A Time of Wonder.....

Hello!
I have a little bright and cheerful Christmas scene to share today....

An alternative Christmas colour scheme, one of my favourite combos of purple and turquoise!
The back and base of my scene are Tando chipboard panels. The back is full size, the base I have chopped up, its probably about half the size of the back. I covered them with gesso, then used acrylic drawing ink as my colour. Simply dripped onto a craft sheet and applied with a sponge. White brayered layers, more ink, stamping and some clear gesso stencilled stars in there too!

My final snowy touch is my go-to Christmas technique, melting white UTEE to give the snow splatter look!
My tree is also coloured with acrylic drawing ink. Top tip whilst doing this is to spray with water first, then the ink disperses so much better! This IS really messy, but the huge plus point is that acrylic ink comes off your hands easily with a little scrubbing. If I had done this with dye inks my hands would have been bright purple for days!

I gently sponged a little Glossy Accents over the ends of the branches, and added some Peacock Feathers distress glitter over the top for a cool contrasting look!
The base was coloured in exactly the same way as the back. I joined the two together, then glued down the tree. I added my Rub On phrase to some white card, then cut it out and used it banner style by the tree...

I feel more purple trees coming on...really love that colour!!!
Trish xx

Hello there! - video

Hello,

Today I have a video for you. It's my second video ever, I hope you will like it! You can see there how I've made my 'Hello there' project.

I used:

- chipboard
- Liquitex gel medium
- Darkroom Door Stamps Set: Carved Birds 1
- Glitz Designs Raven: Gray & Titles&Accents
- Claudine Hellmuth Black Gesso
- Ranger Liquid Pearls - Onyx Pearl
- Ranger Archival Ink
- Hero Arts Ink Dauber

Magda x

A little inspiration.

Ok, hands up if this sounds familiar to you.... You've decided to enter the challenge here at A Sprinkle of Imagination and you're a bit stumped. You look around at your craft room stash and think "where the heck do I start?". Let me also take you back to last spring when you decided to give your craft room/area a bit of a spring clean. You open a draw and find a stash of papers you'd totally forgotten and given up on. Start to sound familiar?

Here I'm going to give you an idea to hopefully help with both these problems.

This is my Inspiration journal (first seen in Scrap 365 Nov 12) where I keep ideas and colour schemes which will hopefully help me when I create a project. It helps to serve as a record of what I have in my craft room and if I need help with an idea I'll look through for inspiration. Also, when I'm doing this, I find things which go together in a way I hadn't thought of before.

For example this page started out with the picture on the left which I pulled from a magazine. On the right I've matched up the colours and the feeling which I get from the image, which is a romantic theme, so I've gone for flowers, butterflies, scrolls and vintage labels.

This page started with the sweet wrappers, so you see inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere.

When given Vicki's colour challenge I did the same thing. I went through my stash pulling out anything and everything which matched the colours. It was while doing this I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Jenni Bowlin papers Modern Mercantile matched perfectly. I might not have made the connection if I hadn't done this exercise. By the way, I collect paint chips every time I go into the DIY store, they must think poor woman just can't make up her mind!!

I started to build the page up using what I'd found. Inks, papers, paint swatches and tape all went onto the page. I overlap things too just to see how they look together. 

and here is what I made in the end using the colours and materials I'd chosen.

I hope this exercise has given you some ideas of how to catalogue what you have in your crafty stash and how to tackle a project.

See you next time

Jaine x

happy scrappin’

good day to you. 

The last couple of days have been a busy time here with deliveries.  Our Paper & Cardstock section on the website has been steadily growing during 2013 with lots of great papers from the likes of Jenni Bowlin, Graphic 45, Echo Park and Glitz Designs.  A couple of months ago I started to look at Simple Stories, and ordered some for myself a collection kits and some bits and bobs to try. I love the quality of the papers, and as you know if I don't love it, it doesn’t make the shop! You should see my reject bin!

Now, I know I don’t often pop on to the blog to share new products with you. They just usually appear as little pictures over there on the left, but I am so excited about this weeks delivery I had to come and talk about it.

Firstly, on Monday saw the arrival of Daily Grind, the latest collection from Simple Stories. Why did I get it in? Well, I’m a secret “Project Lifer”, so secret I forget myself sometimes, but the whole collection is about the little daily things that happen in our lives. For me that’s just as important as scrapping the big stuff. And if I’m being super honest – I LOVE the sticker sheet!

See – how cool is that?!

The collection is mainly 12x12 papers, ready to cut into 3x4 and 4x6 cards to use in divided pockets. Quick scrapping, love the whole concept.  But the papers are also in a mix of sizes, including regular 12x12, and not just 3x4 and 4x6 as you get with lots of other collections.

 

So, you have the papers, and we have a “great for project life” section on the website, but there is a big missing.

Albums and Page Protectors.

There are just so many on the market.  Personally I used D-Ring albums.  I have a WRMK album which I got with my first Project Life core kit, and from before my time as a store owner I have several American Crafts albums. All of which are D-Ring.  I used to have a couple of post bound but transferred everything out of them.  So where to start when looking for albums…. I know I wanted 2 sizes, 8x6 and 12x12, and they needed to be sturdy, a range of colours and something quite clean looking. Simple Stories hit the nail on the head for me.

I am blown away by how good looking the Faux Leather albums are. They look and feel great. I love the stitching detail and the little metal corners. I even like the pink one!

Don’t be fooled by this whole “Sn@p!” thing though – it’s just a branding name, they are regular albums and come with 10 page pockets. The 12x12 only has a couple of divided pockets.

The Sn@p! Binders have extra pages in them, chipboard dividers and 10 pocket pages.

If you’re gonna have the albums, you’ve gotta have the page protectors – or pocket pages, you choose what to call them. Anyway, we have a whole bunch for both the 8x6 and the 12x12 albums.

 

The 8x6 pockets do fit in the 12x12 albums so you can mix up your pages.

AND, as my own stash is stuffed full of American Crafts page protectors I checked, they DO fit in the 12x12 albums. So you don’t have to buy yet another brand because you like a different album.

The upshot of this is… I now have NO EXCUSE to catch up with my scrapping, and I know what’s on my Christmas list this year. At least hubby doesn’t have to go far for these….

Happy Scrappin’!

Vicki

Deck The Halls

Hello!
A little quirky modern Christmas project from me today....

The base for this is a fab Tando panel, just big enough to get plenty of detail on, but not so big it becomes an overwhelming pant job! I used white , red and green paint, and smeared and brayered all over. A sprinkling of white UTEE for the 'snow' splatters, and flicked black paint (to tie the background in colourwise to my embellishments) and it was done...

I used Prima clear pebbles for my baubles. I glued music paper to them, cut them out and then added them to my background...

Love the 3D domed look! The hangers for the baubles are simply black paint lines with doodled bits here and there. I also added a tiny bit of black tinsel twine to make a bold modern statement....
I used rub ons for my festive message...

As you can see, I doodled around the panel too!
A nice traditional Christmas colour scheme, but with a more modern look, I think!
See you soon,
Trish xxx

And the winner is....

Thank you everyone that joined in with our first challenge!  

We thoroughly enjoyed seeing what you all created and generally having a nose at your blogs!  

I hope you also got chance to take a look at all the fabulous entries.

Our very first winner is Claire, with this rather lovely altered beer mat, 

which she also did a step by step for.

So Congratulations Claire! 

If you fancy winning a £10.00 voucher for yourself the November Challenge is up and running. 

You have until the 12th December to enter. 

a sprinkle of colour : November is up!

Novembers Challenge is now up! 

Go check it out and if you take part you could be the winner of a £10.00 voucher to spend in the shop! 

October Challenge Winner will be announced on Monday! 

Carta Bella Giveaway!

Hello there.

Yesterday we took delivery of Carta Bella’s new Homemade With Love collection…

I love it.  It’s a fabulous collection, but it makes me want to bake, or just skip straight to eat cake. In fact, I love this collection so much we’re having a giveaway on our facebook page!

All you need to do is check out the collection, leave a comment on facebook and share the post to be in with a chance of winning a set of the papers form the collection.

Dance.Love.Sing.Live

Hello!

Today I would like to show you how I have made my tag. The weather is dull that's why I used a lot of bright colours!

I used Ranger tag Manila for a background. I put some gesso using painting knife. Firstly I put a smooth layer and than moving painting knife up and down (movement a little like beating eggs ;)) I received great texture (you can see in picture 2).

I sprayed Dylusions Ink Sprays - Bubblegum Pink and Vibrant Turquoise. I like them because they are mixed together nicely. I have only 3 colours of them but I can received much more. Mixing pink and turquoise gave me violet.

I cut some hearts ( if you have a puncher it will be much quicker ) from Glitz Yours Truly paper and used a gel medium to glue them.

For more texture I used Andy Skinner stencil. I didn't use all the skull only a part of it.

Once again I used gel medium, this time using Dylusions stencil. Before it I added more gesso & inks.

I added white glitter...

...and eyelets.

Here is a result...

Magda

Messy Monoprinting!

Hello!
I want to share an easy (but still messy and great fun!) way of creating backgrounds today!

 

Monoprinting is HUGE right now, and this is how I've created my painty background on this project. No expensive bits of kit though, just an acrylic block!
The block I used was the biggest I have, but of course smaller blocks work just as well for smaller projects!
I print in two ways.... firstly...

Put teeny bits of paint on the block. Then, brayer gently to mix...

Now, this is tricky to do without smearing. The block has a slick surface so the brayer can want just to slide rather than roll. Still, persevere and you'll get the hang of just how much pressure etc to use.
Quickly, before the paint dries, press your cardstock onto the block...

Then peel it off....

The thin layers of paint will have transferred themselves to the card...

It's an absolute doddle to clean the block, hot soapy water or babywipes get it pristine in no time.
Now, brayering thin layers can be a little subtle for me, so I tend to go for the more messy approach!
Smear the paint on with your fingers....

And then press on the card to get a print...

This method obviously uses more paint, and you will be able to get more than one print from the block. This is great if you are doing book pages etc, where creating similar backgrounds quickly is useful!
So...printing done, we can get on with the rest of the piece!
I did a little stamping..

Bo Bunny Dots, Prima stitched circles, Jenni Bowlin grids and text.....
I also did some stitching and splatting with black paint..

My Stampotique figure is coloured with the same paint using a waterbrush...

She stands on some washi tape, and I've added a phrase from a cut up old book to finish.
I think we all have an acrylic block in our stash....get it painty and try printing!
Trish xxx