In The Craft Room 11th January 2014 – Hels Sheridan inspired word plaque – part 1

Well that’s it , the holidays are over, everything as back to normal, the craft room is back

At our last crafty afty before Christmas (it seems so long ago now)  I set the group at little homework . I told them that our first project when we started back would be a “word inspiration plaque” inspired by my workshop with Hels Sheridan, and that they needed to think of a word that would be special to them  that would carry them through 2014. The only drawback being that to enable to fit it on their plaque the word could only be up to 6 letters long.  Simple!

I managed to get hold of some A4 sized canvases from “The Works” for £1.99 each, but had a problem sourcing some miniature ones. I then found some foam board in Rymans Stationery shop which was easy to cut up into 2.5″ squares  or to use as a long strip if they wanted. I also managed to find some cheap plywood letters on Amazon so that was the materials taken care of. Now I just had to do the workshop. Hels I don’t know how you manage to do your workshops with over a dozen , I had enough on with my crafty group of 5, lol.

This week I was hoping that we would get the messy part out of the way and then next week it would be all about embellishments, It nearly worked. So lets see what we managed to get done.

First of all they had to decide how they were going to display their word – on one long strip, on separate tiles, were the letters stamped of were they using plywood letters etc , decisions, decisions. This was my first mistake, to much choice, but I like them to come up with their own ideas and flair so – half an hour later – sorted, onwards and upwards we go.

Using layers the canvases and tiles were painted, inked, stencilled and stamped. The only rule being to make sure each layer was dry before starting the next and as acrylic paints and inks are fast drying this didn’t hold things up too much especially with a heat gun to hand.

A base coat of off white acrylic paint over the full canvas and tiles, followed by “dry brushing” two or three more colours randomly over the top  going lighter to dark just lightly dragging the paint across.

Using distress inks and stencils ink background patterns onto the canvas and follow through onto tiles if using.

Draw up a layout guide in a piece of A4 paper marking where the word is going to be. Peel apart 1 layer of a 2ply mansize tissue and lay over the layout guide. Now you can stamp next layer of images using permanent ink pads (we used Stazon, archival and Versamark successfully) The stamps used above are a Joyfy set I received free when I took out a subscription to Craft Stamper Magazine.                                                                                         Tip: If using tiles mark on the tissue in pencil where the corners are so you know where to place the tiles after next step.

Having melted bees wax in a melt pot, brush some across the middle of the canvas and place printed tissue on top. Using a heatgun to keep the wax melted brush beeswax over the tissue always brushing from the middle out, this way you brush out any creases / air pockets as you go,but If you get any creases just reheat the area lift the tissue and re brush over until all covered. Then just brush on more wax around the edges to build up a frame.

If using tiles you can stamp the letters onto each tile

or on a long strip

or paint and grunge up plywood letters with mica flakes

last part to do this week was to brush perfect pearls powder round the edges of the canvas and tiles the wax had been built up and then buffed to a shine.

Some of us got this far and some still have a bit more to do.

Here is sneaky peak at what group have been getting up to. I have just taken photos of part of their canvases as I dont want to spoil the big reveal when their works of art are completed. They are all totally different even though two managed to come up with the same word.

This is Jenna’s  and Jackie’s

and Diane and Margary’s

Sorry, Lisa took hers home to hopefully catch up a bit before next week (and packed it away before i get a picture) so we will have to wait.

Finally, with it being the New year I tried to be a bit more healthy with the cup cakes. I made lemon and poppyseed cup cakes with real lemons,(well they could count towards your 5 a day) The recipe is on my recipe page if anyone is interested.

Thanks for reading