Moonlight…..

Wow, into March already. Time is flying past, it seems.
We had some fabulous entries in last months Craft A Scene challenge, which was ‘A Winter Scene’, and I believe the winning entries will be posted up this weekend.
So now onto this months Challenge, which is ‘Moonlight’.
For the first of my two pieces this month, I have used images from Lavinia Stamps, Stampscapes, and Inkylicious.

 The Lavinia Stamps are:
Moon Fairy
Bamboo( Bottom Left)
Fairy House

The Inkylicious are:
Grasses
Willow (Bottom Right)

The Stampscapes are:
Oak Branch, 203G and
Spooky Branch 273G.

This piece sort of grew of its own accord as I worked on it, and  I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do with this when it was done, but when I got to the end, I realised I had made our Granddaughters Birthday present!
  She loves fairies, and this will go in a frame for her bedroom.
The piece of card is A5 in size, 5 3/4 x 8 1/4. I brayered the background firstly with Adirondack dye inks, starting with Cool Peri. I followed this with Shell Pink,Stonewashed,Purple Twilight and Eggplant. The ‘tunnel’ effect was achieved by keep turning the card so that I brayered all four sides, and tried to come in a little further at the corners by brayering across the corner. All the images were stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black, starting with the Moon Fairy. Next came the Fairy House, then I added the grasses along the bottom edge, Willow in the right corner and Bamboo in the left. The 2 oak branches and the Spooky Branches were all positioned using the Stamp Positioner, so that I could get the orientation right.

The moon was given a little colour with Antique White Flexmarker, and I used Promarkers in browns, reds and greens to colour the Fairy House. I added a little colour to her wings with a Glitter Sakura Gelly Roll pen, and also the dots around the moon. I dotted a glue pen between the Moon Fairy & the Fairy House, then sprinkled some crystal glitter over it. That doesn’t show up too well, to be honest, and I shall add some more dots of Stickles over the top, before I frame it. Then I just trimmed the edges to neaten it, and matted it onto some black cardstock.
You can probably see that I tend to work on top of an A3 pad, the sort you can buy for children as a sketch pad. It makes it easy to take the ink off your brayer, test stamp images, stamp off onto, and sometimes you end up with a really interesting masterboard style piece, quite by accident!
   So thats my first this month, pop over to Craft A Scene tomorrow and you will see all the DT first pieces, as well as the winners from last month.

Craft A Scene- A Winters Scene

Hi folks, this is my first post for the Craft A Scene  DT, and the brief was to create two pieces with a winters scene. The second one comes along on the 19th Feb.

       After a few flicks through my Stampscapes stamps, I picked out the ones I wanted to use, then had a long think about how to create a wintry look, without just adding a load of snow. ( Which just so happens to be falling outside right now!).
 I was still struggling with how to look wintry, but decided to get started on the stamping, and hope for inspiration. This image very, very almost went into the bin- I had a complete disaster part way through- and the funny thing is, it was in the rescuing that I got my winter look.
I have quite a stack of brayered backgrounds, from when I was practising to get the hang of it, so I selected one that I thought could end up with the right look. It is a piece of Matt card, from Lavinia Stamps, brayered from the bottom with Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue & Denim Adirondack dye inks, and from the top down with Cool Peri, Purple Twilight, and a little Eggplant right at the top. Before brayering I added a circle punched from a post-it note to the upper half of the cardstock.
I used Versafine Onyx Black to stamp the images. Most of the elements of this picture come from Nature Sheet #6. I started with the Lakeside Cabin (147F) on the right, then stamped Lakeside Island (from Nature Sheet #4, The Lost Scapes) next to it, using a Stamp Positioner to marry them up. I placed them about 2/3 of the way down the card,just where the blue started to fade out. In the foreground I stamped Ledge (054F) twice, varying the angle slightly, then added Reeds Lge (068D) randomly. I used Water Pattern sm (231C) in the water area.  Final stamp was  Spooky Branch (273G) stamped reaching in to the picture on the left and upright on the right. You can see on the design sheet that the Ledge stamp is much larger than in my scene- I just used a small portion of it to give me a river/ lake bank. Equally, you can layer & stack it to give you a larger rocky area.

            Having taken the design sheet out of my folder to scan & show you, I could see similarities in my scene to the image on the sheet.

   So all was well up till now,  when I decided I ought to have a reflected moon in the water. Considered a few options, and decided to try ‘stamping’ a moon shape in Brilliance Moonlight White, using a round foam brush. My instant reaction was that it looked awful- it didn’t work at all. And that I had ruined what was a promising picture to boot.I tried wiping the white ink off- that smudged and looked even worse. Next I tried cleaning that area with a baby wipe- now I had a patch with a different colour ink to the rest of the image. So, as a last resort, and as I had given up any hope of this image being usable anymore, I wiped over the whole image with the baby wipe- I had black ink coming off the image, as well as the white! Panic!!!! So now, completely stressed by everything going wrong, I folded a piece of plain white copy paper in half, put the image between the two layers, put a book on top of it (oh yes, it was curling up too!), put it to one side and went to cook tea.
 When I went back to it the following evening, I had no expectations of it being any use, and fully expected to be throwing it away. However, as you can see, what the baby wipe did was take enough ink away to give me a misty, ghostly look- perfect for mist/fog falling over a lake in winter. Trust me folks, nobody was more surprised at this than me. I had gone from scrap to perfect by sheer fluke.

The Lost Scapes #4

 Which does go to show that you should never consider anything past retrieving- no matter how bad things seem! I must be mad, but I decided to push my luck a little further- I have never used a white gel pen on images like this before, but I have loved the effect when others have done it. I found out my White Gelly Roll pen, only to discover it had dried up from lack of use! I have since managed to get it working by dunking it it warm water, but I purchased a new one from Joanna Sheen- which only took a couple of days to arrive, and sat down to work. As you can see I outlined the edges of the islands and added some white to the fir trees. I did the same with the Spooky branches, Reeds and the Rocky Ledge.  I used an Orange & Yellow gel pen to add a little light to the cabin windows. Finally I added a few squiggly white lines to simulate the moon in the water- very nervously, I might add- then trimmed the image down and matted it onto black, then onto dark purple cardstock.
 For the base card, I folded an  A4 piece of Gold card in half. The embossed background was made with a Cuttlebug folder, Snowflake.  I cut two strips of white card the width of the folder, and almost twice as long, embossed the image once, then turned the white card around and embossed the other end. The two lengths were then joined together with sellotape on the back, and cut down to fit the front of the card. A strip of pale blue ribbon covers the join. Mounted the image to the front, and breathed a sigh of relief, lol.
              I suppose this could be a Christmas card, which means I have actually managed to start them in January- so I only broke my New Years Resolution by a half (I wanted to do two Christmas cards a month).

  I hope you will join us over at Craft a Scene, I am looking forward to seeing the other DT’s take on the brief, and what you all come up with.

Hobbycrafts at the NEC.

Well, I did go to have a look-see, and yes, I did buy some more stuff! I was very good though, and returned home without a single Christmas themed item! Having looked through all my stash recently, I came to the conclusion that I could make Christmas cards from now till the end of time, and probably still not use all the Christmas stamps I have- and don’t get me started on Christmas paper pads, please.

So, I mainly bought stamps, and embellishments- something I don’t really seem to have much of. I have tried to remember where I bought everything, and link either to the retailer, or someone who has the product if I couldn’t think who it was.

Some u/m Stampscapes stamps, definitely one of my weaknesses, I prefer u/m’s, and not many places seem to carry them, so these were a distinct bonus.I have wanted the Oak Branch and Spooky Branch for a while, but the u/m sheet the Oak is on also contains stamps I  already have as woodmounts. I got these from BJCrafts. 

These clear stamps from Inkylicious were very reasonable,and I thought the multiple types of birds will be very useful. The Face caught my eye too, I have a similar one but smaller.

I liked this when I saw pictures of it a few months ago- nicely dark & gothic. I can’t remember who I got it from, but it is available at Cheddar Stamper.

These two packs from Kaisercraft have lots of useful words and phrases, and were a very reasonable £2.99 each, which I thought was fabulous value. Bought from Ali-craft.

 A Paperartsy set, Clocks 5, and Crafty Individuals CI 305. I love the cogs stamp on the Paperartsy, and the CI stamp has good male/collage images. I bought both from The Artist Trading Post.

These two u/m sets by Papermania really surprised me. Called Urban, they have really nice, usable images for me, not what I would normally associate with their name. Usually, they are too ‘cutesy’ for my tastes. These came from Hotshot Craft– there are 4 available. These two are Bird Print  and Botanical print. The other two are Type print & Travel print.

 These are three u/m plates, two are textures & patterns and one is faces. They were an amazing £2.50 each- hows that for great value. The irritating thing is that a really can’t remember who I got them from, sorry. At the bottom right are three tiny Lavinia Stamps images, small toadstools, a bee and a flying dragon, all £1 each.

Last stamp I bought, Tim  Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Postcard images. I have had my eye on these for a while now, and finally gave in to temptation.

Moving on from stamps, I wanted some metal embellishments for my cards/tags. I found this great company, Riverside Beads, as you can guess from the name, they specialise in beads for jewellery making. However, they have chain, metal charms etc , in a variety of finishes, ideal for adding to your tags and other projects.
You can see one or two price labels there- they are a really good buy- you can have a lot of different embellishments for very little money. For instance, the bag of coins you can see at the top, contains 6 coins- the brass colour cost me £1.20, and the antiqued silver ones £1.35. I think this place was my best find of the day- it shows what you can discover by a visit to a craft show, I doubt I would ever have found them otherwise.

I’ve pictured them against a ruler so you can get an idea of their size.This is just a small selection of what they have, by the way.

 
Paperartsy pen nibs, and some really neat penny farthing bicycles, by Route 52, which I got from The Artist Trading Post.

 Some Tim Holtz game spinners, chains and 7 gypsies cogs.

     
You can see I also bought a Tim Holtz paper pad, the Winter Distress Inks Limited edition, and also Stormy Sky.

4 new embossing folders, a Cuttlebug one featuring cogs & gears, and three generic ones. One of them has what I think will make a good background for Oriental designs.

At the top of this picture is the clear stamp set that came free with Debbie Moores new Stamping Inspirations magazine- a nice set that are all going to be usable. Some black & white spotted organza ribbon, mica flakes, 3new (to me) Stickles a bottle of Black Cosmic Shimmer Pearls, I assume this is like the Liquid Pearls, and a Karantha mould of a face.

Almost at the end, some spray mini-misters.

Two Tim Holtz
dies, Tickets and Rosettes.

Two great storage containers, A4 size, filled with smaller ATC size boxes. These came from Samuel Taylor.

And finally, some Klingon for those u/m’s, and on top of that a selection of acrylic hearts/circles etc from a place called Add Some Sparkle– sold as a pick & mix, you fill the little pot you can see with your selection, for £2! They do this pick’n’mix online too. Not just these stones I bought, they have loads of other styles/colours/designs too.This place was another great find.

WOYWW #126

Hi all, first off I must apologise for Blogger last week, I know a number of people struggled to post comments, and I had a bit of trouble with one or two blogs- you’d really think they’d have it fixed by now! Well, todays the day we  unveil our desks to the world, courtesy of the incomparable Julia Dunnit, at The Stamping Ground.  I spent quite a few hours playing with tags & masks- the posts below are about how I made my own masks with my Silhouette & Transparency film, as well as  tag or two. Mainly though, I played with my Tim stamps, and I will show you those tags in a moment. However, this is Workdesk Wednesday, so here are two pictures- Before I stared playing, and then what it looked like when it came to clear up time!

I managed to get from this:

to this, with absolutely no help whatsoever- all my own mess work! 🙂

 I started  off with a bunch of tags I had sponged in the past…..

Made myself a Post-it note mask of the man with the umbrella….

 On this one I added some sponging through sequin waste, a couple of odd ampersand  & dot stamps and just the man with umbrella & phrase.   I kept this one quite simple too, back to the sequin waste, but this time I just inked up one word at a time on the phrase, and moved them around the image.

Here things were coming together nicely…… as you can see I work on top of an A4 pad of plain paper- the sort you can get for a couple of quid from The Works- I can test out the colours, make sure my image is inked, or stamp off first, and sometimes you end up with something you can cut up and use as a background piece! Double Bonus!!!

With this one I overstamped the tag with the clock face in Distress Faded Denim, then stamped the man with umbrella over them. I picked the words We Must Dream The Impossible out of the long phrase- To be all that is possible we must attempt the impossible,To be all that we can be we must dream of being more.  I did this by masking with a post-it note, and colouring the individual words with a marker.

   I added some clock hands, cut from a dingbat font with the Silhouette, then embossed with black detail embossing powder, and a small pocket watch that was clear embossed. I don’t think they are truly finished yet, but I have really enjoyed doing these- maybe the next project is going to be a tag book of some sort to keep them in.

                                  Here they all are, along with the Halloween tag posted below.

Last thing to show you, is a product that is totally indispensable, and absolutely fantastic at what it does.The aerosol in the middle is the first one I bought, and I was running out. I don’t really like aerosols, not only on the environmental level, but the propellants in them always make me sneeze! But I was looking for some more, and found its available in a liquid form, and also now in a gel. Beloved husband wanted the gel, as its useful for awkward places, or somewhere upright, where a liquid would run. Even he was impressed with this stuff when he tried it, and it takes a lot to impress him with a product. It just dissolves the sticky stuff left behind when you peel off labels, or those sticky tabs you hang air freshners with for instance- you can literally just wipe it off with a piece of kitchen roll. Has a nice citrus smell to it as well. I found it in Lakeland, and they have it online too, as does Amazon.
    Finally, a question that I hope someone can help me with. I remember a while ago, seeing a small wooden box with compartments in, for holding t-bags. Typically, I now can’t remember where I saw it. My Beloved Husband really likes fruit teas (ick), and has them at work during the day. But he only takes in one box at a time, as they take up too much space in his toolbox-(I have the coffee in mine:) ). I thought about getting one of these boxes that he could keep a small assortment of teas in, and altering it as a Christmas present. So if anyone has seen them, or knows where I could get such a thing, I would be eternally grateful to you.
 I am considering going to the NEC this weekend for the Hobbycrafts show, as I haven’t been for a couple of years now, and its nice to just look around and see whats new, and what people are doing. So I may have a (few) absolutely had-to-have impulse buys to show you next week, lol.
 
Oh, oh oh, I almost forgot about this: a couple of weeks ago, I emailed Kevin Nakagawa, (the guy who designed/developed the Stampscapes line of stamps), with the link to my page showing how I built up my scenes, to see what he thought.  This man is so talented, if you get a chance, go to his website & look at some of his work in the galleries. It will truly blow you away.  Anyway, I was stunned to get an e-mail back, saying he had linked my tutorial page to his Lessons page on the website! I was/am amazed/delighted/gobsmacked/honoured- his, and the other artists lessons on there are amazing, I can’t believe he thought mine good enough to include. If I never achieve anything else, this is truly a high point for me.
Hope everyone has a great day, I shall as always post this before work, and start visiting when I get home.

WOYWW #101

Lots of stuff all over my desk this week- I have been doing a Tutorial page for my blog on Scenic Stamping & Stampscapes. Link here, or in the pages list on the right.  Its really a lot easier than it looks- and I can spend hours on the Stampscapes website looking at other peoples artwork.

Had to clear a bit of space to make a New Baby card for my nephew & his girlfriend- a baby girl who is named Madison Lily.  

The base card is covered with  some New Baby vellum, then a strip of pink mulberry paper is topped with a narrower strip of pink gingham vellum. I cut some slits in this & threaded organza ribbon in pink through this, and tied a bow.The baby picture is from a Joanna Sheen cd, matted onto gold card embossed with Forest Branches embossing folder. I just have to print off the parents names, along with babys name & date of birth, which I shall do onto embossable printer paper.

Now its off to the magnificent Julias place for this weeks blog stalk- Happy WOYWW all.

A4 cards

Although it isn’t obvious from the picture, this card is a full A4 in size. For this I use white A3 card, from Staples. This card is not particularly thick, but I resolve this by attaching a full A4 sheet of card to the back of the folded A3, and when the card front is covered, and whatever images & embellishments are added, it becomes perfectly solid. I found this much easier than other methods, which rely on attaching 2 x A4  sheets together with a fold & DST.
This was made for a lady who I work with, who is retiring, and I use the A4 size as it allows plenty of space for people signing it inside.
 For the main image I used the Penny Black ‘Aspire’ stamp again, onto a brayered A5 background, cut to three panels.This was matted onto grey, then gold embossed card.Before matting onto gold, I wrapped some lilac organza ribbon around the image. A folded bow was added with glue dots. I punched the corners of the gold card with a Southwest punch.The front of the card was covered with a sheet of lilac paper, from a Papermania pad. The same lilac ribbon was wrapped around the spine, and tied in a bow. Two sizes of Nesties Labels 8 were cut from gold card, and one from purple. The sentiment and name of the recipient were added in gold Peeloff letters.

 This is a second card made for a work colleague, also A4, and the image was originally the front for a square card,but I had to do this card in a hurry, so I cannibalised ! The front was covered in a piece of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper, which had words like ‘friend, memories,’ etc on it. The corners were covered with Happy Birthday paper. I cut the numbers from dark brown glittered paper, bought in a pad from Hobbycrafts, then cut ‘shadows’ from gold glittered paper.Peeloff sentiment, name and balloons completed it.

Stampscapes Easel

Background brayered in Adirondack Sandal & Latte, with a post-it note mask for the sun.Stampscapes  Pine Row,150E, and Single Pine, 196F, both from the same U/m Nature sheet as the next card, were stamped in Distress ink Forest Moss. The flight of ducks,(Lavinia Stamps) and sentiment, (Butterfly Kisses Art Collage clear stamp set) were stamped in Adirondack Espresso. The image was trimmed and matted onto dark green, dark brown, then a steel grey card. For the base of the easel, I punched a strip with an X-Cut Fleur Di Lis punch, then added a strip of the grey card. A wide green ribbon was wrapped around, and a folded bow added to the top with glue dots.

Stampscapes Easel #2

This is one that was on my desk for WOYWW this week. The background was brayered with Adirondack Shell Pink/Watermelon /Cranberry. Stampscapes u/m Nature Sheet  set #6 provided the images: Lakeside Cabin,147F,Reeds lge,068D, Ledge, 054F and Water Pattern sm,231C. The birds are from Lavinia Stamps,  Flight of Ducks. This was matted onto black card, the corners punched with a SW punch, then matted onto Burgundy card.Card base was covered in a Burgundy embroidered paper, then I punched the lace strip using the Martha Stewart String Lace Border punch. A strip of corrugated black card went on top, and the Friend Description, (Stamps Away/Clevercut) stamped in black then cut out with a Nestie petite Scalloped Oval die. I mounted this with silicone glue so I could angle it upwards slightly.

Birthday Wishes

Another card featuring Stampscapes Lakeside Cove. White card brayered with shades of yellow Adirondack dye ink, overstamped in Black Staz-on, then a little brown ink added to the rocks. the sentiment was also stamped in brown, onto a scrap from the main image. The image  and mat were cut out with the two largest dies from Nestabilities Labels 8. The base card was cut to 15 cm square and covered with a sheet from the Papermania  Antique Cream pad then a length of toning ribbon wrapped around, with a folded bow added on top.

Lakeside Cove at Sunset

Smooth white card brayered with Adirondack Sunshine Yellow and Butterscotch. A reverse mask from a post it note added to the top centre, and Distress Ink Wild Honey brayered across for the setting sun. Stampscapes Lakeside Cove, 049G, stamped in black Staz-on and allowed to dry. Reverse mask reapplied over the water, and the reflected sun brayered with Wild Honey again.A little colour sponged onto the rocks with Adirondack Espresso.The image was cut out with the next to largest die from Nestabilities, petite scalloped ovals, and a bronze mat cut with the largest size, this one also embossed. A sheet of distressed brown paper from  the Papermania Simply Elegant paper pack was used to cover a DL card blank.A length of toning ribbon was wrapped around the card front, and stuck down with DST where the image would be placed.The image was mounted with DST also. Three small squares with bits of image on were cut from the remains of the die cut image and matted onto bronze card  and adhered to the lower right corner, and a sentiment label was made using another scrap.