Wanderlust week 11

Wanderlust week 11. The theme is rivers and the teacher was the wonderful Laly Mille. I had done a few things with her online before so I knew it would be fun. 

  We used loads of different mediums on the page got very very wet! My poor home made journal needed a bit of repair after the class.

I like the result but I think I over worked it a bit too much.

Always a hard job to know when to stop.

Wanderlust week 10

I am way behind on my posting for my Wanderlust course. For the month of March the theme was rivers. Here is my page made for the Clair Etheridge class. I even astonished myself and drew the dragonfly and beetle myself!! 

We made the collage papers that we then tore up to make our page. Loved this class!!

Easter Card

  Can you believe how fast this year is going? Spring is here and Easter just around the corner! 

So today I have a cute little Easter Card to show you using the Craft Consortium Little Fawn and Friends stamps I

have made for The Fruit Pixie online shop.

I stamped the sweet little rabbits onto white card using brown archival ink.

Then used my watercolour paints to paint the background and stamped images.

I then mounted it onto a piece of the matching paper pad, added a die cut sentiment and a 

couple of the Craft Consortium enamel dots to finish it off.

You can find the Craft Consortium Little Fawn and Friends stamps and enamel dots along with 

their beautiful Washi tape and the cutest little pine cone charms you have ever seen in The Fruit Pixie online shop here!

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-little-fawn--friends-collection-803-c.asp

The archival ink pads I used here. These are waterproof inks so you can use watercolours 

and other water based colour without you stamped image bleeding.

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/archival-ink-pads-339-c.asp

Card blanks are here 

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/card-blanks-374-c.asp

Wanderlust week 9

As I have said before, hubby gave me the year long Wanderlust mixed media art journaling online course for Christmas. I am having a ball!! Each month we have a theme and the theme for March is rivers.

 Every Friday we get a full video class from different teachers. Week 9 was taught by the founder of Wanderlust Kasia Avery. The theme for the page was rivers of your heart. 

Now, I could tell you that the page just magically flowed out onto the page and some pages do. But not this one! 

We live in a world now where everyone is an expert, often without any experience. You always see the perfect end result but without hearing the fact that it took them 10 attempts to get there. 

I have been art journaling for many years and making a lot of pages but the first attempt of this page was a total disaster. In the teachers page she showed how to do an image transfer with gel medium. I had done this technique many times before but the difference this time was the fact that my gel medium, which isn’t my favourite product to be honest, had all but dried up. But I tried it anyway and of course it didn’t work so I had a horrible black smudgy mess instead.

No problem! I just glued the pages together and started again.

I worked away all day on my page but at the end of the day I hated it! The colours were all wrong and it just looked a mess. I did sleep on it but agreed the next day, it had to go!!!

So I carefully ripped one page out and glued in a replacement page. Luckily I had made my journal and I just happened to be at the end of a signature so I had enough space for it to work.

I then changed the design completely but kept the essence of the class, changed it to rivers of my life and really enjoyed making it.

So what I am trying to say is never get put off by things that don’t work or like mine are a total disaster! Just give it another go, it’s only a piece of paper at the end of the day. 

If you are interested in my rivers, the Salzach, Inn and Danube are in Austria and I was born and still live in Bristol, where the river Avon runs out into the Bristol Channel.

Craft Consortium travel stamps decoupaged pot

I love organising my Arty things, using unusual containers or decorating blanks. This little pot is a wooden blank from The Works. 

I began by painting the pot on the outside white and inside pink. The white paint helps the colour of the decoupage paper shine through.

I covered the middle heart with the lovely Cosmic Shimmer silk glitter. The heart pops out so you can add a photo if you like.

Once everything was dry I then covered the outside with the Craft Consortium decoupage paper Travel stamp paper.

Everything, except the pot, is available from The Fruit Pixie online shop, who I design for.

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/

Wanderlust 2019 week 6

For Christmas I had the Wanderlust art journaling course from Hubby. A year long online art journaling based course. Each week there is a new class every Friday. I am now at week 6 and I must admit I am having a ball!! Each month there is a new theme. January was Typography ( my other projects can be found on my Instagram ) and this month February is Faces. Not the theme I was looking forward to but it has been fine.

    Here is my page for week 6. The class was taught by Marjie Kemper and used sprays, stamps and stencils. Just my sort of thing and I hadn’t used my sprays for ages! 

I learnt by accident that if you used the Sparkle texture paste by Cosmic Shimmer and then, when dry, spray it with your sprays you get this beautiful effect. The colour pools on the paste. I used the silver texture paste for the tags.

The tags are little pockets that hold hand written tags

Such a fun page to make and I am really pleased with how it turned out too.

Love Katrina

A return to blogging with a cute little card

Hello! I’m back in blogging land again. I have been AWOL for a while due to technical reasons but now I have sorted it out and am back!

   This time I have a cute little card I made for The Fruit Pixie, who I design for. This is a penny slider card made using the Craft Consortium Little Fawn and friends papers.

                                                

This is such a fun little card. The squirrel spins and slides around the card chasing his acorns!

You can find the paper collection in The Fruit Pixie online shop here -

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-little-fawn--friends-collection-803-c.asp

It feels so good to be back again in blog Land!

Thanks for visiting, I’ll be back with another project very soon.

   Love Katrina x

Stencilfied journal challenge 14

I have skipped a few of the challenges of the Stencilfied journal challenge as I couldn’t really do them due to the products I have used or the lack of stencils. StencilGirl stencils are not easy to get hold of here in the U.K. and the postage from the States is more than the price of a heap of stencils but I have just about managed with the StencilGirl stencils I can buy here and am now on challenge 14.

Now this looked quite straight forward until I looked through my StencilGirl stencil collection and found that every single stencil bar 1, which was one of the large multi pattern stencil, had curved lines!

In the end though I did manage a page I was pleased with

Plus I love this quote!

Travel journal using Craft Consortium Winter Woodland papers

 I am so sorry I have been AWOL lately but between internet problems and life, the summer has just flown. Now though everything , except the internet, is back to normal and ready to craft, craft, craft!!

   If you have read this blog before, you might have noticed I love Austria, it’s our second home. This summer we have had two wonderful holiday there. For each holiday I make myself a journal. This is the one I made for our week in Obergurgl Tirol.

     I made the base of the cover from recycled box card so it gave me a nice stiff cover.

I covered it with the beautiful Craft Consortium Winter Woodland papers and added some decorations cut on my Silhouette Cameo.

I added pockets for keepsakes and then for the journal itself,  I folded A4 paper in half and cut a cover from one of the Craft Consortium papers and stitched it all together.

I used elastic to hold the journal into the cover so I could remove it to write in it each day.

I couldn’t resist the cute little metal acorns from Craft Consortium and tied them onto the elastic. 

I also made a elastic wrap to hold the cover shut when it full of keepsakes.

Thought it would make a nice wrist wrap too!

You can find the paper pad in the Fruit Pixie online shop here-

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-premium-paper-pads-714-c.asp

Blackboard tags for my homemade marmalade.

I have fallen in love with homemade marmalade! It is a lot of work but it’s worth it in the end. The thing I really hate though is having to soak all the labels off of the jars, we always use re- cycled jars. So I don’t put labels on my finished jam and marmalade but tie tags around the neck of the jar. 

So,when Bower very kindly sent me a pack of their chalk pens I thought I would make some chalkboard tags and then I need only change the date on them each time.

These tags are so easy to make. You can get blackboard vinyl easily.

I stuck the A4 sheet of blackboard vinyl onto a sheet of card and cut tag shapes out from the blackboard card.

Then all you need do is choose your colour and write your tags

Then tie them around the necks of the jars of marmalade.

The chalk pens will wash off with a damp cloth so keep the tags from the empty jars and change the date when the next batch is ready.

Art journal using gilding flakes

I appear to be on a roll with gilding flakes! I really enjoyed making this page for The Fruit Pixie, along with a video on my new YouTube channel The Arty Parrot. 

All the products, except the shine bright piece which is from Tim Holtz, were from The Fruit Pixie online shop I design for. You can find the shop here.

https://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/

Please visit my new YouTube channel and subscribe to my channel. 

Stencilfied journal challenge week 8

Week 8 in the Stencilfied journal challenge from StencilGirl was to stencil with glue!

O

I decided to use my quickly glue pen and gilding flakes to make my page.

Once I had finished the background, I just had to add the cockerel to finish it off!

Stencilfied Journal challenge week 7

For challenge 7 of the Stencilfied Journal by StencilGirl we had to stencil a page rip it out and tear it up and then make another page with it.

Here is the first page I ripped out and tore up 

Here is the finished page

I think this is my favourite so far.

Fabric luggage tags decorated with Bower Fabric Pens

I was so impressed with the Bower Watercolour Pens I bought and now they have sent me some of their new fabric pens to try.  I just had to put them through their paces.

  After paper crafting my second craft love is to sew. I had been wanting to make some fabric luggage tags for ages. The Bower fabric pens were a wonderful way to decorate them how I wanted and to see how the pens performed at the same time.

  So to begin.

 1.  Cut 2 pieces of thick Calico fabric ( or any cotton fabric ) to the size you want your finished tag plus 1/2 inch seam allowance. Don't make your tags too small or they will be difficult to sew and turn later.

 By seam allowance  I mean add 1/2 inch to all 4 sides of your tag. Then when you stitch the tag together sew 1/2 inch in from the side all the way around. This is called a seam allowance.

  2.  I wanted to see how well the pens did when using them with rubber stamps and through a stencil.

  First the stamps.
               I carved myself a little aeroplane stamp, you can use any stamp you have, and then just used the fabric pen to scribble over the stamp until it was well covered in the ink, then I stamped it onto my calico fabric.

    I chose to use the light blue for my Aeroplanes.

      I also stamped onto the second piece of Calico for the back.
   
      I then needed to cut an aperture out of the middle of my front piece of fabric.

    To make the aperture I drew a rectangle onto the reverse of the stamped fabric where you want your aperture to be. I then drew a cross from corner to corner and cut along the lines and folded the triangles back along the lines as shown. If the tops of the Triangles poke out over the edge of your tag, just snip them off.

    Then I tried the pens with a stencil.

This worked well too. I chose the red pen and a star stencil.

    3. You need to set the Fabric pen ink by ironing your fabric. I recommend doing as they say and cover your fabric with a cloth to protect your iron. If you do get ink on the base of your iron, let it cool and then wipe it off. Do check that you get it all off your iron before you iron hubbies white work shirt though!!

   4. Now to sew our tag together. 

          First stitch around the aperture to hold your triangle flaps down.

          Then, with printed sides together, sew all the way around your tag. You don't need to leave a gap to turn your tag as shown in the photo, you can use the great big aperture to do that. I would of worked that out if I had thought about it!! I did realise after I had struggled for a while to turn my tag through the tiny gap I had left.

   5. So turn your tag the right way out and then give it a good press with your iron, not forgetting the cloth.

  

    6. I then sewed a button hole through both layers of the tag, I found that quicker than doing 2 separate ones on each layer of the tag before I stitched the tag together, as I had done on my star tag here.  If you don't want to do a button hole then just stitch your ribbon to your tag.

    7.  To finish my tag I cut a piece of card and added my details. I also cut a piece of thick plastic to cover my details and protect them from rain etc. I used a piece of plastic packaging you get on everything as this will hold the tag stiffer. Once I was happy with the fit I used a fabric glue or any strong glue and glued the plastic piece in place by applying the glue around the edges of the aperture and then putting something heavy on top until the glue is dry.

    8. Then add a nice piece of ribbon through your button holes and attach to your bag!  You might want to put a couple of stitches through the knot just to make sure you don't loose your beautiful new tag.

So now we have a finished the tag what did I think of the pens?

Well, to be honest I have not used many fabric pens before but I found the Bower Fabric Pens -

* Nice and easy to use and come in nice sturdy carry case too.

* They didn't bleed into the fabric and the colours came out nice and bright.

* They worked very well on the stamps.

* Didn't bleed through the stencil.

* Great price too

Only one down point -

* The nib did felt up as you used them. I don't know if this was the fabric I was using but it was a bit annoying. I could just remove the fluff and it was fine again. Although you did loose the point from the nib a bit.

I don't think the felting would stop me recommending then though. At £8.99 for 10 pens, 8 different colours and 2 blacks ( when this blog was written) on Amazon they are a great price and if you want to try fabric pens out they are a great set to go for. They would be great for children to use too.

Bower are a young British company who sell through Amazon. 

you can find their fabric pens here -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fabric-Pens-Permanent-Markers-Vari-Detail/dp/B078TGK4WL/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1532774992&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=bower+pens&psc=1

Bower Watercolour pens here -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Watercolour-Pens-Artists-Brush-Markers/dp/B0713SMN55/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1532774992&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=bower+pens&psc=1

Thank you Bower for sending them to me.

Attack puppy sign

My sister has the most beautiful little Labrador puppy at the moment, she is so full of fun and mischief and loves to show you how much she loves you by licking you half to death! So when I saw this saying in the Silhouette design store I had to do something with it.

The sign itself was a barging I found at the post Christmas sales. It’s was a wooden plaque with Happy Christmas on it. 

So I painted it over with white acrylic paint and then covered it with some Craft Consortium decoupage paper in a wood effect.

I then cut the saying out from vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo, along with a Labrador puppy and some doggie bones.

I added some garden twine so you could hang it up and it was done!

Stencilfied journal week 6

The challenge for week 6 of the Stencilfied journal challenge from StencilGirl is to stencil a page and then poke holes in it.

This was quite a fun one to do. Here is my page.

Not sure if I like it, I love the quote but......... ? Perhaps it will grow on me.

All the stencils used are from StencilGirl. 

I poked holes in the star bursts and have placed silver paper behind them, which doesn’t show up on the photo.

You can join in the challenge too, all the pages from all the people playing along can be found at 

#stencilfiedjournal and #StencilGirl

Stencilfied journal week 5

This week, is week 5 of the StencilGirl Stencilfied journal challenge. Each week we get a new challenge to create a journal page using StencilGirl stencils.

   This weeks challenge is - 

Here is the page I created

StencilGirl stencil are not that easy to come by here in the U.K. but as soon as I saw this one I knew I had to have it.

Decopatch Hare

I found this wonderful plastic Hare in the pound shop, he was originally painted bronze and looked really convincing from afar but with a little bit of crafting magic the looked even better!

I covered him with the Craft Consortium English Garden decoupage papers available from The Fruit Pixie -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-decoupage-papers-716-c.asp

The way you work with these papers is to tear them into pieces and then using a wet glue that dries clear, like the IndigoBlu Slap it on glue here-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-slap-it-on---gloss-26803-p.asp

Glue the torn pieces to your project, also covering the surface of the paper as you go.

To finish my hare off I used a brown pastel pencil to add some shadows and then rubbed in a pearl paint to seal in the pastel pencil and add a little shimmer. 

I then couldn’t help but add a die cut bow tie!

What do you think ?

Stencilfied journal week 4

The challenge for week four in the Stencilfied journal challenge from Stencil girl was to use your least favourite colour and write about the things you love. 

    After a lot of thinking I decided on black as my least favourite colour in the end. I never wear black or have anything in my home in black. I do use it in my art work but only really for lettering. I wouldn’t say I hated it but it is just not a colour I naturally reach for. So that was the colour I chose.

Here is my page

Which colour would you choose?

StencilGirl Stencilfied journal

I am taking part in the StencilGirl Stencilfied journal challenge this summer. 16 challenges, one each week using StencilGirl stencils.

 We are up to week 3

I decided to cut a leaf out on my Silhouette Cameo and used my Gelli plate to print onto it

I think I might add it to the inside cover of my journal which I made for the challenge.