Crafting, seriously.

Today, I put my crafting skills to use for 8 Arms Creative.  8 Arms, for those of you who've never head of it, is our creative consulting group.  We help small business, start-ups and folks who have a product they want to take to market, to get going.  We do print, package design, manufacturing assistance, sourcing, well, pretty much everything someone just getting started needs. We've been doing this for years, but never put a name to it or created an identity for it.  Santa Fe felt like the place to do this.

So we decided on a name and printed a business card.  The website isn't even finished yet, but we've already gotten several clients.  This morning, A and I were talking about perhaps putting some cards up in our frequented shopping locations, and I didn't want to do that tear-off-a-strip thing, so... CRAFTY TO THE RESCUE!  Out came the Lutradur and the Steam-A-Seam, and the fabric paint and the sewing machine and an hour later...

VOILA:

Looks like suede doesn't it?  Want to know how I did it?

1. First I cut the rectangle size I wanted out of paper.

2. I traced it onto lutradur and steam-a-seam.

3. I fused the two pieces of lutradur together.

4. I painted both sides with Jaquard textile paint in brown, thinned, but not completely blended with  a little water.  This way, there are some darker and lighter areas (hard to see in the photo)

5. I put the wet sheets out into the sun to dry, flipping them a couple of times (with the bright sun and dry air, they were dry in no time)

6. I took a Caran D'ache water color pastel crayon in dark gold and added a couple of veins.  I scrubbed at them a bit with a little stiff, wet brush.  Back in the sun to dry.

7. When they were dry (a matter of minutes) I carefully made a fold to show the whole company name and stitched the edges.

8. And that's it!  I could have coated them with Golden Medium gloss if I wanted a shiny leather look, but A liked the suede look, so we're done! 

So... need any creative?  We need business!

Comments

[TadMack]

Okay, I had to LOOK UP Lutradur , but that's really cool!

[DaviMack]

T. says that somebody will come along & take the card holder, it's such a good looking thing. ;)

[arlee]

Well done, you! Looks muchly better than tear offs :}