My little crafting world....


Hi all
I'm a complete craft addict! I have a small business called Surrey Crafts teaching craft workshops from my studio in Esher, Surrey and at venues around the country. I teach mixed media, decorative painting, card making and papercrafts, jewellery making and creative embroidery classes. If you'd like to find out more just leave a comment, or take a look at my other social media pages:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/surrey.crafts
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surreycrafts/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/surreycrafts/
Crafty hugs & stuff
Suz

xx

Friday 13 September 2019

Life Without Art Passport Book for the September Craft Stamper Blog Challenge

Hi all
This month sees another fab couple of prizes to be won in the Craft Stamper Monthly Blog Challenge. A gorgeous set of Posca Pens along with a handy case to store them in. Have a look here!
Here's my DT project for the challenge.
I've been getting out my Eileen Hull dies in the last few months, trying to tackle how to use them and different ways to add the paper signatures. I'm also madly into textiles and embroidery too at the minute. No embroidery in this one, but some fun stamping and painting onto calico.
 I used a scrap of thick card from the back of a paper pack for the journal covers and spine.
Vintage book pages from a fab book called "Enquire Within Upon Everything" dated 1861 which belonged to Betty! I started to read some pages while I was working and it's amazing. Don't think I can use any more! According to Wikipedia: Tim Berners-Lee named his precursor of the World Wide Web, ENQUIRE, after this work in 1980.[7][8] A Forbes article quoted Berners-Lee as saying:[9]
Back to the project....I stamped one of Andy's new stamps onto a piece of calico.
Stamped it out again to make a mask, which I used to cover up the quote. 
Took another of Andy's stamps and masked off the text inside 
the circles as I just wanted the rings...  
 Stamped it a couple of times over the words.....
 Then started to paint the fabric with DecoArt Fluid Acrylics in Phthalo Turqoise and Quin Gold.
 Then added some Quin Violet around the outside.
 Here's where the book pages come in; I used the leftover paint to 
colour them and glued them to the inside of the journal covers.
 Then I used the diluted quin gold on the spine. I love how it looked, I think I must have had matte medium on my hands from gluing the book pages when I was handling the spine and it acted like a resist, giving a great grungy look!
 More quin gold on the outside of the book cover, that I 
was going to glue the fabric onto, just to base coat it.
 Matte medium to both the cover and the back of the fabric.
 I felt the focal stamp image was getting a little lost so I re-stamped it onto 
tissue paper.....but it wasn't popping enough - so I stamped it again onto painted book 
page that I'd painted white and that worked just right.
 I edged the torn book page with quin gold paint then glued it down with matte medium. The brush I used still had a little blue paint in it, so there are some lovely hints of the colour on the paper.
 I stamped another of Andy's stamps using Titanium White paint around the edges-
paint needs to be washed off straight after to keep the stamps in good condition.
 Then stencilled flowers using crackle paint....
 Once the crackle paint was dry, I added a wash of Cobalt Teal, and a little more quin gold around the tissue paper. A few gems to lift the flowers and the cover was finished. I die cut some recycled pages to create two signatures and now it's ready to use.
Thanks for looking, and if you have any questions just leave me a comment. 
Suz
xxx

Tuesday 10 September 2019

Vintage Bicycle tag for Andy Skinner DT

Todays blog is a vintage tag inspired by Andy Skinners bicycle stamp .
I covered a tag with music paper and a torn vintage book page from a very old (about 80 years) falling apart accounting book that belonged to my lovely Betty 
who passed away a couple of months ago.
 Using a dye ink pad (antique linen) I swooshed across the tag.
 Then added some almost invisible stamping using another of Andy's stamps
(grunge wallpaper) and brushed corduroy ink.
Then inked through Andy's cogged up stencil with bundled sage - but the blending tool had some darker ink on it which really made it stand out more than I'd intended, I soon knocked it back with other colours. I also added bundled sage to the other areas of the background.
I didn't photograph the next step, but once the tag was completely dry, I added some Versamark Clear ink and popped on some embossing powders. Loved how this this gave a steel look on the tag.
 I took out a napkin, and using the white layer in the middle, I stamped the bicycle, tore it out and glued it over the embossing enamel.

Then I had to eat a chocolate to get some lovely gold foil paper! Glued that down. 
You can see the grey embossing powder in the background. 
 I wanted to add a flower to the tag, so stamped out the wheels of the bike using the Raspberry Ice Cream, and when I added some spritzed Vintage Photo ink and Brushed Corduroy - I LOVED how it looked. So I chopped the wheel up, twisted it and glued it into a flower shape.
Here are the wheels before I chopped the up.
Used these two colours on white card, then stamped using the 'Create' stamp.  
Inked up around the edges with the vintage photo, added a little more of the tissue paper under the text to help it show up.
A nice big pearl in the flower and three tiny ones on the vertical gold foil and then it was finished.
Below is a pic of all the products. 
 I really enjoyed making this.
Thanks for looking.
 Suz
xxx