Feature Friday: Great Britain Burlap Bags

Happy Friday all!

It's a regular scorcher here in Astoria today, 82 degrees.  I guess summer hasn't quite given up yet!  I've got an awesome feature today courtesy of Heart Vintage Design.

She's taken burlap bags and stenciled our circular Great Britain stencil on them.  It looks amazing with two colors!  I just love how long these bags are too.  I ordered burlap bags for our craft show and we got two sizes.  Little micro bags for the kids which fit oh, a pack of gum and that's it.  We also got a medium size as well, which was something like 8x10, but that's more of a decorative size.  You can't put all that much in there. 

But these bags are 14x26.  That's perfect for a lot of stuff, including all the umbrellas, crumpets, tea, burberry scarves you need to start your own British Invasion.

If you take your eagle eye and scrutinize this photo, you we see a few more of our stencil designs!  She does great work!  :)

Heart Vintage Design has a great blog you can check out here.   She also has a facebook page you can like here.  She also sells at Adjectives Market, which looks awesome and I would like to visit post haste. 

If you're interested in the stencil used, do check out our UK category, it is chock full of British goodness. 

That's all for this week, pop in on Wednesday for our weekly Etspiration!

Feature Friday: The Notting Hill Pillow

We have a Brit-tastic feature for you today courtesy of Lisa @ Pickles and Cheese.  She took our popular Notting Hill stencil and made a terrific pillow out of it.

Doesn't it look great?  I don't know if it's the Diamond Jubilee or the royal wedding, but I just can't get enough of the British stuff this year.   

Lisa actually made the cushion covers out of painter's cloth, which is a great way to get a lot of cloth for not a lot of money.  Painter's cloth also has a nice look and feel if you are going for sort of a rustic decor. 

Great tip:  She slid a magazine inside the cushion cover to ensure the paint didn't bleed through to the other side. 

Notice how the stencil has paint overlap outside of the cutaways?  This is a good thing!  The number one mistake stencillers make is applying too much paint.  That can cause the paint to seep through into other areas.  No good!  For best results, start by applying your stencil brush in an up/down motion outside of the actual opening you're going to put paint through.  Does that make sense?  It's okay if the stencil gets paint on it!  That way, when you're using that stippling motion, you can just move your hand into the cutaway to apply the paint gradually. 

Here's the Notting Hill pillow hanging out with its friends.  That Wicked pillow is great too!

Check out the original blost post on Pickles and Cheese about the Notting Hill pillow.

Lisa also has a tutorial on how she made the painter's cloth cushion covers.

If you'd like to check out the Notting Hill stencil, click here.

Thanks a bunch to Pickles and Cheese for photo usage.  Her blog is really great, I highly suggest you check it out!