Creative Chemistry 102 Day 1 at last....

Hello everyone and welcome!!

Well, here I am, one whole week after the wonderful Tim Holtz started his fabulous Creative Chemistry 102
classes and I can finally show my first tags. All of these relate to day one and I have combined two techniques on each tag.

I am sure everyone who took part will agree just how fabulous these classes are! I have to say I enjoyed them even better than 101 and I am only about half way through watching all the videos.
Anyway, onto my tags:

This is number 1, as most of you know, day one is all about the Distress Paints. This one combines
Marbling and Coloured Crackling
Here are  a few close ups:

The background was obviously done with the Marbling and the the leaves and little frame with the Crackling.

Tag number 2 combines Altered Surfaces and Eroded Metallic. That was probably my most favourite technique of day one.

And here finally tag number 3:

This is probably my favourite tag from this set, combining Stamping Resist and Industrial. I was kind of familiar with these techniques already, but it was good to revisit them and see them done in a slightly different way. I love how detailed the stamps come out...

Well, there you go, day 1 done, pfew.....

I would like to thank Tim and Mario for making this fabulous class possible, the videos are awesome and so informative. I know I will come back to them again and again.

Thanks for dropping in today, I'll be back tomorrow with some more tags.

Thinking of you on Halloween

Hello everyone and thanks for joining me here today.
If you are here for the Sin City Stamps Bloghop, just scroll down or click HERE
Today it is my turn to post on the Artistic Stamper DT Blog, so just sharing a little sneak peek here...

If you would like to see more, just click HERE.

I just want to let you know that I really, really appreciate all of you who take the time to do so!!
Have a creative day full of happiness.

Sin City Stamps Blog Hop!!!

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!! Today is the start of the wonderful Sin City Stamps Bloghop!!

If you have come from the Sin City Stamp blog, you are in the right place. If not, just click here
The theme of our hop is Autumn/Halloween and one lucky person will have the chance to win a free Halloween stamp plate!! If you want to be in with a chance to win, all you need to do is: Become a follower of Sin City Stamps blog, like their Face book page and hop along the blogs of the design team (there is a link at the bottom of this post, just to make it easy for you), enjoy their inspiring projects, follow them, if you don't already do so, and of course leave a comment. That's it, easy peasy.
For my project I decided to alter a little board book, using the wonderful Halloween Takes Flight set and the Art  Journaling with Terry Sproul set.

As there are quite a number of blogs to visit, I will keep the descriptions brief and let the pictures do the talking.
The little book started life looking like this:

I liked the fact it had the hole at the top, perfect for a ribbon. I covered it all with a few layers of Gesso, then added texture to the cover with some texture paste and embossing folders and then coloured all of the pages with various colours of acrylic paints. The stamps were all stamped on tissue paper and then adhered to the pages with gel medium.

 Here you can see a close up of the textures. I used some of the new Tim Holtz tag stencils.

Below you can see a couple of the inside pages, before I added any stamps.

I kept the inner parts light to be able to integrate the tissue paper stamped images better into the page. I will show you an example of before and after so you see what I mean:

 Here I have just added the tissue to the background. You can still see the edges of the tissue quite clearly.

Here I have integrated it into the page by painting around and over it and adding some subtle stamping to the sides. Adding some shadow to the moon gives it much more of a 3 D effect.
All the other pages were done in exactly the same way, just using some of the different stamps on this wonderful Halloween plate:

With these two pages I added some detail to the stamped witches with a white pen, I also added a few words with the help of Tim Holtz chit chat stickers.

On these pages I also used a few bits of tissue tape to add some interest.

And this is the final page, after a night of magic, day is just about dawning....
I added the ribbon and a few danglies to the cover and that was it.

Remember, you can win the very stamp plate I have used here. So make sure you visit all the others for some fabulous inspiration!  Below you find the order of the hop and I very much hope you will pay my teamies a visit too, follow them and leave them comments to be in with the prize.


Thank you so much for visiting and have a creative day!!

Something different for a change

Welcome everyone and thank you so much for dropping in!
Being a paper crafter more than anything else, it's not often I make a project that does not involve paper. But recently I was inspired by a project I saw on line somewhere and I wanted to give something similar a go.

I love jewellery of all kinds, but me and pliers, wire etc somehow never work well together, so it is very rare I try to create a piece myself. But, this was easy lol, as it did not involve any of these things.
This is how I made it: I cut a piece of grunge board long enough to fit round my wrist. I coloured it brown with some Paper Artsy Fresco Finish in Chocolate Pudding and French Roast. When dry I stamped the Tim Holtz script stamp from the Papillon set  in Black Stazon. (hard to see from the photo). I glued some bits of brown lace to the top and bottom.

The decoration at the top was created by taking a large Filigree charm, colouring it with alcohol inks and gilding paste, then adding a bit of embossed metal and finally a word created with one of the Donna Salazar dies from Spellbinders.
The cuff closes with a Tim Holtz Hitch Fastener.
Short and sweet today but I hope you like my little jewellery piece, and if, like me,  you're not a wire and pliers person, this is easy and of course could be made in any style!
Thanks for visiting

Halloween is on its way...

Hello everyone, lovely to see you here and thank you for dropping by.
Today is my turn to post on the Sin City Stamp Blog.
This time I am showing you just a little sneak peek here:

To see the full project and a description of how to make it, just click HERE
I would love it of course if you leave me a comment there, but in order to do so, you will have to click on the title of my post there first.

Thank you for dropping by here and have a fabulous creative day!!

!2 Christmas Tags Funkie Junkie Style!!!

Hello everyone, so happy you decided to come and visit.

Some of you may remember that Linda from the Funkie Junkie hosted a challenge which she named the 12 tags of Christmas Funkie Junkie Style.
I had great fun playing last year, and of course when I saw that she was doing it again, I had to join.
In case you don't know already, here are the challenge rules in Linda's own words:

Here are the challenge requirements, which must be adhered to in order to be eligible for a prize at the end. 

• This is an inspiration challenge. Each week, I will post my tag and you will use it to be inspired to make something. You can enter any sort of craft.  It can be a tag, a card, a home decor project, a scrapbook layout - your choice but please make it winter/holiday related. 
• You must take inspiration from something on my tag and tell us in your post what inspired you. You don't have to use my style, my layout, my colors, my theme or anything except be inspired by something on my sample. Your make can be shabby, it can be grungy or it can be clean and simple. I don't mind if you CASE my work, but if you do, please give me credit. 
• We will have 12 weekly challenges beginning today, Monday, September 23rd.  You can link your project using the linky provided. If you don't have a blog, you can use another hosting site such as SplitCoast Stampers, but you must provide all required links and information in your posting.
• To be eligible for the drawing at the end of the 12 weeks, you must: 1) enter all 12 challenges, 2) provide a link back to this challenge and mention that it is sponsored by my store The Funkie Junkie Boutique, with a link to the boutique. 
• You do have to have a blog (or some other way to provide the required links and inspiration information).
• All 12 challenges will remain open until December 22nd.  You can play any of the 12 challenges up through that date. To be eligible to win, you must have submitted an entry into all 12 of these challenges by midnight Eastern Time December 22nd.
• On December 23rd, from the pool of players who participated in every single challenge and provided a link to the challenge and a link to my store on their post, I will draw three winners. There will be one $50 grand prize gift certificate to The Funkie Junkie Boutique given out plus two runner up prizes of $25 gift certificates. 
• Additionally, everyone who participated in all the challenges and met the requirements will receive a 10% off coupon good for their entire order at The Funkie Junkie Boutique during the month of January 2014.

Ok, so I am running nearly two weeks behind already, but as there is time until the 22nd of December, there will be plenty of time to catch up. If you don't know the Funkie Junkie Boutique, check it out, you will not be disappointed, great products, great prices and best of all fantastic personal service!

Now, onto for my tag... I loosely followed Linda's lay out, but totally changed the colours, though I stuck with the chalkboard style sentiment, albeit using a totally different one as I don't own those stamps. I used a Kaisercraft clear stamp (seen here on a few projects lately, as I so love it) and stamped and embossed it with Wow Vanilla White embossing powder.

I added a rusty heart and some textural bits as embellishments.

The word Noel was stamped on little scraps of paper with tiny letter stamps and then mounted on black card and rather than adding the words to a die cut like Linda did, I had used embossing paste along the side and adhered the letters to that.

Swirls, cut with a Marianne die and some punched snow flakes finished it all off. I stamped on top of the snow flakes, added some Ranger Sticky Embossing Powder and then some Rock Candy  clear glitter for a bit of Christmassy sparkle.

Well, there you have it, - tag number one... Linda has posted number two and three already and it looks super, so I can't wait to start on those ones, though I know already I'll have to adapt them quite a bit as I don't own many of the things she has used.

Hope you will decide to play too, it is great fun and Linda provides lots of inspiration, - never too early to start those Christmas projects lol!

Be Different....

Hello everyone, welcome and lovely to see you here.
It's not often I get the time to take part in challenges, but yesterday I had some time to play and here is the result:

I know, - just a tag, but I managed to incorporate some of my favourite techniques, texture through a stencil (one of the new Tim Holtz ones), wrinkle free distress for the background, using Crushed Olive, Forest Moss and Walnut Stain Distress Inks and then of course some stamping.

I really can't remember where the raven and the crown came from, I found them in my box loosely named "Halloween stamps".

The Teesha Moore girl I picked up many years ago in a German stamp shop.  I love this quicky girl and to me she really suits a Halloween themed tag. I stamped her in Jet Black Archival on a piece of paper coloured with Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge and Aged Mahogany Distress Inks and then cut her out.

Finally, the leaf at the top was die cut with a spellbinders die, embossed with an old Cuttlebug folder, and then with some gold embossing powder randomly sprinkled over it.  I then coloured with the same Distress Inks again. The sentiment along the side is from Tim Holtz simple saying highlighted with a white pen.

Well, there you have it. I am going to enter this into the following three challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge "Say it with Stamps"
Our Creative Corner "It's Halloween let's tag it on"
Dragons Dream Tag it on " challenge 151, "A word of your choice plus brown, diecuts, layers" 

Thank you for visiting and I hope you will have fun this weekend and get some creative time!!

Finally a Freebie

Welcome everyone and thank you for dropping in here today. A specially warm welcome to new followers, I feel happy and honoured you have decided to follow here, so thank you!

Well, it's been ages and ages since I posted a freebie, but just recently several of you have let me know how much you like them, so here at last is another one, again on the ever popular Paris theme....

Hope you like them, and as it has been such a long time, just a quick reminder of my TOU:
You may down load these images and use them in your own creations in whatever way you like. You are welcome to sell your creations and don't need to give me credit in any way. The only thing I ask is that you don't sell these images as they are either in digital or printed form or as transfer images.

Thank you for dropping by today and enjoy.
Have a great weekend everyone

Live the Life You've Imagined.

Happy Thursday all and lovely to have you drop in here. Today is a bitter sweet day for me as I am sharing my very last post for Snazzys. Snazzys was the first team I ever joined and it's been a great ride. But.... all good things must come to an end and like some of my teamies, it was time to move on.

Hope you'll take the time to have a look at the full project and thank you for dropping in here today!