Paper Play

Today I am posting a second project over on the Snazzys blog, playing with the wonderful Basecoat collection from Kaisercraft and some of the great texture stamps.
Just click HERE if you want a break down on how I made this.

Thank you for visiting and please remember, if you want to stay in touch after the first of July, follow me on Bloglovin as well.

Claiming my blog with bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Yes, it's official and I know a lot of you are worried about it.

My friend Sylvia has made it really easy, click HERE, to be taken to her blog where she describes it all clearly and even provides links to get it all sorted.

Base Coat collection sneak peek

Hello everyone and lovely to have you visiting. Today it's my turn to post over on the Snazzys blog, where we are featuring the lovely Kaisercraft Base Coat collection.

As you can see, I made another LO of my wee grand daughter Lucia with a photo from just after she was born.. If you want to see how I put it together, all you need to do is click HERE.
Thanks for visiting and have a lovely day.

Behind the Mask

Hello everyone and happy Saturday to you all.

This week has been an extremely busy one for me professionally, and it made me think about the many different roles we play in life and the personas we juggle with on a day to day basis.... Wife, mother, professional, artist or crafter, friend, - we all will have our own list of personas that we display to the world in different situations. Probably one of the reasons so many of us turn to art journaling, because that is a place where we can totally be ourselves. Anyway, enough waffle, just to share some of the thoughts behind this tag which eventually will be integrated into an art journal spread.

I am not a great fan of buttons on the whole, but I wanted to play in the current Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge and buttons kind of fitted my theme. To quote the wonderful Mark Twain:
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man, the biography of the man himself cannot be written. So very true, and in addition, people can press our buttons or we button up etc. etc.

Anyway, I shall stop philosophising and get on to my tag: The background was created with a mixture of paints and Distress Inks. I added some TIm Holtz Tissue Tape, some background stamping and embossing with a couple of different folders.The button at the top I found in my stash and I surrounded it with a couple of Tim's wings, altered with some paints and alcohol inks

 The words were stamped with peg stamps on some scraps of paper, cut out and glued on

 The vocal Image from the Tim Holtz Classic 5 set was stamped on tissue paper and then integrated into the page. I added some tear drop doodles and a few rubs.

 A pen nib and home made clay heart embellishment treated with crackle accents, some rusty wire and indeed some tiny buttons, finishes it all off.

Hope you like it, if you want to see a larger image, just click on the photo. Thank you for visiting and have a fantastic weekend!

I am entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge "Buttons"

A Box with a Story

Hello everyone and lovely to see you!
Let me start by saying a huge big thank you to everyone who was kind enough to leave a comment here for my Blogworthy link post. Seeing this was the second time I showed this project, I appreciate the time you took to comment even more, so THANK YOU you are all amazing!!

On to today:

It's my turn to post over at the Artistic Stamper today. This is an altered box with a story attached to it. To find out more, please click HERE

Thank you for visiting and have a creative day!

Feeling honoured

Today my wonderful blog friend Buttons told me that one of my projects had been chosen by Tim Holtz to receive a Blogworthy Link.

Am I excited, - well yes, who wouldn't be right? The link actually goes to the Snazzys blog, as it was one of the DT posts I did for them. As I only showed a sneak peek here, I now feel I want to show the full project here and how I did it, so here goes:

 I started with three colours of Distress Paints, Antique Linen, Bundled Sage and Frayed Burlap. I layered on a good layer of paint, spritzt a bit with water and then dried with my heat gun. I then played around with some Tim Holtz Tissue Tape  and Prima Washi Tapes. I also used some stencils and masks  from my stash,Next came various background stamps and the main stamp, (La Blanche) stamped on Tissue Paper, just to make sure it would land up exactly where I wanted it... I glued that onto the canvas and dabbed some Distress Inks over and around it.

I made a cluster from various bits and pieces and adhered it with Gel Medium.  I also added some Prima Flowers. I masked the main image with a damp baby wipe and some kitchen roll. I then painted the cluster with Gesso and when that was dry took a deep breath and spritzt it with Dylusions Sprays in Melted Chocolate and Black Marble. Oops, a bit dark, so White Linen came to the rescue... I also rubbed some Treasure Gold over the flowers.

Next came some of the wonderful  Tim Holtz Remnant Rubs. I added some crackle to the corners, did some more background stamping and added the sentiment, (a Tim Holtz stamp which I cut into strips and stamped on to some scraps of left over Prima Tea Thyme paper). A bit of shading around the words, and voila, project complete. Here are a few close ups still:

Well, I hope I have not bored you by showing this project for a second time, but, - not everyone hops over to another blog, and like I said, I had not shown it here. 

So thank you for visiting, for your support and for your lovely comments, you are all wonderful!!
Have a great creative week!

Help... a card

Hello everyone and thank so much for looking in here today!

It's not often that I make cards anymore, and I feel I am well out of practice,  but I needed a thank you one and none of the ones that I still had were suitable. It's for a Francophile couple, and so I felt it needed both male and female touches as well as a Paris theme of course...

Almost all of the elements are from a certain Mr Holtz.
The base is  Kraft Card, covered with a piece of distressed paper from the French Industrial collection.
I put a piece of Blue Kraft Core paper through an embossing folder, sanded the raised bit and then inked it lightly. Next came the Stampendous Paris stamp, stamped in Plum Archival. I cut it in a Spellbinder die and inked around the edges while the paper was still in the die with the Plum Archival and some Weathered Wood Distress Ink. I stamped the stamp again, fussy cut the flowers, coloured them with Distressmarkers and then layered them for some more dimension.

Next I stamped the Tim Holtz gentlemen in Black Archival, cut them out, inked them a bit with Antique Linen Distress Ink and a tinsy bit of brown that was still in my ink blending tool to add some shadow.

I stamped the word Thanks with some tiny letter peg stamps onto another piece of the French Industrial paper, cut it into squares and inked around the edges. I then layered it all up with a Tattered Doily cut from the same paper with a couple of embellishments and some ephemera from the collection and there you have it.

Well I hope you like the card, it was quite quick to make. 

Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful creative week.

S is for Seasons, for Sun and for Simple

Hello everyone and happy Sunday to you all.

This week I so enjoyed the theme over Simon Says Stamp and Show which is S that I decided to make another project:

It's a tag accordion card depicting the 4 Seasons, with the Sun being a prominent feature. Having been obsessed lately with lots of texture and embellishments and numerous layers, I also decided to keep it much more Simple and just use Stamping,  with a few rub-ons and a few Chit Chat Stickers as the only embellishments.

It was fun to dig out some hidden and long neglected stamps and to use otherwise rarely used Distress Inks.

So here we go, first up is Spring:

I am sorry to say I have no idea anymore where the flower and leaves stamps used for this project came from, I have had them for years, but the Sentiment Stamps are from the Donna Downey Empowered Words collection that I recently purchased.
Next up is Summer, similar stamps, but different colours:

I think the main colour used here is Sienna. This had not actually been my intention as it gives it rather a late Summer feel, but I think all these Ss were starting to cast a Spell on me.

So here is Autumn, the Sun has now turned red:

And finally Winter, somber and cool...

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my second S project, I had so much fun with this, even while writing this post more and more S words popped in my head.

Hope you enjoying a wonderful Sunday and see you soon again....

Hope for Bee the Change

Hello everyone and thank you for popping in to my little place in blogland.

The block canvas I am showing you today is inspired by two things, a petition that is going on in Europe right now, to do with preserving bee populations, - and a recipe challenge that my blog friend Buttons is hosting at the moment for Our Creative Corner.

Alright on to my piece,  from the 9 items in the recipe I used: Lace, Metal, Wood, Clay, Inks, Paints and Stains.

I started by making a clay tile out of Sculpey. When baked I painted it with Antique Linen Distress Paint, added a scrap of paper from the Tim Holtz Crowded Attic Collection, distressed it with Gathered Twigs DI and then stamped a decorative script stamps from Alpha Stamps. I added a little Sculpey heart, stamped the same script stamp in the centre and then glued the two together.

Next I worked on the the wooden block canvas (not really sure what it's cold but I have had a number of these in my stash for ages..) I started with adding some texture through my beloved Chicken Wire stencil, because it reminds me of a honey comb. I then adhered various bits and pieces: some vintage lace, a filigree corner piece (cut in half, a trick I learnt from Buttons) some Tim Holtz Ideaology wings and a crown..When all was dry I covered everything with Gesso followed by Antique Linen Distress Paint, Stain and spray made with Antique Linen re-inker and water in a mini mister.. When that had dried  I  added some strips of TH tissue tape, some background stamping with an old script stamp, flowers and pen nibs and sprayed with various sprays, Walnut Stain and Cosmic Shimmer Sprays, plus my favourite Dylusions White Linen to tone it down here and there.

The final steps were to add some gilding paste and a few Treasure Gold highlights. Finally I glued on my tile, a stamped bee (Mr Holtz again) and the stamped TH Hope ticket.

As you can see I painted and stamped over the sides too.

Well there you have it. Hope you like it and if you have a spare minute, please sign the bee petition, we need those bees!!

Obviously I am going to add this to the challenge at Our Creative Corner

Have a creative day full of inkyness and fun!!