Friday 28 September 2018

Upstairs Downstairs... by Zuzu



Another Halloween project from me. (no surprise there).
this one uses one of the lovely cabinets with a shelf.
Ive used it as a house more than a cabinet with the top shelf being the upstairs and under that is the very suspect and spooky downstairs.
Ive filled it with things I had lying around the craft room. (yeah that's the kind of stuff I have cluttering the shelves.)

Ive used the large "cubby with shelf" which you can find in beside the shrines. Just select the size you want and choose shelf or no shelf.




Wednesday 26 September 2018

Not Quite Naked by Lesley

Hey everyone.

This week, I have altered a wooden block I found in the room of trash.


I began by tearing up bits of printed tissue paper and gluing it down with a matt medium.

Once dry, I used a sepia coloured ink to give it an aged feel. 


On the corners, I used the gorgeous deco wine flourishes. I decided to leave them natural looking, with a touch of green/gold gilded wax. 


The torso was made out of a mold and clay. I dry brushed him with paint, then added some crackle glaze in places, and a few rub-ons. 


I snipped up one of the art noveau pieces, and again added some of the wax and glued down either side of the torso. 


I won't lie....the mold did show the mans bits! So I snipped another flower off, painted it red and covered them! ;) Protect his modesty and all that!


Thanks for reading.
L.x

Ingredients used.

Sunday 23 September 2018

Somewhere over the Rainbow - reversed canvas by Julie Ann.

Hello Everyone! I must confess I'm a bit of a dreamer and something about the mists and the golden days of autumn inspire me to dream even more!



In this project I just followed my imagination. I combined my own little drawings printed on to ink jet shrinkable film, coloured with pastel crayons with a handful of beautiful Calico Craft Parts to evoke some of my childhood autumn dreams.



One of my favourite books and films as a little girl was 'The Wizard of Oz'. Just like Dorothy, I dreamed of a magical land 'over the rainbow'. As I've grown older, I think I've come to understand more fully what Dorothy means when she says, 'If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard...' Although Dorothy's adventures seem to take her to extraordinary places far from her familiar, everyday world she discovers ultimately that there is 'no place like home'.



 My first memorable home was my Grandma's Victorian 'semi' with its old-fashioned garden flowers: lupins, hollyhocks and - late in the summer - Michaelmas daisies and golden rod. I always hoped to catch a glimpse of fairies at the bottom of that garden and I once left out my dolls' house all night in the hope they would take up residence in it!




Maybe they've eventually found their home in my studio, after all these years and they're going to put on a miniature performance of 'The Wizard of Oz'.



If you're going to create The Wonderful World of Oz, you need a yellow brick road. I gesso'd the reverse of this mini chunky canvas and then pressed 3D gel medium through this stencil of bricks.



Eventually the gel medium will become completely transparent just giving a great 3D surface to work on.



I like to cover all the sides of the canvas. At this stage you can see how I've added craft tissue with dictionary definitions connected to travel and a poppy from the top layer of a napkin to the sides and painted the bricks.


Here is my little collection of hand drawn Oz characters, decorated and heat shrunk to 'fairy size'. They are about half their original size.



Do you remember how Dorothy's house is blown to Oz all the way from Kansas, landing on the Wicked Witch of the West? I used one of the tiny Calico Craft Parts house kits to create the house, decorating the walls with stamped images of butterflies...



and using some of the 3D gel medium for the bricks on the outside.



My yellow brick road is old and cracked with moss growing between the bricks. I used DecoArt Crackle over acrylic paint, emphasizing the cracks with slate coloured acrylic paint. I created the clouds by fixing muslin with heavy gel medium and applying light touches of paint when this was completely dry. As you can see my background was an impressionistic poppy field.



I used the tiny, MDF pieces from between Calico Craft Parts windows to stick my little people among the poppies and blackberries. This helps them to stand out from their background.



Some charcoal art sugar and touches of gilding wax helped provide the fairy production with a little bit of glitter! I mingled and mixed Calico vines and blackberry branches to create a frame.



I wanted to add different levels of interest to my canvas, so here are The Wicked Witch of the West's legs and feet protruding from under Dorothy's house. These beautiful Calico bees help to create a sense of the fairy performers' scale!



'Let the show begin!' Thank you for stopping by today and for stepping back in time with me, into my story-book canvas. Have a wonderful creative time until we meet again.

Calico Craft Parts Used
Sheet of MDF Bees and Beehives
Blackberry Bramble MDF Wood Shape
Floral Flourish MDF Wood Border
Wood Word Elements, Travel and Explorer
Framed Style MDF Cube House Kit
Sheet of Tiny MDF Doors and Windows




Saturday 22 September 2018

Balloon Time with Tips and Tricks by Kerstin

Hello crafty friends!

The time is right for another inspiration with a new amazing multi-frame from Calico Craft Parts.

There are a lot of beautiful multi-frames on a variety of themes, such as Steampunk, Autumn, Halloween and others.

You can use them on all flat surfaces as photo frame, for sayings or to display special ephemera. I was inspired to create a new (old) shadow frame. I love the vintage style with a touch of steampunk, so my aim was to create a weathered and stained look. My friends know that I have a liking for 3D effects, because they always create their own liveliness and mood.


I used these Calico Craft Parts products:



how-to: 
  1. use the frame as template
  2. cut the same piece 4 times, one as base
  3. other three parts are folded once in the middle and glued to the folding edge on the base part 
  4. paint cut edges with silver metal wax


Voila, the 3D effect is finished :-)

some details








Thanks for your visit!
Happy weekend!
Kerstin

Wednesday 19 September 2018

ATB Flower Pot by Jennie

Hello Everyone and welcome to a rather blustery day here in the north! I hope everyone is keeping warm and safe.

For the last four years I have taught a residential weekend workshop for the lovely ladies that have been coming to my workshops over the last 10 years. We stay at a most beautiful house on the most northern island of Shetland (it involves two ferries) and have loads of fun and laughter and get a bit messy with our crafting!

Today I am sharing the box we made on the Saturday using napkins and DecoArt Crackle Glaze. 


I recently bought an artificial plant for the kitchen but the pot it was in was very boring. A few measurements later I realised it would fit perfectly into the Square Aperture ATB Cube.


After painting the boxes with a chalk paint to match our napkins, parts of the napkin were layered onto the box and texture paste words added here and there.


We then used DecoArt Crackle Glaze and Antiquing Cream. You can find details of the process HERE where I have used napkin decoupage in a previous post.


Metallic gold paint was added over the texture paste which had also crackled to give a really shabby finish.


Stamping was added here and there and I decided to add this little Calico Craft Parts Key and Tag to fill in an empty space. These were crackled with DecoArt Weathered Wood.


Needless to say we all had a fabulous time making the boxes and everyone was very pleased with the crackle effects over the napkin.

As always thank you for joining me today and happy crafting!

Jennie x


Calico Craft Parts used:


Monday 17 September 2018

The Numeric Goddess - by Claudia


Hi, servus and thanks so much for stopping by today! Claudia here again - after a short unforeseen break. But luckily lovely Louise jumped in with two amazing projects (if you haven't already done so I highly recommend you check these out!) so you had no reason to miss me a lot two weeks ago on Monday.

Here's my latest project I would like to share with you - The Numeric Goddess.


Sounds intimidating, doesn't it? (especially to someone like me who isn't good at maths...lol). And maybe she isn't just a kind goddess after all (even though I assigned her a head with my lucky number)....actually I think the "Numeric Goddess" may have even been involved in my skipping my last project date...as I had mixed up the weeks on my calendar (due to being a bit absent minded because of a planned dental surgery) and therefore didn't have a project ready for the proper posting date. But here I am today - trying to make up for it.

I went mini again...you know me - I just love to work in small scale, especially when it comes to creating tiny shrines and assemblage pieces. And the mini sized Block Style House Kit from Calico Craft Parts is a perfect size for me!


Calico Craft Parts used:

- Block Style MDF House Kit - Short - Size: mini
- Star Shape - Mini MDF Wood Plaques 
- Sheet of Mini MDF Wood Cogs - Style 8
- Fancy Plaques - Mini MDF Wood Shapes
- Sheet of Mini MDF Hardware Wood Shapes
- Sheet of Mini MDF Wood Wings - Style 4
- Sheet of Mini MDF Wood Crowns - Style 1

Maybe you wonder how I managed to use stuff from so many different Calico Craft Parts kits and sheets, but going small doesn't mean there's enough space to use a load of yummy stuff on...right?

I had already assembled the tiny block house some days ago (using matte DecoArt Decou-Page). I love to have alterables at hand and ready to use.


I have also used the same house kit without the front, so I could create a little open shrine from it (over HERE). This time I used the block version with all the sides glued together. Oh, you can do so many beautiful things with the gorgeous house kits! 

Here's a picture of all the Mini Wood Shape sheets I have used. Honestly I love having a variety of tiny beautiful bits and pieces to choose from - it makes creating assemblage pieces so fun and playful. 


You can also spot the pieces I had planned to use on the house's sides - alongside a little frozen charlotte, some vintage ribbon, a tiny spool and a vintage wooden bingo number (in the final stage of the process I decided to use a different one because I needed a bit of colour contrast). 

I cruelly beheaded my frozen charlotte to replace her original head with the bingo number and a crown...




I first primed all the pieces with a thin coat of Lamp Black Americana acrylic paint from DecoArt. Then I created a crackle base layer on the mini plaques and the house by mixing white DecoArt media Crackle Paint and some drops of media fluid acrylics Raw Umber and Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide and brushing it thinly onto the pieces. 


To speed up the crackling process I like to put the pieces close to the bulb of one of my desk lamps. I have two desk lamps, so I use the other to continue work.

The warmth of the light bulb speeds up the drying and crackling.


To the left you can see the pieces under the desk lamp with the crackle paint on them - put aside to dry. To the right are the pieces that in the meantime I applied some DecoArt Metallic Lustre Gold Rush and DecoArt Extreme Sheen paints Vintage Brass and Bronze onto.


After all had dried and crackled, I applied more white Crackle Paint with the tip of a palette knife randomly and let that crackle under my desk lamp's bulb again. Then I went wild with many layers of mixes of DecoArt Raw Umber and Carbon Black Antiquing Cream and washes of media Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide.


When you work on a small scale you have to pay even more attention to detail - so I took the time to also blend all the edges with black archival stamping ink and a piece of blending foam.


It makes such a difference! 


Time to assemble everything with matte Decou-Page! I also applied a coat of the Decou-Page to the frozen charlotte, so I could add a wash of Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide to it (the matte Decou-Page creates tooth for the paint to adhere to).




I wrapped some black thin soft wire around my goddess (maybe she gets numerically entangled too at times) and the finished shrine and twisted the ends together on the backside.


I added some rough self adhesive ribbon for more interest and to repeat the colour from the spool and the backs of the wood shapes.

I used the tiny spool and a larger cog from the Mini Wood Cogs sheet to create a stand.


Smaller cogs were used on the sides alongside some tiny screw heads from the Mini Hardware Wood Shapes sheet. 


I love how all the tiny bits 'n pieces have come together so beautifully! I hope you like my Numeric Goddess shrine too!





See you in two weeks!

Hugs and happy crafting!
Claudia
xxx