October 28, 2007

These shoes are made for walking






well perhaps not...I have a challenge on my yahoo group where we are altering children's shoes, here is my first effort. the original shoe is a little girl's shiny black dress shoe, I have then covered it in liquid nails for texture, before it had a chance to harden I made swirls with my palette knife. Once dry I then painted with pthalo green, did a dabbled wash over with a sea sponge and copper and gold, the next step was using my heat gun...not to dry the paint but to bubble it and make it even more textured. I smeared a little antique gold Rub 'n Buff over the raised areas and then attached adornments, etc.
See one of my previous posts to see how I altered the German Scrap pieces.

The red shoe is not finished yet but I just love the colour so far.

October 01, 2007

wonderful Dresden trim AKA German Scrap







There are a few things I love and one of those things is German Scrap, I really like that I can change it's appearance so very easily too...very very easily!
I have tried a few things on the gold coloured pieces earlier in the year (these ones shown are available from Scraptivate in Western Australia), I tried vinegar....don't ask why because I do these things when I'm having a "moment" lol....anyway the vinegar stripped the colour right out and left it smelling like fish and chips, so I moved onto "Silvo" silverware polish, it stripped the colour out too and left the piece quite fragile.
Soooo I went back to my trusty fave. and as always it leaves the pieces fabtacular and devine.
Rub n' Buff is the way to go, it strips out the gold and leaves a nice trace colour behind, every colour is different, so it really pays to play...Spanish Copper is the one I use the most, followed closely by black and turquoise. We stock some colours at FTN, you can also purchase from places like Bunnings and Spotlight.

Now go play!...and get your hands dirty!