Stencilled wall art

After 17 years of living with someone else’s wallpaper, carpet & even wardrobes (bought for £20 off the former owner of our PREVIOUS house, ‘just to tide us over for a few months’) we recently had our tired and tatty bedroom re-vamped. Fitted wardrobes, complete redecoration and all new fixtures and fittings. It was like being on 60 Minute Makeover. Or rather, 6 Week Makeover, which is how long we had to decamp into my son’s bedroom, with all our stuff.

They finished the weekend before the Covid lockdown started in the UK, so I haven’t yet been able to shop for finishing touches (I like to do that in person rather than online & I’m still not going out except for the weekly food shop). 

But I knew I wanted something on this wall, to break up the wash of dark teal. My decorator suggested I buy a painting & he would accent it with some of the dark teal paint. And doubtless charge me £200 for the privilege. Err, no thanks.

So I’m currently working up the confidence to paint a large abstract piece for that wall, but I’ve never done anything large before, & these things take time etc, so in the meantime I thought I’d stick with what I know, & work small. 

I watched a fab video on using stencils on a gelli plate to create multiple layers in a single pull, & thought it would be good for creating several 4x4 pieces. Naturally, I can’t for the life of me find it now. It might have been by Carolyn Dube, but I’m not sure - if anyone can connect me with it again, I’d be v grateful. I promise I’ll take better care of it next time.

I used Carolyn Dube’s alphabet stencil to randomly stencil letters on the gelli plate using Paperartsy Fresco Finish in Buff. I let it dry, then placed a Prima Moroccan themed stencil over it & stencilled through it onto the plate in teal, blue & copper - colours I thought would match the wall well.

When that layer was dry, I stamped some text using a permanent ink. Finally, I painted a layer of white paint over the whole plate & immediately pulled it up, using inexpensive mixed media paper. It brought all the layers up with it beautifully, and created a print with depth & interest.

For finishing touches, I collaged some tissue paper into the corners & stamped & embossed some textural stamps.

I mounted the paper on cheap 4x4 artist’s wood panels & painted the sides to match the wall.  (And, yes, I know I really should have ‘staged’ that bed a bit better. But, meh... 🙂)

We locked down before the blinds could be fitted. Nearly six months later, I still have raggedy paper at the windows. Crack den chic.

Thanks 'sew' much

Totally in love with this pop up thank you card, despite the rotten pun. 

Lots of die cutting on this card. Pop up 'Thanks' & card base dies by Karen Burniston for Sizzix. The dress form, buttons & cotton reels are the Tim Holtz Sizzix die. The layered labels are Spellbinders. Papers: DIY Shop (Crate Paper), Thrift Shop (October Afternoon) & Core-dinations (Tim Holtz Distress range).

 

I cut a slit in the top of the 'Thanks' die cut & sunk a support for the back of the dress form, to make sure it would fold flat.

Front - this is a detail from a larger Justrite background stamp, Grandma's Attic. 

Back - my hand writing isn't the greatest so for pop up cards, where the inside is the main feature, I tend to put space for a greeting on the back.

Christmas bunting

 

Well. Clearly I'm ALL about the bunting at the moment.
 
This bunting project is easy peasy, but a bit fiddly. It took me the best part of a day to make. To be fair to me though, I AM very lazy and I DID have to keep stopping to watch TV, so you might find that you romp through it.

I made this bunting using the same Tim Holtz rosette die and Memory Box snowflake corner dies I used for the Halloween bunting. The only difference is that I layered up two cuts of the rosette die to make a bigger rosette. Tim's Youtube video explains how to do this. It's pretty straightforward.

DO stick tape of some kind to the back of the strip before you fold. It pretty much eliminates the problem of paper tearing and foul language that can happen when you fan the rosette out.
 
Also, keep the serrated edge waste from the die cut. You can use this to trim each piece of bunting in paper that matches the rosette (I used an old Cosmo Cricket Christmas range).

 

I secured the back of each rosette with the centre circle from the rosette die (because I'd made two cuts for each rosette, I had a centre to use front and back). Then I glued some vintage tiny tinsel to the back of the other centre circle, so that it peeped out round the edge. Then I glued that to the front of the rosette.

 
For the pennant, I hand cut some triangles and stamped them with a Tim Holtz snowflake stamp using distress ink. I used the second, third & fourth impressions (stamping the first impression onto scrap paper first, to get rid of the excess ink) as I wanted a faded background.
 
Light squirt of Perfect Pearls mist over the top (I used Heirloom Gold). Ink round the edges to give some definition.
 

The starburst at the back of the rosette is the Memory Box snowflake die. It's a corner die, so you need to cut four for each rosette. Line up the straight edges so that the right angles meet. Add glue to the back of the rosette and carefully place down. You might then want to fiddle a bit to get the best placement. (Be warned, these critters like to tangle and latch on to each other. A steady hand and low blood pressure are a boon at this point.)

Then glue the whole thing onto the triangle. I'd use a glue gun, you don't want that sucker falling off right when your visitors are standing before it, gazing in awe and wonder. The shame!

 

 
Hole punch each side and thread through some rustic twine.

Et voila. You got yourself a Christmas banner there, boy!

Halloween banner

This is one of my favourite makes ever! The Tim Holtz rosettes from earlier in the week mounted onto a spooky party banner. Took me minutes, but I love it.

Strangely, the four 8 year old boys in whose honour it was made failed to pass ANY. COMMENT. WHATSOEVER on it. Kids these days :-/

Halloween

My son is having a birthday sleepover for 3 friends on Thursday, so we're giving it a spoooky Halloween feel.

I made these rosettes using the Tim Holtz rosette die. Never really made anything I liked with it until now, but these look pretty good. Layering them up is definitely the key. I layered them up with a couple of star shaped die cuts and the tendrils are 4 Memory Box starburst corner die cuts. The spider stamp is from a Dylusions set.

12 Tags of Christmas: tag 7

I didn't have Tim's holly die, but i do have his holly stamp, so I stamped it onto glasseine with a mix of acrylic paint and distress ink, then spritzed with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls & cut out. The moon stamp is by Crafty Individuals.

Pockets

Shimelle has posted about the joy of pockets in your Christmas journal, and I couldn't agree more!

I am a pocket junky. I love bits that come out and unfold and then slot back in (The Jolly Postman is my absolute favourite children's book because of this). I've made  five for my journal so far, but it may end up that pretty much every page has some sort of pull-out element.

This one is my favourite. It's a 12x12 bracket sheet cut into quarters and stitched together. A card or tag fits in the middle.

The ornament and Santa stamps are Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous.

I love this one too. A tag slots in behind Santa (a detail cut from Paperartsy paper). That tinsel's a bit wonky. Have to go back & fix that.

This one has a vertical pocket, that something will slide in behind (not the paper shown below, but you get the idea).

Finally, this is a 6x6 page protector, stitched down the middle to create two deep pockets. I've cut a single sheet of 6x6 in half and attempted to stamp a similar pattern on the plain back. It'll mostly be covered in journalling or by a photo anyway.

Key fob

Right. Settle down, I made something.

This is a key fob for my locker at work. Delightfully, it features pictures of me. I used the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone. I'm using that at lot at the moment. You can only take so many pictures of the cat staring at you before it gets dull (I know! I wouldn't have thought so either, but it's true) so Hipstamatic perks things up a bit.

I took some of these tags, some ink, paint, book pages, crackle glaze and just a smidgen of wine (a lot of wine. It's mostly all made of wine, if I'm being honest) and made these.

Incidentally, this represents an excitingly subversive act for me, as I intend to leave it dangling from my locker & all personal effects have recently been banned from our office. I'm really sticking it to The Man. Regular readers, however, will recall that I have previous when it comes to guerilla crafting, having made (and subsequently been instructed to remove) a desk calendar which contravened at least three sub-clauses of the dignity at work policy.

PS Hello again! I've really missed you*

*I have not missed you

Pogo Printer

I used my Pogo printer to print these photos. The print quality is kind of what you'd expect for under £20, but I like the size of the prints (sort of cigarette card size)& it's quite refreshing not to be able to fiddle and photoshop stuff prior to print out. What you take is what you get.

Stamps are are mix of Tim Holtz, Sassafras and Technique Tuesday. There are two splots of red wine on there, too. Lord knows how they got on. I do remember spilling wine once, but I'm pretty sure I managed to miss the layout - I checked. So I must have spilled wine twice then. Hey ho. 

I realise this makes me sound a bit of an old lush...

(The boys had their heads hanging over the edge of the bed btw, that's why they look a bit weird.)

Cross Cat

My JYC entry for December 3rd: Christmas cards. The cat stamp is by Judikins. Can't remember who the bird one is - will update when I find it.

I have been making Christmas cards at school with my son's infant class this morning. Not quite sure how I ended up with that job, I definitely only offered to cut out a few Christmas shapes on my Cricut for the kids to use in Christmas projects & suddenly I'm running the show!

(One thing I have learnt over the last few weeks is that you have to be careful what you volunteer for at that school, they are very big on function creep. You offer to go in for twenty minutes to help the little ones get changed after PE, and next thing you know you're leading them on a potholing expedition down the Devil's Arse (proper cavern, look it up!) with Huw Edwards' baleful commentary ringing in your ears ("The boulders bounced off the children's soft heads"). I regularly hear my life, as reported by Huw Edwards, in my head, usually when whatever I'm doing is particularly dumb and/or dangerous. It used to be a local newscaster (Gordon Burns) who was lodged there, but with the expansion of my ego, nothing less than the gravitas of a Huw Edwards or (ideally) Michael Buerk will do.)

Still I can't deny I'm feeling sneakily festive now. The kids sang Jingle Bells in really hushed tones just before I left and it brought a tear to my eye! 

I made up some more text pages for my journal last night and it's starting to look nice and fat.

Snow? Oh I REALLY don't think so

My JYC December 2nd entry. Prompt: weather.

We get snow that sticks about once every other year here (just outside Manchester, UK) usually in Feb/March. I can't remember the last time it snowed even vaguely near Christmas, so we don't rely on the weather to get us hugely festive, although it's always nice to be able to have a good old moan about it.

This photo of my son in the snow was taken about 4 years ago (in April! I have a photo taken four weeks later of him in shorts and t shirt and bare feet, charging round the garden. Madness!). When I printed it out my printer was out of ink, and it came out with a weird purple tinge to it. So I took a scraper and scratched off the top layer where the snow was, and it really changed the photo from being frankly unusable to really quite funky! Well I think so, anyway. I often employ a similar technique with my cooking and my family don't tend to agree. Whatever.

The photo slides out from behind the acetate overlay and there's some journalling on the back.

ATCs

Jackie came to stay this weekend. We did a lot of scrapping, drinking and cackling, while the menfolk of the house hid in other rooms, looking nervous.

On Saturday we went to the Happy Stampers Festival at Port Sunlight. Man alive, it was busy! And hot! I must have had heat stroke or something, because I came THIS close to buying Magnolias (sorry if you're a Magnolia fan, but well....Moomins!!), but thankfully Jackie slapped me around a bit and I came out of my fug and bought a load of cool Stamp Camp stuff instead. (And some cheap Magnolia knock-offs by Kars, but I trust you'll have the good taste not to mention them.)

We bought way too much, and coming out, giddy on the heady combination of rubber and pheromones, giggled and snorted at the site of four nervous looking old ladies as they drove verrrrry sloooooowly and caaaaarefully round a roundabout. Smirk.

Then we got in our car and smartly drove round the same roundabout, the wrong way.

(I knew when we pulled onto it that it didn't feel quite right, but I couldn't figure out why. Hey ho. Instant Karma, I guess. )

Anyway some ATCs from a little fiddling session we had. The fairy stamps are by The Stamp Man, the text ones are Stamp Camp. Am determined to fill up my ATC spinner that two years ago I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO HAVE AND ABSOLUTELY WOULD USE, which currently houses about 6 ATCs.




Jackie made this last one. Good, innit? Go on her blog and bug her to start posting again. I miss her calm and reasoned take on life :)

More Promarkers

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Anyway, yes, Promarkers!!!

I made a couple more cards with them. Bearing in mind that I am an absolute duffer when it comes to colouring in using any other medium, I'm really pleased with the results. I think as I get more experienced* I will manage to whack in a bit more shade and do a bit more blending. I've already learned that when it comes to blending you have to be ruddy quick - leave it anymore than a couple of seconds and you're done for.

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I used the Letraset non-bleed paper. This stopped most of the ink bleed, although not all of it. The stamps are a new Hero Arts clear set, I got them from Sir Stampalot.

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*This suggests future frequent use. Regular readers know that this will never, ever happen.