Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Beauty & the Beast - Part One (The Fun, Artsy Part)

Well if you are friends with me on Instagram, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yup, I drank THE kool-aid, I made an Amy Butler Weekender bag. Let me preface that I did not originally intend to.. Okay, here's what happened..



I used to live in Arizona and that's where I was first introduced to the mega fabulous Crafty Chica. I fell in love with her style, her confidence, and her desire to inspire. She is such an amazing artist and inspirational, positive Latina role model for my two ankle biters. I have followed her success and am so happy to watch her make it national and with a craft line of her own.

This past month I had the opportunity to work with one of her craft products - flocked decals. Not boring ol' traditional puppies and teddy bears, but really awesome designs that you will want to go crazy with. And I went crazy all right!


I ironed on the flocked decals to white linen - I knew I wanted a canvas-ish base to work off of. For the sacred heart, I used watered down acrylic paints to bring it to life. You could of course use fabric paints or even the Crafty Chica's fabric pens!


For the muertos couple, I really wanted to enjoy some mixed media flavor.. lots of paint with lots of hand embroidery.


There is SO much embroidery that is hard to highlight in the pictures. If you are going to Sewing Summit in a few weeks, come get a closer look! The flocked decal was perfect for this mixed media project. It provided yummy texture and a fabulous base for painting.


Needless to say, quite a few hours went into working on the decals. I didn't want to just frame it, I wanted to enjoy this all the time. With Sewing Summit around the corner, I thought it would be fabulous to create The Weekender bag and include this as the highlight.

And I do have lots to say about the actual construction of the bag.. which I will give you later this week in Part Two.. Until then Click here to see if a Michaels store in your area is carrying the Crafty Chica line.

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I received this complimentary product from CraftyChica.com as part of the Crafty Chica Design Team, 
 and was asked to share an original DIY project.

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