A Pop Of Colour! by Lesley

Howdy  folks

Lesley here with a jazzed up plaque for you!

Now........i have a love of journaling.......no-one really ever see's my journals, I just journal for me! But i decided to have a little dabble on a plain birch plaque. These surfaces are fab.....they will take anything you throw at them! And are a bargain price! I used the 150mm x 150mm size....but you could go larger!

I started out by priming the plaque with a coat of gesso. The plywood does tend to eat paint rather quickly, using gesso first stops this. I then picked my colours of paint, A bright pink, a turquiose and a purple.

I used the pink in the middle and the purple around the outside. Once dry, i used a stencil and the turquiose paint.

I then took some Decoart crackle paint and applied it through another stencil. Once this was dry, i used my finger to add turquiose to the cracks.

Then in my super scruffy writing........i wrote around the plaque! I then flicked some black paint over the entire surface.  I used two different sizes of the primitive plywood hearts, and just used my finger to apply the paint.

I then doodled in white and black paint pens over the top.
These were glued together, and i added some turquiose and white stringy stuff around the hearts before gluing to the plaque. Ooooooh, and a little rub-on in the corner!

Thanks for reading.
L.xx

Ingredients used
Birch plywood primitive hearts
Square birch plywood plaque

Follow Your Dreams - by Julie Ann

Hello Everyone! I've been experimenting with one of the medium sized, Calico house cubes, taking advantage of the slightly larger surface to work on and allowing my imagination to lead the way! 

As soon as I saw the beautiful new, Calico tree shapes, I knew I wanted to include them on my next project and I was delighted to see that they fitted well onto the sides of the medium-sized cube house.

I've played with the idea of walking houses before by creating little clay trainers and attaching them. This time I gave my house feet and legs with the addition of a couple of wooden spools.

Apart from the roof, which was acrylic paint over 3D Gloss Gel...

my little house was formed from collage using my own art.

I keep even the tiniest of scraps of design papers to accent tips and corners; but I also like to create backgrounds, which I can scan into my computer and print out to use.

It's fascinating to see how different the background appears when it's part of the project as a whole,

a backdrop for characters and their miniature worlds.

Calico have created some wonderful shapes that stimulate the imagination and get the creative juices flowing: glorious rose flourishes; mysterious antique doors; magical windows and friendly songbirds on branches.

I pieced them together to create a house of dreams and stories, reminiscent of summer evenings when, as children, we had to go to bed in the light while birds still sang outside our window.

We thought our eyes would never close, but - before we knew it - the house was travelling on sturdy turquoise legs, wearing shiny shoes with polka dots and the trees had turned to gold like those in the tale of 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses'.

While we slumbered safe and cosy in our bed...

our illustrated story house took us to lands where golden nightingales sang

and fairy folk made their homes behind doors carved into the trunks of ancient oak trees. What dreams and stories would your 'dream-house' hold? Whatever they might be, Calico has some incredibly detailed pieces that could make your dreams come true! Have a lovely creative week filled with dreams and stories.
Calico Craft Parts Used
Block Style Cube House (Medium)
Skeleton Tree Shape (Style 10)
Skeleton Tree Shape (Style 8)
Sheet of tiny doors and windows
Thorned Rose Scroll (Style 24)
Trio of Songbirds
Window (Style10)

She knew she loved him ....... by Jennie

... when home went from being a place to a person.

That lovely quote (E. Leventhal) was in my head when I started putting this little house together. 

The MDF Cube House Kit comes flat packed but is very easy to put together.  Before glueing the house together I gave everything a coat of blue chalk paint. 

It had been my intention to have the crackle on the outside but the house was just too dark, so the crackled outsides, became the insides! So easy to do with a cube kit!

The side panels were decorated with texture paste added through a brick stencil and finished with those gorgeous little mini hinges.

I kept the crackle (DecoArt Weathered Wood) on the roof and added muslin and a little cluster of flowers. I love the way the inks blend into the crackle to create the vintage shabby look.

I did decorate the inside of the box before putting the roof on! The box has quite a depth to it, so I bought the figures forward (glueing them to a small piece of wood) but it is worth noting that given the depth it will take a lot of items (note for the future!). There is a little MDF floral stem and leaf just tucked into the box - it must have been left over when I cut a piece up for a previous project. Always worth hanging on to all the little pieces!

As I have been on a bit of a run with "wedding present" ideas I think this could also make a lovely gift for either a wedding or an anniversary with the art dolls being replaced by the happy couple.  

Thank  you so much for joining me today for this little vintage project and I hope it may have given you some ideas for using the cube house kit for something a little different.

Jennie x

Live The Dream

Calico Craft Parts Used:

Mini Hinges

MDF Cube House Kit : Medium

Keep Out Sign for the Young Marine Biologist - by Claudia

Hi, servus and thank you so much for stopping by today! And I would also like to thank you all for the lovely comments you always leave with my projects - they're highly appreciated! :)

Today I want to share with you a "Keep Out" sign that I made for my son's new room. We have been busily renovating during the last weeks and my husband and I are switching rooms with our son. So he will soon have his own bedroom and small living room (and we are going to have a brand new bedroom with new furniture...so all are more than happy). 

Those who already know a bit about me and my family may remember that my son wants to become a marine biologist and that he especially loves sharks, whales and the coealacanth. So making a shark door sign for him was quite an obvious thing to do with Calico Craft Parts' awesome shark wood shapes. 

Calico Craft Parts used:

- Fancy Birch Plywood Plaque - Style 1 - 150mm x 120mm

- Stars - Mini Greyboard Shapes

- Great White Shark MDF Wood Shape (please note: this design is now discontinued but link takes you to other shark wood shapes)

I wanted to create a vintage style sign, so I browsed the net for images of vintage signs and studied their colours, designs and font styles before I decided on which products and colour tones to use.

Then I started with adding some Burnt Umber heavy body acrylic paint and white DecoArt Acrylic Gesso to the plaque and the shark shape. 

Once the plaque was dry I added some DecoArt Weathered Wood to it with a soft brush. 

While that was set aside to dry I painted my shark using DecoArt media Titanium White, Phtalo Turquoise, Qinacridone Magenta, English Red Oxide and Cobalt Teal Hue fluid acrylics. 

I mixed some Titanium White, Quin Magenta and English Red Oxide to paint the mouth's inside. Once that was dry I dry brushed the teeth with Titanium White. 

In the meantime the Weathered Wood had gotten dry to the touch - perfect for quickly applying the top colour with a soft brush. I chose DecoArt Americana Sea Breeze as I think it is the perfect vintage colour for an ocean life themed sign! 

I let the painted plaque dry naturally before I mixed some DecoArt Americana Primary Yellow and DecoArt media English Red Oxide to paint a thin frame around the plaque. 

Once that was dry I drew a thin white border using a white gel pen. 

To make sure the font and letters were in the exact spot where I wanted them, I drew a template by outlining the plaque and the shark with a pencil and cutting it out. Then I marked the height of the letters with lower and upper lines that followed the shape of the plaque. 

I sketched my words on that template and then transferred them onto my plaque using DecoArt Americana Transfer Paper. I used a ball point pen for sufficient pressure and traced my letters precisely. 

They were then painted with DecoArt media Phtalo Turquoise using a fine tip brush. 

I also added two greyboard stars that I had painted with English Red Oxide. 

Everything was glued into place using matte DecoArt Decou-Page.

For a final touch I painted a very thin outline with English Red Oxide to repeat the colour of the stars and the shark's jaw. 

I drilled two holes using my Dremel to fix some rough cord for a hanging loop.

I simply tied a knot into the cord's ends. 

Done!

My son loves his new sign for the door to his new "realm". And I hope you like it too (and I am quite sure that there are a lot of future marine biologists out there who would love a "keep out" sign like this too). 

See you in two weeks!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx

Batting Her Eyes by Lesley

Hey people, i have an upcycled piece for you this week.

This piece originally started out as a hanging tealight holder which i picked up from a supermarket for 50p.

Because it is china, there was a good chance any paint would scratch off, even if it was primed with gesso. With this in mind........i decided to cover it in torn bits of printed tissue pieces using a matt medium. And the inside was coated with two layers of gesso.

I added a was of red paint to the entire piece, and then applied texture paste through a stencil. Once it was dry, i rubbed some gold wax over the raised areas. A few little rub-ons were added as well.

The bats were painted black and more gold wax added to the edges. I used a length of thick wire, and wrapped it around the bats and then around the top of the holder.

The dolls head was primed with gesso. And i then added black, red and white paint to her.

Using the last bat i had, i wrapped a length of wire around her neck, bending it around so that the bat sat in front of her eyes.

To finish it off, i added a length of chain so it can be hung.

Thanks for reading,
L.xx

Ingredients used
Flying bats colony