July Challenge at Stamping Sensations

Well, it's time for a new challenge at Stamping Sensations, and we have what I believe will be a very popular theme for you this month!

* * * * * ANYTHING GOES WITH A STAMP AND RIBBON * * * * *

Who doesn't like adding a ribbon or two to their creations?! We're sponsored by the fabulous Crafty Ribbons, who have a superb range of ribbons, buttons, lace and more for your crafting needs. They have given us a fantastic bundle of ribbons and embellishments for this month's lucky winner.

I recently acquired the gorgeous new Bigz Butterfly 1 from Inkylicious, and couldn't wait to ink it up! I stamped it on to watercolour paper and coloured it with Be Creative alcohol markers, then masked it and sponged, stamped and stencilled the background. I added some shading around the butterfly with coloured pencil to make it stand out a bit. All stamps by Inkylicious. Tim Holtz Mixed Media die used as stencil. I mounted the finished design on to the base card along with a strip of patterned paper (PDA), sheer and satin ribbons, and pearl embellishments which I coloured with the alcohol markers to match the ribbon.

The base card is 7" x 5", which gives you an idea of the size of the butterfly, which is simply stunning.

In the knowledge that people will be busy with holidays and summer activities this month we've kept the theme nice and simple, so I hope lots of you will find time to enter for a chance of winning that gorgeous prize! We look forward to seeing your projects!

More Bits & Pieces

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when I found out that my entry into Crafty Individuals' May Challenge had been picked by Malcolm as one of the five winners! This was my winning project (also my DT sample for Stamping Sensations May Challenge). For details of how I made it, and more photos, see my earlier blog post here.

My  prize was a free stamp of my choice. I chose the beautiful Butterfly Trio Panel, which I have long admired but for some strange reason never got round to buying, so I was delighted to have the chance to add it to my collection.

The first thing I made with it was a thank you card for Jean and Malcolm.

I embossed it with copper embossing powder on to black card, diecut the corner of the card with a Sizzix/Tim Holtz die and matted it with a paper from Crafty Individuals' "Travels In Italy" background paper book. The girl image is from the Crafty Individuals A4 Glossy Sheet "Domino", mounted on to Spelbinders diecuts. The smaller diecut is also copper-embossed around the edge. Sentiment by Crafty Individuals (a freebie). Can you tell they're one of my favourite stamp companies?! Not only for their stamps, but also for all the other gorgeous bits and pieces they sell to go with them!

I am, though, still loving my Altenew stamps, particular the "Beautiful Day" set, which I have used again for a birthday card for a friend.

She asked me to put it on my blog and explain how I made it. Hmm! I think it was actually much easier to make than to describe the method! But I'll have a go!

1. Stamped the silhouette part of the flower twice and the leaf spray three times on to post-it notes and cut them out to use as masks.
2. Stamped the left hand flower (four-part stamping) and masked it.
3. Stamped the right hand flower and masked that too.
4. Stamped the leaves three times and masked them all.
5. Keeping all the masks in place, sponged the entire background with various colours of pigment inks.
6. Overstamped with the harlequin and text stamps (Cherry Pie), butterfly (Chocolate Baroque) and flower sprays (from the Altenew set). The harlequin stamp was only partially inked as I didn't want the hard edges to show.
7. Removed all masks.
8. Sighed with relief, as that's the point where you find out whether the design has worked!
9. Coloured the butterfly and added shading around it and the main flowers and leaves with pencil crayon to make them stand out a bit.
10.Sponged pigment ink around the edges of the picture to define them.
11. Mounted it on to a 6" x 6" blank card.
Phew! Definitely easier to do than to describe!

Since I wasn't able to get to the recent Stamp Magic show (see my previous post) I decided I was fully justified in cheering myself up by spending the petrol money I saved on new stamps! Thank goodness for mail order! Haven't had time to ink them up yet, but the school hols will be here in a couple of weeks so watch this space! Thanks for looking!

Just because

It's quite a long time since I made anything that wasn't for a challenge, DT work, or a particular occasion. Having recently acquired various items of new stash, I thought I'd take a bit of time to have a play with some of them.

I'd been wondering whether to invest in some Distress Stains, and in the end couldn't resist ordering a few to try. I must admit they are very convenient to use, being in a sponge tipped bottle and so it's easy to cover a background quickly with them, and you can also ink up stamps with them, but since they are basically just like watered down distress ink, and you could probably get a similar effect using diluted DI and a sponge, I'm not sure whether I'll buy any more.

Anyway, inspired by Glenda's video on her blog, where she uses the Distress Stains with some of her gorgeous new Chocolate Baroque stamps, I made a card.

The background was made with Spun Sugar Distress Stain, overstamped with Hero Arts Dots & Flowers background & Old French Writing, which I had inked up with the same DS. The result is very subtle. Also stamped the Old French Writing on the base card. The picture is from a Crafty Individuals Miniatures Book (People & Places 2), and I made a frame for it with a Nellie Snellen die, inking around the edge with Versamagic ink. A strip of Tim Holtz Tissue Tape across the bottom, a Marianne Design leaf flourish (also coloured with Versamagic), and a sentiment by Innovative Stamp Creations finished the card.

I'd just like to say a big thank you to all you lovely people who keep commented on my blog. I do appreciate your visits, and hope you'll forgive me for not being able to reciprocate much at the moment. The big clearout in preparation for our move north is ongoing, slowly but surely, and between now and the end of term I will be very busy indeed at work, with several school concerts/events to come. A bittersweet time, as I have been at one of my current schools for the past 28 years and this is my last term here. But, as I said to my head teacher last week, 28 years is half my life, near enough, so I reckon it's about time for a change!

Another great Blog Girl Day at Sir Stampalot

This was our third get-together, and it was lovely to see some familiar faces again and some new ones too, especially Lisa Jane, who I'd been looking forward to meeting for ages. As usual, Brenda and Chris had designed some beautiful projects for us to make, and not only that but they had each made us little gifts. A wallet filled with flowers from Brenda, and a butterfly bookmark from Chris. Thanks, both of you, they are gorgeous! Here they are.

Our first make of the day was a twisted easel card, by Chris. I'd never made a twisted easel before, so I was really pleased to learn how to do it. Next was a card by Brenda, featuring a Penny Black stamp (which was the first thing into my shopping basket!) and a flower (made with Tim Holtz Tattered Floral dies) dipped in UTEE using a Meltpot. A fabulous effect, but I don't think I'll be buying a Meltpot. Sally & I reckoned that we could do it by melting some UTEE in a tinfoil dish with a heatgun. Haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know if it works when I get round to it!

Once again, Brenda and Chris co-ordinated a delicious lunch, to which we all contributed, but the highlight of it had to be Chris's amazing raspberry cheesecake, which didn't last very long!

Hunger pangs banished, we went back to work on two more pretty cards (which I've yet to finish off), and finally a delightful little divided box designed by Chris for holding stamped images waiting to be used, or paper snippets, or recipes, or photos, etc etc. Chris had put Molly Bloom on the front of hers, but not being a fan of cute characters I decided to be different and have a butterfly on mine instead. We made the flowers with the Cuttlebug quilling dies, which are good but very expensive! (They didn't make it into my shopping basket!) A Marianne swirl die completed the decoration.

The day flew by, but we managed to save a bit of time for some retail therapy at the end! Huge thanks to Brenda and Chris (and Janice and Andy) for another fantastic Blog Girl Day. Can't wait for the next one!



Very busy!

Up to my ears in school concerts and things right now, but just had to pop on to point out that Lin Brown, of LB Crafts, is giving away a fabulous set of Tim Holtz goodies on her blog!

 Click the link on my side bar to see how to be in with a chance of winning them!

Normal service is resumed!

Back to my more usual style for this card. I love the look of the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals dies, but they are too big for the sort of things I'd want them for, so I decided to make my own distressed flowers using the EK Success retro flower punches. I wanted them to look as though they were made from old book pages. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. However, I couldn't bring myself to tear the pages out of a book! A friend of mine even gave me an old book which she'd got specially for me to use, but it was a book of wild flowers with some lovely old pictures in, and I just couldn't do it! I thought I would scan them instead. Then I found a website where you can download copyright free books, so I printed some pages from that and made them look old with Distress Inks (Tumbled Glass and Antique Linen, which I also used on the butterfly and sentiment). Having punched out the flowers I just tore the edges of the petals a bit & then inked around them. Not quite the same as Tim's, but near enough to the look I wanted.

The background paper is a digital download from Two Peas in a Bucket, one of the "Art Papers III" digital kit by Vinnie Pearce. The text-printed leaves on it went perfectly with my flowers. It's such a pretty paper that I kept the embellishments to a minimum so as not to hide it. The photo doesn't do it justice. The punched butterfly is overstamped with Hero Arts "Delicate Vine", and the sentiment is by Darkroom Door. The lace and ribbon came from my late mother's stash. She was a crafter, though her speciality was in fabrics and dried flower arranging. She was also a hoarder and loved a bargain, with the result that she had more materials stashed away than she was ever likely to use. I think I've inherited the tendency! But if that's the price of also inheriting her love of arts and crafts and making things, it's one I'm happy to pay!

No longer so distressed!

Well, 10.30pm has just passed, so it is time to declare the winner of my little competition. Not many entries - obviously nearly everyone but me had already got a Victorian Velvet Distress Inkpad! I loved Jules's suggestion that I had sneaked into her front room and taken a pic of her dusty coffee table, (which sounds a lot like mine!) but I'm afraid that was not the case! In fact there was just one correct answer, so my superfluous pad will be finding a new home with

CRAFTIMAMMA (LESLEY)

Well done, Lesley! I'll be posting it off to you tomorrow, and hope it cheers you up after your cold.

Thanks very much to everyone who did enter. The mysterious object was indeed a Tim Holtz/Ranger Blending Tool!

Butterflies and Blossoms, and my favourite things!

Well, some of my favourite things! The Sir Stampalot Challenge for May is right up my street, as is the prize! Butterflies and/or blossoms tend to appear on most of my cards, and anything by Tim Holtz would find a good home in my craft room, so this is one challenge I couldn't miss.

The only materials I've used for this card are paper and one shade of ink. Having finally managed to get my hands on some of the new Distress inks, I think Chipped Sapphire is going to become my favourite colour. More of a purply-blue than the denim of Faded Jeans, and just what I was hoping there would be in the new range. The flower stamp is an old favourite, by Funstamps. I've had it for years but use it often, as it's so pretty and versatile. Here I've used a favourite technique to colour it. I'm not sure what it's really called, but I call it the magic painting technique, because it reminds me of those children's painting books which appear to have blank pages until you paint over them with plain water, and the picture magically appears. I used to love them when I was a child (and confess I still do!).

I stamped the image with Chipped Sapphire, and then, with a fine paint brush and clean water, drew out some of the colour from the outline to shade it in. By using more or less water and blotting areas you want to be paler, it's possible to vary the depth of colour. When I've used this technique before, I've always done it with Adirondack rainbow inkpads, and this is the first time I've tried it with a single colour, but I really like the result. The Distress ink works perfectly for it. And to think that when Distress inks first came out, I didn't see what all the fuss was about! Now I wouldn't be without them.

The background stamp is Dots & Flowers by Hero Arts, the sentiment by Darkroom Door, the circle and oval shapes were cut with my Nestabilities and the butterflies were punched from paper coloured with the Chipped Sapphire ink. The overall effect reminds me of Delft Pottery. And, of course, blue and white is one of my favourite colour combinations.

Amazing Blog Candy from The Stamp Man!

Jill is giving away either a complete set of the new Tim Holtz Distress ink pads (12 new gorgeous colours!) or the complete set of the 12 new re-inkers to two very lucky winners!

If you'd like to be in with a chance of winning , hop over to Jill's blog for all the details. This really is a fantastic prize!

Starting them young, and Allsorts Challenge week 40

Well, I had a great week up north, albeit exhausting! Needless to say, I didn't get any cards made, though we did have time for a bit of crafting. My four year old grandson had two birthday parties to attend while I was there (his social life is far more hectic than mine!) and he wanted to make cards for his friends. He decided to do some stamping, and here's what he made.

It was all his own design. He chose the inks and stamps (Clarity Stamp, Stampscapes, and Non Sequitur) and just got on with it. All I did was cut it out and mat it for him. I thought it wasn't bad for a 4 year old. He then decided he liked it too much to give it away! So he made a couple of other cards for his friends. 

I'm still trying to catch up after my week away, so apologies if I haven't managed to get round to everyone's blogs. I feel as though I've been out of circulation for ages. However, I did get a card made for this week's Allsorts challenge, whch is to incorporate a tag, ticket or label in the design.

I went for a vintage look. The background paper is old stash (Anna Griffin I think), overstamped with a Crafty Individuals text. I also used a Martha Stewart punch and Prima flowers. The flower centres are made with micro beads (very old stash!). The photo is of my maternal grandma. I was looking for something in my sewing box the other day and came across my thread cutter, the sort you are allowed to take on aeroplanes. I'd forgotten I had it. It's a circular blade set in a case which exposes parts of the blade, similar to this by Tim Holtz. I don't do so much sewing these days, and even less flying, so I thought my thread cutter would come in handy for distressing paper, and as you can see, it worked really well. And it's much prettier than Tim's!

Craftwork Cards meets Tim Holtz! Or What a Difference a Spray Makes

I've been enjoying using the items in my Craftwork Cards Chocolate Goody Bag, but today I felt the need for something a little less sweet. I wondered what it would be like to take the same things and grunge them up a bit, a la Tim Holtz. Here's the sweetie card first of all. White embossed scalloped frame, Yummy Scrummy background paper, white pearlescent Spring Flowers with chocolate and marshmallow Card Candy centres, overstamped with a Crafty Individuals text stamp.. An In-circle Message (matted on Nestabilities frames) and a Flutter Message complete the look.



Then I took another embossed scalloped frame and sprayed it with a mixture of walnut ink and various Crafty Notions creative colour sprays. I did the same with the flowers and the butterfly. The flower centres this time are dark blue metallic Card Candy. I drew some markings on the butterfly with a sepia coloured Zig sketching pen. The base card was sponged around the edges with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink & then sprayed with Adirondack spray in Denim. Behind the frame is a piece of the kitchen paper I used to protect my work surface when spraying the flowers! I always save those bits - they make great backgrounds. I matted the frame on to a piece of dark blue pearlescent paper. It's the most gorgeous colour, and came in a Craftwork Cards Paperblox quite some time ago. Half the block was the dark blue, the other half was pearlescent black. Unfortunately they seem no longer to sell it. I think I'll start a campaign to get it reinstated!



So the question now is which do I like best? Well, the first one is sweet, pretty and clean looking. But if I'm honest, I think I prefer the grunge!