Kitchen Cupboard Art

I would love to tell you about my visit to the Work and Play Scrapstore in Tooting, the other week. My friend, Berit who volunteers there, took me, and I think all you crafters in the London area would absolutely love it! They are a charity who provide art and craft materials to the community, using donations from local businesses, in order to promote upcycling. You can subscribe as an individual or group membership for a modest fee so that you can go along and help yourself to the most amazing materials to use in your projects. There were swathes of velvet, batches of leather, books of carpet samples, images for doing transfers, chunks of wood, beautiful, beautiful fabrics. Fill a bag. My creative juices were flowing with ideas in moments.

They had a huge stack of 'paint chip tiles' which had evidently come from a company making bespoke kitchen units where you can have any colour of your dreams. I thought it would be a variation on american paint chip art to use these wood pieces, complete with their colour names, and of course my mind was on aqua for the challenge. I decided to make a triptych using three graduating shades, and I mounted them on one of their blocks of wood. I coloured a huge piece of calico (above) in shades of aqua to cover the wood and it looked really pretty.

I then used baby wipes to cover some pieces of card with various shades of aqua fresco paint and then did the same with some yellows and oranges and then some greens. I then stamped some Tracy Scott flowers and layered them up on my triptych, cutting pieces in half where they overlapped two tiles. Sorry I'm doing this away from home and I'm struggling a bit with the layout on my new tablet

I'm entering this into the PaperArtsy challenge which is Aqua. I do hope you will have a look at the website for the Work and Play Scrapstore. They are happy for people to arrange a visit to look around if you get in touch and are incredibly friendly. If you are after some unique items for your crafting or you need a decent supply for your crafting group, it will be right up your street.

PaperArtsy Aqua Challenge - Lynne Perrella Bracelet

I am delighted to have a project on the PaperArtsy Blog and I would love you to pop over and have a look. The current challenge is Aqua, and the stamps I am working with are Lynne Perrella, her three newest stamp sets. I chose to make a bracelet using some flat wooden beads, shrink plastic, and various shades of aqua Fresco Finish paint. I also used a gorgeous new stencil by Kay Carley for the little sprigs on the beads.

I pressed the shiny side of the frosted shrink plastic onto the black StazOn so that I could colour the image on the reverse using ProMarkers, and I used Aquamarine Treasure Gold around the edge of the shrunken pieces. You can just see in this photo my aqua nail varnish!

I was shocked when I came on here to type this up how long it is since I have blogged. I am just emerging from a rather up and down period in my life. After Colin's Mum had her stroke, he became ill and my Mum had her handbag stolen with doorkeys, debit card, and cash, and the house was ransacked. We felt we had no choice but to go ahead with five day a week live in care, with myself continuing with the weekend care. I set this up along with some adaptations to the house whilst Colin was in hospital. He was diagnosed with a lifechanging brain condition, but fortunately has responded dramatically well to treatment. Mum is now very settled with three regular and very compassionate carers and I have a wonderful person who can do a weekend for me now and again. Colin and I are feeling happy and positive about the future, and my anxiety levels are improving. And I'm looking forward to going to Stevenage next month and hopefully other days like that!

Would love to have a comment from you here or on the PaperArtsy blog and hope not to be such a stranger from now on.