Mixed media

Mixed media workshop 2

A few weeks ago I spent a weekend away so I could do a full day of craft classes at The Scrapbooker’s Confetti Box in Swansea, NSW. Because it’s a two-hour drive each way, I opted to book a hotel room by the beach to make it more of a full weekend of recharging the batteries.

The first class I attended in the morning was learning how to pour quick-cast resin into moulds, and oh boy was it fun! I went mostly with ocean/beach themes for my choices and managed to use up the entire bottle of resin we received as part of the kit.

The afternoon was more intense learning as I was stretched outside my comfort zone again – I’ve come to realise I’m a super slow crafter, and we needed a full six hours to get the projects completed. My goodness it was a fun project to work on … I especially loved the effect of adding mica powder to the glue paste through the stencil for dimension. This project was another of the ones originally taught by Antonis Tzanidakis, designer for Stamperia called ‘Poison’ – so many fun details of this one. Loving the stone paper ‘leather’, although mine looks more like hammered metal,which I love too. I definitely need more practice with painting, but I’m pretty stoked with my attempt!

My next personal mission is to recreate something similar myself using a beach theme … unbeknownst to me at the time there would be an ocean theme release by Stamperia before I started, so I’ll have more inspiration in the near future.

Mixed media

Stamperia mixed media workshop 1

Oh boy did I get outside my comfort zone with this project! I visited a scrapbook store two hours north of where I live back in May and heard they had some mixed media classes. I kept an eye out on their schedule and when I saw this project I knew I really wanted to give it a try. Sadly I missed out on the first round of classes when it was held with the Stamperia designer visiting from Greece, Antonis Tzanidakis as they sold out within 24 hours. I was so disappointed, then found out the store had been given the go-ahead to teach the classes again using some leftover kit supplies. Well, I couldn’t hand over my credit card quick enough for this one!

I’d never ever done a project like this before and had no idea what I was really signing up for – this book is a full A4 in size, so it’s not a small project, and it’s uses a lot of resin pieces and chipboard gears etc. I learnt so much from this class, and it was the most inspirational craft session I’ve had in a long time – totally new techniques to learn, and different products in use that I’d never heard of. As a first attempt at this, I’m incredibly proud of my achievement, and look forward to doing more in the future. I can totally recommend classes at The Scrapbooker’s Confetti Box in Swansea, NSW – they’re a joy to craft along with … although my bank balance may believe otherwise, going by all the goodies in my car boot on the way home!

Challenges, Craft Roulette, Tic Tac Toe

Vintage spanner card

This is my first ever attempt at the spanner-style fun-fold card. For something easy it melted my brain a tiny bit, but more around finding cardstock etc that didn’t look too drab but that worked with the vintage Santa image. This was my Craft Roulette entry this week – my 70th challenge to date. The parameters this week were:

  • Project: Spanner (I had to Google this one before I started!)
  • Colours: Vintage (I remembered I had a couple of paper sheets from Stamperia that had vintage Christmas images, so I chose one that would work OK cropped down for the centre panel, and based my colours on the image)
  • Element: Outside (Santa is outside on his sleigh)
  • Random: Textile (the two panels down the sides are papers with textile images that tone in with the other colours

Along with Craft Roulette, I’ve also decided to enter this card into a couple of other challenges too:

  • The 12 Months of Christmas Link Up – anything goes plus optional patterned paper (it’s very rare for me to enter two cards into one challenge, but I couldn’t decide which one to enter so I went with both!)
  • Tic Tac Toe – I went with the top row of ‘December Holiday, Use a die, and Embellishment)

Supplies used:

  • Pink Christmas paper by Stamperia
  • Pink textile paper from Elegance Elements paper pad by Lemon Craft
  • Season’s Greetings sentiment from Snow Globe Geetings by My Favorite Things (retired)
  • Poinsettia dies by Stampin’ Up!
  • Wonderful Gems by Stampin’ Up! (retired)