Hi Everyone

Did you catch the shows yesterday on Hochanda where That's Crafty launched another new range of stamps and stencils designed by my very talented team mate Melina Dahl, they are all fabulous. You can catch the shows on Hochanda through their Rewind feature, all shows are available to re watch for 60 days HERE.

As part of the design team we got to play with all of the new products to prepare samples for the show. So for this weeks post I would like to share with you one of the samples I made, the Mandala Artist Trading Block, that featured on the shows.

Here's What I Did:

I started by constructing the MDF ATB, for this block I have used the 4" version but the pack also comes with 3" size, the kit comes with 3 of each size so brilliant value. These go together really easy made easier with the right glue and That's Crafty glue is just perfect and holds everything together really quickly. I then painted around all the corners with black multi surface paint, no need to gesso first as this paint has brilliant coverage. I then set it one side to create my panels. 

I took a couple of A4 sheets of thick white card and painted each half of the card with That's Crafty multi surface paints in Mustard, Midnight, Christmas Red & Teal. Once that was dry I brushed on a layer of That's Crafty Crackle Glaze, for the best effect ensure you brush or scrape it on in one direction, this part doesn't have to be perfect in fact you can just add it to an area on your project for the the crackle it doesn't need to go all over it. For my card I wanted it over the entire piece as you never know where the best crackle will appear which also makes it good fun to play with. Leave the glaze to dry naturally. I left it a couple of hours, the crackle glaze will be tacky but that's how it should be. Then paint over with a contrasting colour, I used all the base layer colours except the midnight as that would have been too dark to stamp over.

These are the scraps I had left which shows the effect the glaze gives you, and of course enough left for another project - Watch this space.