Calico Craft Parts - Design Team Application

A little review post as my submission for the DT call at Calico Craft Parts. I am sharing three past projects so please do not feel the need to comment unless you want to!

My style is varied with a focus on mixed media - using a variety of substrates (e.g. canvas, wood, paper) to create wall pieces, cards, tags or altered objects. 

Project 1. 

Reversed canvas. Textured frame, ink and paint background, die cut silhouette bird (foam board).
Original post 

Project 2.
Layered tag, home made flower, embossed and inked backgrounds.
Original post

Project 3.
Altered and layered canvas.
Original post

Nikki xx

Anniversary Cards

Just a quick post today - I am over on the Country View Crafts project blog sharing a step my step for this Anniversary card.

Nikki

x

Guest Design - Mixed Media World - Get in Gear

Hi everyone - today I am guest designer over at Mixed Media World. Their theme this month is Get in Gear so I decided to make a masculine birthday card. 

My base is embossed card stock with distress crayons - just added in various places and smudged with my fingers.

I took some corrugated card and dry brushed gesso over it. I tore it to create a little frame before adding some tarnished brass distress spray. The letters were die cut and coloured in a similar way.

I added a die cut cog that was on my desk and metal embellishment for the 'O'. I mounted it on a kraft base and card.

I would like to enter - Frilly and Funkie - Boy oh Boy

See you next time!

Nikki

xx

Sparkly Flower Canvas

Hi everyone - something a little different today - lots of paint, stencilling and drawing to create this fun canvas. Details on what I did can be found over at Country View Crafts. Be good to see you there.

Nikki

x

Wonderful World Canvas

Hi everyone. Today I am very happy to be a guest designer over at Anything But Cute. I am sure you all know this blog, created by the amazing talent that is Pamellia! 

Their current challenge is celebrating Earth Day - what a great theme - chosen by Samra. Here is how she describes it...

Create a mixed media project inspired by the beauty of our planet and tell us what inspired you. It could be echo friendly, or even recycled item, or depiction of sea, mountain, river, forest...let's celebrate our planet!

I decided on a canvas using Tim Holtz's globe die. 

I smooched the die cut in distress inks until I was happy with the result. I painted my canvas with sage PaperArtsy paint and once dry coated with crackle medium. (Just a thin layer - using a credit card). Again when dry I added my dark blue paint - this is actually just household paint but works perfectly for this technique.

I die cut and embossed two butterflies (Butterfly Duo). I then took an oil pastel and covered the embossed area. The oil will then resist anything water based. This is great for then adding distress inks or stains but I actually went with paint in the end. As the pastels do not resist this as well I added another layer once the paint had dried. My word used the same paint (PaperArtsy Banana) and I added touches of the same oil pastel.

I hope you like my canvas celebrating Earth Day.
Thanks for stopping by.

Nikki

x

Spring Floral Canvas

My second post of the day... if you missed my Spring shadow box for A Vintage Journey you can find it here.
Ah April...I love spring, hopefully full of bright days and the emergence of colour as summer approaches. Our April challenge at Country View Crafts is Spring. I have created this canvas for my first project of the month.

Now I must firstly say - this is a remake of a project from one of Brenda Brown's Country View Crafts workshops from last year. You can see what we all made on her blog and Brenda's original project design on the CVC blog - here.

This canvas is a little smaller and a little greener than the one we did at the workshop. I have made this for a friend who asked for a piece of Nikki artwork - no pressure then! I don't have any process photos but here are some close ups:

Do check out the Country View Crafts challenge blog today for more ideas ideas and spring creations from the team.

Nikki

xxx

Spring Butterfly for AVJ

 It's April and here in the Northern Hemisphere, let's hope it is the start of some beautiful Spring days! We are celebrating Spring at a Vintage Journey with our April challenge. 

For my design I have taken a plain shadow box and used lots of different paint techniques to decorate the frame and contents - brayering, dry brushing, a bit of sponging!

The butterfly is embossed and oil pastels used to highlight the raised area before coordinating distress stains were added.

There was a painted flower on my desk, leftover from a the canvas I have made for the Country View Crafts April challenge - post coming in a few hours - (here) - so I used it as a little embellishment.

Until next time..

Nikki 

xxxx