It takes a Faux Quilting Village…

By Chris Wallace for Walnut Hollow

If you are coming from Sara Shirman’s blog then you’re in the right place! It’s been fun to partner with Ann Butler Design Team and Ann Butler Designs for a Blog Hop.

Be sure to leave comments on the Walnut Hollow Blog to enter to win this prize! We’ll chose a winner Wednesday, May 28th for our Blog Hop prize randomly drawn from your comments. The winner will be announced via the Walnut Hollow Facebook Page.

Being a quilter myself, I have loved Ann’s Unity Stamps from the beginning and made greeting cards as gifts for friends and a project or two for Walnut Hollow.

Then along came the Blog Hop and I was excited to use more of Ann’s Stamps and other Ann Butler Designs products!

Recently, I’ve seen many fun quilts being made with House Blocks and knew that I wanted to make houses – several of them. And, of course, that created the Faux Quilting Village. At first, I planned to stamp directly onto the Card Keeper Box base coated with DecoArt® Americana® Light Buttermilk using a large flat brush.

Then I looked around the design studio and found little embellishments to add and I liked the layers and textures that were being created. Textures! Light bulb moment! What if the houses were stamped on fabric? Terrific! I dug through my stash and found lots of pieces – from very old muslin, tone-on-tone, to a piece of linen that could be used. There was even a piece of pique which really dates me – I don’t even know if they make pique anymore, but I really liked the texture of that particular type of fabric.

InkPads

I started making houses, stamping the houses with squares and roofs with the triangles using Clearsnap® ColorBox® Crafter’s by Ann Butler. Single story houses were good, using both the small and larger squares and triangles. Loved the multiple levels – up to three stories high. I used both the 2” and 1” Ann Butler Designs Unity Stamp sets to stamp the houses in the Village. The stamping inks come in 6 different colors. You will need to heat set them with an iron, as I did for the fabric stamped houses, or with a heat gun to make the ink permanent.

Prima® Manufacturing Inc. makes small laser cut wood pieces – I used the longer scallop pieces on the bottom of 3 sides and added leaves, flowers, butterflies and birds. Each was painted with Earth Safe Finishes Ann Butler Designs Iridescents or ColorBox® Crafter’s Ink Pads. I used a small sponge to add the Ink Pad colors.

The slide lid on the Card Keeper Box was sponged with, Aquamarine Iridescents. I used a sea sponge to softly add color for the sky. Adding a few Prima® fabric flowers represented some clouds!

Once all the elements were created, it was time to build the Village and glue everything in place. I painted doors on all of the houses using a small flat brush and different Irediscents. Use the end of the brush to make a dot of color for the door knob.

This Card Keeper Box will be perfect to hold the greeting cards I will make with the same supplies. So the fun will continue using the Ann Butler Designs products from other terrific companies!