Guest Designer ; His Pride and Joy

Hi Michelle here aka mjm and I’m thrilled to have been invited to guest at It’s a Creative World for June!

So a little about me before I share my 1^st project. I am a one time theatre designer/stage manager who has gone back to her arty roots and loving it!

 

I discovered scrap booking at the beginning of 2007 and realised it was the perfect outlet for my creativity. I love telling stories and creating art with meaning as well as being really into collage, so scrap booking is the perfect solution for me!

 

I was proud and thrilled to be announced a 2008 Best of British Scrapbooking winner with Scrapbook Inspirations last November and have been an on going contributor with them for just under 2 years. I design for Banana Frog here in the UK as well as being on the DT for Crafty Stash. I also design for Purple Cows in the States and have been accepted as a Basic Grey ideas designer. I launched my own website at the end of 2008. www.mjm-thearttart.com,where I share my work, inspirations, my blog and sell my DIY projects (full instructions and templates for some of my work that you can make with your own materials and colours in your own unique way!!)

 

I love playing with products and finding different ways to use them. Above all I have a passion for my hobby and love to share it with people.

 

And so to the creative stuff!

 

His pride and Joy

 

I love books and have many, many arty books to gleam inspiration from and to boost the mojo when it’s needed. The idea for this LO came after looking through a fabby book by a lady called Ashley Calder called Scraptatstic. I took her idea and made it my own. (I think with art we all gain inspiration from other artists from the greats to the contemporaries, to this end I will always acknowledge someone who has inspired me and hope that everyone always does the same!)

I loved the idea of creating a background that looks like a piece of metal but is just essentially a piece of card!

 

The Ingredients

An A4 piece of card

Some tin foil

Red, brown and orange acrylic paint

Kitchen towel

Some brads

An old ruler

Some ephemera (I found mine on the internet)

Some embellies (I used Tim Holtz idea-ology sprockets and a 7gypsies journaling block)

Tim Holtz distress inks antique linen, tea stain, and walnut

Tools to distress with, e.g. sandpaper, scissors etc

Spray adhesive

Glue of choice

Photo 6’’ x4’’ landscape

 

Rip along the edges of your A4 card to create an irregular shape. Rip some strips of your tin foil and scrunch, unscrunch and stick to the card using a spray adhesive (I can’t recommend crafters companion permanent spray adhesive enough!) They can be longer than the width of card and can go in any direction.

 

 

Fold over the edges of the foil and glue to the back of your card. As you fold over, mould the foil into the irregular shape of the edge of your card.

 

 

Time to get messy!!! Dribble red acrylic paint over your surface and spread with your fingers, leave it a few minutes then…..

 

 

Gently wipe areas with some kitchen towel. This will lift the colour in places.

 

 

Then do the same with some brown acrylic, spreading and wiping as before.

 

 

Build up your layers of colour until you are happy with the rusty metal look. Next we add

some orangey rust patches. 1^st by dabbing orange and brown acrylic along the edge of an old ruler and using it as a stamp to create lines, to look like the edges of sheet metal…..

 

 

Then with fingers, building up a corner of rust with the orange, brown and red acrylic

 

 

Take your ephemera, you could use a book page, a vintage ad like me from the internet or whatever you fancy as a mat and distress the edges and ink. Distress your photo, I distressed the edges of mine, ripped off one end sanded and inked it and adhere both to the background. Add some brads along the rusty lines as rivets (It doesn’t matter what colour these are we will be adding paint!)

 

 

Get your jounalling ready, I printed mine form my computer in word using the font travelling typewriter from 1001freefonts.com. I inked each piece and distressed my journaling block.

 

 

Assemble the rest of the layout adding in the sprockets or similar embellishments

Time to get dirty again!!! With more orange and brown paint and your fingers, meld everything together with patches of rust

 

 

 

 

And that’s it! A convincing metal layout that weighs nothing!!!

 

 

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little spot here and I hope you’re inspired to go and play (and get messy LOL) I’ll be back on the 14^th with another project for you which I am cooking up right now! Until then Happy Crafting and thanks to IACW and Caz for having me!

Love

M x

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Eleanor]

Lovely to have you here with your faux metal - fab idea for lightweight version of heavy metal.
E
xx