craft market – Basement Studio

GOING INTO ART FAIR OVERDRIVE

I know one thing you really shouldn’t do is start a blog post with, ‘it’s been a while since I blogged’ but really…it’s been a while!! Truth is I’m juggling with getting ready for the Summer art fairs, being with the family and as the weather is now perfect – gardening like a mad woman. The warm weather makes me, a) want to rush outside with my sketchbook and draw everything in sight, b) keep on top of the weeding and c), yes there’s a c, just keep the back door open to let the warm sunshine in as I cut a few more books to put on my stand. What a whirl!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve done all of the above and more so I think I’m in a happy place right now. I think my stand at KUKI will look pretty good, not bursting at the seams but who wants that any how? I want it to look cohesive, bright and smart. I keep forgetting that the next one is only a week later so I need to keep creating books and cards whenever I can.

One of the things I’ve been working on recently was a bunch of scrapbooks. Honestly, when I rediscovered them I was prepared to pull them to pieces and start all over again. Actually I should rewind a bit here. I made these books a few years ago for one of the last art fairs I attended before ‘Rona’ and as they were the last few which hadn’t sold they sat on the shelf doing nothing. Fast forward a couple of years and the way I make these type of books has changed so they were bugging the heck out of me. I mentioned this to a friend who told me basically I was totally over thinking the whole thing (which I tend to do) and suggested a small but fairly obvious change which made all the difference. So much so that I added a couple more scrapbooks to the pile and now love them. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.

I think it’s easy to over think things and as I had been looking at these books so often and for so long I had become far too critical and would spot small niggling things which no one else would even notice. That’s why it’s good to step away occasionally, take some time out then come back with a fresh eye or better still get a good friend to give you some advice. They’ll see things you can’t!

It’s now the last week until KUKI and I’m getting down my to-do list so it’s all good. This week will be table mock-up, labels and packaging. At this point I’m not stressed but then maybe I should be? Oh now I’m stressed about not being stressed!! Just kidding, it’s all good.

I’ll post a picture of my table mock-up when I’ve done it and I’ll compare it with the actual table later on just for a laugh!

Have a good week

Jaine x

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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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Catching Up for May

I hadn’t realised just how long it had been since I last posted an update. Such alot has been going on and I’ve been really busy on and off. This weekend in particular was a local Arts and Crafts market which I decided to take part in. It’s been many many years since I did this sort of thing and I have to say I was very nervous. It’s easy to get really comfortable when you’ve built up an online community where everyone else knows everyone else and if you don’t want to show your face you don’t have to. So I wasn’t sure how well my stuff would be received by the public and explaining what I do to people who mostly have never heard of me was a scary thing. I needn’t have worried though as I had some amazing feed back and people genuinly liked what I was doing.

Half of my tent was me and my cards, books, book covers, kits etc and the other half was my connection to workshops, so my two friends Katherine and Lena helped me out to do a Make and Take table with the aim of hopefully getting a few more people interested in signing up for workshops.

Make and take ATC.

I spent a few weeks putting together notebooks and sketchbooks by hand and making Travelers Notebook covers out of felt.

I also made mini junk journals too but I had no idea how these would go down. It’s not a concept which has taken off here at all and explaining how to use a mini journal with each page made from different materials would be a challenge but on the whole they were loved and I did sell more of these than the plain notebooks.

Inside watercolour pages had been tea dyed to create an antique feel.

Before all that though I’ve been working on a few other projects like this journal page which is the latest in the Canvas Corp Brands Traveling Art Journal project. This is the April page. I really enjoyed creating it but was a little worried I’d gone a bit over the top this time.

This is the March page which looking at it now is just as busy. I must be going through a busy faze.

I did have to have a little titter to myself when an ooops moment provided a bit of extra publicity. I designed this little birdy stamp for the cover of the June Craft Stamper magazine but it came out a month early by mistake with the projects which went with it appearing in the June issue but the birdy on the cover of May. So although it was a headache for the Craft Stamper team it meant an extra month for me of my little birdy stamp. Win win.

I’ll be listing my notebooks and covers in the shop and on Etsy along with other colours and notebook designs so look out for those.

Have a good week

Jaine xx

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