April Hall – August Guest Designer

This month we are working with April Hall, our new Guest Designer. April brings us fresh colours and fun project ideas. This is some great inspiration!

My name is April Hall, and I live in gorgeous Peoria, Arizona. I have been married to my husband for 6 years, although we have been sweethearts since high school.  We have 5 kitties and 1 dog, and they make us the happiest parents!  I have been doing some sort of crafting pretty much all my life….although just recently over the last 5 or 6 years have I really put my heart and soul into it.  I like to dabble in it all, but my favorites are card making, mixed media, painting, sewing and book/journal making.  Some of my favorite products to use are stamps, ink, paint, found object and paper.  One thing that always seems to find itself on my projects is stamps.  When I create something, I don’t always follow the same “process”.  Sometimes I start with the paper, other times I see a color combination or I’ll just sit down and grab the first scrap next to me and go to town.  My style never really stays constant…one card could be very symmetrical and clean and the next one could be shabby and vintage.  It really just depends on the mood that I am in or what I see around me.

At this time I have not been published.  I have a stack of stuff that I have been meaning to submit for publication, but just haven’t found time to do it!  My favorite time to craft is when I get off work for about an hour or so, and at least one full weekend day. If I don’t get some sort of crating done each day I go stir crazy. The space that I create in is actually our guest bedroom. I have transformed it into my studio, and that’s where I find the most peace at the end of the day. One fun fact that many don’t know about me is that I love being on the beach. If I could live on the beach, most specifically Huntington Beach in California, I would!

Here is how to make this adorable clip board:

Paint the whole clipboard in aqua, let dry.

Stamp flowers all over in pink, purple and green.

Use a brush with black paint to write a sentiment, names, expressions, etc.

Add a few specks of black to fill up empty space.

It is such a fast and fun project, because the paint dries very very quickly.

This altered clipboard was probably my favorite project to do because I had never altered a clipboard before! Even though this project used the fewest supplies, it was so fun to just use nothing but paint!

The supplies used were:
- Abundant Blossoms stamp set from myStampBOX
-clipboard from Hobby Lobby
-Michael’s Paint in Deep Aqua, Hot Pink, Lime, Purple and Black
-Ranger Stickles in Stardust

I even used paint to stamp the flowers on the clipboard.  The trick to using paint on polymer stamps is to use a little bit… if it is globbed on the stamp it will glob on your project.  The image still came out very crisp! I will definitely be using this technique again.

Check out more projects by me coming in the next few days! Hope you like this projec,

April