That's Crafty!: March 2023

The Blue Dream collection is I think very versatile - whilst lots of the images are undoubtedly sea themed there are also ones that are completely different making this collection suitable for lots of different makes. This week I have chosen to work with the tiles and lemons icons in the collection to make a home decor canvas.

The base for this piece is a canvas board 10 x 12" on to which I started by adding Floor Tiles A4 rice paper - clearly the rice paper is not big enough to cover the whole of the base and so I did what I often do with background rice papers tore off the corners at angles adhering these to the covers of the board with Matte Decoupage Glue and Varnish before putting the remaining piece of the rice paper into the center of the canvas board. I made sure to cover both sides of the rice paper so it was properly sealed and protected.

To fill in the background I applied Cracking Paste Primer and left it to dry before adding some Cracking Paste White mixed with pigment pastes to colour - the Dispersion Pigments in Blue and Yellow will work well although you will loose the transparency of these pigments in the white paste.

Having created my background I then worked on my composition. I cast pieces from the Plates mould doubling up on some of the tiles so that I had enough for my piece. You can cast these with Ceramic Powder or Amazing Casting Resin. If you use the Ceramic Powder you can paint directly without the need for a primer where as I always use a primer, either gesso or Bonding Primer when painting cast resin pieces. The tiles were then painted with Blue and Saffron paints, mixing the colours whilst wet before drying and then distressing with White Antiquing Gel.

I cut the clock element out of one of the pages in the 8x 8 paper pad and adhered it to an approximately 6" circular MDF piece I had in my stash that had been painted with the blue paint - the inner piece from the Porthole set will work well giving you a slightly bigger mat. This was placed as shown and elevated using waste pieces of MDF giving me enough space to slide the tiles into place under it. Next I added fussy cut flowers and lemons from the paper collection along with the flowers and lemon from the Ephemera. To get size variation you could always use elements from the 12 x 12 collection. Finally I added splatters of watered down white acrylic paint.

I hope you like this bright and cheerful make which I think would look good in a summer house, conservatory or even the kitchen.