Waving Hello

 Hi all

My name is Katie. Here is a little bit about me and a few makes using Oak House Studio products.

 I am from Birmingham. I have 4 cats who are very bossy and I have discovered that they are attracted to empty boxes and that's how I keep them off my craft projects !!.  My favourite colours to work with are blues and greens. I love sci-fi and comedy movies and I believe laughter and creativity heal the soul xx.

I am thrilled to be joining the Oak House Studio Design Team. I specialise in mixed media and love getting messy with inks and stamps.

Crafting is therapeutic for me and it helps me to forget the everyday worries. I have been crafting for over 10 years and started off creating simple scrapbook pages and grew from there.

My style is mixed media, messy and with lots of colour. I don't plan my projects I just play with the inks and see what happens next. Here I combined French Lavender with the Citrus Inks In A Bottle and used a selection of texture stamps to add depth to the page.

 I love all things nautical so when I spotted the sea shell stamp set I had to order them. They were my first stamps from Oak House Studio and I have been back for more since.

I created the background by spritzing Vintage Blue and Tempting Teal over the page. I then stamped the sea shell and sea life stamp sets across the page and used Blue Jeans embossing powder on them to make them 3d.

Which is your Favourite stamp set?

I love this stamp as its very inspiring.  I used the  music script stamp on thick white  paper and cut it up to create the layers. I added glow in the dark stars so it would Twinkle at night.

So now you know me and my crafting style - I will be back on Sunday with a tutorial.

Katie xx

The wilderness with Colour Chemistry

Hi everyone its Katie back again with another layout. This time i have used the new Apple green mister and Diva Acrylic Inks.

This photo was taken at Lulworth Cove in Dorset its such a calming place. I started off by randomly applying texture paste to the page.

To create the distressed rose i painted it with crackle paste and let it dry before painting with the Diva Acrylic ink and dabbing with Vintage Burgundy to show the cracks up.

I stained the paper flowers with Peridot Acrylic Ink and left it to dry. If you use white or cream flowers you can use the injs to dye them any colour you need.

Mix inks into texture paste to create new colours. I used the Acrylic ink so this but the Inks in a Bottle work as well.

       
Here are the products i have used

Colour Chemistry Acrylic ink Diva
Colour Chemistry Acrylic ink Peridot
Colour Chemistry Inks in a Bottle Bramley Apple
Colour Chemistry Inks in a Bottle Paris Pink and French Lavender
Colour Chemistry Inks in a Bottle Vintage Burgundy

                                            Thank you for visiting

A burst of citrus with Oak House Studio

Hi its Katie here with a new mixed media layout. I used the bright and cheerful citrus inks in a bottle.

 Mix some Peridot Acrylic ink with white texture paste and apply to your chosen stencil.

Next apply texture paste to the rest of the layout randomly and let dry before spritzing citrus yellow, citrus green and Pumpkin randomly across the page allowing the inks to blend as they dry.

            Customize paper flowers by dipping them into Acrylic ink or spritzing them with inks in a bottle.

Use the mini texture stamps to add interest to your page by stamping them randomly on the layout.

Thank you for visiting please leave us a comment and here are the products i used.

Colour Chemistry Inks in a Bottle

Citrus yellow

Citrus Green

Pumpkin Pie

French Lavender

Colour Chemistry Acrylic Ink Peridot

Stamps

Sunshine sentiment and texture set

Harlequin Stamp

Decorative Diamond Stamp Christmas Decorations

Hello today I'm going to show you how to make some Christmas decorations using the Decorative Diamond Stamp.  

Ingredients - 
Decorative Diamond rubber stamp
Translucent shrink plastic
Black archival ink (I used ancient page)
Acrylic paints
Paint brushes
Cheap make up sponges
Glitter glue
Acrylic matt glaze (optional)
Paper hole punch
Heat gun
Wooden barbecue stick

Using one colour

1. Sand your shrink plastic -this helps the paint to marry with the plastic.

Add your paint to the plastic using your sponges - add them quite lightly as the colours will intensify once it has shrunk down. 

Stamp your image matching up the center of the diamond - as close as you can.  It doesn't matter if there is a gap in between the stamped images.

2. Cut out the star close to the outline.  

Punch a hole for the ribbon at one of the points - I used a paper hole punch

3. Shrink down the plastic using your heat gun - use the barbecue stick to stop the plastic from flying off the desk and to prevent it from sticking to itself.  Add some glitter - I used Stickles crystal ice

Using multiple colours

For my second decoration I painted the design on the diamond with 3 different coloured acrylic paints.  I stamped the image on the same piece of shrink plastic to which I'd used for the above decoration.  

As above the plastic has been cut out, hole punched and shrunk down.  I've used some acrylic paint varnish/matt glaze to protect the paint.  Painted on acrylic paint when heated and shrunk will create a texture on the plastic - you can see some of it on this image before I added the glaze/varnish.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and will have a go at making some bespoke decorations for your trees or to even hang around the house or even in your window - if you use the clear shrink plastic you can make them look like stain glass/acrylic stars.

Have fun and enjoy experimenting with shrink plastic.

Anita

Big Christmas Collection Christmas Card With Stamps from Oak House Studio.

Today's card  for Oak House Studio features 2 sets of stamp collections, the Big Christmas Collection and the 2 inch Journal Circles set.  For the background I used a mixture of regal claret, citrus orange and totally turquoise from the ink in a bottle range  and sprayed onto a glossy card.  The background was made on a A4 size card and I cut out this square as the colours worked well with the Sea Blue ink pad .  

To start with the construction of the card I stamped the dotted frame circle onto my background square.  Then I stamped the solid snowflake bauble from the big Christmas Collection onto white card stock with the sea blue ink.  I cut this out using a 1 inch circle punch (you can just cut around the bauble if you don't have a punch).  I then glued this to a flattened bottle cap, let it dry and then added the clear bubble dome on top.  I then applied this to the center of the stamped frame - if you score the back of the bottle cap with a scalpel it will help to adhere the cap to the background.  the corners are then stamped using the open snowflake bauble in the 4 corners of the background.  I've mounted the whole thing onto a coordinating paper from my stash of scraps.  To balance the whole card I added the words "Let it Snow" from the Snowflake collection.

Have a great day 

Anita

A day in the studio

Ben and I have had a busy day at the studio, we spent the morning cleaning out and re organising all my inks pads ahead of teaching the inks course on Monday. We spent the afternoon producing and bottle some new spray inks colours in the new bottles.
These bottles were on on offer at our normal suppliers and hold 75ml which is 50% more than our normal bottles. But we saved so much on the bottles we are going to be offering these at the same price as the "normal ones" so you will get 50% extra ink free. We have also splashed out on screw top AND spray tops, which means you can get both tops for our regular £4.99 price. That makes it easier to clean your spray tops at the end of a session without spilling your precious ink.  If you already have spray bottles or mini misters, we will also be able to sell the inks as a refill bottle for just £3.50
I do rather like painting with these inks too, so having the screw tops on is going to make that all easier too.
More colours to sort out next week too.
Please note that when requiring teenagers to help with production tasks generous helpings of Pringles and Quality Street certainly helps

Phew all over for another year

We are safely back from the the Stitches trade show at the NEC. we met up with lot of old friends from the crafting world mainly other retailers I have know for years like Anni Jo from Crafters Dream in Nottingham, other Nottingham folk like Becky. We also saw all our favourite demonstrators like Lindsey Mason and Michelle Saxon who have kept me inspired over the years.

Here I am with Gwen from Stamp Pad. I hope to get over there soon to do some work with Gwen who is a crafter with a great style.

We basically, for three days we ate chocolate and gushed as everyone told us what a stunning stand we had, how striking it was etc...which considering we were with the trade we took as a great compliment, especially when the first person on the stand and taking a photo was Suze Weinburg, she should know.

This is me catching up with Michelle, we thought she was dressed to work on our stand, but it turns out she only came for the chocolate! still love her though
I made one new friend, Carole from Arty Farty, they were straight across from us and they were marvellous, we laughed and enjoyed ourselves so much it was brilliant. I kept calling Carole, Cath or Pat I have no idea why, she never corrected me, she was amazing.

On my team, I had Martin to help with setting up and for the worst part of Sunday. I also had Elaine Kettle who draws some our stamp designs and Ben who was wonderful even if he did get tired. I have an image in my brain of him on Sunday night at the back of the hotel, I wasn't cruel enough to take a photo but we both know what it was like, a shared experience we will have a long time. (Poor boy I wonder if he worked out his Christmas "jumper" was bought to co ordinate with the stand.)

I didn't get off the stand much other than to visit the toilet or to eat, but that was my fault I didn't want to leave my "baby". You can tell how bad I was, I could see Tim Holtz's face from my stand but didn't go to watch his demo!

here is a close up of a couple of the samples we did for the show. I will try and tell you more about the trip tomorrow.