Unusual page, recycled material.

Hello, my dear friends!

My DT project this week is a very unusual, round layout!
How I like to experience, renew and recycle things! :)) Yes!!! and do you know what I have used as a base for this page?
Sooner or later every thing reach the end of it useful life. I'm not Frankenstein (the opposite, pretty and nice lol), but the other day I did revive a "dead" and forgotten object that had pulled in a drawer in the kitchen. It was a mold to make cakes, old and almost rusty because it has not used for a long time. So, instead of throwing it in the trash (which would make any other woman seeing a white elephant in the kitchen lol), I rescued it and transformed it completely.

The first thing I did, was cover the surface with Black Gesso.

Then I used some Stencils with Finnabair Art Basics: Modeling Paste. When it comes to the colour, I resorted to sprays of Prima Color Bloom Sprays.

The next step was to add a few strips of different fabrics and laces, to achieve more texture and enrich the background.
I created a composition by mounting a few layers of paper, flowers, different embellishments, Finnabair Vintage Mechanicals: 961121 Plate & Label, dies cut and tags. To give a few finishing touches, I added Finnabair Art Ingredients Glass Glitter - Gold Rush

And the result is a different and very special layout :))  You can find all the materials in the store  A Sprinkle Of Imagination.
I hope you liked the idea and it has inspired you to try to do something different:))
 See you soon! Much kisses!
xxx

The Butterfly

My latest journal page was inspired by a crafty session in the garden, with the weather being so wonderful I really couldn't stay in the basement to craft. I grabbed my journal and Inktense pencils with the pages already prepared with gesso and set about adding colour.

 I created the framing around the outside with Finnabair stamps called Lace and Doily and a Prima Stencil. The texture paste is also from Finnabair and has a fantastic sparkle to it when it's dry.

For the butterfly, I drew it onto a sheet of music score paper and used the Inktense pencils to colour it in.

If you needed any convincing about how vibrant the colour is, just take a look here at the before and after adding water. I think it speaks for itself.

I put a crease in the butterfly wings before adding it to the page so it would add dimension.

Happy crafting

jaine xx

Random Painty Journal Play !!!!

Good morning creative people

Tracy here........

Sometimes you just feel like playing don't you ????
 

Just being able to experiment and play without worrying about the end result or having a preconceived idea of how something should look........

Well that was how I felt today, I wanted the freedom to be able to create something totally random, so I got out my Dina Wakley paints in Lime, Turquoise, Magenta as well as Black and White along with some Liquitex acrylic paint in Deep Magenta and Golden acrylics in Primary Yellow and Teal and started to layer in my fabulous Dylusions Journal.......

I laid down random colours using and old credit card and smearing colours with my fingers. I kept adding and layering until I got to a happy place !!

Dina's paintbrushes are fabulous for adding details and I painted in some black circles to frame the paint colours underneath adding scratches into the wet paint in places to add some texture.....

I finished off with some white paint and used a white gel pen to add some detail work. 

I may keep this as it is or I may cut it up into pieces at a later date and use in other journal pages !!

Sometimes a little random painty play is all you need to brighten your day !!

Have a great weekend

Xxx

Love & Happiness ATC's

Hi there!

Georgie here with you today :) and I'm sharing a pair of ATCs. These are going to be sent to America very soon for a swap!!

I've gone funky in colour and style this time. I hate being tied to one niche and just love to experiment!!

I started out with a couple of cream canvas ATCs, and then sprayed with Prima Blooms in Sunshine and Iris to give a base of colour. I wanted more of a pop from the yellow so I then added some Tim Holtz Mustard Seed Distress Paint.

The gorgeous pink was a happy mistake, and one I will be doing again. I left the Art Ingredient Violet Glitter Glass in the Art Basics 3D Gloss Gel for a few mins and then mixed (distracted by one of the dogs), and the above is what happened!! Bright pink gorgeousness, which I put through Tim Holtz's Burlap Stencil.

I used Crafters Workshop Stencil Mini Subway with Art Basics Modelling Paste. The #happy and #lucky stamps are from Tim Holtz's stamp set Hashtags.

The lettering is Prima's Wood Icons In A Box: Words, which were then sprayed with Prima Bloom Sprays Cobalt and Iris . To give them that shine, I gave them a couple of coats of UTEE.

The torn papers are from 7 Dots Studio Messy Head Collection and the Wired Thread is from Prima and is in Ecru.

That's it from me for today! Hope you've enjoyed this post. Hugs, Georgie xx

Flying bird thing.....!!!

Hello!
In between all manner of organising, plotting and planning this week (did I mention I'm the new Craft Stamper Magazine Editor?!?! squeeeeeeee!!!), I actually managed to squish in some crafting time. I made a 'thing'............ with birds on!

My rainbow birds are by Tando. I didn't do anything complicated to them, just painted with bright colours. The wing s are separate parts, so these were glued into place before I doodled and added dots...

The birds were glued to some wire that I had coiled by wrapping around a skewer. The wire was then pushed down the centre of a white painted spool. A little cut up book page 'frill' (or grass maybe?) to hide the hole!
I cut lengths of cord, and knotted it around the spool to decorate. I really love how that turned out, will be doing that again!

Some tiny stickers for the word, and it was done!
A bit mad, a bit quirky...just a 'me' thing lol!!
Have a great week,
Trish xxx

Feeling Distressed !!!!

Morning my lovelies, Tracy here with a new post....

Most of the art I do nowadays involves acrylic paints but having recently been on holiday and not being able to take my beloved paints with me I was forced to step out of my 'comfort zone' and experiment with other mediums. I loved the challenge of using things I hadn't used before and whilst the first couple of pieces weren't the best they did give me the opportunity to play and get a feel for the materials.....

Anyway this got me to thinking about when I started out with mixed media art and one of my favourite mediums was distress inks (of course I brought as many colours as I could afford) and how I hadn't taken them out and played for a long long time !!!!

So I decided to get them out and dust them off and see if I enjoyed playing with them as much as I remembered.....

I cut 3 ATC cards and a 7x5 postcard from a piece of 300gsm watercolour paper and started to add colours from the distress ink pads with a sponge distress tool. I used pickled raspberry, peacock feathers and mustard seed as my starting place.

For the postcard.....

I then used a Dylusions flower stencil and a Dina Wakley alphabet stencil to add interest to the background again using the distress pads and an inking tool. I used a small script stamp and stamped with black archival ink. 

I stamped one of the Dina Wakley's 'Face in the crowd' girl stamps directly onto the background using black archival ink and then coloured directly over the top using crayons blending with my fingers. 

I added some white acrylic dots, a sentiment stamp and then finished it off with some machine stitching. 

For the ATC's.......

I started with the same background process, layering the distress ink pads and adding some stamping. I then cut out hearts from some vintage French magazine pages and added to the cards

I stamped onto a scrap of card with the fabulous dylusions quotes stamps and coloured with watercolour crayons. Cut them out and added to the cards. To finish off I machine stitched around the edges and also around the hearts.

I had so much fun playing with my distress pads. The colours are amazing and so easy to work with...... I will definately be using these again very very soon !!!

I hope you are inspired to give distress pads a try and have as much fun as I did this week

Tracy

Xxx

Vintage mini journal

I had a small journal with a hard cover that seemed to be perfect for storing precious words, quotes and poems. However like majority of widely available paper notebooks it had something missing- the character…I am sure that for many of you something that does not look inspiring is simply difficult to look at. So I decided to give it a little more character and vintage feel...This is how it ended up:)

 

I started with using some vintage papers and Dina Wakley Media Line Gel Medium Tube to cover the whole front cover of the journal. The next step was to add texture by using lace as the stencils and Dina Wakley Media Line White Gesso- that can be seen on both sites of the cover. I used many small scraps of lace to build the middle section and again gel medium as a perfect adhesive!

Then it was the time for some colour to wake up the gentle, vintage feeling. You may be wondering- sprays, inks? And here come surprise! I used Neocolour II and Derwent intense pencil! They are very water reacting mediums and can give you much more control that spraying. So I used them to draw directly on pieces of lace and cover and then sprayed with water! Both mediums combine perfectly with each other as well. I used pencils in Fuchsia colour. When the layer is dry I used pencil/crayon again but this time in dry option to draw some lines and give more coverage.

Last step was attaching a photo of a lady (cut out from a magazine) and using a key ring as a border. I also used Adirondack Dye Ink Pad in Pitch Black to stamp some circles. 

Hope that journal has more character now!

Honorata

Winner of the monthly challenge for March

Winner of our challenge 

We were overjoyed to see so many of you enter our first challenge of 2015 and the entries were stunning so a huge thank you to everyone who entered.

The team looked over each and everyone but the result was totally unanimous, we fell in love with this entry as soon as we saw it.

The winner is Clare Lloyd with this amazing fabric book. You can see more pictures of Clare's book on her blog ClareLloyd.

 
Clare if you'd like to contact Vicki at the shop for your prize (find the e-mail contact form on the left hand side of the blog) and in the messages box just say you're the winner from the March challenge.

You'll find the new challenge here on the Monthly Challenge page.

 

Special Guest Designer; Shirley Bampton

Hello!

We have another wonderful project to share today from our April Guest Designer:

Shirley Bampton

www.shirley-bee.co.uk

 I'm thrilled to be back for my second guest design spot. I've used the Don't Forget To Fly stamp set by Finnabair. I wanted to stamp a front and back of this image on cotton canvas, with the possibility of stitching them together and making an art doll. 

I started by inking the stamp with Versafine Onyx Black except for the sentiment across the middle because I wanted one of the other sentiments, then stamped it onto the canvas piece, then I stamped the sentiment in the gap.  For the back view, I re-inked the stamp, this time leaving out the face as well as the sentiment, and stamped that onto the other canvas.  I stamped one of the text circles for the back of the head, and one of the other sentiments across the middle.

I added some colour with Distress Inks and a paintbrush, and decided it would now be a pincushion or just a hanging 'thing', so off I trotted to the local craft store for some wadding, and stitched the two pieces together, using a length of giant ricrac for the loop, then I frayed the edges.   Here's the back view of the finished article:

Thanks so much for inviting me to be a guest designer!

No... Thank YOU Shirley for creating fabulous projects for us to drool over!
We will be featuring a guest designer most months here on the blog...so keep checking in to see who is up next! 
Have a great day!  

Dodgy Background Rescue!

Hello!
Yep, we've all been there... had a good idea for a colour combo that you end up really not liking!
I started out with this...

Dina Wakely paints....love these colours but maybe not all together? Not really feeling it at all...maybe black splats and stamping?

Nope, still not a fan. So, plan B. I punched a circle from card, then used it as a 'frame' to find some bits I DID like....

I drew around the circle, so I could line up the punch exactly where I wanted it....

Rub out the pencil lines, and you have some shapes to play around with!
I made a card....

(And I make cards so rarely I can't get a decently lit picture by the looks of it!)
Doodles around the circles...

And doodles for 'stems'....

I saved the rest of the background to use in other projects!
Have a good Sunday,
Trish xxx

7 Dots Studio - Wedding Card

Hello!!

Thank you so much for joining us here today! I have a special wedding card to share, which was made for some dear friends of ours!!

With this card I really wanted to capture a soft elegance which would be fitting for a wedding. The Messy Head paper line from 7 Dots Studio is just gorgeous and I really wanted to showcase this!

Not only that, the matching 7 Dots Studio Messy Head Elements have some stunning pieces, that I just had to use it as the sentiment and of course, compliment the range perfectly.

The colours from the papers are soft, but modern hints come through with text and ink splodges.

After stitching the papers I used some Wood Icons from Prima, the Borders were given a coat of Art Basics Heavy White Gesso and then a light wash of Prima Chalk Paint in Plum. The Flowers LV were just touched with Prima Chalk Paint in Sand. Both of these colours helped to keep the tone of the card similar all over.

To add extra to the spray I coiled some Prima Wired Thread in Ecru and lastly, some yummy Prima Say It In Crystals Gems, Prima Frosted Mica Flakes and Gold Rush Glitter Glass to add that touch of sparkle. 

Hope you've enjoyed today's post,

Hugs,

Georgie xx