Monday 1 September 2014

Nautical

The new challenge at Country View Crafts has a wonderful nautical theme to it, chosen by our lovely Jennie who loves to be on the sea. I also love the sea and always thought one day I might live on the coast somewhere but it never happened but that doesn't stop us going down to the coast as and when we can. In fact I was in Portsmouth on Saturday night for a walk and a lovely meal at Jamie Oliver's restaurant.

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For this project I chose to use the back of a deep canvas to make this shadow box effect display and began with some white paint, torn strips of patterned paper and texture paste with stencils.

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I added a couple of the canvas stretchers first of all to provide me with something sturdy on which to add some of the elements and bring them nearer the front. I painted the inside of the frame with white emulsion and when it was dry I adhered some torn strips of patterned paper.

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I rubbed some gesso over the paper with a dry paper towel and then using texture paste and a palette knife I added the textures around the edges of the frame.

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For the background I chose a piece of Tim Holtz paper and added some bubble effects with the texture paste and used a few blue distress inks over it. This gave me the base to add the elements I had chosen to use. You can see I had great fun with the rusting powder and alcohol inks to give the metal embellishments a really aged look.

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I also used Tim’s crackle paint and distress paints on this little bottle and found a video on the internet and learnt how to make this Celtic Plait.

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Whilst I was making this I knew I was going to see some friends on Saturday night on the way to Portsmouth and they have a lovely beach hut and the colours I was using reminded me of it, so I decided to add the name of the sea-shore abode ‘Y’ Knot to the label pull and take this with me for them.

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Did you see the little battleship on the top of the letterpress? It’s from an old Monopoly set and given a bit of an alcohol ink treatment and I don’t have an anchor so I used some old jewellery to add the hanging ball and chain.

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When Ken saw this he thought it would be very apt for Jill and Dave, our friends, as the old liner on the tag is like one that used to come into Southampton and the battleship is a reminder of the naval presence at Portsmouth and our friends live between the two.

I hope you’ve had a great weekend and if you have the inspiration and motivation to make something Nautical, we would love to see you over at Country View Crafts. Do go take a look at all the wonderful inspirational projects by our amazing team.

Thanks for joining me today.

Have a great week and a wonderful September.

hugs Brenda xxx