Happy Birthday BAC

This weekend our wonderful local arts and craft shop, Berkhamsted Arts and Crafts, celebrates its 40th birthday! 

They asked for birthday cards to share, so I couldn't not make one, could I?!?

It also gave me a chance to play with a birthday present. I got some powertex, and related mixed media goodies following a workshop in June with Angela Simpson and Leonie Pujol. We had such fun playing there, so I wanted another go.

(That's my journal middle right - it's really not that dark!)

Angela on the far left, and Leonie next to me in the front. And the other lovely ladies!


I started my card by collecting all kinds of bits and bobs to go onto it.

I added grunge paste to the card base for texture, as well as to the wooden letters and numbers, and some stars I die cut from an old tissue box.

These also came from the tissue box - the plaque has three layers, glued together for depth.

I also had papyrus (which stretches out wonderfully with the powertex), cheese cloth, lace, string, wooden embellishments and some clay balls to play with.

I added them all to the base with the powertex. (It's a fabric hardener, so gives the gorgeous texture to the cloth, but also works as a glue.) I had the transparent one, I decided it was the most versatile, as you can use it with patterned cloth etc and retain the pattern.

This was the result! It looks a bit of a mess - it is! This is not tidy crafting. Powertex sticks to fingers best of all, I was covered by the end, but peeling it off is hugely satisfying!

Once this had dried (keeping the lovely folds and dimension in the fabric), the next step was to paint it all with black gesso.

This took a while to get into all the nooks and crannies! Despite examining it from all angles, I missed loads the first time, so had to go back in for a second pass (and there were still some tiny gaps!). This is where spray gesso would come into its own!

Once dry, time to add the colour and highlights!

I dry brushed with acrylic paints - metallic blue, purple, which I mixed with a pearlescent medium, and gold. I then added metallic wax in gold, with a bit of blue, purple and silver, to highlight areas. Finally, I watered down the paint left over from dry brushing, and splattered on a layer of each colour. I wiped it off some of the words I wanted to highlight.

The final step was to mount onto an 8x8 card blank (using super sticky tape as it wasn't very flat so needed to be held firm!). I added a squiggle round the edge with a black drawing pen, as the plain white didn't look right when the main piece is so full on!

It's maybe a bit over the top for a card, but I had so much fun playing with this! I have plenty of journals and things I can do something similar with. It's really very forgiving too, it's not hard to create something that looks great (in my humble opinion!).


Maybe next time I'll go for something not quite so dark!

Artoo-De-Shoe

Something a bit different today, and very exciting!

I've mentioned before that my best friend Susan and I like to do crafternoons and try new crafts. It started with my hen do, when we all spent a very enjoyable afternoon making paper flowers, which then adorned the chairs at our reception.

Well, it's her birthday this month and mine next, and a post I chanced to see on Facebook led me back to the page of the lovely lady who ran that hen do crafternoon, Claire Mackaness, and the perfect craft for us to celebrate with; Comic Book Shoes. 

This one required a bit of preparation to find the materials. I got the shoes on sale for £9 (bargain - they only had one pair in my size otherwise I'd have got more!) then headed for a comic book shop. I think the guy there was quite upset at the idea of cutting them up (hubby wasn't particularly happy either) but they both helped me find a few - including 3 for free - that might be suitable.

So yesterday we headed over to Brentwood to Claire's studio.

The process is basically decoupage. Having said a few weeks ago that I hadn't tried the dedicated decoupage glue/varnish, yesterday I did. Although this itself was a stand in for mod podge, which Claire would usually use. It's a lot thicker and quicker drying than the PVA and water I'm used to. But it reduces the bubbling, so I think is particularly suitable for use with thicker papers.

We first went through the comics to cut out specific images we liked and wanted to use. Having seen "The Force Awakens" last week, I went for the Droids magazine - plus C3PO's gold colour matched my shoes!

We then cut some pages into random small squares for the background. These we applied to cover the whole of the body of the shoe. The glue went onto the shoe first, then the square of paper, then another layer to seal the square down. The glue softens the paper a bit so it curves with the shoe, although some areas were a bit trickier and required much smaller pieces. And some pieces of paper just refused to stick for no apparent reason!

I didn't think to take photos of the shoes before I started, but here's one partially covered.

This is what they looked like with the background layer complete.

I've glossed over the process a bit - this took us at least three hours to do!

The next stage was to place the images we'd selected over the background, again applying glue under and over the paper. This went relatively quickly, although you could take ages deciding on the layout you want.

And, with a short drying time, my shoes were finished!

I'm so pleased with these - so here are lots of pictures showing them off!


The glue doubles as a varnish, giving a slightly glossy finish. We could add a coat of yacht varnish to make them splash resistant as well.

(Must take the stickers off the soles!

You can also get glue/varnishes with sparkle in, which would give a slightly different look.





 There's enough flex in the glue/varnish that they feel like normal shoes to wear, although they probably won't stand up to too much wear. 

The odd crack etc could be covered by adding another piece of paper with the glue.





There's also the option to add glitter to the heels and/or strap - I haven't decided whether I'm going to try this.

And here are Susan's Catwoman shoes - how gorgeous! I love the colours, and the speech bubbles she's added to them.

She's planning to wear these on the school run this week!




I'm definitely on the look out for an occasion to wear mine - my days of heels everyday are behind me!

But I am keen to try another pair - more practical flats or a low heel this time - after all I have 4 comics untouched, as well as some of the droid one left.

You could use all kinds of papers. Another woman at the workshop used magazine cuttings, which looked amazing, or wrapping paper, or even decoupage papers!

I wish I'd seen this technique before I got married, as this would be an amazing way to make bespoke wedding shoes.

And of course, the technique isn't restricted to shoes - I have quite a collection of items to be decoupaged that I haven't got around to yet, so maybe I shouldn't get carried away, but this does open up the possibilities.

A crafty day away

A treat for me today, as I got to spend the whole day crafting at a Clarity workshop with Angela, one of their design team, down near Reading.

We made 4 cards, mostly using a Japanese style Clarity stamp set.

This is the first, a waterfall card that unfolds to reveal the lower panels, with the greeting on the last one.It's easier than it looks - and now I have instructions and measurements!

Don't look to closely, but after I took the first photo, I splashed my drink onto the card, smudging it a bit. I have some spare card so I can redo the damaged bits at home.


The next card used a bigger version of the geisha stamp.

It's simple but effective. The images are stamped in watermark ink and heat embossed with white powder. The hills are shaded with white pencil, to ground our lovely lady. The white mat is edged in black sharpie to mimic a black layer - isn't it effective! And saves on layers for postage.

After lunch we tackled a pagoda.

The images were stamped and masked - good practice for this month's Clarity challenge, which has a masking theme.

The panel was created with masking tape, and distress ink swept over with stencil brushes. I used salty ocean and picked raspberry; others used yellow and green, or green and a pale pink, to give a completely different feel to the same card.

The pagoda, lanterns and blossom were coloured in with pencils, and the panel edged with a black micron pen. Again, we used a sharpie to edge the piece.

The final card of the day used a different stamp set - the wild grasses, which are on my wish list.

The first step was to brush in the background, using a square aperture stencil.

The birds, grasses and butterfly were stamped in brown. We stamped a second butterfly onto a spare piece of card, and cut it out (I even did the antennae!) then layered up.

We dry brushed the edge of the card in the same colours as the centre, but reversed. The final step was a raffia bow on the corner.

It's subtle but pretty - I think this is my favourite card of the day.

Thanks to Angela and the other lovely ladies for a very enjoyable and productive day! I look forward to joining you again soon.