I won! I won!

Woohoo! I won the retailer blog hop over on Tando Creative! Earlier this week I received a box crammed full of all these fabulous goodies: (for some reason Mr Blogger wants to display the pic sideways)

Among all thee fabulous goodies was a 4 horse carousel.  I love carousels so that was the first thing I played with:

Loads of Fresco Finish paints, gold paint dabber, die cut flourishes and gems later, I used edge punches to make a card trim for the top and bottom and used mica flakes all over the roof.  Here's a look at the opposite side:

This was so much fun to do and went together so easily, I can't wait to play with some more of my prize, and with the Pebeo Fantasy Moon paints.

Thanks for looking.

International Card Making Day...

...is today. Over on the Paperartsy blog Leandra has a competition to celebrate. I don't really do cards, but I thought I would have a go, especially with the chance to win Paperartsy stamps up for grabs!



I painted the front of a card blank with my favourite combo (claret fresco finish, crackle medium then nougat fresco finish) then embossed a music script stamp with gold. I went round the edge with my new love, frantage aged teal embossing powder. The Paperartsy bauble and word were stamped onto grunge paper that had been painted with pea coat and Hyde park fresco finish mixed to match the teal in the frantage. I embossed those with white detail powder, cut them out and edged them all with a gold paint dabber. A bit of gold ribbon tied around the top of the baubles and I was done.

Thanks for looking.

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More Mixed Media

So while waiting for the texture paste to dry on the gift box I started fiddling around with a canvas board I found ( yes, I literally found it in a carrier bag of stash I forgot I had!). I had an idea for something in shades of brown and cream with lots of layers but then it sort of went in a totally different direction (except for the layers, I did end up with those)





Well, there is some brown in there, but I spied the jar of Aged Teal frantage embossing powder I picked up at Ally Pally and decided I had to use that somehow so I veered off into green and blue territory. I discovered to my horror that I do not possess any Toad Hall fresco finish! How did that happen?! So I mixed French Roast into Hey Pesto and got something close.

I love how the Frantage looks around the edge. Must get more of that!

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Mixed Media Madness

I had a very boring plain brown box I intended to use as a gift box but first I needed to pretty it up a bit



I gave it a couple of coats of claret fresco finish then applied crackle glaze followed by vintage lace fresco finish. The box itself had slight ridges, almost like corrugated cardboard, so that added some interesting texture as well.



I stamped the Paperartsy birds in the grass stamp around the sides, then mixed some texture paste with some of the claret paint and pushed that through a crafters workshop template on the lid and around the sides. When that was dry I mixed some hey pesto fresco finish into some more texture paste and pushed that through the grass part of the template on the lid. A bit of washi tape around the lid and I was done.

Thanks for looking.

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Ally Pally Stash Fun

Had a great time yesterday at Ally Pally watching Leandra and Lin demoing on the Paperartsy stand, bumping in to old friends (mainly on the Paperartsy stand) and buying loads of stash - also mainly on the Paperartsy stand. Can you see a theme here? lol.

I did hear a couple of ladies outside saying it wasn't as good as previous years, "there weren't many peel offs" (this is a bad thing?!) How many peel offs can you need? Besides, Topaz Crafts were there. I avoided that stand like the plague, but if you are in to peel offs I would imagine Ms Bibby (who was there in person) would stock more than enough!

Anywho, I have been busy with one thing after another today and haven't had much time to play, but I was determined to make something with my new stash so did a quickish tag with one of my new Lynne Perella stamps from Paperartsy, some crunchy waxed paper from Paperartsy, and some keys from..... Ali-Crafts (yes, I did buy from a couple of other stands!)




The paints are a variety of Fresco Finish colours blended and layered and the techniques are all ones demoed by the dynamic duo yesterday, including the simple but genius idea of Leandra's to clear emboss the Lynne Perella stamps.

Thanks for looking.

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Where does the time go?!

I can't believe it is mid-September already! Where has this year gone?
I've had a bit of  a play with a configurations box

I'm not really sure it's finished, but I've been looking at it for a week now and I can't think of what else to do with it so it's done for now!

I used some music manuscript tissues I found on a shopping trip to cover the outside of the box and painted the whole thing with Hey Pesto fresco finish with some French Roast dry brushed on top, then started adding various bits and pieces.  The flowers are made with t!m's tattered pinecone die and the music notes are from a Maya Road key ring painted with Pumpkin Soup fresco finish and stamped with a music stamp.  The ballerina is from the Artistic Stamper plate by Sioux Jenny's and the jazz band is a Graphic 45 stamp.

So, being stumped with what else to do with the box I decided to play with a tag instead

I painted the tag with Vintage Lace fresco finish then a thin coat of London night and some Pansy dry brushed over the top, then I stamped a Paperartsy text stamp with Dusty Concord DI then made a mistake so I mixed some Vintage Lace and London Night with lots of glazing medium and painted that all over the stamped again with Jet Black archival but that was too much so I faded that out with some more of the glaze.  The bird and grass are Paperartsy again, and then I pushed some Viva Ferro through some crafters workshop templates - blackberry for the birdcage and branch and iron for the butterflies.

What the heck is wrong with Blogger today? It keeps turning my pics sideways when uploading so I am having to rotate them myself before uploading so they come out up the right way!!

Hope you are all making the most of the gorgeous weekend before summer goes away.

Holiday fun

I've just got back from a short holiday to Barcelona with my two daughters. We had a great time wandering around, munching tapas and sipping sangria - perfect.

Got back on Friday and started playing with a back to front canvas (working on the back to make a sort of shadow frame).





While wandering around I stumbled across a collectors market and picked up some old postcards and ephemera so used some of those on this.

For the frame I stuck tissue paper and then spread on some texture paste which I stamped then heat dried to bubble it and add more texture. That covered the staples and canvas edge and then I painted on several layers of Fresco Finish paints. I might give it a touch of rub n buff later.

I used the same paints on the main canvas through stencils and some random stamping then started layering up ephemera and pictures.

Alas, my trusty old printer decided to give up on me so this isn't finished yet. I have more pics to print (have ordered from an online photo printing service) and once those are on I have some charms and other stuff to add, but I am quite pleased with how it is turning out.

Ah well, back to work tomorrow :(

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Tagging along

I'm quite impressed with myself managing to make stuff three weeks in a row and blogging as well!

This week I have been playing with backgrounds on tags.

First was pan pastels (the embellishment is to hide a boo boo I made :o )



Second I played with fresco finish paints and crackle glaze plus the memory box poppy die which I love



And finally I had a go at "bumping" a stencil. First time I've tried this technique and my attempt isn't perfect but I get the idea now. I also stamped on some fabric as this is my new fave technique since Artsycrafts




Thanks for looking.

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Two Weeks in a Row

Hi everyone. Are we enjoying the wonderful British summer?! I think I'm getting webbed feet :o
I thought I would try to discipline myself to blog once a week so here I am for the second week in a row.
I have been playing with the shelf unit thingy that I showed you last week. After base coating it thoroughly I painted the bottom section and the drawers with Fresco Finish in claret, then a layer of crackle glaze and a top coat of vintage lace:



I left the drawer handles plain claret - love that colour for an accent shade!
Decided this was way too pink and clean looking so I set to work with various washes of Fresco Finish - pumpkin soup, claret, chocolate pudding, then dry brushing with French roast. Lots of tissue tape, stamping onto Paperartsy crackle - amazing stuff (did you play with it yet H?) and some die cut metal.



The little vases are fancy bottle tops painted and stamped with script.
Thanks for looking.


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Hello Peeps

And another six months have passed! I promise to try harder, honest.
So, what have I been doing? Settling in to my new job, which I am enjoying, and I also decided to rearrange my bedroom (which is also my craft room - in fact, it's more my craft room where I happen to sleep). Both of these things have caused a major mojo crisis as I haven't had much spare time and, when I have, I haven't been able to find anything :o
Anyway, 3 weeks ago I attended the whole three days of the fabulous Artsy Crafts weekend.
Day one was spent making a fabric book. All new techniques to me and so much fun. Here are some pics of my version:



This is the front page made using all kinds of Artsy Crafts painty, inky, stamping techniques plus . . . . . sewing! With a sewing machine! I was terrified, but I needn't have been as Lin and Leandra were on hand as always with lots of help, advice and tips to make it all so much fun.
Here are the inside pages - I still have one more to make!






The next day was more inky fun making a niche called The Sewing Room






And then the final day was spent making a fab grungy piece called Rusty Relic



I am so glad I went on this event because, as you have probably heard, it was the last ever one :(
I have attended 3 Artsy Crafts events altogether and every one has been amazing. Both Lin and Leandra are fantastically talented in their own right and together they produce stunning art and then have graciously shared that with others.
So, after spending such a fantastic 3 days my mojo couldn't help but be inspired so I have been playing again. A while ago I was given a delicious box of designer chocolates. The box itself had a clear acetate panel in the lid so I saved it to alter. Here's what I did with it




Not the best photo - taken with my iPad which has a pretty basic camera, but I had fun making it.
I went to the Craft Barn extravaganza yesterday and bought lots of new stash including this little beauty



Although the pic is tiny, he is quite a big thing in real life. At the moment he is sitting on my desk having just had a coat of gesso as I didn't want the bare wood soaking up all my paint. I have sorted through my paints and found lots of beige, white and light neutrals that have only small amounts left so I plan to mix these all together and apply as a base coat, then I will start layering on the colours I really want and will hopefully get good coverage with them. That's the plan anyway. I'll keep you posted as to how that works out. . . . . hopefully it won't take 6 months!

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New Year, New Me

Well, it's been over 6 months since my last post and, to quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the face of all the world has changed I think. For quite a while now work has been ....... uncomfortable, and this intensified around the middle of last year (seems strange saying that!). This meant that i had very little spare time and when I did have some I wasn't in a very good place so didn't get any crafting done. Anyway, right at the end of the year I was head hunted! I was offered the post of Executive Assistant to the CEO of a group of companies, and so when I returned to work after the Christmas break I handed in my notice. I start my new post mid-February, and it's like a huge cloud has lifted! I am in a much better place now, so much so that I have actually made something this weekend! I used one of my fabby Christmas gifts, the caged bird die from his Holtziness the Tim, and I am blogging about it with my other fantastic prezzie - my iPad :0 so I'm not sure how this will work!


Wishing you all a Happy New Year x - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I'm still alive !

Bet you wondered about that! I haven't had any time, energy or mojo lately which is why I have been MIA. 

My curiousity was piqued by all the smash book talk and then I found this in Paperchase:




The pages inside are lined, plain and graph paper plus these little beauties:

A clear plastic 4 pocket divider

A clear plastic single large pocket

This is quite a useful card pocket

 and a lovely zipped pocket!






My idea was to open the wire binding, take out all the pages, make some of my own pages with PP etc, decorate the covers, then put it  back together again.  So far I have deconstructed it and decorated the front cover

I had some old world map wrapping paper so I stuck that to the inside with glossy accents so it showed through to the front.   The atlas cover was from my stash and I fixed that to the outside of the cover.

Inside the front cover I painted the back of the map with some Honey Dew fresco finishes (love that paint), stamped some Artistic Stamper travel stamps over it then went to town with travel themed bits and bobs from my stash.

Once I've got around to sorting out what I'm using for my inside pages and puting it all back together it will be a travel journal (just in case you hadn't guessed!)

I found these fabby things in Muji:

I love the little hand paper clippy things, and the pen holder will be useful.

Anyway, at least I seem to have got my mojo back.  All I need ow is a  bit more time to get it all done!

Various bits and pieces

I realise my blogging has been sporadic at best lately.  I'm not in a very good place right now due to one thing or another (mainly one thing) but I won't bore you with that.  Suffice to say my mojo is largely missing right now.  I have not been idle though, gentle readers, perish the thought!  I have been doing some bits and bobs of yarnery and stitchery that consists of following designs by other people thereby utilising their mojo while mine is off wandering.
I learned to knit and crochet when I was a child and have done most kinds of both crafts.  One branch of knitting eluded me though... lace. I can crochet lace no problem but have never got around to even trying knitted lace (i.e. shetland/orenburg/estonian).  My first attempt to rectify this lack was made 4 years ago during my chemo/radiotherapy treatments.  Needless to say it did not go well! Trying to focus on new and complicated techiques while your brain is fried by chemical and radiation poisoning is not really a good idea.  So, on clearing out some dark corners of storage cupboards I came across the patterns and yarn and decided to try again.  Here is where I have got so far:

This is one a third pattern repeats of the edging, and there are 49 repeats in total for just the edging.  It's taken me over a week to get this far, so I figure at least a year just to comlete the edge.  I think I'm doing ok, although I think the vine pattern may have gone adrift a couple of times by the look of it! It is intended to be the Magikal Earth Shawl by Sandy Terp and this is how the finished article should look

 
I have a long way to go!  In the meantime I found the level of focus and concentration needed for lace knitting was so high that I needed something simple to fit in between, so I took up the crochet hook and did a simple shrug for DD which I completed just yesterday

Finally I did get around to some papercrafting.  I decided I needed somewhere to keep cards I had made.  I had intended to use an empty cereal packet  but DD had a tidy session and threw them all away! I therefore scoured the net and found a tutorial from Inking Idaho which almost fit the bill. I wanted something a bit bigger though so I started with some 12 x 12 cardstock then covered it with some old K & Co papers from my stash

So, lots of little bits and pieces keeping me out of mischief.  Hopefully my mojo will come home soon and I can get really inky and messy!
Hope everyone is keeping well x

Playing with Art Parts

Inspired by the gorgeous sample THE Linda Elbourne had on her demo station at Ally Pally I bought the Studio 490 Art Parts Cake Stand.  I've finally managed to have a play and made this for my DD

 

Wren is her family nickname, and she loves playing scrabble, so using the tiles was and obvious choice.  The "vase" of flowers was inspired by this genius idea from the wonderful Lin Brown, I just shaped the grungepaper fringe to make the leaves a bit more spiked then added some tiny lilies.  Here is the back view

I needed something to cover the frame at the back of the mini canvas so it looked ok from all angles.  I just coloured up a piece of paper, stuck that on the back then used and image of Peter Rabbit and his cousin Benjamin Bunny (regular visitors may recall DD is a big fan).

Thanks for visiting x

Here he is.......

the fairy elephant in his magical glade in a cage! He's a bit shy, so it's difficult to take photographs, but if you look closely you can see him wandering around in amongst the prima vines and flowers. 
He was a decopatch elephant and I gave him a coat of eco paint in Ocean as a base then blasted him with every glimmer and shimmer mist I owned (that didn't have a clogged valve), then stuck some wings from a butterfly I had in my stash (yes I pulled the wings off a butterfly but, to be fair, one of them had already fallen off anyway).
My DDs bought the cage for my birthday last year and I have been gathering bits for it ever since.
Here is a top view

I found some stuff in a model shop that was for making landscapes for train sets and used that for the base, it started out green and I covered it with flower soft, glitter and some bling and Prima pebbles.  I used some mirror card surrounded by moss as a pond, and then went mad with Prima vines and glimmer misted flowers.

Here's a glimpse inside with the lid open.

and this is the "sun" made with a t!m rosette and a CI image.

Had loads of fun making this :)

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine today x

Another DD birthday

Yep, their birthdays are only 2 weeks apart.  In fact, for the past two weeks they have been the same age as there is only 11 and a half months between them (yes, I am mad, are you only just realising this?)  Anyway, here is eldest DDs birthday card

This is taken from THE Wendy Vecchi first book (as that is the only one I own!).  I used some handmade paper I found  in Paperchase and added a second butterfly as the paper was a bit too big.  The matting is horrible I know.  Matting is not in my skill set I'm afraid, but luckily the paper has a ragged edge and I distressed the edges of the mats a bit too so it doesn't look too bad.

I am now off to continue work on my fairy elephant......... all will be revealed in due time my pretties!

Kaisercraft Paperartsy style

DDs got me the Kaisercraft desk organiser for mother's day last week, so I've been putting it together today using my PaperArtsy Thorndon Hall papers

The sheet music isn't Thorndon Hall, it's something random from my stash, and the piece just above the three drawers isn't covered in paper.  That has a coat of the new Fresco Finish in London Midnight, then a thin layer of the crackle glaze followed by a coat of Vintage Lace. It's magic! It's so simple, no worrying about how long to leave between coats or anything, just let the crackle dry (or dry it with a heat gun) then put on the top coat and the crackles appear.  Here's a close up, the crackles really are amazing

 I stamped a  bird from each of the three new PaperArtsy stamp plates I bought yesterday straight on top with  black archival.  It takes the image like a dream. 
Now I just have to get organised enough to put stuff in the organiser!

Ally Pally

Had a great time yesterday at Ally Pally.  Not having any craft stores anywhere nearby it's good to get to actually see all the stash in person and watching the demos is really inspiring. Managed to spend a huge sum and buy loads of stuff.  Here's a peek

I had snaffled this huge basket that DDs had filled with bath stufff at Christmas for stuff I needed to sort out. I managed to fill it one go with my Ally Pally spree.  My new pal, Freyered ( my PIF from the uber talented Donna) was so amazed she came to get a better look!

I bought lots of things that weren't on my shopping list, including some Art Parts after seeing what THE Linda Elbourne had done with them. Jennie had a geat deal on some Wendy Vecchi stamps as well as some really gorgeous new stamps, and I just had to get some of the new PaperArtsy Fresco Finishes after seeing Lin demo them, especially the crackle glaze!

Saw quite a few amazing people, including Alison, Minxy and Helen but alas did not manage to find Carmen. I think she was hiding from me :(

Anyway, am off now to play.  Hope everyone is having a good weekend and enjoying the fabulous weather x

At Last!

I finally got some time for me! Not a lot of time, and not a huge project, but it feels good to have finally made something again.... a card for my youngest DDs birthday in a couple of weeks

She may be all "grown up" but she still loves Peter Rabbit so I used a puffy sticker of him on the card, the rest is Fairy Flora background papers and graphic 45 stamps.  Unfortunately the camera flash bounced off the sticker so you can't see it.  Here it is on it's own but very blurry! My camera skills leave much to be desired!

Anyway. it's great to make something again after such a long time.  Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Chaos and Confusion

I can't beleive it has been 3 weeks since my last post! Work has been insane I have been peeling myself off the mattress in the morning, slogging through the day then coming home and collapsing in a heap.  I haven't done any crafting and have barely been online.
So, this post is just to say I am still alive!  I'm away with work for the first half of this week, but hopefully things will settle down a bit after that and I can get my life back! In the meantime I miss everyone and look forward to catching up with you all soon x