Monday 5 January 2015

Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire!

First and foremost, Happy New Year, may you all be blessed in 2015. This is a month of reflection and at least for the first few months adherence to some resolutions. One of my main resolutions is to spend more time in my craft room. When we moved to our present home I tricked out a craft room in the basement and I don't like it down there. My last room, although small, had a floor to ceiling window looking out on a mountain creek surrounded by 200' cedar trees and birds singing all the time. We haven't a spare room to devote to my crafting so it's the basement or nothing. If any of you saw the room I craft in you'd think me a chronic complainer as the room is large, well equipped, and beautifully finished but in this space I am not inspired. A friend of mine (who is a psychiatrist incidentally) decided I am mildly depressed and suggested I take a walk in the woods a few times a week for inspiration and hang art that inspires me on my craft room walls. Anyway the outcome of this is I have made myself a promise to be much more productive, by setting achievable goals.


If I am slightly depressed (only where crafting is concerned) I do know a great contributor, ELECTRONICS!!! In a 3 month period my hard drive crashed, my much loved camera broke, and on this project my printer failed when I tried to print on linen. Actually I was proud of myself, after getting over the fact my long planned linen growth chart was doomed for failure I came up with the idea of a child's carousel without too much sorrow for myself. It was hard to capture the whole thing in a single photo but here are two shots of it.





For the TUTORIAL this month I will take you through the steps to create your own carousel.

I started with a wooden embroidery hoop. First I painted it with silver paint and then punched out the letters to spell "Twinkle twinkle little star" which were covered in glue and extra chunky silver glitter. That was all left to dry. Next I  used my big shot to punch out the star and moon border by Memory Box. That was painted silver and the stars and moon glued, glittered, and left to dry.


The silver hoop was assembled with the letters and border. I cut silver cord in 2 lengths the shorter cords hold the children and the longer cords hold the stars on the bottom and the upper half attaches to the hanging hook. The cords are glued inside the hoop. There are 5 alternating long and short cords. Lastly I glued strips of silver paper inside the hoop to hide where the cords are attached to the hoop.

The next step was my favourite of course, because it involved colouring. I used  "Bedtime Kids" to create these adorable little sleepyheads. I love this wonderful new Crafty Secrets set and it is wonderful value with 55 images.                                          







To create the kids I printed the five images you see hereand I paper pieced their pyjamas. The wonderful thing about digital papers is that you can scale the paper to any size you want. If I had used a normal sized patterned paper the scale would have been way too large. I shrank the patterns until the print looked about right for the images, overlaid the images and then cropped the excess paper so I wouldn't waste much ink (a trick I learned from Melody Clement). For each child I printed 4 images, one with the image exactly the way it comes, the second with the image reversed, the third with the image printed on the patterned paper, and the fourth reversed. Of the two images printed on patterned paper I cut out any skin part and the plain printed image I coloured the skin parts and slippers with copics. The pyjamas were shaded with copics as well.

I had 15 foiled stars and I cut out 15 glittered stars to back them with. To assemble I glued the pj's on the kids and glued the backs and fronts together sandwiching the silver cord between them. The stars were assembled the same way with a foil star on the back and a glittered star on the front face, three to a cord. The five cords were tied together at the top and wired to an "s" hook.

If I was to make it again I would have used fishing line as the cord didn't allow the sandwich to lie as flat as I would have liked. However the silver cord does look pretty .

"Now, go visit the rest of the design team blogs below and be sure to leave them some love. Then, link up your own Crafty Secrets project on the BLOG and you could win the entire Bedtime Kids Stamp Set! We’ve loaded a free image from the set into this month’s Linky Party post as our way of thanking you for playing along. You can download the image and use it in your Linky Party project, or use one of the FREE PRINTABLES found on the blog page. The rules are simple: Just create a NEW project featuring Crafty Secrets, and link it up on the Crafty Secrets blog before midnight Pacific Time on Sunday, January 18th. "

Crafty Secrets Design Team

Kathy Clement, DT Leader  http://www.kathybydesign.com

Darlene Pavlick, Dar’s Crafty Creations    http://darscraftycreations.blogspot.com/

Diane Hover, Nellie’s Nest   http://www.nelliesnest.blogspot.com

Melody Clement, Paper Melody’s   http://papermelodys.wordpress.com/

Michele Kovack, Thoughts of a Cardmaking Scrapbooker   http://chelemom.blogspot.com/

Shantaie Fowler, Inking Pink  http://www.inkingpink.com/

Sheila Rumney, Sheila Rumney Design and Photography,   http://www.sheilarumney.com/


Guest Designer

Our own dear,


Thanks so much for visiting me at Paper Pass Times

Happy New Year

Elizabeth



9 comments:

  1. Liz, I can't believe that this was your "second" option...as it is just incredible! It is magical with all that lovely silver paint and glitter and so perfect for a child's room. Your colored/paper pieced images are darling and the composition of the whole thing is just delightful. I'm so glad you persevered and created this amazing bit of artistry to share with us in the Linky Party! Take a bow....this is magnificent!

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  2. OH MY STARS!!!!!!!!! This is just AMAZING and absolutely ADORABLE!!!! I am so sorry you've had such troubles of late ... hopefully 2015 will be MUCH better for you! I must commend you highly ... if I had been having the troubles you were, I could have NEVER come up with such a BEAUTIFUL and CREATIVE work of art! I would probably still be sitting in a corner somewhere sobbing!! LOL!! WELL DONE my friend !!!!!! Fabulous inspiration to us all!!

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  3. OH .. this is just SOOOO CUTE!!!!!!

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  4. Wow...well it might not be what you had planned, but it turned out incredible!! I love every single piece of it...and I always learn from you..what a fantastic tutorial, too....this should make you very happy as it the best idea and project ever!!!! Beautifully done...and beautiful colors, too.....cannot wait to see your Valentine project, you have me wondering...LOL!!

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  5. Love this cute project! I used just printed out on regular cardstock for the hanger I made this month. I debating on using my watercolor paper, but didn't want that much texture on this project. I find that if you don't wet it that much that most cardstock can hold up to the water. Thanks for sharing your wonderful project!

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  6. WOW Elizabeth what an adorable project ...I love how you made the stars and the little children..such a beautiful idea and no wonder you are depressed...I am hate it when my computer or any gadget for that matter doesnt work!!
    Cheers
    Dr Sonia
    Cards Crafts Kids Projects

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  7. What a clever idea this was! you executed it perfectly!!!

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  8. first of all I love your glittery starry carousel, its so imaginative and quite adorable! I can relate to your lack of inspiration, my craftroom that I have been in for years by the way has no windows, meaning no views or natural light...I share it with the washer and dryer which are seemingly always making noise LOL I do get "craft depression" often and when it gets too far gone I force myself to head out to places that bring me joy, I'm happy to hear that that is what I should be doing :)
    but I think the advice you were given to go out more often may be helpful to me too! thanks for sharing that!!!!!!

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  9. WOW is right, your mobile is so flipping cute Elizabeth! My niece would love this Thanks for adding all the photos!
    Sandy

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