My Day At The IndigoBlu Art Retreat & Rubber Stamp Haul

I had an absolutely fabulous time at the IndigoBlu Art Retreat – there was plenty of fun, painting and tea & cake with a bit of shopping thrown in! After a warm welcome, it was time to get my apron on…

Kay is a marvellous teacher and showed us all how to make our projects step by step. It would be easy to assume after the first peek of the project that you won’t be able to make the same….WRONG! With Kay’s encouragement and detailed instructions, we were all able to replicate our own versions. I really liked Kay’s example piece and was determined to make mine as close as possible to hers…. and I think I pulled it off!

First we painted our bare covers with black gesso to prep them for the pieces of dry embossed papers. We stuck down our papers with SUPER THICK SLAP IT ON medium.

Next, we added our hardware – nuts, bolts and washers. Then some torn up cardboard and pearls were applied.

Time to start painting – we started on all the cracks and paper edges with Leather Corset (brown) and then filled in the rest of the gaps with Warm Tan. A few patches of blue, orange, Steam Whistle (grey) and Olive Waistcoat (green) were added. We used our heat guns to dry the paint in between coats.

With an almost dry brush we added Stroke of Midnight (navy) in layers. This really brought out the embossed paper. Building up the layers here is key to the finished result.

After we had finished our albums we had the chance to buy from the shop that is also at their headquarters. I bought 3 stamps that I couldn’t leave without and you can see them in my video below. Product details are in the video description box.

Overall, I had lovely day out, was inspired to carry on with mixed media at home and it was great meeting the owners Kay & Alphie. So, thank you to both of them for having me along with all that tea and cake! There will be some projects coming up very soon using IndigoBlu stamps, so keep an eye out for those.

To visit IndigoBlu’s website and shop, please click HERE or on the image below.

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Helen Xx