Back with a bang.....

Hello everyone and welcome! Thank you for dropping in after my long absence from blogging while I was in Australia.

Well finally I am back home and slowly getting back into the swing of things and today I have not one, but two projects due. I am sorry to say I also did not manage to visit many of you during my absence, but from now on I should be properly back and look forward to seeing what you are up to!
This is the second project I am sharing today, the other one can be seen HERE:

This one an altered box holding a set of alphabet stamps as you can see.

To get a full description, more photos and a step by step, please visit A Vintage Journey, where I am sharing a Destination Inspiration post today. Hope to see you there!

Have a great week

Playing with texture

Hello everyone and thanks so much for taking the time to visit.
Today is my day to show a project over on the Calico Crafts blog.
I had great fun playing with some of the yummy products available from Calico and I created an altered box for my 52 pickup altered playing cards.

 If you want to see more and how I altered my box, please click HERE.

I just created a new set of 4 cards, numbers 9, 10 11 and 12.
They are created in pretty much the same way. You can find a description and a link HERE

And here are some details of the individual cards:

 Heart cut free hand from old book papers, issue tape,a Tim Holtz journaling ticket and computer generated words.

 Same sort of thing, another part of the same ticket, a little vial label and some remnant rubs.

 And more of the same, though this heart was cut with a Sizzix die

 This one is a bit different. I fussycut a small part of one of the yummy new Tim Holtz Wallflower papers and collaged it on to the card that had been covered with tissue wrap and Gesso. I also used one of the Wendy Vecchi Love to make Art stamps for the background. I then blended it all together with some Bundled Sage Distress paint etc.Here is a little close up still.

 The box I made for it hold all of my cards just perfectly, - I really hope you will take the time to have a look at it and maybe also check out the shop. They have just added some fabulous new wood flourishes etc.

Well, that is it for now, don't forget to come back tomorrow, because that is when the new challenge blog A Vintage Journey will be starting!!!
Thank you so much for visiting and I hope you are having a day full of creativity and hopefully some sunshine too!!

A box to treasure...

Hello everyone and welcome to my little creative place. So kind of you to drop by!
Today I would like to share an altered box with you

On Saturday two of my arty friends will come and visit, the lovely Annie and her wonderful mum Rita. A few weeks ago I visited them and Rita gave me this box, that started life just plain white, to play with. It's been around for a while but I just never got round to blog about it and stupidly I forgot to take a picture of it before, so all I can do is tell you how I went about altering it....
It started life as a sturdy, plain white box, just perfect for altering. I began by adding some texture with the help of a Prima corner stencil that was just the right size. I then Gessoed over it to take away the slight sheen of the texture paste (Golden Moulding Paste) I had used. As I wanted my box to look vintage and old I then added some Rock Candy Crackle paint in the corners and along the sides of the lid. Next I stamped various images (sorry they are all really old stamps from my stash and apart from the leaf and the feather one that are la Blanche, I have no idea where they came from) in Plum Archival and then coloured the corners and sides of the box with the same colour, darkening a bit more with some Expresso Adirondack Die ink. That particular brown colour has a slight purple tone which matched the Plum Archival. Some White Fire Treasure gold rubbed over the raised bits, finished it all off.

Here you can see the flower, this was one of the flowers Rita taught me to make when I visited with them and I sprayed it with various sprays to match the box.

I stamped the La Blanche Feather and Script stamp along the sides of the actual box, then masked it and over stamped with a script stamp. I think I over did it a bit, as it does not look quite right, but hey ho, you live and learn (embrace imperfection and all that...)

I left the inside of the box unaltered, it was so perfectly finished already, so there you have it.

Hope you like it and that you will have a a great creative and peaceful weekend. Thank you for visiting!

Alter Box for Calico

Good morning everyone and welcome to you all! Lovely to see you here in my little corner of blogland.

I was happy and excited to be asked to be guest designer once more for Calico Crafts, a wonderful shop with amazing and unusual products for the altered artist.
I decided to alter one of their fantastic book boxes, using some of the new Graphics 45 Steampunk Spells collection.

To see the full project and how I made it, please head over to their BLOG

Hope you will like it and thank you for visiting!

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!