Sparkle and Shine for Countryview Challenges

Hello everyone, hope you are having a good week!
Today it is my turn to share a second project on the Countryview Challenge blog, - another Christmas card I'm afraid to say

I used The Vintage Cabinet card die, the Stacked Snowflakes die, and the Holiday Greens Sizzlits die, all by Tim Holtz. Now before I go on I want to tell you about a fabulous new product I just discovered, amazingly useful if you love to use die cuts, specially delicate ones. The stuff is called Stick It and was invented by Ken Oliver. Ken, who has been a Facebook friend for some time, sent me some to try out, and I have to say, I LOVE IT!!. Here is a link to a video where Ken demonstrates how it works:
 For my project I started by cutting 4 of the cabinet cards with the small die inside to create a frame. I cut them from cereal packets, so the frame would be sturdy and have some depth. I glued them together, gave them a coat of gesso and then added Picket Fence Distress crackle paint. When everything had dried I coloured it and  a backing piece with the new Distress Stains. I used Brushed Pewter and Faded Jeans, plus a tiny bit of Picket Fence.

I inked all he edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and then gave the centre of the backing a spritz of Black Soot, so there would be a good contrast for the Snowflake I was planning to add.

Sparkle and Shine was added by covering everything in Mat medium and then sprinkling with Clear Rockcandy Distress Glitter.

I stacked the snowflakes up, edged with Walnut Stain again and then also gave them the glitter treatment.

I adhered the frame to a card blank, inked with a mix of Gathered Twigs and Walnut Stain DI and then stamped one of the stamps from the Christmas Nostalgia set around the edges, also in Walnut Stain.

I embellished with some branches from the Holiday Greens, coloured with Iced Spruce and more glitter.

I also added a few tiny berries to the branches, they came from my Christmas box....

Well, that's another Christmas card done, so I am happy about that. There is still a week left to play in the challenge if you have not done so yet, do go over and check it out, we would love to see you there!

Destination Inspiration for A Vintage journey, - sprays and pastes.

Hello all and lovely to have you drop in. Today it is my turn again to share a project over at A Vintage Journey under the heading of Destination Inspiration. As I was thinking about what to write for what I have done, I came to the conclusion that Destination Inspiration is perhaps not quite the right title for my project,  Destination Exploration would be a better name for it on this occasion, for when I started I had no idea where I would land up, as really I was just experimenting.... But I hope that what I am about to share, may give you some inspiration along the way too to explore and discover....

So I decided to play with the new Tim Holtz Distress Sprays and try them out on as many different substrates and texture pastes as I could. I created a series of 9  different tags, I will number them, and here on my own blog I will share step by steps for some of them in greater detail than I did over at the Vintage Journey blog, where I am showing all 9 in one go.


So here goes:

Tag 1

Sprays on a plain manila tag:

Colours used: Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, Walnut stain. I wetted the tag and then sprayed my three chosen colours, spritz some more water and then dried with a heat gun.
Next I used the Shattered Layering Stencil and sprayed with the Walnut Stain spray, adhering the stencil onto the tag with some removable spray adhesive so it would stay in place.

Next I did some background stamping, using the Classics 14 and Mercantile stamp .sets in Black Archival

Finally I collaged other stamped elements and finished it all off with some embellishments, including the little alpha tiles that I was lucky enough  to receive the other day as part of the huge parcel I got from my win at the Compendium of Curiosities challenge.

Alright, on to:

Tag 2

Sprays on a Black tag:

I die cut a tag from thick black card and gave it a first spraying with two of the metallic sprays, Tarnished Brass and Antique Bronze. To be honest, I was not too excited with the result, so gave it a second spraying, this time using Picket Fence and Peacock Feathers.

Much better I reckon, love the verdigris effect of this, definitely one to remember I think.

Now before I go on, I just want to mention that I think it is a good idea to put some large sheets of scrap paper underneath your work area when using the sprays as I found they tend to go everywhere, this also gives you some great backgrounds, as inevitably they will soak up some of all that lovely spray. Here is a piece of mine that I decided to use on this tag:

I decided to  die cut a leaf with the new leaf and matching embossing folder:

This became the main embellishment for the finished tag, here it is:

I used some remnant rubs (they adhere perfectly on the sprays, unlike on top of Distress Inks)! and finished off with some other bits and pieces.

Well, that's it for just now. Tomorrow I have a different project going live, but in the days to come I will post some more details of some of the other tags I made. If you want a quick over view, please head over to A Vintage Journey, and if you have come from there, then thank you for dropping by here.

Have a great week ahead and look after yourselves. xxx

Halloween- to die for

Hello everyone and thanks for dropping in! It's time for challenge 17 (can you believe it?) over at A Vintage Journey. The lovely Red Anne has chosen the theme HALLOWEEN TO DIE FOR.
Well, I decided to play with both aspects of the theme. This is what Anne had to say about it:

Halloween is one of my favourite times of year, I love when the children come to the door, in their costumes, to 'trick or treat'. You do not have to make anything scary (but it would be fun if you did!) but you must use at least one die on your creation and it must be strongly influenced by Tim Holtz. It can be a tag, card, canvas or mixed media piece.

And this is what I came up with:

Now, though like Anne I love Halloween, I don't actually own any Halloween themed dies apart from the little Movers and Shakers pumpkin and acorn, and in the end I did not even use that particular pumpkin, so I decided to make my own Halloween themed embellishments, using the dies I had at hand.

But, let's start from the beginning:

I wanted to use a Triptych blank that I have had in my stash like forever.

I coloured it with my new Distress Sprays (love them!!!!), I used Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge and a tiny bit of Vintage Photo, then added a first layer of stenciling using the Halloween Words Layering stencil and Walnut Stain DI.

As the card blank was not very good quality card, it soaked up the colour big time, so it needed more depth and also more stenciling for interest. I used the Shatter stencil and Walnut Stain and Black Soot DI.

Alright, now for to use some dies....

I cut three ovals with one of my Spellbinder dies. 

Ovals? Why you may wonder, - this is Halloween, not Easter. Well all shall be revealed:

Tadah!!

Home made pumpkins!! I had this idea in my head, and I think it actually worked lol. As you can see I cut a further 3 ovals, slightly smaller, so I could make a smaller pumpkin too. I layered them up as shown in the picture, one in the middle and two on either side, glued and then coloured them with the same sprays and added Rock candy Crackle paint. Once the crackles had appeared I gave a quick spritz with the Walnut Stain spray, wiped off the excess and that was it for the basic pumpkins. I then added some bits of greenery from the garden Greenery die, hand drew and cut some little stalks and added some curled raffia covered wire, - all done!

Next came some bottles: I have the Movers and Shapers mini apothecary bottles, and they of course always come in handy for Halloween projects. I cut both bottles, once from plastic packaging and once from card.

The plastic packaging ones were coloured with alcohol inks: Terra Cotta, Butterscotch and a tiny bit of Espresso. I then covered them first with Glossy Accents and then Rock Candy Crackle. When it had dried I added some depth and shadows with a Faber Castell Big Brush pen. The card one was coloured with Pumice Stone and Vintage Photo DI. I then glued the packaging one on top of the card one, to keep the glass effect, but have more depth of colour (forgot to take a photo of that, but you can see it on the project of course). I did the second bottle in exactly the same way. 

Next I had more spritzing fun with various colours of Distress Spray and some thinned gold paint and when dried cut a whole number of leaves with various leave dies that I am lucky to have collected over the years:

Alright, onto the three panels now:

I cut 3 of the large Vintage Cabinet Cards in Black card and three of the small in white.

I had to slightly trim down the sides of the black ones, so they would fit onto my Triptych.

I'll talk you through what I did with the white ones, one by one:

I stamped the witch from the Mini Halloween 4 set by Tim in Black Archival, masked her with Pebeo masking fluid and then stamped with a mix of stamps (Darkroom Door London and Clarity Trees) around the edges. I then inked with Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Stormy Sky DI. I used the faux bleach technique (just using a wet brush and blotting with kitchen paper) on the moon and the light around the street lamp. I then removed the masking fluid from the witch and coloured her and the pumpkin with Distress markers.The little stars were added with a gel pen.

On this one the Skeleton from the Mini Halloween 4 was white embossed, the spider from the same set was stamped in a corner and then I did some more stenciling and inking with the same sort of colours.

The last one, which is probably my favourite, uses the same Darkroom Door stamp and the little owl is from Sin City stamps. I used the faux bleach again for the light and shadow effects.

Well, that is pretty much it. I layered it all up, added a few acorns etc still  from the Autumn Gatherings strip die and that was it.

Here you can hopefully see how the bottles turned out. I added some little labels still which were computer generated, as I don't have any of the stamps that include the cool labels.

Well, hope you like my project and sorry for yet another mammoth post, but I think particularly beginners in crafting and blogging like to have some of the detail.

The Day of the Dead sentiment was computer generated and mounted on a piece of black card.

Make sure to check out this latest challenge, my teamies, including two new ones, have made an amazing collection of projects to inspire you, so celebrate Halloween with us and play along!

Almost all product in this project are available from Countryview Crafts, our wonderful sponsors.

Now before I finish, I want to just share a couple of photos with lovely blog friends I met up with this last week. On Saturday The lovely Julie and I, (she  is one of our two newest Creative Guides at a Vintage Journey) met up for a coffee and a chat here in Edinburgh. And just yesterday the wonderful Kath Stewart and I met for a great chat at the Papeterie in Aberdeen. I am always amazed how time seems to fly when meeting with crafting buddies, so much to laugh and chat about. Loved meeting you both!!!

Julie and I outside in our street

Kath and I in front of all the Tim Holtz goodies (of course)

I have decided to add this project to the That's Crafty Challenge, where the theme is Spooky

Thank you for visiting like always

Holiday Knits in different ways

Hello everyone and thanks so much for coming to visit today.
It is no secret, - I love Tim Holtz and all the wonderful products he brings to us, again and again. I had great fun making several Christmas cards,  using the wonderful Tim Holtz Holiday Knit stamp set and matching Layering Stencil. Here is the first one:

I have this wonderful mitten and ribbon die and I knew this stamp set would just be perfect for it.

I stamped one of the two stamps in the set on strong white card in Adirondack Cranberry ink, die cut the mitten and inked a bit around the edges, both with Vintage Linen Distress Ink and with a bit of the Cranberry ink.

Here you can see the other bits I prepared for my card:

 A bit of 5.75 by 5.75 Kraft card run through a snowflake embossing folder and inked with various colours of green distress ink: Peeled Paint, Pine Needles and Forest Moss. I then highlighted the raised bit with treasure gold to give some sparkle.

The white ribbon, is actually die cut card, sparkled up with Rockcandy Dry Glitter. A piece of the Tim Holtz red and cream trimmings and a stamp from the new Tim Holtz Christmas Nostalgia set.

Here is a close up of the ribbon, I also added a little flower, the only slightly more bulky embellishment, as I want to try and keep my Christmas Cards as flat as possible for easier posting.

I added a sentiment, stamped in Potting Soil Archival and then die cut with the Spellbinders Labels 4 die.

Finally I mounted it all on a  7 x 7 Kraftcard blank, and that was it.

The other two cards use  the layering stencil, but a different stamp set, the Nostalgic Christmas set. These cards were inspired by The Funkie Junkie's 12 tags of Christmas challenge. Linda is on tag 3 already, and I have only managed number one, but I did two different versions of it at least.

This one is all in brown tones, totally different from Linda's original, which was all in reds, but it using the same background technique and similar elements on the lay out. I decided to not make my challenge pieces in to tags but cards this year, at least it forces me to get some Christmas cards done.

Here is the second one, very similar, but this time in blue tones.

All the rules of the challenge and Linda's original can be found HERE.

Sadly I know already that I won't be able to finish all 12 tags this year, as I will be away without craft supplies by the time Linda posts her last example,but I'll do as many as I can and at least it will provide an incentive to do my cards....Well, that's it for now

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you are having a good week!

Tim Holtz stamp	Distress Ink	Peeled Paint Distress Ink	Distress Ink
Distress Ink	Christmas Nostalgia	Trimmings

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