Sewing box make over

Quite a while ago, (make that a year or two) my mom gave me Gran's old sewing box.

I am not much of a seamstress... so I knew I was never going to use it as a sewing box...  I always wanted to make it over as an art tool box!  The question was HOW?

Why it took me so long to think of this solution I don't know...  I mean, I use this all the time for the projects I produce for art installations!  This technique is one I learned from Tim Holtz.  He called it Painted Industrial and it is on page 46 of his Compendium of Curiosities 3 book!

I am attending a two day scrapping event at the end of the month and thought this would be a brilliant tool tote...

So here it is in all its ugly fake wood and yellowed plastic glory!

Then I spray painted the handle and rims black.

After that I added embossed sticky backed foil.  (yes, I have an industrial roll of the stuff from a friend who's hubby is in the building trade)  These top two folders are by Cuttlebug and are 6"x12"

I decided to use two different designs so that I know which side is which and can open the appropriate one first... cos if they were the same... Murphy would have it that I would open the wrong one first every time!

Once that was all in place, I added the black paint and wiped off the excess.  Quite a quick afternoon's project!

Now to pack it full of inks and the like!

Truth Coffee mini book

I have decided to join in with a new blog challenge site for Mini books...  you can find the Mini Album Makers Challenge here!

This is my entry:

Back in 2014 I started the negotiations to create an artwork 2m x 4m with a 3.5m airship for Truth Coffee... This fat mini book chronicles the work....

I made it from scratch so it would fit.

I like to print all my photos first and make my pages to house the photos.  This works for me...

The idea is that I like each double spread to tell a story about one thing...

Then in the end, I make the cover to fit all the pages I have created!

 This is a close up of the cover below.  I created the Truth logo in a 3D program and 3D printed it for the space I left.  The stamped image of the 3 stooges lost their hats when I got a little over zealous with the Ground Espresso distress spray... so I re-stamped the hats on card stock, fussy cut them and added them on top for the final cover...

The close catch is a strip of leather which I embossed with an embossing folder, glued to the back cover and used an eyelet over a little knob to keep the book closed.

I did not take photos of this album as I worked... so here is one of the inside pages.  I did however shoot a video which is below so you can see all the fold out pages, it is slightly fuzzy, but you get the idea!

All about cogs Canvas

Over at the KaiserCraft Blog, they are having a challenge where the theme for the month of August is COGS!  Well, of course I could not resist, could I?  First I ordered the paper pack, die and stencil...

Then I set about looking at the delicious paper and die cuts for two weeks...

It would seem I work best under pressure and seeing as the deadline is tomorrow... I thought I better get going!  So I found a canvas and got to work!

I played with the cog embossing folder in as many ways as I could think of...In the end I used it in 7 different ways!

First I took orange craft foam and made a stamp, which I stamped onto card stock with coffee archival ink.

I inked the inside of the folder with Walnut Stain Distress Oxide inks and embossed the paper both on the negative and positive side of the folder. (these I also sprayed with water after they were embossed to make the ink wick)

Then I did the same with Archival ink.  Then I cut these into tags. 

For my feature tag, I also played with the distress oxides, but this time on my craft sheet and coloured a tag with Walnut stain and Vintage photo.  When this was dry, I ran it through the embossing folder and then clipped the surface of the cogs with Ground espresso distress ink.

Next, I die cut some card stock covered in sticky backed foil with the pipe die which I then inked with alcohol ink and painted with a little black soot distress paint.

Having created all my pieces for the canvas, I then embossed a long strip of sticky back foil by repeating the embossing folder down the length of it 3 to 4 times.  The one strip was slightly longer than the 12" canvas so it would wrap neatly round the corners.

I added the black soot distress paint and wiped the excess off.  When this was dry, I cut the strips down the length of the foil and adhered them to the sides of the box canvas.

Having created all these things I now needed a base for everything to be layered onto so I stenciled the cogs down the right hand side of the page using the same Oxide inks and then inked the edge of the page with black soot distress ink.

Below you can see how I started laying the tags out.

The final touches were added from the die cut paper pack and here is the finished canvas

Below are lots of close ups and different angles showing the foil edges.

Steampunk creations for Truth Coffee

I know I have been a bad blogger... real life just keeps getting in the way...

I have just done some samples for Truth Coffee Roasting to see if they want to go with a Decor theme in their "pods" as I call them.
I made a fake cake, a mechanical hand, an airship and a hat of course!
There are quite a few of these pods (11) grouped together and currently house the products they sell.
I had fun over the week end making the creations to trial run in them.
I was restricted by the size of the pods which was interesting to say the least as I usually create quite freely and with gay abandon... this restriction caused some brain scratching...

First I went shopping and bought some blanks

Then I started working on my ideas

And finishing them off

Then it was onto the cake...
I got some thick cardboard and cut and glued the sides onto the cupcake stand to make it into a cake.

Then I spray painted it copper and punched some paper strips. Made some paper roses and polyurethane stuff which I also sprayed copper.

The finished fake cake!

The mechanical hand has a 3D printed winding mechanism and eyelets with cogs and chain as well as a 3D printed submarine for good measure...