Vintage Style Photo Canvas DIY

Today I'm sharing how I made some fun and easy photo canvases...

What you will need...

A stretched and primed canvas (available from good art & craft shops) I used a 5" x 7" canvas board
Gel Medium (I used Golden regular gloss gel)
A big paintbrush (to apply the medium smoothly, a 1" brush was the perfect size for my canvas)
A laser print out or copy of your photo (ensure that it is a toner based printer or copier, available in most offices / libraries etc...)

To make...

If your photo is on your computer, start by flipping it over (the picture will come out backwards otherwise, this may not matter for a lot of pictures but anything with words etc... will look a bit strange) print onto a laser printer or copy with a photocopier - I made my picture black and white as we have a black and white laser printer here in the office (our colour ones are inkjet)

Prepare a surface to work on - you may want to use a craft sheet if you have one - and begin by painting your canvas with a thick layer of gel medium all over

Place your picture face down on top of the canvas and gently smooth out any air bubbles, pressing it  down into the medium

Leave to dry for a few hours (overnight preferably) and once dry spray the canvas with water

Using your fingers, rub gently to remove the paper - you should start to see your image revealed! don't rub too hard or you could damage your image (some bits will come off anyway) and keep spritzing with water as you go

Once your image is revealed, leave the canvas to dry for about 20 minutes - if your image goes cloudy, like this...

then you aren't done yet! the cloudiness is caused by small paper fibres left behind, so spritz once more and rub gently to get them all off, it may take a couple of tries to get your image perfectly clear...

Once you have finished, apply another coat of gel medium and leave to dry. It's as simple as that!

Here are the two I made...

One of Fuzzybutt (of course!) and one of mine and my sisters wonderful (ahem! it was the 90's be kind!) fashion choices. I love that they aren't perfect and have that vintage slightly worn around the edges look to them, they look great in my little photo corner :o)

I hope you'll give them a go :o)

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

A Cricut Nativity!

One of my favourite projects this Christmas season has been my Nativity scene frame that now sits in pride of place on my mantlepiece - I know this will be a feature of my Christmas decorations for years to come!

Supply List - Cricut Expression 'Winter Frolic' Cartridge - Provocraft, Tinseltown CD - Sarah Hurley, Frame (from any homeware store), White Acrylic Paint, Promarkers - Letraset, Precision Pen - American Crafts, Distress Stickles (Broken China), Stickles - Stardust - Ranger, Coated Card - Rymans, Sticky Dots

This was really simple to make, all the pieces you can die cut from your Cricut Expression (on to white and colour in like I did or using up your scraps!)

Firstly I sanded the frame and painted with two coats of acrylic paint - I made the paint quite watery as I didn't want a completely even finish, I like the Shabby Chic look!

I then set that aside to dry and covered the back part of the frame in snowfall paper from the Tinseltown CD, I cut the hills from a scrap of brown card and added those in front. I then die cut all the pieces from the cartridge (I cut most of these around 2.8 but depending on the size of your frame you may want to change this - the squares on the mat will help you see what size you should be cutting, it makes it so simple!) I cut everything from white card then coloured with my Promarkers.

Once the shapes were all dry I layered them together using Sticky Dots (they are great for sticking down the fiddly little parts of die cuts!) and added features using an American Crafts precision pen in brown.

I then arranged them onto the backing to get the look I wanted. Once I was happy I glued them all into place and tucked the back back inside the frame. I then added the Christmas Trees and the Angel to the frame. I used Stickles to make the Angels cloud and wings sparkly and to add baubles to the Christmas Tree. I then printed the banner and added to the top - done! Such a fun project :o)

I hope your Christmas preparations are coming along nicely, not long to go - eeeeeeek!

Sarah x

Free Fabric Owl Template!

Today I have a free project download for you, I designed these cute little felt owls and made them up and thought perhaps you all might like them too!

For the Brown Owl, I made him all in felt and added some rough stitching to the belly with embroidery thread to make him look fluffy. For the grey girl owl I added some eyelashes and eyelids made of scraps of leftover felt and the belly is a scrap of Cosmo Cricket fabric (love this fabric!) You can of course add more details and more adventurous fabrics if you are more advanced than me! You could also use them as paper piecing templates to make them from your scraps of paper and then pop them onto your cards / scrapbook pages etc...

I have to say, I'm really not a great sewer so if I can do it, anyone can! (I of course also had to endure B asking me 'owl you doing'  250 times while I was making them and then cracking up laughing thinking he was hilarious *sigh* )

You can click here to download the template which also includes basic instructions. You can share your finished creations over on my Facebook page if you'd like, I'd love to see them!

If you are looking for the Tinseltown sneak peeks you can see them in this post here, or for my Christmas Village please scroll down to the previous post. Today's Tinseltown inspiration comes from Jess,  Emma, Claire, Melly and Nikki - lots and lots to see today!

We also have a brand new Challenge on over on the Challenge Blog and it's had a bit of a make-over! I hope you'll come and join us :o)

Sarah x

Tinseltown Christmas Village

Today I'm sharing one of my own projects using the new Tinseltown CD - A Christmas Village...

Supply List - Tinseltown CD, Stickles (Icicle), Thin Card, White Felt, Soft Toy Stuffing

All of the templates and pieces are on the CD, you just need to print onto thin card and cut them out - I left little tabs at the bottom of the people and trees so I could stand them up (you can cover these up with some Angel Hair or soft toy stuffing (which is what I've used here) Here is a close up of how I done them... (you can click to make the pictures bigger)

The house templates (there are 8 precoloured ones on the CD to choose from or you could use one as a template on your own papers) I printed onto thin card and then put them together using double sided tape. I added a 'snowy' effect using stickles on the roof. When I was setting it up I thought I should have printed off one of the little wreaths on there and put it on the front door - I will add that in later! :o)

Once the stickles were dry (tested lots of times by putting my finger into wet stickles and then repairing the damage I'd done *sigh*) I set the whole scene up onto a piece of white felt and added some soft toy stuffing to hide the little tabs at the bottom of the little bits - I added some stickles to the trees as well and closer to the day I might add some loose glitter over the felt / stuffing to make it sparkle. I printed one of the patterned papers off from the CD and stood it behind the whole scene to pull it all together and make it stand out against my white walls.

 

Now I just need to run some lights in front of it and I've got a cute little winter snow scene for my mantlepiece! The whole thing took me just over an hour to put together including printing and sticking and styling the scene so not bad for a home decor project! You could also use the digi stamps and colour them in to match the people in your family - I should have given my little girl red hair like me! :o)

You can get your copy of Tinseltown here thank you to those who have already ordered, I'm hearing it's very popular! I'd love to see pictures of your Christmas Villages if you make one.

Sarah x