Heart and Soul by Teresa

Today I have a pretty Valentine card, clean and simple but with a little texture and shimmer:

I began by die cutting the Khadi cotton rag paper into several sizes of hearts.

Next I gave them a coat of eco-acrylic paint, using Titanium White, Magenta and Crimson:

Once dry, it was tome to add some shimmer using Silver Acrylic Shimmer Spray:

I layered the hearts using glue:

Then assembled my finished card:

Eco Acrylic Paint

Brusho Shimmer Sprays

Painted & Stitched Heart Cards

Well, January has seemed to fly by, and it will be February next week!
So it is time to be thinking about showing appreciation to those we care about. 

So whether you are into celebrating Galentines Day on the 13th or Valentine's Day on 14th February here is a painted and stitched idea!

I took a piece of well-washed cotton cloth (a piece of sheet to be honest) and stretched it on an old wooden frame. Three-Point pins are great for stretching the fabric to a frame, not causing tears, and come with a handy tool for removing them too, but you can use drawing pins.

I then had a play with three Markel Oil Sticks:  purple, light gold, and red. These look good on their own but will resist added paint too. They do sink into the cloth so don't rub off as you are stitching later.

I then used some batik dye powder I had mixed up in jam jars.
These are handy concentrated cold water fabric dyes and I mix up lots of different colours just from the three primary colours. You just dilute them to get pastel shades!
For an average jam jar, I dissolve 30g of table salt in a little hot water and then make it up to 250ml with cold water. You then add 5g (1 level tablespoon) of Batik Dye fixer powder and 1g (a quarter of a teaspoon) of the dye powder.

I painted these on the fabric making several hearts.

You can see here how I let the paints bleed as I was wanting a shabby-chic effect.

When the paint dries sandwich two layers of fabric with some wadding in the middle. 
You can secure this with a couple of pins but I used an embroidery hoop.

I used a couple of different embroidery thread colour and used running stitch around my painted lines.

I then trimmed the hearts and used double-sided tape to secure them to the front of cards. I'm not sure whether to leave them simple like this or whether to add a sentiment cut from the ribbon. What do you think? (Sometimes crafting on your own can seem lonely when you want another opinion, but here the online crafting community can be wonderful, so please do tell me in the comments what you think)

These heart cards also seem like a good idea for weddings and even thank you cards too!

I did make a heart-shaped padded shape too but haven't found the safe place I put my lavender to fill it with yet. I'll keep looking and will hopefully find it before February. It's nice to show yourself some love too and so I plan to put the scented heart in my wardrobe.

Painting with Water by Karen

Did you have those 'magic' books when you were a child, the type that, when you painted water over the image, the colour magically appeared? You had to be careful not to let the colours run in to each other to keep the colours strong and not end up with the same colour all over! I loved those books and I was reminded of them when I made this card.

I stamped the boy and girl on to watercolour paper with water resistant ink and masked them to add background features and then painted round them with water before adding my Brusho crystal colours. I pushed the colour around with a brush but it only goes to the wet parts of the image: Magic!

This needs to be dried thoroughly with a heat tool before painting in any details or the colours will run in to each other. For the smaller details on my images, I mixed the Brusho colours with some water and painted them in with a fine brush.

Once dry, I mounted this paper on to a card to finish.

There are a few tips and tricks for this in the video I made of the process:

I hope this was interesting and helpful to you. I am sure you have stamps that would lend themselves to these techniques: Enjoy!

Karen

Air tight colour mixing water pots in tray

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

15g brusho

Golden haired nylon brushes

Heat Gun

Valentine ATCoins

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all having a great start to your weekend!

My project today is Artist Trading Coins.   I used some jelly plate background papers made using Colourcraft Acrylic ink, and I also used some lutradur and Acrylic Spray mists.

Step 1

Take a blank ATCoin and your Gelli plate printed background papers and using some tombow stick adhesive glue your disc to your paper.

 

Step 2

I took a script stamp and some Neon Red Hero Arts Ink Cube and stamped over the top of the Gelli printed paper.

Using the same ink cube, I ran this around the outside edge of each ATCoin.

Step 4

Take some lutradur and skim a very thin layer of expandit over the top and dry with a heat tool until it expands and dries, once dry spray with brusho acrylic spray mists, dry with your heat tool and die cut a heart shape.

Step 5

Time to embellish!.. I used some cotton ribbon, pink lace trim, wooden hearts, epoxy hearts

I hope you enjoyed todays project and make some of your own ATCoins, they are fun to make

Have a great weekend and see you all again soon

Sarah x

Brusho Mist sprays

EXpandit 3D expanding medium

Lutradur

"Pouring" your heart out- a pouring medium project

February is just around the corner, which means Valentine's Day is! What better way to show someone you love them then to make them a piece of art, and why not "pour" out your feelings using Brusho Flow Medium and testing out some pouring techniques.

                                   

 This week I decided to try two different pouring methods.

First I made a template out of freezer paper which I ironed onto my canvases. Then I mixed my colors. I mixed normal white acrylic paint with the medium in one cup, and then added Brushos in Rose Red, Sunburst Yellow and Purple in my other cups. I stirred well and then added water until I got the consistency I wanted.

My first canvas I decided to do what is called a "balloon pour". First I poured some of the white inside of my masked area and spread it out. Then I dropped and swirled the other colors.

I didn't find my balloons so I took some bubble wrap which I pushed into these areas of paint. I kept dripping paint and then pushing the bubble wrap into it. It started to look like this:

I wanted to have a bit stronger colors, so I sprinkled more of the Brushos into the colored areas and blew a bit with a straw.

 This is what it looked like when I took the freezer paper off. It had bled a little under my mask, but that was ok! I sponge painted around it in Aztec Eco Metallic Gold paint and then drew in flowers with a paint pen.

For my second heart, I decided to do a flip cup. You can read more about that technique and even see a video on my earlier blog on pouring (link later in this blog).
I did the same thing with the mask, then I made my flip cup by adding the Brusho mixed colors to what was left in my white cup. I then flipped it onto the canvas, and tilted to spread around the colors.

 After this one dried, I removed the mask, used a stencil to add some DesignIT for texture and then painted the background with a rose gold color I mixed from Aztec Eko Metallic Bronze and Silver.

 Tada! I think they both look quite cool. I have to warn you though- pouring is totally addictive. I am really pleased with the depth of color I got using the Brusho medium plus Brushos! And it didn't take much of the pigment to get a lot of color. The medium is sticker than others I have used, but just adding a bit of water makes it perfect for these techniques.
Here they are again! Give it a go!

If you want to see more pouring techniques with the Brusho medium- check out another blog post I did here.
And the link for the pouring medium again is here: Brusho Flow Medium

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint