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!