Good Times at the Etsy Craft Party

I had a great time friday night at our local Etsy Craft Party, hosted by the Hollywood Craft Mafia. They did a great job organizing the party (check out their meet-up schedule for future events). It was so much fun, over 50 people and everyone working away on making stamps and wristlets. I met so many interesting folks and it was a pleasure being together with other crafters. I forgot my camera, so I took a picture of my 2 unfinished projects. I have a little more sewing on the edge of the wristlet and still need to put some paint on my stamp & try it out. Hope to get back to them soon.

Shop for Independance

I created a treasury for 4th of July items, check out the cute buys.

Beaded Tail – the Esty Blogger of the Month

Do you love dogs and cats? How about some cute jewelry with animal themes or perhaps a ruffled collar cover for your own pet. Then head over to the Beaded Tail shop on etsy. Not only will you be able to purchase lovely handmade stuff, but a portion of ALL sales benefit Animal Charities (so wonderful). And for your entertainment head over to the beaded tail blog for some adorable stories and photos of some lovely pets and links to other adorable animal related crafts.

Repairing Vintage Wallpaper with Inkjet Canvas

This is how I repaired/replaced some vintage wallpaper in our tiny bathroom.
While having new windows installed, we discovered termite and wood rot damage to the bathroom window frame & wall. The damage extended along the upper part of the wall so we needed to knock it out to replace the studs & frame. But this meant removing the lovely art nouveau wallpaper that was my favorite part of the bathroom. I shopped around and online, looking for vintage patterns or anything black & white that might match, but couldn’t find anything appropriate. It was the wall directly across from the doorway so it would have looked odd without wallpaper. Tile extends 2/3 up the wall & the section of wall was only about 4’ wide, so it wasn’t a large section. It was vinyl wallpaper, so I attempted carefully to scrape it off and save it. Of course that didn’t go as well as expected and I ended up with many tiny fragments.

The wallpaper had an open weave cloth backing. I began to tape together the fragments of wallpaper on the front side and then glued cheesecloth to the back to hold them together. I only had one section about 20”x30” that was too broken up to reuse.
I was shopping for photo paper for my husband when I came across canvas made for inkjet printers. I came up with the idea of printing the design on it (I had seen pages from an old Sears Catalog used as wallpaper) so I figured the canvas would paste up well and the texture matched the existing wallpaper very well. I began placing the better sections on the scanner and scanning into jpg format. I had to edit parts of the image to fill in the damaged areas. I was then able to print out 8 ½”x11” sections. Luckily the design of overlapping illustrations gave me lots of places to form seam between the small prints. Somehow the new window & frame ended up narrower than the original, so I also needed to create two small strips to border each side of the window. In one of my many art books I found an Aubrey Beardsley design that went nicely. I scanned & printed those out too.
Then I thought about it going up in a moist and steamy room and that the ink might not hold up. I tried painting some polyurethane on one of the scrap portions but the ink bled. I then started researching to see if there was a product made for sealing injet prints. There was, but at $20 dollars per can & only available online, I didn’t want to wait. So I ended up buying clear coat spray with UV protection. I tested it out on another scrap, let it dry and glued it to a scrap of drywall. Looked great. But when I pasted up the real pieces ink bled. I think I used too much glue and got it too wet from the under side, which I hadn’t sprayed. I wasn’t going to remove it and try again, not that big a section anyway. So if you try it, clear coat both sides before gluing & use the glue sparingly.