Summer Time!

Hello everyone and thank you for dropping in today!! It's been rather quiet here for the last few weeks, I have been to Australia to visit my grand children. Wonderful, but busy days, and I have fallen badly behind with visiting your lovely blogs. However, I will try to catch up with you all in the days to come.

It being the first of the month today, it's time for a new challenge at Our Creative Corner, and the lovely Laura has chosen the theme of Summer Time!

I love to make projects that can turn into useful gifts, that's why I decided to make a little folder out of two hand made envelopes. You can tuck a gift card or tag inside or it could even hold photos or whatever you like. If you want to know how to make the folder, you can find a tutorial on a previous post HERE

For this particular project I made two 5 x 7" envelopes out of Cored'nations Kraft core. Next I made the front and back covers. I cut two pieces of card to slightly smaller than my envelopes, painted them with various colours of acrylic paints in red and browns and ran them through an embossing folder, this one is by Darice.

Next I high lighted the raised bits by dry brushing with Gesso.

I love how this brings out the pattern of the embossing and tones down the colours.

I then created a collage on the front with various ephemera pieces from my box of scraps

Below you can see a bit better how I layered them. Some bits are from various Graphics 45 papers and some Tim Holtz ephemera pieces.

The sentiment was stamped with alphabet stamps from the Madame Perauds collection on one of the Tim Holtz tattered banners.

I also added a pen nib and a strip from an Tim Holtz Industrious sticker.

Below you can see the back, another collage put together from scraps from my scrap box.

 The key etc is a stamp from a  Heartfelt Creations floral key collection, coloured with Distress Markers and a water brush.,

I lined the inside of the folder with papers from the Graphics 45 French Country collection

Well, there you have it, hope you like it, - I have tried to represent the summer theme mainly through the colours and sort of summery elements I have used.

Thank you so much for visiting today, make sure to check out the amazing projects my teamies have created, I promise you will not be disappointed, and of course we all hope you will join in our challenge!

See you next time and have a creative month of August!!

Birthday set complete and some news.....

Hello everyone and lovely to see you here. A special welcome also to my new followers, I feel honoured you decided to follow me.

Well, today I managed to complete the gift set I made for my SIL:

The bag and tag I showed already in my last post, but I have now managed to finish the card:

I followed the same technique as with the bag and tag, to make them all match more or less of course. The little postcard this time is from the Graphics 45 French Country Collection stamps.

One of the elements cut from the 6 x 6 paper collection. (You can read more about that here )

Some flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts, layered with some leaves and a bit of tea dyed cheese cloth





And finally another butterfly with some strips cut with the Tim Holtz tattered banners die.

Now to the news: Some of you might remember that I was chosen to be a member of the Sincity Stamps Design Team. Well, today would have been the day of my first post, but..... all of the stamps they sent me to work with got stuck in customs so I never received them in time. So meanwhile I thought I would just show you some of the wonderful stamp sets I will be working with:

They are really reasonably priced if you are interested (only $20 for a full rubber sheet) and they have many  amazing designs, from Art, to Steampunk to Seasonal, so much to choose from,  I fell in love with them straight away and am now keeping my fingers crossed they will get here soon.....

Thank you for dropping in today and see you next time!

Off to French Country

Hello everyone, long time no see... I am sorry I have been AWOL over the last week or so but I have been extremely busy with end of term activities and getting  ready before I go off on my hols to France on Monday.

Obviously that is the inspiration behind this little canvas.

I started with adding some Golden Brand molding paste through a couple of stencils. When dry I I added some Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap  (no longer visible really) and then painted with a variety of different brands acrylic paints, Golden, Tim Holtz and Fresco Finish were all somewhere in the mix. Next I stamped a couple of Graphics 45 French Country stamps onto some smooth stamping paper, blended with Distress inks and coloured further with some water colour pencils and my re-fillable water brush.

I finished by layering some of the elements of the paper collection, a die cut ribbon slider and some string and  my all time favourite ideaology bit, the inevitable pen-nib.

I carried the texture through on the sides of the canvas also and rubbed a tiny bit of Treasure Gold around the edges and over the raised bits.

 Well, that's it. We leave on Monday and will be on the road for about a week, traveling through Holland, Germany and Switzerland, so again it will be pretty quiet here. But whenever I can get online I will try and visit my favourite blogs and see what you are all getting up too.

Loads of art and crafty stash will be packed and I hope to do some art journaling while away and I might be able to show some work in progress.

Thank you for visiting, have a creative time where ever you are, may the sun shine on you and I'll see you when I see you...

I am adding this to a new and exciting challenge blog for people who love the alter things Altered Eclectics where the theme this and every month will be, anything goes, how fun is that!!

This Ol' Chicken came into the Wood

Hello everyone, nice to have you visiting here today.
Ok, so what is with this weird title? Well, I did not know what to call this post and just wanted to do something slightly different.
The whole inspiration for both this post and the project came from the current challenge theme over at Simon Says Stamp and Show which is "into the wood."

At first this theme had me totally stumped, but then I came upon this old wooden container and I decided to alter it. For once I remembered to take a "before" picture, - so this is how it started out:

Once upon a time it was a nice weathered wood plant container, but it had become quite grotty as you can see.

I started by sanding it down, then I gave it a coat of Gesso and when that was dry I coloured it with dark brown acrylic paint. When that had dried I added a thin layer of crackle glaze, let that dry to the touch and then put a final coat of straw coloured acrylic paint on top with cut and dry foam because I wanted the crackle to become quite random, and if you use a brush the crackles tends to follow the direction of the brush strokes. The inside was painted with a glaze of Titan Buff paint. Next I added the chickens and roosters, carefully torn from the top layer of a paper serviette. I glued them on with Modge Podge, added some background stamping and coloured the edges with  various brown inks.

Here you can see one of the sides. I also added some charcoal pencil around one side of the roosters and chickens, to bring them out a bit more and add some depth.
The front and back were further decorated with some fussy cut bits of Graphics 45 French Country papers.

Finally I rubbed some Treasure Gold around all of the edges and covered the whole thing inside and out with two coats of Modge Podge.

Well, I hope you think it's an improvement.

I am adding this to this week's SSSS challenge

Thank you for visiting, much appreciated!