Every Good Village Needs a Pub.

The house building obsession continues...

Yesterday I made a modern 2 storey house for my village, and decided that a flat metal roof would suit it. This was achieved by cutting off the gables from the top storey. I ended up with half a window at each side of the building but, well, why not?  I made the a roof using card slightly wider and about half an inch deeper than the building, covering it with metal tape and then running it through my Bigshot using Tim's Rivited Metal embossing folder. I grunged it up by swiping it with white paint (picket fence), and rubbing most of that off to give a zinc look, not too shiny.  Then I rubbed a little black paint into the rivets to age it a bit.   I curled then front and back edges over so it looked a bit quirky and modern.

To match the metal roof, I outlined the windows in a silver pen and made a metal door.

My village is coming along nicely, but every good village needs a decent pub, and preferably one with a bit of history, oak beams and a roaring log fire to welcome you in on a snowy day.  So I made one...

I started by making up the walls of 2 dwellings and sticking them together. As I didn't need 2 doors,  I removed the one on the right, then I cut a strip of card and punched another window in it using the movers and shapers small window die (forgot what it is called, sorry) and stuck this where the door had been. I outlined all the windows with black pen.

I then made up a third building, painted it black and used a pen to mark 'weatherboard cladding' on it.

I removed the door and made a window embrasure (3 layers of card) to cover up the hole, and gave all the windows the leaded pane treatment 

This became the upper storey for one side of the pub but I left the other side as a single storey.  The roof of the single storey building had to have small sliver cut from the left hand edge because there would be no overhang at this side. And you will see that the roofline has a definite lean, but it's a very old building (built 1588 according to the sign) so that's okay. :-)

My pub needed a name, and because it looked kind of like a smugglers den by the sea, I called it 

The 3 Ships (and it is for Christmas) painted a little sign for the front of the building, and gave it a big, studded Andy old black oak door.

Oh look, it's opening time. Mine's a G&T, thanks.

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation....

It's MONTHS since I did a blog. Months. No excuse really other than after I moved my craft room upstairs to the spare bedroom, I totally lost my crafting mojo. In didn't like being so isolated so rarely went in there.  I've not got a big house but I felt so out of the loop up there. It was also a bit too compact, so it had to be kept tidy (and I'm a mess magnet).  And there was no room for spreading myself about, which I like to do, with 2 or 3 projects on the go at once but that was a no no too. And no room for any crafty buddy who wanted to come over and play.

Problem.

This was solved on October.  My youngest son Tom graduated as a building surveyor on July and has been working as such for a firm in the middle of Edinburgh since May.  He and 2 of his ex-university mates decided to take a flat together in town, which meant I could take over the now spare sitting room that my boys used to have.  Hurrah!! Whoop!!!  But also a little sad as we are now empty nesters.  Hey ho. Swings and roundabouts.

It's taken a bit of time to get it as I wanted, and required a trip to ikea for another desk and storage shelves, but I'm sooooo happy now.  Here are some pics.

New desk area, and shelves.  The ikea cd rack holds all my paints, pens etc, and also space for sissix dies etc. ink pads are in old cassette shelves on my new desk.  I spray painted the multi cubbyhole shelving white, to match in with the rest.

The spare desk, for spreading out on or for craft buddy, and the metal wall board that I store my Movers and Shapers dies.  This is now hanging on the wall within easy reach of my diecuttting and embossing area:

I've also got a sofa for lounging about on (an important part of the creative process I find!) and other cupboards for storage.

It's all fab.

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Since I moved everything in, which was in the middle of November, I have busy on lots of projects, so here are some of these.

It was my sister Ailsa's 60th birthday in December so I made her a memory assemblage using a tim holtz mini configurations book. We went to London for a girly weekend, theatre, shopping and met up with friends for dinner.  Fab time, had by all.  This is the book, using 7 Gypsies papers and various TH ideology bits and pieces,

Cover

Inside the book I have filled the boxes with all sorts of bits and pieces that are relevant to her life.  She loved it.

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I saw a lovely Christmas burlap panel on Paula Cheney's web site, a site I follow as she has some lovely ideas on it, so I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing them. 

http://www.oneluckyday.net/2013/08/christmas-burlap-panel.html 

I ended up making a few of these as Xmas presents for friends.

This one isn't finished, but don't have a photo of the final outcome,

I coloured the tim holtz christmas charm with alcohol inks and then sealed it with glossy accents so it looks like an enamelled charm.

The papers I used for these are a mixture of Tim Holtz Seasonal Stash, some leftover paper from a christmas project from last year (can't remember what paper this was), but mostly pictures from a a John Lewis carrier bag!  This is it:

 

I've got loads of this left over, so will use it again next year.

Another present i made was a model of my son Lucas' kitchen.  His partner Jill gave me a box and

suggested that I could build a kitchen in it, and she would love something like that.  After such a forceful hint, I could hardly refuse.  Even I was surprised how well it turned out.  The box is roughly 8 x5 inches, to give an idea of scale.  I used white foam board, greyboard and some dark mirror card, and made some Fimo bread and eggs.

The top one is the real kitchen, and my version is underneath

Finished item.

That'll do for this blog.  I've got another one to do about the 12 Tags of 2015....

Tim's Tag and My New Art Journal (or at least the cover of it)

 Here's My take on Tim's August Tag.  Strange that it was using a rusty technique on the corners, considering the photo album I've just completed.  I used a Crafty Individuals stamp that was given to me by my crafty friend Zuzu. I'm not really in to stamping, so don't have that many and this was the only one I had of a head. Or two heads in this case.  

I used distress stains in peacock feather, vintage photo, bundled sage and weathered wood, though the sage colour has pretty well disappeared. I used a tiny attacher to attach some of the elements as I haven't got a sewing machine handy (attic? back of cupboard under a pile of junk?), and not enough patience to do that by hand. I made a big fluffy bow using the 3 times around the fingers technique.  I think if I was doing this one again I would use embossing powder on the stamp as it doesn't stand out enough and that area of the tag needs a bit of texture.

My other project that I finished recently was an art journal cover. I was supposed to be going over to Zuzu's house on Thursday and she had decided that we would be creating a journal page, and I've not done that before.  As it turned out the date was cancelled, but I did the cover of my new journal instead.  I bought a ringbound book of multimedia paper to use as a journal, but the cover needed strengthening.  I covered the front in patches of embossed foil, using all my favourite embossing folders, and a couple of Movers and Shapers die cuts that were hanging about in a drawer.  I added some stiff card to the reverse side.  I painted over the foil with white gesso and let this dry then dribbled alcohol inks in several colours over it.  Once dry I sanded back the relief areas to reveal the foil.  I hope it stands up to some wear and tear.

I hope I can create interesting pages inside.  It's a big book (A4) with lots of pages and a bit intimidating.  Eek.