Long Live Calico Craft Parts!

Hello all!  I'm absolutely thrilled to share some fantastic news with you... After the awful fire which put the much-loved Calico Crafts out of business last year, I'm delighted to say that the Calico Craft Parts have arisen from the ashes.  This brilliant line of gorgeous laser-cut wood and MDF shapes is now available again, with an ever-expanding range of even more designs to choose from.  Check out the brand new website here.

To celebrate the wonderful news, I thought I'd share some of my Calico Crafts Design Team posts which used the Craft Parts - posts which hadn't yet made it over here to Words and Pictures and need to be added to the crafty scrapbook - starting with one of my favourites, this Garden Tray.  (If you commented last time, please don't feel you have to again!)

The tray itself is part of a range of self-assembly Printers' Trays - they're being re-designed at present and should be available very soon.  It's so cool that you put them together yourself, because it means you can decorate them beforehand, which makes painting and papering much easier.  So here's what I came up with for my first tray - it's a country garden, moving through the seasons, in a tray!  And it uses other wonderful Calico Craft Parts available now.

I'm afraid I forgot to take photos at the early stages... but I started with the DecoArt Chalky Finish Paints.

I gave the walls of the tray a coat of Enchanted - an earthy garden green, then a coat of the Decor Crackle Medium (specially formulated for the Chalk Paints), and then the white Everlasting over the top.

Eventually they had added shading using all sorts of colours, which you'll find out about further down the post.

On the back wall, I glued a piece of the Tim Holtz Menagerie 8x8 paper using the matte Mod Podge from my Mod Podge Starter Set.  Because the pattern on the paper varies, it looks as though I've carefully chosen different papers for different sections of the tray... nope, it's just one piece! 

I decided it was time to glue the tray together.  Because I had added both paper and some quite thick paint layers, I had to do a bit of sanding around the "teeth" where the pieces join to get them to fit snugly.

You might be better not gluing the paper right over the teeth, but just up to the edges of them - that's what I'll be trying next time - you live, you learn! - or maybe that's what they're working on in the redesign!

I added some shading with green paint, a wash of DecoArt Hauser Light Green, on the corners, both external and internal, adding a bit of colour to the background paper too.

Next, I started filling my compartments with lots of rustic goodies.

I altered some Buttons with paint - the Enchanted and Everlasting chalk paints again, a little touch of DecoArt Forest Green - and a tiny touch of Florentine Gold Treasure Gold.

I threaded Rusty Tin Wire through the buttonholes, and layered some of them up over different sizes of the Rusty Tin Hearts. 

The smaller heart is mounted on a cork from a glass vial which smashed.  Naturally I saved the cork, and now it's doing good service creating great dimension in this little section of the tray.

The smallest rusty heart is mounted over one of my favourite Punched Metal Heart Danglies, which has had the same painty treatment as the buttons.  And I curled a bit of rusty tin wire through the hole at the top.

In the tall segment at the top, with the largest rusty heart (mounted on some padded tape), I added one of these fabulous shiny yellow pears, so that became a sort of autumnal section, especially with those pods looking like sycamore wings, of which more later.

Just below that, it's Spring!  I created a little nest of green jungle moss and someone clearly took advantage as there are now some miniature speckled eggs nestled in it.  I also added some of lovely Sun Daisies in Golden Yellow, Yellow, and White and Yellow.

And there are some more daisies up in the summery corner, top left.  These I left with longer stems, rather than chopping them off as I usually do, and I used some masking tape to stick them into a UTEE moulded pot I'd made a while back and which had been sitting on my craft table, waiting for a chance to come out and play.  

The moulded UTEE is painted with DecoArt paints in Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber with a little dark shadow of Raw Umber at the edges and some highlights of Florentine Gold Treasure Gold.

The final touches include some more of the wonderful Calico Craft Parts - one of the grasses, Wild Grass Shape 2...

... and a snippet of seed pods, cut off from the Maple Leaf and Twig shape that I used in the orchard frame which I'll be sharing with you soon.  It's playing the role of autumn sycamore seeds here!

Both of them had a coat of DecoArt One Step Crackle, and then I inked with Vintage Photo Distress Stain to intensify the crackles.  You may also spot little shimmers of the Treasure Gold too (as well as the button hiding in the dappled sunlight behind!).

I used lots of Rusty Tin Wire to attach an Idea-ology Word Band which I'd altered with the Hauser Light Green and Forest Green paints, as well as some Quinacridone Gold paint and Florentine Gold Treasure Gold.

I almost forgot to tell you the paints for the shading on the outside!  I used the Quinacridone Gold and some Raw Umber around the corners of the tray, so that the edges also have a good rustic feel to them.

So that's my rustic garden Printer's Tray for you... From what I hear, various styles of tray will be available at Calico Craft Parts soon - definitely worth keeping an eye out for, and great fun to play with.

In the meantime, I can only recommend that you head over to Calico Craft Parts and see what fabulous bits and bobs are available, and all for temptingly reasonable prices.  You have been warned!

Thanks so much for dropping in, and I'll see you again soon.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

Rumi

Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.
Anonymous