Altered Element DT pack 1

Each month, I will have 2 'design team' packs from The Altered Element. One will be a pack of things sold in the shop, and the other will be an 'Upcycle' pack consisting of something from a charity shop.
This month, the Upcycle pack is a beautiful piece of William Morris 'Agapanthus' fabric in blues, greens and lilac, with some ribbons and lace in toning colours. I'm thinking about the possibilities for this pack, but do have a project in mind.


The pack of stock items consisted of a large piece of black 30g weight Lutradur, and a copper themed pack of metal, bullion wire, knitted wire tubing, fine copper wire, and Lametta curls.

I have started working with the contents of this pack and hope to post a finished project this week. I'm waiting for something to dry at the moment, before carrying on to the next step.


What would you make with this pack?

Colorwash spray technique

I had a 'light bulb' moment today. I have lots of colourwashes in my stash, and have only ever sprayed them onto various surfaces, or painted them onto specific parts of projects. What was I thinking of? I should have thought of using them like this a long time ago, not finding out by accident today!

I was making something today when I accidentally got some colourwash onto some glossy paper. I dabbed it with a wet wipe. I liked the effect. I added another colour, dabbed, added another colour and dabbed until I was happy with what I had. It looks quite similar to alcohol inks at first glance, but it a much cheaper way of achieving the effect than using alcohol inks. I used what I produced as backgrounds to stamp on, and made these two cards.

Mixed media pendant

I had a few birthday presents to make, and reluctantly decided to use my last few Patera hearts. These are part of a range of really high quality jewellery findings, and the pendants all have matching punches, which makes it really easy to achieve a professional finish when cutting your artwork to fit.

I was only reluctant because I have a weird thing about not using things in my stash which I really like, especially the last of anything (because then I won't have it any more, and who knows whether I can get it again LOL).

I was also reluctant because I can't find a UK supplier for these beautiful high quality jewellery findings, and UK customs restrictions on imported goods means I can only buy 5 at a time from the US, unless I want to pay £8 handling charge plus 17.5% tax.

I took some fabric paper scraps left over form my last mixed media art quilt, and punched it to shape. I stamped with Versamark, and embossed with Stewart Gill Metallic copper embossing powder, then sewed on a bead and bead spacer. Voila! A pretty unique piece of wearable art. Apologies for the image quality, I scanned it and probably should have taken a photograph instead.
Anyway, I hope the friends who receive them for their birthdays like them!

Woo HOO

I used to buy most of my art supplies from the US, because I couldn't find a UK website which sold the eclectic mix of stuff I like to play with, and I was fed up of paying lots of expensive UK postage to buy bits and bobs from lots of websites. Altered Elements sells most of the things I like to use, so I am really happy to have found their website!

However, I'm doubly happy because I'm delighted to announce that I've been chosen to be part of a new Altered element design team. I will be playing with products from Altered Element for the next 6 months, and sharing whatever I create here.

I will also share them on this blog, so watch this space!

Beryl Taylor style wall hanging

I've been making a Beryl Taylor style wall hanging this week. I made some fabric paper using paper napkins/serviettes, I think it's the nicest I've ever made, probably because there is less contrast in the images and colours than using random papers.

I took an old cotton pillowcase, and cut it into 4 pieces. I mixed equal amounts of PVA (white) glue and water together in a pot, and used an old paintbrush to paint the glue mix onto the fabric. I laid cut up napkins on top, leaving gaps between the pieces., and painted with more glue mix. A top layer of white tissue with more glue mix finished the structure, and before the glue dried I added a wash of 3 colours of watered down acrylic paint. I left it to dry overnight, and this is the finished product.


I cut a piece about 7 inches by 11 to use for the wall hanging, and started to use some of the rest of the sheet to make embellishments. Here are a couple of small pieces sewn onto felt, trimmed, and with buttons and beads added.


This heart is made the same way - sewn onto felt, trimmed, then embroidered and beaded.


I sewed the background onto a piece of felt, then added some painted diamonds, ribbons and hand dyed lace. I stamped onto the diamonds with gold paint, and sewed around the edges to make them stand out from the background.


I added another ribbon, and sewed square sequins and beads onto it to break the colour up. I sewed some of my little beaded and buttoned embellishment pieces on, and thought about what to put in the big space!


When I'd made some more embellishments, including one made from Paper Perfect, and sewn them on along with some silk flowers, the quilt was almost finished, but the vertical stripe of turquoise ribbon was too strong, so I broke it up by applying moulding paste through a heart stencil at regular intervals down the ribbon. Once dry, I finished them with Treasure Gold rub on wax. To finish the hanging off, I sewed deep pink organza ribbon around the edges, and backed the fabric with some mount board. The finished hanging looks like this:


This quilt took about 20 hours to make, but I enjoyed making it, and hope the long standing swapping friend who receives it like it too.

Ribbon storage

I have tried all sorts of ways to store ribbon, and have always ended up with several problems - I can't see what ribbons I have, or how much I have of each ribbon, and despite my efforts to wind it onto various things, I usually end up with a tangled mess in a box.

And then I found this:

http://www.ribbonring.com/

and I thought it was too expensive, so I bought some plastic ribbon storage cards which did stop my ribbons getting into a tangled mess, but still stopped me seeing how much of any ribbon I actually have. And all the ribbons on the cards were still in a box, so I couldn't see at a glance whether I had anything which would go with whatever I was working on. I certainly couldn't just lay some ribbon onto a project to see how it looked - I had to delve into the box, unwrap ribbon form the cards, try it and re-wrap if it didn't suit.

So, I decided to try the ribbonring system. I am a complete convert. I don't usually promote products here, but this has made my life so easy I thought I'd share it with you all! All my ribbons are now stored on the system, and hang from a coat hook on the door in my craft room. I can see what i have at a glance, and there are no tangles. Bliss!!!!

ATCs

Here are a few of the ATCs I've made recently. I love the small scale of ATCs as a 'canvas' to try out new ideas, techniques, and products, before using them in bigger projects where mistakes would be more costly in terms of time and materials.

The pear on this ATC is made from polymer clay, painted with acrylic paints and stamped onto. It's set onto textured card, which I painted with fluid acrylics then rubbed with metallic rub on wax to bring out the texture.


This ATC was a way of testing out Brilliance white ink on colourwash & distress ink backgrounds. I used watercolour paper which had been sprayed with several colourwash sprays, then stamped the main image using black Stazon. I used a mask to cover the centre of the image, and added distress inks around the edges using cut and stamp foam. Finally, I stamped using Brilliance Moonlight White.


This was another new technique try out. I created 'luminous paste' by mixing PearlEx with glossy soft gel medium (one of the variations in Julia Andrus's Paper Transformed book), and applied it to painted canvas through a stencil. The letters are die cut. The butterfly is polymer clay - using clay which was rolled out, had a layer of metal leaf added, coloured with alcohol ink, then rolled out thinly so that the metal leaf 'cracks'. I had leftovers from my mian project so put them into the small buttefly mould to see how they looked. Works for me! I'm not sure I like my design here, but it is a little record of the techniques I used, which will act as a reminder for me.

Fabric paper jewellery

One of my friends has a birthday this week, so I thought I'd make her a little something!

I used an antique copper heart pendant finding from Nunn Designs - I love their findings, they are well made and gorgeous. And several of the pendant bases have punches in exactly the same size and shape, which takes all the hassle out of cutting your artwork to fit!


I used a scrap of fabric paper, punched it to shape, laid it onto a piece of felt and sewed around the edges, and trimmed the felt. I beaded the surface, then stuck it into the heart bezel with heavy gel medium. I hope the recipient likes it!

Recycling

I made a votive for a friend, using an old translucent cosmetic pot. This is a really easy project, and looks pretty! Stamp your design onto pastel coloured tissue paper, adhere to pot using gel medium, add a circle of velvet paper underneath to cover the scruffy tissue edges.

Cut decorative canvas scrap to size to fit neck edge (this covers the screwtop ridges) and adhere using gel medium. Add a trim of gold german scrap to the inside and outside rim, and it's done!

Friendly plastic butterfly

I made a friendly plastic butterfly for the Amaco butterfly competition - all the entries will go to the holocaust museum, each to represent a child who died. I had decided not to enter the competition, as I was very busy at the time, plus international postage is expensive. But somebody from Amaco emailed me and asked if I would submit an entry, which was flattering...

I made this in a bit of a hurry, and it's not as good as I would have liked, but I didn't have time to re-do it, so off it went! It was on display on the Amaco stand at CHA 2010!


The butterfly is about 4 inches across, and I used a colouring technique I learnt from Liz Welch - doodled alcohol ink. I didn't have time to take step by step pics when I was making the butterfly, but have included some from an earlier project (below) so that you can see how easy it is to do. To make the butterfly, I used 2 wing shapes cut from doodled sticks and a body made from a piece cut from a fuschia stick. I joined them all together by dipping the edges into hot water for a few moments then pressing them together and holding in position for a few moments. The antennae were made from copper wire.


To make doodled alcohol ink Friendly Plastic, take a stick of gold Friendly Plastic and drip some alcohol ink on it. The newer bright colours are good for this technique. You can blow the ink around using a straw if you like.

Keep adding aclohol ink. If you're blowing it with a straw, you will find that the ink you're blowing comes to a sudden stop when it touches dry ink. So, eventually you will have to drip or dab the ink into the gaps.

This is what the finished piece looks like, along with the inks I used.

Now take a white Sakura souffle pen, and draw around the blobs using wriggly lines, then infill with doodles, until the piece is doodled all over.


Easy to do, and looks very effective. Liz uses it to make beautiful pendants, by cutting it to shape and size and laying it into bezels, then covering with layers of resin and trapping doodles or tiny embellishments between the layers.

Conditioning Polymer Clay

This is a first - a blog post without pictures! I have been playing with polymer clay, but not nearly as much as I'd like to, and I haven't finished anything off to a standard that I'm happy to show off yet!

The problem with polymer clay is that you have to condition it before you can play with it. Clay is properly conditioned when you can fold a thin sheet in half and have no cracking at the fold.

Different brands of polymer clay have different properties, and as I have learnt this week, until you understand what they are, you won't necessarily be successful in preparing the clay for play.

I worked with Fimo Classic last summer, and found it a bit of a pain to condition, even using a pasta machine, so a friend suggested I try Fimo Soft. Fimo Soft is easier to condition, but I don't like the look or feel of the baked clay as much as baked Classic.

I worked with Sculpey's new lightweight Polymer Clay - it is a dream to condition as it is very soft and easy to knead. It also takes colour very well after baking - using alcohol inks and Johnson's Klear/Future acrylic floor polish. If I had found this first, I probably wouldn't have tried any other polymer clays! Except that I like to use black clay, and I haven't seen this product in any colour other than white - it may exist, but I haven't seen it.

I had read that Kato Clay is harder to condition, but worth the extra effort in terms of the finished product. I have tried it this week, and would agree completely that the finished product is the best I've tried, but the conditioning nearly defeated me.

I asked around for suggestions about conditioning polymer clay. Friends suggested that I place the pack of clay in my underwear or that I sit on the package for a while to warm it up before trying to condition it in a pasta machine. I have discovered that this works well - but only for some clays.

Fimo clay is conditioned by the use of gentle warmth and kneading, or running the slightly warmed clay through a pasta machine. So the underwear or sitting on it technique works well.

Kato Clay is conditioned by pressure, so warmth doesn't help at all. And even in thin slices, running it through my pasta machine just resulted in a load of crumbs which I couldn't get to stick together enough to run through the machine again, and which were too hard to knead. I spent an evening trying to get crumbs through the machine in enough quantity to stick together. It was really hard to get through the machine, and I had to run it through between 35 and 4o times to get it manageable, but it still wasn't properly conditioned. I gave up and left it alone for a couple of days.

And then I had a brainwave. I remembered reading that you can use your Wizard to condition polymer clay, so ran some clay through it, between plastic bags. The clay got softer, but the bags stretched and popped. I ran some more through between pieces of teflon craft sheet. The clay got softer, but I managed to split the craft sheet! After running the clay through the Wizard about 10 times it seemed much softer, but also seemed to be getting 'dry', so I moved it to the pasta machine and ran it through a few times. It was really easy to run through the pasta machine, and working it between metal seemed to make it less dry and more plastic and elastic.

So, I now have my perfect method for conditioning KatoClay - run small amounts through the Wizard ten times, then through the pasta machine 10 times. Combine the resulting small sheets into bigger sheets, until all the clay you want to work with is in one sheet, and can be folded without any cracking at the fold. This method is much easier than the pasta machine alone, and certainly much much quicker.

I need to experiment with what I use to protect the Wizard plates whilst running the polyclay through the Wizard - polythene is too stretchy, teflon craft sheet is not stretchy enough, and probably too thin. Ideally, 2 thin metal plates would be best, but until I can think of how to create those (cutting up the Christmas 'Quality Street' tins?), I will try using the thin plastic used for slot-together files & boxes, or acetate from Christmas Card packaging, or transparencies. I'll edit this post and let you know what works best when I have tried a few things out!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda - Happy New Year

I'd just like to wish you all a very happy,
healthy and creative 2010 - or,
as we say in Wales -

BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA!!!!

I'll drink a toast to you all at midnight. Chink chink.

Perfectly clear

I signed up for a swap called 'perfectly clear', where I had to make an item which incorporated a clear element. I made a votive 'shade' by stamping on 2 pieces of acetate with several shades of Brilliance ink. I used acetate recycled from Christmas card packaging, but you could also use transparencies suitable for lazer printers, the acetate just needs to be either reasonably heatproof or stiff enough to stay clear of the candle flame.

I used 4 eyelets to hold the acetate pieces together. I included a clear tealight/votive candle holder, which can take either a real candle or one of the small battery operated votive candles.


It does have a wintry theme, and makes snowflake patterns all over the wall - maybe my swap partner will like it enough to bring it out each Christmas!

Green & gold Friendly Plastic mask

My step daughter asked me if I could make a mask similar to the one I had made for my daughter:

but in greens.

A mask takes between 3 and 4 sticks of Friendly Plastic, so I checked my stash and found 2 iridescent green sticks and 2 gold. I cut one of the gold sticks in half and then cut each half lengthwise into 7 strips. I did the same with one of the green strips.


I have a paper mache mask form, which I covered in aluminium foil, so that the Friendly Plastic wouldn't stick to it.


I then set my melting pot to 140 degrees and filled it with water. I dropped a gold strip into the water, coloured side down, and after about 10 seconds I fished it out (using a wooden handled pointy tool), and laid it onto the mask form. I repeated with all my gold strips, until I had my mask base. I pressed the pointy tool into each joint as I worked, the joints are what holds the mask together and I wanted them to be as strong as possible.


I topped up the water, and repeated the process using the green strips, overlapping and joining onto the gold strips as I went.


Next, I put a green strip onto a piece of non stick craft sheet and heated it with my craft gun until soft. I pushed a cutter into the Friendly Plastic then dropped the craft sheet, plastic and cutter into a bowl of cold water. After 10 seconds I took it all out, removed the cutter, peeled the plastic off the craft sheet and used sharp scissors to separate the shape I had cut out from the plastic. I repeated with the green and gold until I had 6-8 shapes of each colour.


I heated the centre of the mask with my heat gun, just enough to make it tacky, then laid a shape at top centre, and continued heating until I could see the shape was soft. I pushed into the shape with the end of the pointy tool - this gave a 'crease' down the 'petal' and also pushed the shape firmly into the layer below, making a strong joint.

I repeated with more heat and more shapes until the mask was finished. You need to be careful not to apply too much heat at once, or the mask will melt so much that it loses definition and oozes off the foil...


Once happy with the mask, I left it to cool on the mask form for an hour or so, then just popped it off.


All it needs now is elastic!

Stampbord triptych

Trizzy sent me a stampbord triptych a couple of months ago, and I loved the idea, so I made this one to give as a Christmas present.

I took two of the 2 x 1 inch pieces, drenched with water and zapped with a hot heat gun until they bubbled.

I used fluid chalk inks to colour the bubbled pieces and a 2 x 2 inch piece, then stamped images using Chapel Road stamps and Stazon ink.


I scraped and scratched here and there, but you can hardly tell as when I added a layer of glossy accents to seal it and give it a shine, the ink dissolved just enough that the scratches disappeared!


Finally, I added tiny hinges, and coloured the edges and hinges with a brown Sharpie pen.

Copper & agate brooch

I had some 16 gauge copper wire to play with, and decided to make a brooch as a Christmas gift. I had an agate heart which had a pre-drilled hole of about the right size, so threaded that onto the wire. I used round nosed pliers to bend the wire into the shapes I wanted, then used a chasing hammer to flatten all the bends, which stiffens the piece so that it holds its shape.


I hammered and flattened the end into a point, and used much finer wire to wrap around the bottom of the brooch to hold the last curve of the wire in place. Thankfully the recipient likes it!

My new play space

Well, I've finally moved out of the dining room into a proper play space. I'm not fully organised yet, so please excuse the messy piles of stuff here and there!

This was once a bedroom, and is still the spare room if/when we have a house full, as the sofa is a fold out bed. To the left of the sofa is the filing drawer unit that I store my unmounted stamps in. To the right of the sofa are the iris carts which were almost the whole of my storage space in the dining room.


But now I have cupboards... no curtains yet, but lots of cupboards!


And spaces on top of cupboards and underneath cupboards... the cupboards were once a mini kitchen which is no longer needed, so we moved them in here. We had to buy new worktops as we've organised the cupboards differently, but we managed to find a cheap worktop at a bargain price.


I have invested in lots of plastic boxes so that I can organise things in the cupboards, but a number of them are empty as yet, as I haven't sorted everything out into its final home yet. I m determined to be properly organised, and have even started putting labels on the boxes so I know what's in each of them. I've already used one dymo cartridge and need to buy another to carry on!






I bought a spice rack for the inside of a kitchen unit, and then had a 'eureka' moment, as I realised that fitting these to the inside of these cupboards would be perfect storage for my embossing powders and colourwash sprays and would be really easy to see the colours.



I'm not sure what the best things to out in drawers are, but for the moment this is my metalworking drawer:


This one's full of napkins and glue guns:


and this one has some of my beads, brayers and non stick sheets. No, I'm not sure about the logic, either!


Because there is actually somewhere to put everything, I am pulling boxes out, using the things I need, then putting them back into the box and putting the box away as I work, so hopefully this room won't degenerate into the dreadful mess the dining room was. Things just piled up on the table there until they reached avalanche point, and slid off the table, at which point I had to try and clear and sort everything. And I could never find anything!

Apart from finding places for the last few piles of stuff, and adding more labels to the boxes, the only things that need to sort out are curtains, the lighting, and the power supply. This room is much lighter than the dining room was, but when I am working on the worktop am standing between the light and my work. The desk lamp helps, but is not enough. We have got some spare lights that fit under the wall units. All I have to do is persuade the man in my life to install them... As for the power supply, I have a double socket next to the sofa, and another in the corner of the room above the worktop. I am right handed, so I either have to use the tools which need an electric supply on the small section of worktop near the window, or use them on the longer piece with the wires getting in my way. I think I'll run an extension lead under the units to somewhere near the door. Makes sense to have another couple of sockets anyway!

It's lovely to work in here, and what's nicer, it's a quiet room at the back of the house away form the traffic noise, and the window looks out over my lovely garden! Oh, and there's a bathroom next door, so carrying water is never going to be an issue!

Friendly plastic mask

My daughter is going to a masquerade ball next week. She was going to go shopping for a burgundy and gold mask, to go with her dress. I said I was sure I could make something unique for her instead, and this is what I came up with:


I took a blank mask and covered it in tin foil. I cut thin strips from a gold FP stick, and softened them in water, then used a pointed tool to lift them out of the water and lay them randomly onto the tin foil covered mask. I bent them so that each strip changed direction a couple of times, and made sure they crossed over and joined onto other strips. Once I had a reasonable base, I started cutting strips off an indian red strip, and added those to fill some of the gaps and add strength. When I was happy with this base, I heated it with a heat gun to make sure all the joints melted together. I then took some short red strips and warmed them in the water, and added them to the mask, folded in half, so that both ends were joined to the top edge.

I laid a gold strip onto a small piece of non stick craftsheet and melted it with a heat gun, then used a 4 petal cutter to cut a 'flower'. I dropped the FP and craft sheet into a bowl of water to cool, then made lots more petal shapes in gold and indian red.

I dropped the 'flowers' into the hot water to soften them, then attached them to the mask, trying to spread them evenly over the 'ribbon' framework, and ensure a balanced mixture of gold and red. It's quite sturdy, but nicely lightweight. And my daughter can be certain that her mask is unique!!!!