Saturday 25 August 2012

Shabby Chic Hanging Heart

So today, even though I have a list as long as my arm of other things I should/could do, my procrastination skills out-shone me and once the children left with their father for the rest of the weekend I decided to try something that wasn't on the list.

I blame the cream coloured upholstery fabric I picked up in a charity shop for £1.00 this week - it was just begging to be used for something quickly and I had in mind something lacy and tattered and definitely shabby chic in style.  Last night I happened upon a tutorial for a hanging heart here at Handmade Habour written by the talented Wendy and was itching to get going.

I've seen others like this and so wanted to create something a little less flat and so padded out the first and second layer and then just added as many little layers as I could.  In my stash of "things to use sometime" I have some fabric onto which I printed some vintage images with my inkjet printer so I added her and then embellished the whole thing with vintage buttons and rhinestones and as a finishing touch made a beaded tassel for the bottom.  There's room for improvement but I'm pretty happy with how it looks and I can see that there's opportunities to add secret pockets and scented petals to really make the most of the romantic nature of this.

Here's some of the fabrics and trims I sifted through to make it:


And here's what I made:




I'd love to know what you think.

Because I think this piece is quite romantic I'm going to enter it into the Vintage Elusions challenge.

And because I used Wendy's tutorial (and because I've not added anything for ages) I'm going to link this to Handmade Monday over at the Handmade Harbour and then a little later tonight I shall enjoy looking at what everyone else has been up to.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend x

Friday 17 August 2012

Almost time to get going again.....

So the last three weeks of my life have been about concentrating solely on the children as the school summer holidays are long and with our typical British wet weather and our inability to let our children wander as freely as we did (well me anyway) potentially boring.  Hopefully I'm not the only person here who, as a child, was able to play out (in the garden, the park, in the local fields) every day and it's true that I would love to be able to say to my children, "Off you go!" but the reality is that I would wonder what might have happened to them, and they would soon be back.  maybe I'm thinking about the times when I was 10 years old......

Anyway, we've done a lot of camping because that is one place where they can make friends and wander off and do as they please as well as having time with me.  And I made sure to camp with friends so that I had someone to talk to and I have to say it's been a lovely summer so far.  Anyway, I've been home since Sunday and now that the tents are all dry and the washing is all done and ironed and put away and some shopping is done and the shock of my car going for its MOT is almost over (don't ask) I kind of feel as though I can get back on track.

I've got some craft and vintage fairs booked between now and Christmas and so I need to get my commercial head on - ahhh, I'm not sure I have a commercial head.....ooops.....

The thing I've been playing with this week is shrink plastic.  Yup, good old shrink plastic.  In fact I can remember shrinking down crisp wrappers when I was a kid as the make-up of crisp packets when I was a child was different than it is now and if you put the packet on the grill you could shrink down your Wotsits or Snap packets with the heat from the grill flames.....(gulp - if I caught my two doing that I'd be beside myself!)

Anyway - shrink plastic - if I was rich I'd have a melt-pot and ton of Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE).  I am not and I don't but I do have a small pot of UTEE and have been researching ways in which to use it with shrink plastic.  I'm going to have a play with this over the next couple of days and if I am a good blogger I shall take some pics to show you what I'm up to (cos mostly I play and don't get pics.)

Another thing I'd have if I was rich would be ink jet printable shrink plastic so that I could print some of my vintage and digitally manipulated images onto the shrink plastic and then cut them out and shrink them down and make purdy little things from them.  Do you know what though, I've just had an idea....  maybe I can paint some shrink plastic with gesso and then let it dry and print on that?  I've seen a tutorial where you can sand ordinary shrink plastic and print on that and I've printed onto the frosted side of frosted shrink plastic but it all goes wrong once you try and seal the image....

I'm still trying to work from a place of *use what you've got* and as the only thing I've bought recently is some shrink plastic I think I'm doing pretty well.  I've also been playing with plastics that are in the house in the form of packing and I'll let you know how that all goes once I get a good result that I can replicate....

So all in all, it's not entirely quiet here, things are getting thought about and sort of done.  There are another two weeks of the holidays left so feel free to kick my behind if it looks like I'm slacking.

And by the way, I don't think art journalling is for me........maybe I haven't given it enough of a good go though.....  oh, and I still don't have a dedicated art space but I think that in practical terms (two children under the age of 9) that's just a pipe dream......

Monday 6 August 2012

Catch up

I haven't stopped doing stuff, my creativity is being channeled into the school summer holidays - so far I have given my children more camping trips than I ever had caravan holidays when I was a nipper.

When I return I should have ideas and pics about shrink plastic, upcycling, craft fairs and all manner of things.  Ooh, and my *art room*.