News – Basement Studio

Moving On

This week has been difficult to work through but I’m forced to accept the changes which will now inevitably happen!

I’ve been a reader of Craft Stamper magazine almost since its beginning. It was unique, full of wonderous mixed media inspiration, unafraid to be different. Imagine my absolute delight at having one of my pieces of art published on its pages as a reader. Discovering that my work was thought of in the same way as some of my crafting heroes gave me the boost to send in more work which paid off when I was taken on as one of the full time contributors. My first article was published in 2012 and from there I went on to write articles for Scrap 365, Sewing World, Beads and Beyond as well as a couple of overseas magazines.

When Trish asked me to join her as Assistant Editor of Craft Stamper it was a dream come true. To be on the team responsible for putting my favourite magazine together was an absolute honour and seeing my name on the inside cover each month made me fill with pride.

So it’s with huge sadness that this week we’ve officially had to put it all to bed with the closing of Craft Stamper. Another victim of the times and no doubt not the last. I’ve made some wonderful friends over the years through the magazine not least Trish who has been an amazing mentor and inspiration to me.

I have to move forward, keep up the momentum and see what comes next.

Jaine x

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January So Far

Despite the on going clear out in the basement, my work table still looks like a bomb has gone off on top of it. It’s littered with projects I’m working on which you’ll get to see soon along with some new craft materials I found last weekend at Expo Creativ in Luxembourg, exciting stuff. I visited Lux Expo with friends taking public transport to get there for a change. Honestly, I have no idea why I don’t do it more often. It’s so cheap and painless and in March it’ll be free too so it’s a bit of a no brainer! We were pleasantly surprised to discover a few new craft stands as well as some familiar faces. We have to continue to support this local event even though it’s tiny in comparison with Frankfurt or Dortmund. It’s still the only event of its kind in the country. Lena keeps telling me I need to have a stand there too, maybe one day!

My A6 bullet journal and cover embellished with materials from the January box from Paper Pen and Plan on Etsy

I’m continuing to use my A6 bullet journal this year, it’s the only one I regularly kept up in 2019. I’m using one called Scribbles That Matter which I found on line and it’s great. I don’t get any bleed through with my pens and I’m mostly using a Micron pen for my doodles. This little one won’t be used with watercolour paints as it’s for carrying around with me and on the go planning so has to be functional and practical. It does come with a nifty pen holder but I’m reusing my hand painted cover so the holder gets lost inside, but I’m sure I can knock something up if I need it.

January kicked off with the first Facebook challenge of the year on the WOW! Facebook page. The new theme is Love, Valentine, Wedding etc so it was a brilliant opportunity to create some hearts. I’m not an obviously, all pink and red hearts sort of person so jumped at the chance to try out some new colour combinations coming up with these two cards. I simply can’t decide which of the purple colours I like best, Royal Crush or Persian Indigo, they’re equally gorgeous. Photography isn’t my strong point and I really wish you could see how wonderful they are. I love that little splash of colour on the top one created by simply dipping a piece of watercolour paper into Distress Oxide inks on my craft mat. It’s a technique I love.

Have a great weekend I hope it’s a crafty one and I’ll speak soon.

Jaine xx

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New Autumn Term From The Basement

Even though I no longer have school aged children (just one at uni), I love the start of the new term. It reminds me a bit of new year and a fresh start. It must be all the shiny new things in the shops, especially the pens and pencils, I want it all!

Lots of things have been happening over the summer, including holidays away, and there have been lots of projects in between. I’ll recap a few here.

First up, there have been quite a few projects for WOW! including these ATC’s. The theme for September is Embellishments which opened itself up to so many possibilities. Here I chose to create little embellishments from die cuts and embossing. A bit of sewing and they’re done!

The same powder from the Riviera Trio was used on these circles and again sewn onto for extra texture. The powder was set onto texture paste for much deeper dimension and heating it with a heat tool created bubbles too. I love that finish!

For this one again I used a die cut but covered it with gel medium and embossing powder. Heating the powder over the gel medium created some wonderful texture which adds to the magic!

I’ve rediscovered how brilliant ATC’s are again after falling out of love with them for a while. This little one was made for Paper Pen and Plan and even though it looks as though I painted the whole background I’ve actually only used a small amount of paint smeared over this already painted scrapbook paper. A good trick if you have little time or inclination to wait for paint to dry!

At Paper Pen and Plan we’ve been enjoying our tiny travelers notebooks and have created Tiny TN Tuesday in our Facebook group. While away in the Summer I found a gorgeous OXO tin in an antiques shop and discovered it was perfect to hold my tiny and a few collage bits. I feel a bit disrespectful to my Grandma’s tin but honestly, OXO is the cutest.

A couple of days ago I had a stand at a local arts and crafts fair. I really didn’t think I’d make it as I’d been so busy in the lead up to it but the weekend promised to be warm and sunny so I packed up my books and headed off. This was a huge event with well over 200 stall holders and the weather was superb! (except for a few gusts of wind which threatened to take our tent away over the fields). Thank you to all the people who came and supported me, I truly do appreciate it. Here I am with Katherine who I shared a spot with. Thanks Tine for the photo. x

Now it’s back to reality and back to work. There’ll be a workshop coming up soon in October which I’ll fill you in about soon.

Have a good week and I hope the sun continues to shine.

Jaine x

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KUKI 2019

Wow what a great weekend at KUKI in Kehlen! Given that the weather was all doom and gloom, we were prepared for the worst, but in the end we only had one small shower and the rest of the day was gloriously sunny.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and had tonnes of positive feedback. A huge thanks to all the family and friends who came to support me, it means such a lot. Now its all steam ahead to the next one in September.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover my best sellers were my tiny travelers notebooks which were a bit of a last minute addition just to see how they’d go!

Along with the aged and recycled notebooks which were also popular. I’ll have to get the tea out again for some more tea staining.

I’m concentrating on a new workshop coming up at the beginning of June which is all about collage art and creating small collages to the members of Mosaik. More about that later.

Have a good week.

Jaine xx

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