Finnabair recipe heart canvas

I was really taken with a book cover that Finn posted recently and decided to have a go at making something similar on a 6"x6" canvas using products that I already have.

You can see her full recipe here and so I'm not going to give instructions, rather step out photos of how mine progressed.

I started with the crackle texture paste by Finn in white and that took half a day to dry properly.  Then I added the clear plastic heart (which is the one half of a Christmas tree ornament) and all the beads and cogs.  There are also dots in dimentional pearls and glossy accents for another texture dimention...

I cheated and spray painted the canvas black cos I wanted the heart to be smooth with no brush strokes!  Then I started adding silver Inka Gold.

Followed by blue Inka Gold on the left hand side of everything.

And green Silks acrylic on the right hand side of everything.

The metallics are much brighter in the real world...they just won't photograph nicely, but here is a close up showing some of the details.

Art Journal page: Sing

I started the page with Dylusions ink sprays in Bubblegum pink and Lemon zest, by spraying the one page with the inks and water and closing it.

I then set about creating my die cuts and machine cuts for the page while the ink dried.  Having inked the edges of the word sing with Black soot Distress ink, I then stamped the music on it using a Kaisercraft stamp with Jet Black Archival ink.  I used a Poska white pen to add the highlights to the word, the bird, dress form and the cage.

When the page was dry I added my latest collection of Tim Holtz background stamps and stencils using Jet Black Archival ink on the stamps round the edges, picked Raspberry Distress ink through the Lace and Scribbles stencils and Black soot through the Wildflower and Typo stencils.

 On top of this base and my die cut bird cage, I then stamped the floral background stamp in Mustard Seed Distress Paint.

 I love the fact that Distress paint is kind of translucent and you can see through to the layers below it in places.

 above is a second generation print and below is the first print made with the distress paint. (remember to wash your stamps immediately after using paint on them otherwise the paint will dry permanently onto your stamp)

Here is a pinnable version of all these images for you to add to your board!

Art Journal Page: Make Pretty Things

I started the page by spritzing it with water and  Dylusions sprays in Lemon zest and Vibrant turquoise which when they blend give a wonderful green hue.  I then closed the book, opened it and left it to dry.

 I used the Finnabair lace stencil with texture paste on both pages and covered it with Peacock feathers Distress ink.  I then used BoBunny's doily sticky masks with more Peacock feathers Distress ink randomly all over the page.  I found some left over die cuts of butterflies and doilies in my stash and glued them to the page using gel medium as well as a lovely real doily which was gifted to me by Shamela.  The black doilies were stamped on using Jet Black Archival ink.

I stamped over the word "make" with a Kaisercraft lace stamp and the word "things" with Tim's Mesh stamp using Jet black Archival ink.  I then set about creating shadows under the words and doilies etc with my pine needles distress marker and highlighted with the Posca white pen.

Awesome discovery!

I am busy designing my next class to teach at Scrapbook North and in experimenting with Tim's Spritz tool, I made an awesome discovery!

I had been using his stencils to create paint splats, but they were just a bit too contained for me, so I put the Perfect Pearls large paint brush in the spritz tool and dipped it in distress paint and blasted my project...It worked a real treat!

Exciting news! The Joy of Extraordinary TRUTH.

I am about to burst with excitement!  Do you remember this canvas? 12"x12"

Well it was the beginning of something wonderful.

In March last year Tim Holtz came to town and went to my favourite coffee shop called Truth.  He loved it so much that he wrote a blog post all about his experience there.

In June of 2014 I decided to create a canvas based on Truth Coffee meets Tim Holtz which I posted on Twitter for them both to see.  Truth said they wanted it and so I gave it to them...On meeting the one partner when I handed it over, he asked if I did commissions...and yes I do!  So began the beginning of many meetings between myself and the partners, culminating in a final meeting yesterday with all three of them in which it was decided that I would be doing an art installation Steampunk style across their blank wall all down the one side of the shop.

I have made many samples for the wall to get a sense of scale for the cogs and other items.  Some of which you might have seen blogged about here before, like the dress-form which is already in situ at Truth.

In my studio she was large and life size standing 6ft tall...in this huge space she looks tiny and almost insignificant!

Here's another sample/trial run of one of their staff's profiles done in polystyrene (frame and all) and is 55cm x 75cm though I have not yet blogged about how this was created.

Then there were the hats which I have blogged about recently...I made one for each partner to try and show the versatility of my artistic skills and thought processes.

 Here are the big blank walls...In time you will see them change.  I will endeavor to take photos as I work so you can enjoy this journey with me.  It is going to be quite a ride!

What's on My Workdesk Wednesday No303? New Tim stash and fallout!

Quick post from me as I have already dropped my son at school at 7am, set up his food fair table, collected the cake for our home cricket match this afternoon...still have to go collect the sewing done for my studio on my way to work before 9am...I need a 24 hour day before I even start!

So What's on my desk?  A beautiful little case which is in need of serious repairs.  It came from a lady who is down-scaling and not crafting any more.  The contents of the case are on the left of my desk together with a lot of gold glitter fall out as the lid had come off the jar in transit...

Then there are the new and as of yet un-used stamps and stencils I purchased yesterday.  I wanted the alphabet one so I could try Tim's latest tag with it as my current version is rather heavy handed on the gold using the harlequin stencil...

Silver Hat

I just realised that although I made this hat last year and I blogged a short post about it, here are some close ups of it finally finished.  It is for a particular gentleman who is a specialty coffee roaster...hence the 3 stages of the beans!

No step out photos of this as I made it impulsively and did not think to pick up a camera!  This was the first one in the series.  I have made a girly steampunk hat for myself and again...there are no step outs...It will appear in the next blog post!

Steampunk Hats - The final one!

I have been busy with a series of hats for a personal project.

Here is the last one!

I give you Apple Mac meets Steampunk!

I had fun with the thought of what Apple's branding would have looked like steampunk style...like a step back in time!

To create this one, I did the same process with the metal foil as per the silver hat, but then I sprayed it with white spray paint and sanded it back a bit to show the silver.

 Then I added the hat band with a cog to hold it in place.

 Next came the white embellishments which I had to hold in place with painters tape while the glossy accents dried.

 I felt it needed a little more after this so...

 I found some of the DIY straws and some micro beads to make it a little more funky!

 Here we have the final hat...front, back and sides!

These hats have been incredibly rewarding to make, lets hope the final project they are meant for goes ahead eventually.

In the mean time, I am entering this in the 3D section of Sandee and Amelies steam punk challenge for March which is "Gear it Up" as the whole top and rim of the hat has embossed gears on it as well as at least 6 dimensional ones for good measure!

March tag of Tim's 12 tags of 2015

Here is my take on Tim's tag for March...Mine seems to be all about the texture paste and embossing powder where as Tim's is all about the butterfly...visually speaking that is.

I think this has happened for two reasons.
1:  I don't have his beautiful big butterfly stamp (yet) and used my biggest Darkroom Door one instead.
2: I don't have the alphabet stencil yet either.

Knowing that these tags are all about the process and making them your own...

I chose to use the harlequin stencil which has LOTS of coverage, unlike the subtle alphabet one.  Perhaps I should not have covered the whole tag with the embossing paste...then it would not be quite so overstated.  However, the technique is a fabulous one and worked particularly well, though I had to actively practice some patience while the texture paste dried over night and I could heat gun it the next day to emboss the powder.

The nice thing is that I got two more tag bases out of the paint I had on my craft sheet, so I can try a few more versions when I get a chance.  I think I was a little generous with the paint to start with...

Roll on 1st of April, I can't wait to play again!