Let me introduce myself. I create to
preserve my sanity s my “proper” job is as a children’s surgeon
which is extremely busy and can be very stressful. Through crafting I
can escape into a different world and find peace in a world full of
turmoil. I hope that you will enjoy my crafting journey over the next
year as I take you through some of the projects I like to make – my
style is quite eclectic with a background of scrapbooking, jewellery
making, mixed media crafting thanks to the wonderful Finnabair and
more recently flower making.
I guess my favourite projects are home
décor pieces as they take a while to put together and allow me to
add loads of little details.
Be warned they are often product heavy,
but you will have loads of bits left for further projects. So, go on,
I encourage you to get crafting – whether you choose to copy as
near as possible or are simply inspired by my makes pick up your
crafty items and enjoy the process of creating something as unique as
you are.
For this project I have chosen to work
with the big sewing machine MDF piece made by Snipart and available
from 14Craft Bar.
Having constructed the main part of the
sewing machine I knew that I wanted to add some texture so using
structure paste and the geometric stencil. I added a layer to the front and back of the body of the sewing
machine. I then used the roses stencil to add detail to the base.
Whilst this was left to dry naturally I
made some embellishments using a number of moulds – long ornament,
keyhole,
decorative swirl and air dry clay.
Once the paste and embellishments were
dry, I layered the body of the sewing machine and base together and
glued on the long embellishment and key hole before covering with a
layer of chalk paint. Whilst I used Americana Décor paint any brand
will work so choose the colour you love or one that will work with
your own décor.
Once this was dry, I used Decoart ®
antiquing cream in patina green to add another layer of colour. The
beauty of this paint is that once it is touch dry you can wipe back
to reveal variation in colour creating the vintage effect I was
looking for.
I added strips of paper from smile ofwinter
to the underside and top of the machine edging them with Ranger ®
hickory smoke distress oxide ink applied with a sponge dauber . I
then highlighted the texture on the machine using Prima® art alchemy
vintage was in vintage gold. Again, any gilding wax like product will
work just as well.
I then collected my embellishments
mostly from 14 Craft Bar but some from my stash.
To embellish the knobs for my machine
and for my bottle lids I used flower centres - gem button and pearl button.
The chipboard dress pieces came from my
stash but you could use the snipart dress.
I cut out flowers and butterflies from
vintage time 008 and 009, ephemera set
and from the paper pad Hugs or Roses.
From my own stash I used – a cotton
reel (but you can make your own with the extra pieces in the sewing
machine kit), lace (you could use set of laces), metal embellishments, buttons and baker’s twine.
I then added all of my embellishments
to my machine before deciding it needed to sit on have a “table”
so I decorated a paper mache box using pieces of paper from the sets
used to decorate the sewing machine and some lace before gluing the
sewing machine to the lid so that the whole could be functional as
well as decorative.
