The Thrill of the Hunt

I don’t know about the rest of you, but grocery shopping became less interesting to me when they started to use barcodes instead of price stickers. No longer could I scrounge around on the bottom shelf for the jar of peanut butter that was priced less than the ones at eye level.

I still enjoy “the thrill of the hunt” and starting today, Jan, my cohort in all things “cheap and cheerful” (to quote the Brits) and I will be sharing with our blog followers some of the escapades that we go on in search of interesting and frugal fibre arts and mixed media arts and craft supplies and where they may be found in Calgary and area.

With today’s frugal find we are also doing our first giveaway, a non-stick silicone baking sheet, a $2 find that is virtually identical to the non-stick craft mats sold by a number of companies for $15 - $25 dollars.

Our $2 find is a tad smaller than the others, but works just as well as the more expensive brands. This frugal find was purchased in Calgary at Bianca Amour Liquidation. 

In order to win today’s giveaway, post your favourite "crafty" frugal find in the comments area. We will have a third party pick the winning entry on April 1st and contact the winner for their mailing address.                       Cheers, Jan and Meredith

Image Transfer Techniques

February FOG day was devoted to working on a "Valentine's" themed project, using something that was heat embossed with embossing powders. We worked on these in the morning and in the afternoon we experimented with just a few of the myriad of image transfer techniques.

One of these is the packing tape/clear contact paper transfer, a simple, easy and inexpensive transfer method. Find an image in a magazine that you want to transfer and cover the right side of the image with a piece of the packing tape, sticky side down on the image. 

Next, soak for a short time in a bowl of water. Once it is wet begin in the centre and with your thumbs or fingers start rolling the magazine paper from the back of the tape until only the image is left. The really interesting thing about this type of transfer is that there is no white colour applied to a magazine page, so when you remove the paper, you are left with clear tape.

 

Two other methods that we tried were:

Artist Transfer Paper by Lesley Riley 

Citra Solv 

Micro Bead Bird Embellishment

On one of my last pieces for FOG, I created a beaded bird. If you look at the photo, you will see that the bird is outlined in black and that micro beads fill in the areas between. The black outline of the bird is actually a sticker that I picked up at a scrap booking store. Although there are many of these types of stickers, some in black and some in white, the one I used came from a sheet of birds (see photo), and was designed by Elizabeth Craft Designs (#2350). This bird sticker is approximately 2” long by 1 1/2” wide. Although this is a sticker, I felt that it would need a little extra glue to keep it in place, so I used gel medium to adhere it to my background. By the way, my background is a piece of felt covered with painted fusible web, stitched, and distressed with a heat gun.

After the glue had dried, I then put gel medium onto one section of the bird at a time and poured micro beads onto it. This process was repeated for each section. Sometimes I found that I had to redo parts of a section, or pick beads off the black outline as these sections are very tiny and my accuracy with my toothpick wasn’t always perfect.

Anyway, after a number of days, the bird was complete. I was very pleased with the outcome and that my fellow mixed media artists at FOG were impressed.                   Jan S.

January FOG Session and Embossing

At our FOG session in January we worked on encompassing our December Fun Foam embellishment into our journal page. Diane came with hers already embedded into her journal cover, so she was ahead of the rest of us.  Finished projects will be posted at a later date.

Our afternoon technique was working with rubber stamps and embossing powders. If it laid flat and could be stamped, it was embossed. It worked very well on most things; fabric, hand made papers and card stock, balsa wood business cards from Lee Valley Tools, metals and mica.

One of the neatest things we discovered was making a non metal substrate look like metal. First off stamp your rubber stamp in the VersaMark ink pad and set aside. To achieve this great metallic look on non metal surfaces first coat the surface with a clear VersaMark ink pad then liberally coat with a metallic coloured embossing powder (silver, gold, copper), tap off the excess powder and heat with a heat gun. Repeat this 3 - 4 times to lay down a thick layer of the embossing powders. As soon as you have completed the final layer of the embossing powder and before it cools, quickly stamp your rubber stamp into the surface. Just a note, do not reheat after it has been stamped or you will lose the imprint. Askme how I know :)

Top Left: Embossing on Mica, Top Right: Embossing on Hand Made Papers, Middle: Metallic Look on Card Stock; Bottom Left: Embossing on Lee Valley Balsa Business Cards, Bottom Right: Embossing on Painted Card Stock that has also been Dry Embossed in a Sizzix.

I think it was safe to say that we had a great time with the embossing powders and the possibilities for use in our mixed media projects.

Merry Ho Ho

and a Happy New Year to all our blog followers.
Thanks for taking the time to visit with us.

Paper Cloth & Foam Embellishments

Our December FOG session was a stimulating one. We were working with our paper cloth, or fabric paper (whichever term you like) from Diane’s demo at our November session, and using it as the background of our art piece. Pat came with hers virtually completed, but the rest of us were still busy working by lunch break. 

Completed Paper Cloth/Fabric Paper Samples

We spent the afternoon making Fun/Craft Foam embellishments. Yes, even though that sounds rather hokey, they really do turn out great. In a nutshell, you heat up your Fun/Craft Foam with a heat gun, press a rubber stamp into it until it cools and voilà, you have an embellishment ready for painting, inking, or colouring by other means. The harder red rubber stamps with simple, deeply etched designs seem to work the best.

We discovered that we could heat the foam sheets and run it through the dry embossing machine (Sizzix) to impress the image. This opens up a plethora of possibilities for designs. We also cut some shapes out of the foam, folded over the top (around a knitting needle), carefully heated the foam and impressed it. This makes a rather nice pendant, especially painted with the Lumiere paints.

Fun with Fun Foam

 We also discovered that not all Fun/Craft Foam is created equal. The thicker the Fun/Craft Foam, the better the impression of the stamp, or embosser. We were really churning them out and didn't get a lot of time to paint, ink or colour them. (Lumiere paint by Jacquard is the best for some metallic or pearlescent colour).

January Challenge

In fact, we were so enamoured with our efforts that we have decided to use the woman’s face for our January challenge, the start of an ongoing art journal project. Can’t wait!

Thornhill Branch

Well, we finished our last Inspired Art Journal session with the Calgary Public Library at the Thornhill Branch.  We had a very energetic group and they were all very creative with their journal pages. It is so inspiring to see people jump in, be creative and want to continue on when they leave.  We have certainly had great support from the library staff for these sessions and we are glad we were able to be a part of the One Book One Calgary event.

Thornhill Branch Journalers

We are happy to announce that we will be leading a Fibre Arts session in the Spring at the Calgary Public Library, Central Branch downtown. We'll post further details as we approach that time.