffed  (the second option was to use my scrabble square digikit and do it that way, but I didn't need to resort to that)

Macrame with the grandchildren

6 year old's on left and 9 year old's on right

I had to babysit the youngest grandchildren yesterday, and the eldest two (6 & 9) wanted to make macrame dolls, when I showed them the ones I had made.

They picked up tying the knots really quickly and this was the result of a few minutes work from both of them.  Didn't they do well.

I have to go and look after them again next week, and have promised to show them how to make bracelets!

Green macrame bracelet and a necklace

As mentioned yesterday I made another three strand macrame bracelet, this time using green catseye beads and pearls with a pale silver grey cord.  This cord was a tad thicker than the first bracelet.  I had forgotton that I had some green beads in my stash, as was only thinking the other day that one of my tops would look good with green beads.

Of course I then decided I needed a necklace too ......

... so I made this one.  No pearls this time, but white catseye beads instead.  (Mainly because I discovered I had the white catseye beads already on pins!  Well why make more work for oneself!)  I can't remember what I originally intended to use them for, I may have only just been practising with a tool for making eyes on pins when I first purchased it!)

I also toyed with making a macrame strand to match the bracelet, but decided to opt for a chain - well the difficulty I had with attaching the clasp to the chain .... it just didn't want to play .... think it would have been quicker with macrame. lol!