Go confidently in the direction of your dreams

Hello everyone and thank you for dropping by here. Today I am sharing my penultimate project for Snazzys where it is my turn this week.. It was a great ride but time to move on..... Anyway, if you want to see the details, please click HERE

Thanks for dropping by here today

Autumn Gift Set

Hello everyone, welcome and lovely to see you here. Can you believe it is nearly the end of the month?
It is my turn to create a project for Spellbinders as one for their international Blog Ambassadors.

I decided to create a gift set, a card and a box, featuring their wonderful 3D M-Bossabilities. If you don't know these yet, you are in for a treat, you have never seen anything like it. The embossed impression with these folders, truly is 3D!
The folders I used were:
Rustic Wreath and Persian Splendor
I also used a number of dies:
Font One Upper Case
Orchard Harvest Tags and Accents
Ribbon Banners
Blossoms Five
Splendid Circles
Here is a quick step by step of how I put it all together, lets start with the card:
I cut a piece of 5 x 7 smooth white card stock, put it in the Rustic Wreath folder and ran it through the Grand Calibur using the Pink and the Raspberry Plates. This folder is actually a Christmas one, but by using Autumnal colours the wreath was easily transformed. Here you can see how I coloured it with Distress Inks: Wild Honey, Peeled Paint, Crushed Olive, a tiny bit of Pine Needles, Rusty Hinge, Aged Mahogany and finally Gathered Twigs.

A lot of colours, but I love how the blending of them just brings out the embossing. Here is a close up of the wreath:

I coloured the berries with a bit of Treasure Gold Renaissance Gold.

Next I stamped by sentiment and then cut and embossed it with the number 3 (3rd smallest) of the Splendid Circles dies.

As you can see, I added a bit of string and a brad.

I also stamped a greeting (Tim Holtz Simple Sayings) and cut and embossed it with one of the Ribbon Banner dies, these dies fit the Tim Holtz sayings just perfectly.

For further decoration of my card I stamped a few leaves (Artistic Stamper), cut them out by hand and coloured them to match the rest of my card

I made a flower, using the Blossoms 5 die and then matted and layered it all up with some other little leaves from the Orchard Harvest set and a few bits and pieces from my stash

The box was done in a very similar way. I made a 5 x 7" sized box out of Kraftcard and then  I embossed a piece of 5 x 7 card, this time with the Persian Splendour folder, This made the topper of the box. I then cut and embossed 2 further pieces which I trimmed to fit on the sides of the box, colouring everything with the same colours.

As you can see I cut and embossed the word Art with the Alphabet dies (love these, the fact you can emboss them really makes them pop), and then embellished in a similar way.

And finally the completed project:

Well, hope you like it, thank you for visiting and happy October when it comes to you all. Can't wait to show you some Halloween projects soon.

Faded Glory

Hello everyone and thanks for dropping by.
My turn today to show a project over on the Artistic Stamper blog

To see the full project, all you need to do is click HERE
Thanks for dropping by again and see you over there hopefully....

Fly Free altered canvas

Happy Wednesday everyone and lovely to see you here. Today I am sharing a little canvas with you, created for Sin City Stamps

Today will be the last time for a while that I will be featuring these two beautiful stamp sets:

 Butterfly Love

and Journaling with Terri Sproul

I started with a little 6 x 6" canvas and covered it with random strips of paper

Next I painted it with two colours of acrylic paint, I used Distress Paints in Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire.

Then I knocked the colour back a bit by going over it with white acrylic paint mixed with Golden brand glazing liquid.

As you can see, I also added a bit more interest by painting some colour back through a couple of stencils, I used two of the new Tim Holtz tag stencils. I also did some background stamping with the journaling stamps and some white paint.

Now for the vocal image, - I created a background with Squeezed Lemonade, Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire Distress Inks and Stamped the largest of the Butterflies in Cobalt Blue Archival ink and then I cut it out.

Time to put it all together: I added a filigree piece and flower to the centre of the butterfly, die cut some letters (I used the new Spellbinders ones) to spell Fly Free. I then added some more background stamping with Cobalt Archival straight onto the canvas. I added a piece of butterfly trim and positioned it all on the canvas until I was happy with the composition.

The final touch was to add a bit of shading with a black charcoal pencil to make the letters pop a bit more.

Before I sign off: on the 12th of October we will have a fabulous blog hop, make sure you don't miss it!! There will be an awesome prize!!!

Well, hope you like my project, quick, easy and fun to do. Thank you for visiting and see you next time!

Playing with Pastels (no not Pan...)

Hello everyone and thank you for dropping in here today.

Recently I have been much inspired by the beautiful work of Maria from Maria's Knutsel Plezier. She makes the most amazing backgrounds but just in the last few days has been playing with Pan Pastels.
Well that gave me the inspiration to try something just a little different:

Now to be really honest, I am not a huge fan of Pan Pastels I only have very few colours, but I loved what Maria did with them, so I started to experiment with something else. I have a small set of  Faber Castell Polychromo Pastels which I use occasionally for my other art work (that I don't blog here). I love these pastels, there is nothing quite like them. They blend like nothing else I have come across, just using your finger in a piece of cotton fabric (I use cheesecloth)
This is what the pastels look like:

You rub them onto your finger (inside the cheesecloth) and then start to blend in a circular motion onto your paper. I used smooth stamping card but they work brilliantly on water colour paper too. Oh and just in case you are wondering , - no I am not on Faber Castell's Design Team or anything (wished I was), I just love these pastels lol

For this one I blended my two blues, a tiny bit of the pinky red and the orangy yellow. Around the edges though I used a Pan Pastel brown. The Pan is much more powdery and "solid" in colour and you have to use it very lightly for this technique. Next I stamped the poppies and grasses (Chocolate Baroque) in embossing ink and then rubbed my pastels over it again. I coloured the image with Distress Markers and my water brush. I then masked it, stamped a Darkroom Door script stamp in random places and added a swirl stamp from Stempel Glede around the edges. Then I rubbed over it again with my pastels to bring out the detail.

For the next one I first ran my piece of card through a little snow flake embossing folder (a freebie that came with a magazine some years ago). I then used exactly the same technique but just the two blues and a tiny bit of brown again. The stamps are from Crafty Secrets and then the same script and swirl stamps.

I rubbed a tiny bit of Treasure Gold in Pewter over the snow flakes. I just love how the colours are so translucent and subtle. Very, very different from blending Distress Inks for instance. I'll try and show you the difference in the last one:

The main stamp is from Chapel Road Art Stamps and this time I used all of my colours. The apple sentiment however was done with Distress Inks, stamped in Potting Soil Archival, cut out and then adhered to the card.

You can no doubt see that the intensity of colour is very, very different. Don't get me wrong, I love my Distress Inks, it just all depends what effect you want to achieve.

Well hope you like my little exploration with pastels here and thank you for visiting!!

A little book full of forgotten things....

Hello everyone, thank you for dropping by!
It's been rather quiet here this week but I have been busy elsewhere, both at work and with DT projects coming your way in the next two weeks or so.....

Anyway, yesterday evening I had a little play time for myself, so made this little tag book, full of forgotten things as a) I wanted to ink up some stamps that had not seen the light of day (or ink for that matter) for ages, and b) I wanted to play in the Our Creative Corner Forgotten Things Challenge.

I started by gluing two tags together (Prima Mixed Media tags, I had quite forgotten I had a pack of 48 of these) They are quite thick and gluing two together made for a sturdy book cover. I created the outside with the help of all sorts of sprays, inks and paints and then used a number of forgotten stamps (including the little Craft Stamper one that I stamped on tissue paper). As you can see I also embossed a corner with a Tim Holtz/Sizzix Texture Fade folder.
The little crown embellishment I picked up during the summer while visiting a fab little scrapbook shop in the Netherlands called Scrap Delight They make their own resin embellishments very much like the Melissa Francis or Prima ones but at a fraction of the price and I got quite a few of them, and then of course promptly forgot I had them lol...

The inside pages were made by cutting a strip of the Tim Holtz French Industrial pad, inking it with various Distress Inks and then decorating it with all sorts of old and forgotten stamps. I am sorry but as I have had these for years and before I joined design teams never took much note of the companies that made them, I really can't tell you who made them.... So here are the inside pages:

I know the pens on the left are from Indigo Blue.

 The photo here is from the Tim Holtz paper collection. The Eifel Tower might be Oxfort Expressions, the ephemera bits are Tim Holtz and G45.

 Here I have no idea about the vocal stamps, the clock on the right hand page is Indigo Blue.

The words are Tim Holtz chit chat stickers. There is of course a little story behind the images, it's of a dapper gentleman travelling to Paris, meeting the love of his life and after many years they produced a pair of twins whose favourite past time was to sit together on a swing.... I leave you to imagine the rest.

Before gluing the inside pages to the cover, I tucked some hand died seam binding behind the back page and looped another bit through the front cover so the booklet can be tied shut. Like I said I am putting this for the Forgotten Things Challenge at Our Creative Corner

Hope you like it and thank you for visiting like always!

Hope you'll all have a good weekend when it comes

Tag Play time

Hello everyone, welcome and I hope your week has gone well so far.
I just had a bit of play time today between other projects and made a quick tag, tags are still pretty much my favourite projects and they always come in handy.

I started by running a large tag through a Spellbinders 3D M bossabilities folder, this one is the Persian Splendour one. I inked it with Antique Linen, Victorian Velvet and Brushed Corduroy Distress Inks.
I then stamped images from the Darkroom Door For Correspondence set, cut them out and arranged them on the tag.

The little panel at the top is made from Paperclay. I stamped into it with black Pigment ink and then dried it for about half an hour in the oven at a very low setting. (If you are patient, which I am not, this stuff will air dry in about a day, it is very light weight, so perfect for embellishments).

A couple of chit chat stickers and some flowers, some bit of chip board and a brad finished it all off.

The final bit was to add a bit of lace at the top and the tag was done.

I have just heard that there are a few places available still for the Finnabair Workshops at DAMSELFLY So if you have been considering this, now is your chance!!

Well, that's it from me for now, thanks for visiting and have a good week!!