Easter Egg

Easter Egg

Hello Everyone!

How are you all?  Hope you

are enjoying fine springlike

weather - it is snowing here

as I write!  Don't know about

Easter; it's beginning to 

look a lot like Christmas......

Claire Jackson is here with

a beautiful reminder of the

season..........

"Today I’m sharing an idea for an 

Easter or spring time gift. 

I started with a plain cotton bag and

 masked off a central square with tape 

and a homemade mask of a 

hare in the middle.

 I then painted the sky and grass

 with fabric paint.

When the paint was completely dry 

I stamped a variety of PaperArtsy flowers

 in Archival Ink and coloured them with 

more fabric paint. 

I added a little shading to the hare 

and stamped a border.

If you’re like me you have umpteen reusable

 bags in different places so that you 

never get caught out when you’re shopping."

This is just beautiful Claire

thank you very much for sharing

If you'd like to decorate a bag

then do take a look here

They're currently on offer.....

I have a lot of bags too, unfortunately

they don't seem to make it out to

the car very often................!!

'Till tomorrow

Mickie xx

Fabricated

Fabricated

Hallo Everyone!

I'm quite excited to have

Karen Gist here today with

another of her fabulous

creations so without further

ado, over to you Karen:

"Hi, I have chosen to decorate the Cotton

 Carrier Bag for this project. 

What a fantastic bag this is!!! 

Its made of sturdy cotton, 

is a good size and has a zip...I love it!!!!

To start - stamp the sunflower from the 

PaperArtsy set ELB24 on some scrap paper

and cut in half.

 Enlarge it by using a photocopier or your 

scanner software and print out. 

Now trace the image onto your bag. 

I chose the sunflower but you could 

use any stamped image this way.

Paint your image. 

You can see by my photo that these 

Starlight Paints are super shimmery! 

They have a lovely consistency for fabric too.

Punch shapes into some fairly stiff card

 to use as a stencil. 

I used a Woodware scalloped circle but you 

could use any shape you fancy.

Dab paint through the circles randomly

 over the rest of the bag.

Add some other circles by dipping a bottle top

 into the paint. 

Heat set all the paint using an iron then doodle 

around all the shapes using waterproof pens. 

(I used Uniballs for this)

Sew some ribbon and braid across the top of the bag 

and add buttons to the small circles and

 large buttons to the handles. 

Tie a length of ribbon to the zip pull and you are done!

Supplies used:

Cotton Carrier Bag

PaperArtsy Stamps

Starlight Textlle Paint

Ribbons & Buttons

Karen your bag is just

right for the summer.

Thank you very much for

a lovely project

I'm going to have to make one 

of these - I can just hear people

asking me where I bought it

Hmmmm..... pocket money opportunity?.....

'Till tomorrow

Mickie xx

Bag It

Bag It

Hallo everyone!

I have decided that one cannot

have too many of these bags.

They seem to make even the

most mundane items look as

though a special purchase

has been made

Here's Hazel Harler with her

gorgeous bag 

"This is my decorated bag using the So Soft fabric paints

I started by putting a piece of corrugated card 

inside the bag, this was to give me a firm surface 

to work on and stop the paint from going through

 to the other side of the bag. 

Sorry about the photo, I didn't realise that the 

shutters on my camera hadn't opened properly.

I used a sponge the add the paint.

 I mounted some small Gelli plates onto 

acrylic blocks and used them like stamps 

to add the colour,

 I must admit that I like this and wonder 

if I should have stopped there.

Then used a sponge to stencil the paint onto the bag.

I stencilled some flowers.

I used some indian ink markers to give 

the flowers a bit more definition

I also added some white dots here and there"

Supplies.

Fabric bag.
So Soft fabric paint.
Stencills.
Gelli plate.
Indian ink marker pens.
White marker pen.

Thank you Hazel, that

really is a versatile design

I'm thinking that you could stop

at any of the stages and still

have a stunning bag.  I would

go so far as to say that you could

make a series of bags and stop

the decoration of each one at

the end of the different stages

That'll be the birthdays sorted for this year then....

'Till tomorrow

Mickie xx

Bag It

Bag It

Hallo Everyone!

How're you today?  Well

I hope and having a great

week.  

Not sure I'm full of the 

joys of spring but today's

project brought to us by

Craftyfield might have

a lot to do with it!

"Since last year's introduction of the plastic 

bag charge in the UK I make sure I always have

 a bag with me, preferably one that is light 

and that I can fold and shove in my handbag. 

A crafting opportunity... 

As this is my first time using So Soft paint, 

I decided to put it through its paces and 

test several ways of using it: 

as a wash (like watercolour), to stencil with, and to stamp with.

This is the bag before transformation. 

To prepare it for colour, I have ironed it and

 inserted a rigid piece of cardboard with some paper

 on top to absorb any excess water or paint seeping 

on the wrong side.

 I also masked out the area of my painting.

The So Soft paints are quite pigmented so for my sky 

I have prepared a mix of Mediterranean Blue paint and water 

in a small container and brushed some water on 

what will be my sky.

 As I go down the fabric I add more water

 to the mix fading the blue to (almost) nothing.

 I have repeated the process with green for the grass 

and lastly in the middle with the Buttermilk.

 Next I used a small sponge to stencil circles

 with So Soft paint using a DIY stencil. 

These will be my flower heads.

To stamp my flowers I used Brilliance ink in Graphite Black. 

I tested on a separate piece of fabric and found

 that Versafine and Archival stamped equally well,

 but not better than Brilliance, and I find 

easier to wash Brilliance off from the stamps... 

To make sure the ink was wet enough 

I topped it up with the re-inker before starting.

 Here I'm using 2 of the smaller flowers from the 

stamp set as a filler.

 A small piece of plastic packaging serves as a 

palette(bottom right) and I have spread paint thinly on it.

Now for the stencilling.... Again I'm using my DIY stencil, 

the distressed diamonds have been die-cut with 

the Mixed Media Thinlits set.

 I mixed Buttermilk and Dark Burgundy paints 

to get the pink I was after.

And finally a close up taken in natural light. 

I still have the reverse unpainted so I can have more crafty fun!

I liked the So Soft paint very much, as it is easy to use

compared to traditional fabric paints and they are

 indeed soft, which might not seem like a big thing 

for a bag but, as I said, this one will spend its life folded

 in my handbag so cracked paint is out of the question!"

Supplies: 

Cotton bag natural:
So Soft paints:
Paper Artsy EKC02:
Brilliance Dew Drop inkpad in Graphite black:
Brilliance ink reinker in Graphite black: 

Thank you Craftyfield for your beautiful bag

Love the depth of shading you have achieved

These paints really do work well, although I never

thought of adding water to them and using as a wash.  

That was a masterstroke.

'Till tomorrow

Mickie xx