My first blog post and design team project.

Welcome to my first blog post. Firstly let me introduce myself - my name is Gill and by day I am a paediatric surgeon by night, weekends and holidays an avid crafter - hence the name of my blog -The Crafty Surgeon.  

I have been crafting for more years than I really care to think about. My mum was a great needlewoman and made all of mine and my sisters clothes so I guess the need to create was in my genes and whilst I can sew, knit, crochet and do embroidery these do not fill my heart with joy in the same way that messing around with paper, paint, inks and pastes does.

I create to preserve my sanity, its a way of expressing my self and fills many a wonderful hour.    Through crafting I can escape into a different world and find peace in a world full of turmoil.

I hope that you will enjoy my crafting journey. My style is quite eclectic with a background of scrapbooking, jewellery making, mixed media crafting thanks to the wonderful Finnabair and more recently flower making. I guess my favourite projects are home décor pieces as they take a while to put together and allow me to add loads of little details. Be warned they are often product heavy, but you will have loads of bits left for further projects. So, go on, I encourage you to get crafting – whether you choose to copy as near as possible or are simply inspired by my makes pick up your crafty items and enjoy the process of creating something as unique as you are.

I am sharing with you my first ever design team project - for 14 Craft Bar hence the links to the products I have used but you will be easily able to source similar materials where ever you are in the world or via the net.

For this project I have chosen to work with the big sewing machine MDF piece made by Snipart and available from 14 Craft Bar. Having constructed the main part of the sewing machine I knew that I wanted to add some texture so using structure paste and a geometric stencil   I added a layer to the front and back of the body of the sewing machine. I then used a roses stencil to add detail to the base.

I made some embellishments using air dry clay and a long ornament, keyhole and decorative swirl moulds  and when these were dry added them to my sewing machine base before giving everything a coat of Americana Decor chalky paint. Once this was dry, I used Decoart ® antiquing cream in patina green to add another layer of colour.  The beauty of this paint is that once it is touch dry you can wipe back to reveal variation in colour creating the vintage effect I was looking for.

I added strips of paper from smile of winter (https://14craftbar.com/home/2589-scrapbooking-paper-smile-of-winter-12x12.html) to the underside and top of the machine edging them with Ranger ® hickory smoke distress oxide ink applied with a sponge dauber . I highlighted the texture on the machine using Prima® art alchemy vintage was in vintage gold. 

I then collected my embellishments - bottles, pins, resin people, a little lace and arranged them on my machine until I was happy with the look.

The chipboard dress mannequin ( from Snipart and available via 14 Craft Bar amongst other sites. was backed with a piece of paperclay to make it look like there was a dress on the frame and to give it more body as I knew it would protrude beyond the edges and needed something extra to have enough support.

I cut out flowers and butterflies from papers an ephemera set and from the paper pad Hugs of Roses https://14craftbar.com/home/789-scrapbooking-papers-house-of-roses-12x12.html and used these to decorate the machine.

From my stash I used a cotton reel, lace, metal embellishments, buttons, resin figurines by Tim Holtz and baker’s twine. I filled some small glass bottles with micro beads and added gem flower centres as bottle lids. Adding the embellishments to my machine before placing it on a decorated paper mache box. Finally I made a card to fit in the bos using small pink roses, white cherry blossoms and a Snipart sentiment.