Altered Key Cabinet

The other day, my friend Carol and I got together to have a play day and decided we would alter some key cabinets. We each had one from a well-known high street store with initials in its name, which I find is a good source of small mdf items to alter. In the past I've had mini chests of drawers, tool caddies and a key rack. (OK, it's T K Maxx)

Anyway, they both originally had rather lurid pictures of roses on them. For some reason I NEVER like images of roses. I love the flowers themselves, and I like other flower pictures, but I never ever like rose pictures, not even photographs. I forgot to photograph the cabinets before we started, but here is the front of another piece waiting to be altered, with the same dreadful rose on it:



Carol and I chose quite different approaches - she is a very tidy and classic designer, I tend more towards slap it on and see where it goes, and it ends up more grungy. I started by taking the door and the door knob off to give myself a blank canvas, then I cut a piece of corrugated board to fit. I distressed the board with a bit of brown emulsion paint and some gold acrylic paint, very roughly dry-brushed on, then I embossed the edges with some Cosmic Shimmer EP in a greeny-black colour. I stuck this on with PVA. I took 3 tags and decorated them, firstly by inking the edges and then stencilling with some of the new DI's then I stamped with my new Tim Holtz set "Purely Random" which has a gorgeous elephant among other things! I embossed the edges very roughly with more cosmic shimmer and an unknown EP that my friend Sue was chucking out before moving house. I then added some short ribbons and stuck them on, allowing for the door knob to go back! I had some new Marianne dies that I bought from Paddy's Stamping Place so I pinched a bit of K&Co paper that Carol had with her and chopped out some leaves and flowers with my trusty Cuttlebug, distressed them then stuck them on with Pinflair glue. (that stuff is brilliant!)

Carol painted hers a lovely dark red with some emulsion paint then stencilled swirls over it with Crushed Sapphire DI. She made a lovely 2 dimensional butterfly and added some gems to it and stuck that on the front. Hers is what I would call sophisticated and elegant! Quite a contrast to mine which I can only describe as "rustic" ! Forgot to take a pic of Carol's, sorry - if I get one I'll post it another time!
Here's mine anyway:

Stash Box workshop

The Stash Box workshop went ahead yesterday as planned with three attendees including Paddy, who did finish the project, apart from the varnishing! For all who know her, this is amazing, as she is usually distracted and interrupted all day long by the shop, phone and visitors, or starts off doing the workshop project then goes off at a tangent.
Anne and Sharon, (hope I've spelt you right girls) were the other two, they are sisters-in-law from Blackburn and very talented and very funny! The day flew by. My worries about not finishing the project in the day were unfounded, we finished in plenty of time for them to have a good browse and pick up a few crafting essentials! Here are some pics - my apologies to Anne for lousy photography, but my pics of your pretty box were too blurred to use - even my photo editing s/w couldn't make a good job. For everyone else, Anne's box was a lovely riot of spring colours, just right for this time of year. You can see it part-finished in the last photo.
All the stamps used and inks are available from Paddy's Stamping Place:
www.paddystampingplace.co.uk

This is an extra sample I finished the night before - although it's not really finished, don't look at the back!!!!



These next two are Paddy's - gorgeous naturally, her colours are beautiful, my photograph hasn't really done them justice, they are more vibrant in real life AND she managed to incorporate her current fave product - velvet ricrac ribbon! She chose her box colours to go with the colours of ribbon that she had:




This is Sharon's box in progress - she chose a lovely warm colour scheme, using the new DI's, as Paddy had - there are some gorgeous colours as you can see. Sharon added a lot more detail to this before she had finished, and it looked really pretty - as we said, one can hide craft stash all over the house in boxes like this!




Finally here is everyone hard at work - I was obviously cracking the whip quite hard at this point!
Paddy:

Anne and Sharon:


If you want to come along and join in a workshop, ring Paddy on 0161 798 5115 or call in the shop and she will tell you what is coming up.

Workshop at Paddy's - Stash boxes

I've been a bit absent from blogland for a while - lots of reasons, one of which is that I have been preparing stuff for a workshop I'm doing at Paddy's Stamping Place in Prestwich this Saturday 17th April and repeating the following Friday, 23rd.
These are a couple of "sneaky peeks" of the stash storage boxes we will be making from recycled packaging. There are still places available, if you would like to come along, phone Paddy on 0161 798 5115, she'll fit you in I'm sure! If you do, I'll "show and tell" the story of the disaster that happened to another sample (which was the girly one, if you are thinking these two are a bit macho)!!!
By the way, that reminds me, I am also going to be doing a "man cards" workshop there in a few weeks, no sneaky peeks of that one yet I'm afraid, but it's before Father's day, if anyone is stuck!