Wedding present

Recently we were invited to a wedding reception and not wishing to go empty handed I put my mind to making a gift as we knew the bride-to-be loves handmade items. Something to hang on a wall was decided upon. The couple are both religious, love nature and so this is what I made:

two wood based hearts joined with chain

From Ebay came two wooden heart bases, these were a good weight too and made from birch wood, it was almost a shame to cover them up! The wood was given a coat of acrylic paint , I mixed lemon yellow with a touch of white, when this was dry and having a further lighter mx of lemon yellow and white ready diluted pva glue was brushed over the first coat and left until tacky dry before adding the top coat of the lighter mix to get a nice crackle effect. My main drive was to make this gift light and airy hence the light colours used.

close up of first heart

The blossoms were stamped onto crackly tissue paper and coloured in with pencils before being adhered to the base. The butterflies were stamped once on the bases in Stazon and then on to card stock, coloured with mica powders, cut out and then glued over the stamped images; a stamped sentiment added and then a handmade ‘flower’. To the first heart I also added some extra chain and charms. Before adding the chain, charms, butterflies and handmade ‘flowers’ I sprayed varnish over the surface.

close up of second heart

The only snag I hit was not having large enough jump rings to go through the holes drilled in the wood! After hunting out some suitably thick enough I had to learn to make that wire into jump rings! Fun and games and many deformed circles before I had created some jump rings I was happy enough with. Just hope they prove strong enough.

Ingredients:

Inks – Archival black, Stazon, vintage linen Distress Ink

Paint – Daler Rowney System 3 Lemon Yellow and White acrylic

Varnish – Plasti-Kote clear polyurethane

Crackly tissue paper by PaperArtsy

card stock from my scrap box

chain and charms from craft stash

Stamps – Hero Arts Antique Engravings; Aspects of Design Japanese Plum Blossom; Inkylicious Oriental Awakening; Creative Expressions Flower Phrases.

Thanks for looking x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on….

Loosely based on Mondrian’s painting

I rarely CASE or copy someone else’s work although I might use an idea based on that work however when I saw a card created by Susan Raihala on her blog back in 2011 it struck a chord.  I saved an image of that card for all this time hoping to do something with it one day. I had never heard of Mondrian before Susan’s blog so that took me on a magical mystery tour of the man and his art. To think that he once painted landscapes and then turned to very rigid, full of straight line, work is odd in a way. Landscapes are rarely filled with straight lines. Yet somehow I can understand his fascination.

In my line of work, now a hobby/chore, of gardening there are occasionally enforced straight lines but in its natural state gardens are flowing spaces filled with flowing shapes that bend and billow yet in art I just love the rigidity of those straight lines and colour blocks; I think they speak to my tidy side!

To create her card Susan used a ‘ribbon’ stamp for the black lines however I don’t have a straight line stamp so I cut 0.5 cm strips of black card and glued them down. Unusually I did not use measurements or ruler to line the strips up (as you can probably see). My attempts at straightness are a bit of a joke.  I have ideas for recreating this style on something larger in the future

Thanks for looking x

 

Mostly Yellow

The theme for this month’s postcard swap at UK Stampers is Mostly Yellow with circles somewhere!

Postcard Swap

For some reason I don’t have much in the way of yellow inks and this 6 x 4 inch piece of card started off as an experiment which was then added to and became a postcard for the swap! I was fooling around with a brayer which had rubber bands wrapped around it, some embossing ink and silver detail embossing powder which explains the silver lines running across the card. Then using various ink shades and a piece of  sponge the background colour was added followed by a script stamp, a circle stamp then a marker cap dabbed into ink made further circles and finally a leaf flourish stamp. Some of the circles were highlighted with a white gel pen and a clear sparkly Sakura pen although the camera hasn’t picked up the sparkles! Hope the recipient won’t be too disappointed with my effort!

Thanks for looking xx

 

 

 

Coaster Swap

Over on Cardmaking Paradise we had a coaster swap, for this many participants used beer mats sadly I couldn’t get to the local pub so had to resort to making a coaster from grey board!

Coaster Swap

I struggled with this swap and it took a long time before I started work but there were a fantastic array of works of art. Some ladies created hangings with two or more coasters connected together with jump rings while someone else made a small ‘book’. Just have to admire that talent and creativity!

Ingredients:

Stamps – Inkylicous ‘Nature Speaks’ (script)

- Paper Artsy – HP1005

- Oxford Impressions ‘Bird’s Nest’

- Cart-Us ‘Birds on a Branch’

- Inkylicious ‘Take Flight’

- Inkylicious ‘CI-256′ (words)

Inks  - Archival Ink Jet Black

- Impress Chocolate

- Versamagic Spanish Olive, Aegean Blue, Ocean Depth, Night Sky, Sahara Sand

Shrink Plastic

White Gel Pen

 

Thanks for looking x

 

 

 

 

 

In for a penny….

….in for a pound goes an old saying! So as I have tested the challenges water and found it not too terrifying I decided to make another card using the faux airbrushing technique. The stamps I used on this card were ones I won in a draw; they are KatzelKraft and are superb stamps. The images are fun and they stamp so cleanly and crisply.

f aux airbrushing using KatzelKraft stamps

The background has been inked with Whispers Green Dye Ink with the circles sponged through an acetate stencil with VersaMagic Spanish Olive. The images were stamped with Distress Inks Vintage Photo, Archival Jet Black and Versamagic Spanish Olive.

Thanks for looking x

Faux airbrushing

I have never entered a formal challenge before because I am not as good as those who do enter them however I decided to dip my toes in the challenges water and these are the details of the one I am taking part in at Craft Stamper:

“Hello everyone!
Welcome to the first Take It, Make It challenge!

You TAKE the specified technique and MAKE something of your own using it!

So now, its over to you…we want to see YOUR art……

What Can You Win?
For our first challenge, we are delighted to be sponsored by Indigo Blu

Creators of fabulous deep etched rubber stamps, Indigo Blu have provided one of the prizes for the challenge…. this beautiful image:

PLUS: The Design Team will have a look at all your gorgeous work, and choose their winner….. who will get published in Craft Stamper magazine! Yep, your winning entry will appear in the UK’s number one stamping magazine! We’ll have an ‘I was a winner’ blinkie to grab too!

Now for the Challenge details!
We want to see how you lovely lot tackle a technique showcased in Craft Stamper magazine, and this challenge will concentrate on the Faux Airbrushing technique, demonstrated so beautifully by Joanne Allison on pages 62 and 63 of the March 2013 issue. Don’t panic if you haven’t got hold of this issue yet, the challenge lasts for nearly TWO whole months, so you have plenty of time to grab a copy, get inspired and enter!

We would love to see your creations using this technique……your project can be anything at all, card, layout, 3D item etc, any theme or colour, AS LONG AS THERE IS FAUX AIRBRUSHING ON THERE SOMEWHERE! Oh, and stamping too, this is a Craft Stamper challenge after all!”

I am a subscriber to this fab magazine and rub shoulders (virtually speaking) with many of the contributors whom I admire. Needing to make a birthday card and using Joanne’s Faux Airbrushing technique this is what I made and have entered for the challenge.

Faux airbrushing technique

The inks I used are Distress Ink Milled Lavender and Whispers dye based Blue ink. The focal image is a stamp I have had for years and the company is no longer around but the word stamp comes from PaperArtsy -HP1005.

This is such an easy technique to achieve but very effective; laying down colour using a small piece of sponge that has been made into a round.

Thanks for looking x

 

 

 

Another item changed!

It appears I can’t leave anything alone these days! Something looks a little dull or plain and I am ready with paint, tissue paper and inks. This time it was a jewellery box that belonged to my late and much loved sister-in-law. It housed all those little buttons and badges I never quite knew what to do with and stood all forlorn and unremarked in its dull brown overcoat on a chest of drawers. The grandchildren love it because when the bottom drawer is opened it plays a tune – Brahms lullaby I understand; my DH is trying to educate me into recognizing classical music but, Philistine that I am, if it isn’t 60s or 70s pop it doesn’t stay in my head for long!  So he finds the “trying to educate me” very trying indeed – poor man.

The box’s drawers were emptied and the box was very roughly treated with coarse sandpaper to remove its varnish and give a bit of tooth for the acrylic paint to adhere to. To assist the sticking power of the paint I mixed in some Liquitex matte medium and covered the box and drawers with paint and left it to dry. Crumpled up white tissue paper was then glued on and plenty of diluted PVA glue slapped all over it.

A flourish stamp (manufacturer unknown) was used to stamp images in Jet Black Archival ink over the drawers fronts  with green gold Daler Rowney Goldfinger finish rubbed on here and there.

side view

On PaperArtsy crackle tissue I stamped the bird image and a script with Archival ink and then painted the reverse of the tissue paper with gold acrylic paint over the centre and a mix of violet and white around the outside and adhered this panel of tissue to the prepared box. String beads were glued to the top and bottom edges of both sides as well as along the top edge with paper flowers added to each corner of the sides.

top

Out of greyboard a back was created, painted and covered with crumpled tissue paper then crackle tissue was stamped with a Crafty Individuals image and another flourish stamp in black Archival ink. Feathers, paper leaves, metal leaves and paper flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts were added. The little decoupaged bird was a small RAK from a UK Stampers forum friend who hosted the Twinchie swap – Catherine, thank you Catherine!

close up of top

Does anyone recognise the image used on the side panels? I’d love to know who made that so I can credit the company!

Materials used:

Acrylic paints – gold, violet and white

Tissue paper – from stationers

Crackle Tissue Paper – PaperArtsy

Jet Black Archival Ink – Ranger

Strings of beads – stash

Paper flowers & leaves – Wild Orchid Crafts

Stamps – Script (Creative Expressions)

- Birds (Crafty Individuals CI-193)

- Flourishes (Creative Expressions)

Thanks for looking x

 

 

Postcard Swap

For some months now I have participated in a postcard swap on the UK  Stampers forum; some of the makes for the swap have been well within my capabilities but just occasionally Sam slips a blinder through that is a tad outside my comfort zone! It is all good fun though and there are few rules; as it is a stamping forum then stamping must appear somewhere on the postcard, postcards are approximately 6 x 4 inches but don’t have to be rectangular but they must be able to go through the postal system ‘naked’ – that is without an envelope so any embellishments must be well adhered but participants tend to keep the cards as flat as possible.

There isn’t a theme for this month – we can do whatever we want so I went with a grid postcard:

March 2013 Postcard for UKS swap

I was lucky enough to win some plates of Art Journey’s stamps so I gave one or two of those stamps an outing on this card! I used Versamagic Chalk Inks Red Magic and Mango Madness for the background colours, the stamps were inked with Memento Potter’s Clay and Archival Jet Black. The whole card was edged with Potter’s Clay to finish it off.

For February’s postcard swap Sam came up with Getting Emotional which really threw me in a spin! After much head scratching I went with a sad/happy card and found the theatrical mask on the internet and resized it. One half of the card shows a grey, rainy day with a happy spring time on the other half – a good compromise!

February 2013 Swap ‘Getting Emotional’

 

Thanks for looking x

 

 

 

 

 

Dress Form

I have a love affair going on with dress forms! No idea why but there is something about them that just calls to me. Just after Christmas whilst in Hobby Craft (an expensive UK store!) there were dress forms on special offer and so I took the plunge and bought one.

She has a metal stand attached and stands approximately 40 cm tall (roughly 14 inches) and here she is:

Dress form

I shall have to think of a name for her! She is modelling a coat of light blue acrylic paint; while the paint was drying a facial tissue was separated into its 4 component sheets and onto these sheets was stamped a Penny Black Chantilly Lace background image in a blue dye ink. Each sheet was cut into manageable pieces and attached all over with IndigoBlu’s Slap It On. Her necklace consists of a pearl trim hot glued into place as is the other trims and she sports a beaded pin on her shoulder.

Her hat was created from black felt, lace trim,bead trim,  feathers and paper roses:

Felt hat

She wouldn’t look out of place at Ascot although her hat  couldn’t compete with Mrs Gertrude Shilling’s outrageous head-gear. I have Christina Griffith’s to thank for instructions on how to create the basic hat. Christine has several Youtube videos on dress forms and hats.

Thank you for looking x

Keys received :)

In my last post I showed the keys I had altered for the Cardmaking Paradise Key Swap for Jan/Feb of this year. Here are the beautiful keys I received back.

First is from Patsy of Ireland, she used a small gold key with a heart shaped top:

Patsy’s key

Patsy decorated her key with small pink gems along the ‘shaft’ of the key then added gold cord and purple beads to the heart shape and a dangling charm made up of several metal discs decorated with holographic purple/blue sequins and flowers. A very pretty key.

 

Lainey chose an old door key, as did I, for one of her swaps and she made a lovely holder for it too. Lainey has an eye for detail in everything she creates.

Lainey’s key

I think Lainey used alcohol ink to colour her key, she then wrapped wire around it – far more neatly than I could have achieved! I love the small ornamental key added to the beads to make a dangly charm.

Lainey’s key holder

back of Lainey’s key holder

Isn’t that key holder a lovely finishing detail?

This swap was great fun and certainly encouraged many of us out of our comfort zone. The next swap is a decorated coaster, this will be another interesting one. Perhaps we will see you there!

Thank you for looking x