Love

Love is in the air ...  With Valentines fast approaching are you feeling the lurve?!!

Our new fortnightly challenge starts today at Try it on Tuesday  ... and we are all about Celebrating Valentines Day (include a heart).  Dust down your cupid stamps, your bows, arrows and hearts and see what loving you can create!!

I really enjoyed making my DT entry for this challenge.  I managed to snatch 2 hours on Sunday afternoon to get creative having had a back to back weekend schedule of football and rugby.  Normally this would result in me only getting my act together at the point my slot was over but not this week!  With the excitement of going to see Ronan Keating that evening (great concert and nice eye candy!) I cracked on and achieved my goal!!

I embossed the stamps for the background in white before using distress inks in a combination of pink, purple and turquoise shades.  A quick spritz & flick with water and a little gathered twigs around the edge completed it.  I cut the flourishes from grungeboard and painted them with Byzantia paint.  The heart is also grungeboard which I embossed with script before inking with pink & purple distress.  I then added Silver Fox embossing powder which is quite coarse so gives a lovely texture.

The crown is hand cut from a vintage book and I stamped 'Love' using old printers letters painted with acrylic paint.  The material strips were stamped using archival and spritzed with Shimmerz Sea Foam.  I crinkled the muslin up and dried it with a heatgun.  I didn't expect it to retain the crinkles but the spray ink has given it a bit of body and it's actually quite solid which was great!

I used a domino covered with part of an old playing card and UTEE'd for my other embellishment and stamped a little butterfly to my gorgeous girl.

Hope you feel like getting into the love game and want to have a play along with us!  x

Don't forget our great sponsor for this challenge 

who are offering a £10 store voucher!

I'm also entering this into Fashionable Stamping Challenge 40 - Show Some Love.

Thai Boats

I love to change the artwork on our walls at home to keep it fresh and I also love to have reminders of our holidays.  I love delving into mixed media techniques and I decided to make a canvas of these two Thai fishing boats tied up on the beach at Kata.

I stuck my head in a couple of technique books to try and get some initial direction before heading off with absolutely no idea (same as usual) LOL!!!

I planned to make this for a guy we met at Christmas in Phuket who has an apartment at Kata Beach, but I've decided to keep this one and make him another as I want to put it up on our wall!! 

The canvas measures 12" x 18".  I painted a coat of gesso first before starting to add my paint colours.  I used glass bead gel to create my circles.  It has taken a few days to finish as there were several delays to allow it to dry.  I bought acrylic inks to experiment with and they are really fun to use.  Their colours are so strong and they act like a resist when dry.  If you spray them with water as they run, they fan out and create gorgeous effects.

The sand was poured over regular gel which I applied with a palette knife and pushed the fragments of glass and shells into.  I used rock candy crackle for the bottom and side sections into which I sprinkled turquoise seed beads.

I nearly had it all completed but felt something was missing so the addition of the fish was the final step before I was happy with it.  I re-tinted the fish with acrylic paint to blend it into the canvas and then used a spritz of heirloom gold perfect pearls to give a little sheen to his scales.

I wasn't planning on entering any challenges with this project, but I've just come across the Eclectic Paperie Get Altered Challenge which is to 'Using Canvas' ... and it seems a waste not to take part!!

Right ... off to get the hammer and put up a new fixing on the wall.  We are back to wet & grey today with a chance of snow so this will help me to remember sunnier days!  x

Canvas Houses

Wow - the sun is shining today and we have blue sky and puffy clouds!  Seems to have been grey for so long that whilst it's still cold, it's a gorgeous sight and lifts my spirits.  Everything seems so much better when the sun shines!

This fortnight at Try it on Tuesday the challenge is for your project to include stitching - real or faux.  I love adding stitching to my projects although my sewing machine does not feel the same so we have a rather tricky relationship!!  Fortunately for my machine, this project was a hand sewing one so it could stay sulking in the corner ...

We are very lucky to be sponsored by Crafty-Emblies who are offering a £10 store voucher to the winner! 

 

I made these canvas houses for a good friend of mine who wanted to use them to promote the kits she was selling.  The canvas came pre-cut and I also had the string, beads and some stuffing supplied.  

I started by sketching out the design for each house in pencil before using acrylic paints to create each one.  They are painted on both sides but I forgot to photograph the backs before parting with them so I can only show the fronts which is a shame as the pink house has a flowering creeper growing all over it but you'll just have to imagine it!  

Once dry, I half stitched them up before stuffing them using the filling supplied plus some additional soft toy filling.

I painted the beads to match each house and plaited some of the string before threading the beads.  The strings were then glued into the houses to ensure they stay put and the bottom sewn up.

They are a really fun project so long as you remember to punch the holes with a bradle rather than try to get the needle to do the work.  My thumb was testament to my mistake on the first one where I hadn't realised this was the way to go!!

Hope you get some sunshine in your day too ... xx

Runner Up!!

 

 

I decided to enter the annual competition run by Scrapbook Magazine to find the Scrapbooker of the Year.  The competition required three layouts to be submitted by the end of October.  I spent a lot of time creating my pages and was really pleased with them so I was feeling cautiously hopeful that they would be good enough.

Finally, at the end of November I got a mail to say that I was one of the nine runners up!!  I don't know how many entries there were but probably quite a lot as it's a one of only two dedicated scrapping magazines in the UK.   I am really excited to have been selected and so this is the first of the three layouts which I can now publish on my blog!

And this is the stash I won!!

 

I used many different techniques to create this page - too many to list, but this was the start of my new idea to try to get the photograph to blend into the background.  I did this using a combination of molding paste, paints and inks and white embossing. 

The flower sprig is by Prima but the other flowers were cut from old music and an old magazine page (the colours of the advert were perfect for my scheme) using the Tattered Florals Die and the Tattered Flower Garland Die.

I'm going to enter this page into the following challenges so I hope they all like it too!  x

Fashionable Stamping Challenge 38 - Surprise Us, 
My Mum's Craft Shop - Anything Goes, 
Opus Gluei - Challenge 147 Free For All, 
Simon Says Stamp and Show - The Totally Mad (Anything Goes) Tea Party
Stamping for the Weekend - Anything Goes.

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year and that your 2013 is everything you would want it to be.  x