Welcome Back GD: Clare Lloyd - Cotton Spool Garland {Part 1}

"Hello everyone, Clare back with some more inspiration and here is something different for you all to try ... a cotton spool garland. It would be perfect to display in your craft room or around the house". 

First I rummaged 3 pairs of cotton spools from my stash and paint them with a quick coat of Chocolate Pudding Fresco paint. I didn't worry much about painting the ends as I knew I was going to cover them up and I am all for taking some crafting short cuts...wink!

Once dried I painted a coat of Nougat Fresco paint onto them, blasted them quickly with the heat gun until they weren't completely dry and then scraped and sanded them back to create a shabby chic effect.

I decided to add a touch of stamping to my spools using Archival Potting Shed Ink and I used some word stamps from the E Sara Naumann 08 set. I placed my Flexi Block onto my craft table with the rubber stamp, inked it up and rolled my spool over the top adding some pressure to make sure it stamped well.

ESN08

Next out came this vibrant tube of Prima Petal Palette Handmade Paper Flowers and I worked out how I was going to mix the colours to add to my garland.

To tie my spools and flowers together I stamped them up with more images from the E Sara Naumann Set 08 and also some stamps by Ellen Vargo from her latest collection called Eclectica Set 1. Pairs of flowers were then stuck together, added to the end of each of the spools. I used some dry dot matrix adhesive to do this as I will need to thread them all together later and didn't want to have to struggle through super sticky glue.

EEV01

I hope you have enjoyed the first installment of this weeks featured project. Join me again tomorrow night for part two. Until then .... Clare!

Leandra Says: Looking great so far Clare! A girl can't have too many spool and paper flowers! Looking forward to your posts this week!

Gillian Says: Love the effect you created with the distressed/worn look to the spools. ESN08 works perfectly. Can't wait to see more:)

If you would like to join in this week's challenge and play along with Claire's techniques, then do link up your creativity here, and go in the draw to win some PA stamps of your choice! You need to link your entry by 17:00, Sunday April 6th 2014