I learnt something new!

Hello ,

First of all happy Friday! I love the end of the week and Fridays are my favourite.:-)

Today I want to show you something which has been on my pinterest to-do items for a while but I could not find a decent enough tutorial. I am talking about Dream Catchers. I love those things. Finally, I found a tutorial on youtube and gave it a go. Here's how it looks

Of course, the actual dream catchers are not made of yarn. They are actually made of willow hoops and sinew and beads. The story behind the dreamcatchers is very interesting. They are actually supposed to get rid of bad dreams and all the components of a dream catcher have some significance. The nightmares pass through the holes and the good dreams get caught in the web and slide down to the sleeper through the feathers. How fascinating is that! If you are interested, read about it here

I don't think my dream catcher would do any of this.:-)I used an embroidery hoop and white yarn. The centre embellishment is  a snowflake from Craftslane and  I used MDF letters to spell out dream. Here are some closeups. I kept it super simple. Just wanted a red white and gold colour scheme.

Hope you like this and give it a go. It's super easy to make, I promise. Here's a link to a tutorial.

Happy weekend and see you soon!

Cheers
Pallavi

 

An affirmation for myself and mini tutorial (Pic heavy)

Hello everybody,

First of all a million thanks for your comments and feedback here and on facebook. I am truly grateful for all of you who take the time out to comment and encourage.

Today's project is entirely for myself and I have been meaning to do it for the longest time. I am a big scaredy-cat and have long periods of self doubt and often question my capabilities ,so I decided that I needed something to motivate me and reaffirm the faith I should have in myself ( heavy stuff,heh heh ).This is why I made this.

You might not know that even though most of my projects are in the shabby chic, overly embellished style, my first love is mixed media and I have a fascination for textures. I am not a painter and not very good at sketching, so mixed media gives me the opportunity of playing with paints and mediums.

As I had mentioned in my last post, today I have a tutorial for you. I don't know how many of you who read this blog, actually like mixed media, so I am kind of nervous about sharing the tutorial. Then again, my project today is a sort of positive affirmation for myself, so I figured to just go ahead and share it anyway.

Enough rambling and on to the tutorial.

Here is how I altered them.(Apologies for the not so great pictures. It was very late at night and my craft space does not have enough light)

Step 1 : The first step I always follow before painting any object, especially wood, is to prime it with Gesso. Gesso provides some tooth to the surface for the paint to stick on to and you also end up using less paint, since it does not get absorbed by your substrate.

Step 2: I tore out some pattern paper sheets and stuck them down randomly on the letters .I used Matt medium, but you can use glue or mod podge or watered down PVA glue. Remember, random is key. There's no plan or precision required. This should be fun and not a practice in being a perfectionist. (What a relief for all you cardmakers, eh )

Step 3. I wanted colour on my pieces but I also wanted the black and white designs to show through, so I took some stencils and sprayed randomly through them. Not too much, just a teeny bit to add shades of blue .

Step 4.I also used some stencils to add some texture using modelling paste. If you do not have modelling paste, you can use a thick layer of gesso or just use acrylic paint through the stencils. It's all about playing and experimenting, so make do with what you have.

Step 5. The last step I did was just pick up some red and yellow acrylic paints with my fingers and dab them randomly all over the letters. At some places, I focused on the stencilled areas to highlight them. Like I said, totally random. If you don't like what you did ,use a baby wipe to rub off the colour. If you do it quickly enough, you can get rid of the paint.

My next step is generally stamping, but in this case since the base layer has touches of black in it, I didn't bother to do it. I did go in with bubble wrap and some Gesso and stamped with it to tone down some of the very bright areas which were bothering me.
 
The last step was to sand the edges , distress all the sides of the letters with black ink and seal it with Matte medium. You can use mod-podge or watered down PVA glue.

And that's it. You are done.

Phew, that was a long post. I hope you had the patience to read all of it. I would love to know if you found this helpful or does it look like just a random hodge podge of paint and mess to you.:-).It's difficult to be objective with your own projects, isn't it?

Cheers
Pallavi

 

Submitting for
Color Conceptions Challenge # 10-Anything but cards
Altered Eclectics April challenge

 

Altered Bird house

Hello,

Today's project is another Craftslane MDF product that I altered for a friend. Tonnes of embellishments and colour on this one too. I seem to be moving away from pastels and embracing brighter colour this summer.:-)

Look at the bird house. It is so adorable and a nice size. I guess you can use it as an actual bird house. I might try that next. It's available here if you are interested.

 

This is how it looks after I was done with it.

 

 

I used the DCWV coral couture stack. I love the colours in this stack. The lovely teals, oranges and reds. Added some fussy cut elements from the paper and some handmade and store bought flowers and it was done. Easy peasy.:-)

 

I used some dangle trim for the sides and here's what they look like.

 

 

And another view since I took a million pictures of this.:-)

 

 

Okay, that's it for today's project. I have just finished a mixed media project and created a mini tutorial of sorts, but I am nervous.Would you be interested in mixed media?

 

Let me know.

 

Cheers

Pallavi

 

 

 Submitting to :

 

BGC #49 Grown with Love : I have used flowers,butterflies and birds and some colours from the mood board.

Color Conceptions Challenge #9 : Anything but cards

 

Heart-art

Hello!

Top of the morning to all of you. Monday blues started yet? I start whining about Monday from Sunday afternoon itself, much to the annoyance of darling husband.:-)

Anyway, on to today's project. I altered a heart though I have to admit that I cheated on today's project. It is a larger version of a magnet that I had done some time back. You can check it out here. I just changed what I did on the background a little bit, but most of it remains the same as the magnet. Don't blame me, my client wanted it this way.:-)

I told you it was glittery! I hand cut some hearts with chipboard. The backgrounds on both of them are done with gelatos, some stencilling and stamping. On the bottom heart I also used a waterproof pen to outline the stencilled flowers.

Much of what I have done is not visible, since I glittered the heck out of it with Dimensional magic. I wanted it to have a laminated and tile like finish.Wish I had taken a picture before I did that though. Maybe you can see some of it here.

 

 

 

And that's it for today's post .Hope you liked the project. I will see you tomorrow. Have a wonderful week!

Cheers
Pallavi
 

Happiness Project -Part 2 :-)

Hola!

As promised, here is the second hoop wall hanging that I made. I used some fussy cut flowers and a few die cuts. There is nothing much to explain here, since it's a fairly simple project.

I say simple, but it still took me ages to finish it. I am so slow in deciding what to use and have to try out a million things before I stick anything down. Does that happen with you too, or are you guys super efficient at designing and finishing your projects?

That's it for now. Will see you soon with my next project. Hint hint , its super glittery!

Cheers
Pallavi

The 'Happiness' project

Hello,

Happy April to you. The months are just whizzing by, aren't they? It's awfully hot in my neck of the woods and I am going crazy bit by bit.

I know I have been missing again, but we will pretend that did not happen and continue as usual.:-)

To tell you the truth, I have been battling with low mojo, bad health and general garden- variety existential conundrums and have not been doing much, crafts-wise. Thankfully I had some orders, so I was forced to get some things done.

Now that I have made some legitimate excuses, we shall move on to my project. The brief from my client was that she wanted embroidery hoops, lots of flowers and happy things and I created two projects.

Today I am showcasing the first one which is a bright, sun-shiny yellow.

I used a lot of chipboard letters and sentiments on it. The small chipboard letters are lasercut mini alphabet letters from Craftslane. and I love them (I already have two packs of these hoarded away)!These are not chipboard, but good quality MDF and take a lot of media without buckling or peeling  or breaking off . Here, I have primed them with gesso and then coloured them with Faber Castell Gelatos..

The snowflake is another laser cut piece from Craftslane.I sponged it with Wild honey and mustard seed distress paints.

If you haven't visited Craftslane yet, please do so. Their MDF products are extremely good quality and a dream to work with. If you are not interested in altering stuff , they also carry scrapbooking supplies and constantly add new stuff to the store.

Okay, so now can you please tell me if you would call it a happy project?I will share the other hoop in my next post.

Psst... I am thinking of making my blog a bit more structured and hopefully a little bit interesting . I am also thinking of doing some tutorials or sharing interesting links whenever I can. Would you like that? Do let me know. I will be ever so grateful :-)


Till then,
Cheers
Pallavi

Submitting for the following challenges
Color Conceptions Challenge #9 : Anything but cards
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Anything goes
Altered Eclectics :April Challenge
Crafter's Corner challenge #15.Go 3D