Upcycled Storage by Karen

Happy New Year! Have you made any resolutions? Mine are based around decluttering and tidying so I started with part of my craft stash. It was getting hard to find things or even to look without setting off an avalanche of things falling in all directions: Time to get organised!
The 'before' photo:

I do like the small wooden trays that we often buy satsuma or clementines in at this time of the year. They are fairly strong, stack easily and are not too big for things to hide in. I had all ready collected a few and I pulled off any loose labels and gave them a coat of white Gesso to try to smooth out imperfections and cover metal staples before giving them a coat of bright Eco Acrylic Paint.  I wrote on each box what they would be used for in black paint and roughly edged round the front of the box to frame this section.

Each box was then treated to a layer of stenciled Design-It paste in Pewter, Aquamarine or Copper and left to dry before I organised my pots and bottles back in to the correct box.

I also gave the writing and borders some white paint highlights which you can see in this photo. This helped make the colours pop and the writing to stand out. You'll also see a fourth box that I decorated to go with the original three and I have another two boxes put aside to do for more supplies.

I still have a way to go to get everything organised but this simple project has been quite a transformation so far: It is so much easier to find things and put them back tidily. I think it will help me use what I have and save time too!
Wishing you a happy, creative 2020!
Karen
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Design-It Relief Paste

Eco Acrylic Paint

white gesso

Golden haired nylon brushes

Quick Christmas cards by Karen

It is fast approaching the time when I need to be sending out Christmas cards and I have been doing 'one sheet wonder' style cards where you use every bit of one sheet of paper to make lots of cards. I applied this to these cards today by creating a colourful sheet with Brusho Crystal Colours in traditional Christmas hues of red and green and then cutting it up to make my cards.  Although there are 6 cards in the photo, I actually made seven in just a few hours.

I used a 30 x 30 cm (12" x 12") heavyweight paper and sprayed it with water before sprinkling it with Brilliant Red, Gamboge, Olive Green and Emerald Green Brusho powders. I dabbed with a paper towel anywhere that there seemed to be too much water or the colours were running together and becoming too brown.

I dried this with a heat tool before spraying and flicking Brusho Gold Shimmer spray on to it and letting this dry naturally.

I recycled a cereal packet by painting the inside with Aztec Metallics Gold Paint and used this to die cut my text and embellishments. It looks streaky in the photo but it dries to a lovely metallic sheen as you can see in the embellishments below.

I'm pleased with how the cards turned out and I just have a few die cut baubles and a small piece of gold card left over. I'm sure they will make their way on to another card: Nothing wasted!

Hope this helps you if you have lots of cards to make.
Karen

Brusho Shimmer Sprays	Clear Spray Bottle	Heat Gun	Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint	15g brusho
Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set	Golden haired nylon brushes

Mixed Media Mushrooms By Karen

I love all the wonderful wild mushrooms that pop up at this time of the year and they inspired me to make my decoration.

I had bought a wood base and I gathered up some cardboard pieces and rolls to recycle and create the mushroom shapes. Two tubes were cut in height and along their length and rolled narrower to make the different sizes. I filled the tubes with pieces of cardboard to make them more stable and give a bigger surface area to glue at the top and bottom.

To decorate the lower parts, watercolour paper was coloured with Brusho Crystal colours in Burnt Sienna and Light and Dark Browns

Cardboard boxes were used to cut caps for the mushrooms. Red, Yellow and Leaf Green Acrylic Paints were mixed to make a red-brown and, although they are unlikely to be seen, I painted over the cardboard with this.

Once dry, I cut up the watercolour paper to fit around the mushroom stalks and to create the gills of the mushrooms. These were accordion-folded and then sprayed with Copper Shimmer spray for the smaller mushroom, gold for the middle size and bronze for the larger one.

Lutradur and Tyvek fabrics are wonderful in the way they react to heat, shrinking and getting lacey effects so I wanted to use these for the tops of the mushrooms.

Pieces were cut to size: One Tyvek circle and two Lutradur circles for each mushroom. These were sprayed with Shimmer spray and left to dry.

Once dry, the watercolour paper was stuck on to the mushrooms using Flexi glue:

The Lutradur and Tyvek papers were heated to get those wonderful lacey, bumpy textures...

 and then glued on to the tops of the mushrooms with Gel Medium, Tyvek first followed by the two Lutradur layers:

The wood base was washed with Dark Brown Brusho Crystal mixed with water to match the mushrooms. I also used some Aztec Metallic Paints to rub over the raised parts of the Lutradur to enhance the texture and shine.

Finally, for some contrast on the tops, I added some Leaf Green Brusho Crystal colours to the bits of paper left over and reactivated them with water and gold Brusho Shimmer Spray. I used this to die-cut some leaves and glued these and some sequins to the tops of the mushrooms.

I particulalry love the stalks and gills though: Quite lifelike!

I hope this inspires you to make you own Autumn decoration. Please leave a link, or any comments and questions, below.
Karen
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Tyvek Light Weight Fabric	Brusho Shimmer Sprays	Lutradur	Gel Medium	Clear Spray Bottle
Eco Acrylic Paint	Heat Gun	Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint	15g brusho

Painted Sleeve Protectors by Karen James

We have some fabulously talented fabric artists on the design team but I am not one of them. I am very much a paper crafter and mixed media artist but, just occasionally, I do feel compelled to sew something! I wanted some sleeve protectors and I like to recycle things so I decided to make some from an old cotton pillowslip. Rather than adding fabric paints to my stash of acrylic paints, I decided to use Fabric Medium with my Eco Acrylic paints to make them suitable for using on this project and to enable me to wash my protectors from time to time.

I mixed in fabric medium to each paint colour as I used it. The Fabric Medium is quite thick and is transparent so it doesn't change the thickness of the paint or change the colour. I started with black and sponged this on to a stamp which I printed on to the fabric. I repeated this until the cotton was covered with a random pattern, leaving plenty of space between each flower. You can see the black stays black and prints well on the fabric as a nice crisp image without bleeding.

Each flower was painted with an Eco Acrylic Paint and Fabric Medium mix, working one colour at a time and allowing these to dry completely between layers.

It was useful having two pieces of fabric as I could work on one while the other dried.

I used Magenta, Turquoise and Yellow to colour the flowers and then used more turquoise to stamp again in between the flowers as a background pattern.

Once these were finished and dried, I sewed them in to two tubes and seamed the edges, passing elastic through so that the protectors would stay in place.

I won't expect these to stay in pristeen condition. I am sure they will soon pick up ink and paint marks and I won't worry about this: It is what they are for. However, it is also nice to know that I can wash them as necessary.

I hope you'll consider giving this a try: An easy and practical project which can give a second life to your pillowcases or other fabric pieces. Careful if you work outdoors though, as I was here in France: You might get some curious visitors!

Karen
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Fabric medium

Plastic Painting Knives

Eco Acrylic Paint

Golden haired nylon brushes

Stamps by PaperArtsy