Re-purposed Canvas Tote with Eileen Hull's House Ornament Die Cut

Hello Blogland, I am here today with a fun re-purposed canvas tote using Eileen Hull's newest House Ornament die. I am sure you have received a canvas bag or 2 that maybe the logo no longer applies or you are bored with. I decided to give one of mine new life!! 

Here is my fun bag!!! This was a project that really allowed me to play with different techniques. Once I got going it was easy to just keep adding & adding.... This is a no sew project but you can easily add sewing to the list if you like. I still may zig zag stitch around the houses. 

The House Ornament die will cut a piece of mat board & score allowing you to make a strong 3D house. As I just wanted the house shape I made a template using the mat board piece, & then a piece of paper to mark where to cut off the tabs. This will make it easier to cut the tabs off the fabric shape as the score lines may not show up. 

Let's get started!! There is a supply list at the bottom of this post so you can see the products used that made this an easy no sew project. Start with either a plain canvas bag or as I did re-purposing one. The logo for this bag was in black so I covered it with a coat of black gesso, let that dry & then added a coat of white gesso. This covered the logo nicely & gave my bag some tooth so the stencil images would adhere nicely. Hot tip: wash you hands after this step so you don't put black finger smudges on your project!

While that was drying, it was time to cut some fabric. Using a few pieces of batik & some Heat & Bond Fusible Fleece was a good place to start. Following the directions I cut the fleece the size of the fabric needed. I ended up cutting each fabric piece separately.

I used my iron, on the steam setting to pre-shrink the fleece & then to adhere it on the back of the fabric (as per the directions). This will give my houses that puffy quilted look. I cut one house but realized I wanted to have a no sew option so my work around was to use another layer of iron-on adhesive. Using Heat & Bond Lite (this gives me the option of sewing) was the answer. You could use Ultra-hold instead for a stronger bond without sewing.

I simply cut a piece the size of my fabric, moved my iron to no steam, med heat & adhered according to the directions. 

This piece only has the fleece adhered.

Next step was to run these fabric pieces through & cut my houses. Put the piece fabric side down & run it through your Big Shot or equivalent. The steel rule die easily cut through the layers to leave me with the nice little house. I trimmed the flaps off using my template. Voila! 

I cut 3 houses & positioned them on my project to see what else I wanted to do.  

This is where the fun really started! I decided to make some stencils using Eileen's flower dies & acetate packaging. Next I sprayed the back of my stencils with Pixie Spray. This is a "light tack, repositionable adhesive for stencils" it helped stick the stencil down so my ink didn't bleed underneath making the image sharper. 

Using Colorblends 2, I stenciled flowers around where my houses would be, so some of the flowers would peak out behind the house. I heat set the flowers as I went adding layers of petals once the bottom flower was dry. 

Using a posca paint pen I outlined the flowers giving them a sketchy look. I also added a leaf diecut using Flock Transfer sheets. Love the look of this material. 

Time to add my houses. I heat set my houses with an iron, following the directions on the Heat & Bond package. I also had to add my wee Minion on there just for fun. He is made of fabric & I just followed the same steps as the houses, then cut fussy cut him out. 

Now my repurposed bag is already to go for a shop maybe at a fabric store so I can make another?!!! Thanks so much for joining me here. I hope that I inspired you to play with some of Eileen's dies, fabric & Thermoweb products! Have an inky day!!

Supplies:

Eileen Hull dies by Sizzix- House Ornament, Spring Leaves, Flower w/Heart Petal, Hydrangeas. 

Color Blends 2 in Pansy, Bay, Beach, Hydrangea, Sunshine, Wildberry,  Melon, Tutu, Coconut.

Therm O Web- Pixie Spray, Fleece Fusible, Heat & Bond Lite,  Flock Transfer Sheet in Green Envy.

Canvas Bag

Gesso & Black Gesso

Posca Pens in black. 

*Thanks to Therm O Web, Sizzix & Eileen Hull for supplying me products to experiment with!!!
*Affiliate- some of these companies have given me product to use, play & experiment with. The ideas are my own but I tend to work with companies whose products I like so enjoy the inspiration.

5 Ways to Play with Color Blends!

Hello Blogland, I am so excited to play with Eileen Hull's Color Blends today. I am also very thrilled to announce I am on the Eileen Hull Design Team! You may have seen me at the last 3 CHA (now AFCI) shows as a crew/roadie/Minion with Eileen and her trailer Scotty. I have been a big fan of Eileens products for years & regularly teach & demo using her Scoreboards Sizzix dies. It certainly makes sense for me to be blogging more about her products cause I LOVE EM!  

On to my first post! This month the design team are playing with Eileens Color Blends from ColorBox. This is rather appropriate as I met Eileen for the first time while demoing this product at a local scrapbook store years ago. We hit it off immediately as we have similar backgrounds being military spouses, love to chat and her granddaughter and my daughter even share the same name!

On to the fun! I love making art journal pages. It is a great way to play with product, figure out how it works, experiment & just play. I started with the backside of an art journal page, made with a piece of patterned card stock, great way to use up your stash. The paper was very busy so I knocked it back a little using gesso, and created a bit of texture as I put it down with a spatula. 

I decided to use the Hummingbirds stamp set from Darkroom Door as my theme. I love, love these little flitty birds & have a feeder right outside my studio window so I get to see them in the summer months. Putting photos on art journal pages in a great way to include your personal life to your art and it helped me choose my color palette.

If you are not familiar with how to use these unique inks there is a video tutorial by Eileen here. The highlights are:

• permanent when heat set
• 10x the amount of ink than a regular stamp pad
• hands stay clean
• extremely versatile
•  comes in 16 colors

 Technique 1- watercolor background- I started by putting some color directly on my page & blending it using water and a paint brush. They blend really well using this technique and I was able to get some nice vibrancy.

Technique 2- make some pools of color on your craft sheet or palette paper and use as a paint to watercolor in a stamped image. Stamp with an archival waterproof ink. Here I liked how controlling the color is easy, more water = translucent, less water = darker but still translucent.

Technique 3-ink with a background stamp. OK this is cool. I used the Color Blends by swiping the color Ebony on my script stamp. The images are crisp and permanent when heat set!

Further example with this technique. I added gesso to a book page to push the type to the background. Using the same technique add Color Blends to the script stamp. If I add a spritz of water the image is looser and has a watercolor feel to it. You can see by my book paper that in spots where no water was used the image is crisp, in others a spritz of water changes the look of my stamp. Yet after drying with a heat gun the ink did set permanent. I was able to add a wash of water color to the top and the script stayed put! Very cool. 

Technique 4- use multiple colors on a stamp. This was my favorite, super quick and simple to do as you have really good control of where your color goes unlike using an ink pad. The built in foam allows for easy application. More ink gives a darker image, give a light spritz of water and total watercolor look. Above you can see I got 4 stamped images without re-inking. 

Technique 5- Embossing. This ink has a slower dry time when used at full strength so I was easily able to use it with a stamp and heat emboss "Fly High". I have not had good results using ink pads to heat emboss so this was a bonus. That way if a spot of your image is missing the emboss powder the image is still visible. YAY! 

For the flowers the above book paper technique was used and die cut with Eileen's Flower Layer's with Heart Petals. I doodled a bit and layered the flowers alternating the colors and adhering with a brad. Tip: put a spot of glue on each piece as you layer to keep them in place. I added some thread underneath for a bit of flair.

To give the page a bit of that grungy look & to help the pieces pop, simply hit the high points with heavy body copper paint. I also used the Ebony Color Blend to distress the edges of my scrap of paper and art journal page. So easy to just swipe away. 

All that was left was assembly. Pulling stuff like the red net from my junk stash (clementine fruit bag) and journaling on a tag. The page is done! Thanks so much for joining me, leave me any questions or comments & have a wonderful inky day.

Supplies:
Eileen Hull Color Blends by ColorBox
Eileen Hull Flower Layers with Heart Petals by Sizzix
Stamps by Darkroom Door
Emboss Powder & charm by Emerald Creeks
Photos by me!
Copper paint by Golden