Panic stations and an all nighter

On Friday I went to the Range with my mate Tracy.. it was her wanting to go not me and I very kindly offered to take her!!  She ended up spending next to nothing.. I came home with a new kitchen bin, craft paint, a new paint brush and a (silly cheap) a4ish canvas and easel.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the canvas and easel and set about aging the easel, texture pasting & gessoing the canvas.. then it all went wrong.. after making a lovely background with distress stains in browns & greens I went to add pumice stone over an area I intended stamping a statue (I was going for old lost garden theme) and to my horror I found that the stain had turned TURQUOISE!!  Ruined, wrecked and calamity springs to mind!  No amount of gesso would cover the turquoise and no other ink would hide it either, couldn't use acrylic paint because I needed it to be able to take ink and didn't want to lose the texture of the canvas :o(  In the bin it's gone.  Shame, I'd spent ages blending colours and adding texture, I'd even stamped and painted the image on tissue ready to wax in place.  Easel looks good though and I'm sure I'll find it handy for photoing cards on.

One hectic Sat & Sunday later and I have to start a new project.. wasn't going near canvas again so I decided to alter an ikea tolsby frame and turn it into an advent calendar.

Butterscotch, latte & terracota alchie inks on some felt, followed by gold with blending solution soon had the glaring white frame looking like 1950s bakalite!  


Next came 12 tags, 3 1/4" by 5".  All using distress inks as background on both sides (there's a lesson in how you have to keep the mat clean).  The project had to be done and in the post by this am so I ended up pulling an all nighter and eventually finished at about 4am.  Hubby not impressed lol.  Ideally I'd have spent a good couple of weeks making multilayered tags with lots of texture but 24 tags in one day means I had to sacrifice something so I went with simple stamped images, occasionally embossing, stamping with glue & foiling, glitter, paint & gems.  Sounds like I went to town but divided by 24 it meant most tags were like this one, nowt fancy bar a few pearls added to the image.





This one had a bit more work involved.  StampinUps lovely as a tree stamped in black archival then versamark before being embossed with white ep.  I used TH white marker to extend the ground and SU white ink to emboss lots of snow flakes.  The numbers are all diecut using a very old Spellbinders font set.  

With the benefit of hindsight I wouldn't have used terracotta on the frame because it clashes most evilly with some of the tags, specially the cool toned purple & blues and there would have been more thought into the tags but over all I was reasonably happy with how it turned out.  Next time I think I'll turn the frame into a recipe holder... just got to find some decent cookery themed stamps to make it with ;o)

remember those mop up pieces?

Back a few weeks I was playing around with distress paint & brushos and rather than waste paint I always dab offcuts of white card in it and leave to one side for diecutting.

I finally got round to using a few pieces yesterday and this is the result.



Flowers are cut from the mop up pieces using Arianna stamps & dies from Heartfelt Creations.  Leaves are from Cheery Lynn.

I wanted the background to match with the flowers but not be overpowering so I used pea sized blobs of pearlescent tinting medium and mixed in, vermillion, cobalt blue and purple before being dabbed seperately over white card using a ball of clingfilm. 

Sentiment is from Heartfelt Creations and is one of my favourites.  I don't use it that often because it's a whopper.. this is an 8*8 card.




These are a nearer to the real life colour of the flowers, they remind me very much of Love Heart sweets.








I'm going to enter these challenges

Cuttlebug Mania..  Anything diecut

Deep Ocean Challenge blog use at least one flower

Craft-DeeBowZ anything goes with a handmade bow

Stamps & Fun = Creativity handmade background

rubbernecker Flowers in the Breeze

Quick post because to be totally honest this stamp does all the work.. there was NO shading to be done at all... the texture of the stamp does it all for you!!  Ade was so impressed with the shading he didn't think I'd made this one.. back handed compliment or what lol.

Calypso coral ink for the flowers,
pumpkin pie for the few dots that are amongst the grass
Old olive for the grass & stems
black versafine for the verse
and it's on calypso coral & white card.

Under The Sea

Get me, yet another new stamp set used.. and only 8 days after buying it!!  (Don't mention the stencils lol)

This is from IndigoBlu Under The Sea and using my beloved Brushos.  The black background has bubble stamp from the set using flitterglu and winter dawn flakes.  Sparkler from Kaisercraft and some lime green organza.  The layout is from IndigoBlu's challenge blog

It wouldn't win any technical merit points, not a good idea to start using new stamps very late at night when you're knackered and haven't stamped them on scrap.  There's faults on each layer where I've managed to catch the edges of the rubber with the ink.  That's not something I do very often so I must have been more tired than I thought.

Starting from the top, I stamped the fish in black versafine, masked it and added the swirly fronds.  The background was given a pale wash with cobalt blue mixed with emerald green before colouring the fish with the same blue and purple.  Once dry I added clear wink of stella over the top.  The frondy part is loosely coloured with emerald & not quite mixed with water olive green.

Once it had all dried the sea looked a bit too even so I went back into the wash and added more layers but patchily so there was some texture.




This is the layer underneath, very little shows so I thought I'd take a seperate pic,  damp water colour paper, sprinkled with stripes of turquoise, ultramarine, emerald and olive green, sprayed quite heavily and lifted at the top so the colours blended in to each other before being sprinkled with rock salt and allowed to dry.  Stamped with the bubbles that I also used on the black background.

rubbernecker poppy

I was playing with the rubbernecker Poppy stamp day before yesterday and it's not quite as it seems.. it looks to be a solid silhouette on the petal part but it's not there's a very fine texture so I thought today I'd see how it inked up with different mediums.

This is a close up of using 2 red distress paints on a craftmat, squidged about a bit then stamped into.  

With the benefit of hindsight I'd have used the paint rather than SU real red inkpad on this brusho marbled background.  Bit gutted because I left all the pieces I marbled on the demo table at Taunton last Sunday.  If I try to zoom in on the texture the camera thinks it's a blur but in reality it's a very fine woven material texture which lessons the impact of a stamp pad ink.










Epic fail, and one that will teach me not to look at my pc screen when I have stamp in hand just because I've had a fb message ping.  Not thinking went on and stamped the sentiment upside down lol.  this was using 3 red Tombow type markers and huffing on the stamp.  Again I had the textured weave but was able to use a damp brush and blend the texture away. 

I think the general guide with this stamp is if you want a more even coverage you have to have the stamp wetter than before, either with paint or with misting.  If you want impressionist style, be a bit more heavy handed with the mist/paint.

3rd in one day

 I'm definitely on a roll at the moment, 3 cards in one day and there's a couple more drying at the mo!

This one uses my newest stamp, Poppy from Rubbernecker bought from Oysterstamps.  It's a 2 part stamp and I dry sprinkled vermillion & scarlet brusho crystals directly on to the rubber and misted lightly before stamping.  Once dry I used my stamp positioner and added in the stems and vague outline in black versafine.

The script background is a very old magnolia stamp, the border a stampin up wheel.  Poppy Parade ink (seemed appropriate) and a Sue Wilson bow die.

same card two looks

One of our playday rules is if you go to a craftshow you have to bring something you've made using a new purchase to the next playday.  So seeing as I organise playday I have to lead by example and make something.

Despite playing with brushos so much lately I'm still in love with them big time and decided to see if they'd make a decent inkpad.  I didn't have any felt here so went with a folded dried up babywipe and sprinkled a few blue & purples over the surface before misting with water.

Because I wanted to challenge the paints I used my new wishing willow tree from Inkylicious.  This was the 3rd impression I'd taken with the pad, it wasn't the easiest stamps to get a good impression (I tried later with versafine) but it gave me the soft partially stamped effect I was looking for. 

I also used the "inkpad" to stamp on a strip of waste with some butterflies, and although you can't see it I screwed up the babywipe, gave a slight mist and used it to pounce lightly on some more card and stamped the Lily Of the Valley sentiment, it reads wishing you a magical birthday which I felt was very apt for the tree. The background card has been clingfilm veined with pale blue and pink perfect pearls, barely shows here and it's not as noticeable irl as I wanted.  Overall I'm fairly happy with the card, which is on an 8" base.

This is the same layout courtesy of sketchandstash challenge blog and using the same stamps.

This time I used a clingfilmed background of sandstone, light brown and yellow ochre with a gold perfect pearls.  Stamped with black versafine and I've glittered several of the beads on the tree with a soft gold glitter.  The background is actually cream with gold perfect pearls clingfilmed veins but the camera doesnt seem to like fine detail when it's layered, the glitter dots on the tree arent showing either.  Finally to finish off I cut 3 strips of brown stardream and the bow from another new purchase from Sue Wilson & Creative Expressions.

fab time at Sincerely Yours

I had a really great day yesterday at the Sincerely Yours show in Taunton, bit unusual though.  I normally go down with Jackie, June & Tracy but now my daughter mans the tea & coffee stand there's not really room in one car and to just tip the decision into taking 2 cars our other friend Sher was in need of a lift.  Normally she goes with her daughter but said daughter was leaving on her honeymoon that day and didn't want to take her.. bloomin ungrateful wretch wasn't flying out til 10pm she had plenty of time ;o)  lol.

So decision made I left early with Tiz and sort of pretended to help her set up for a few mins before the goodies were calling my name. 

I had said I wasn't going to buy any more prima dolls but Kitty had these reduced to £4 so it would have been rude not to buy any ;o)

Poor photo but the top stencil is a stylised teasel from Sweet Poppy, Mushroom houses below and one of Sue Wilsons paper bow dies.











These are my absolute favourite buys, Rubbernecker flower stamps and a Willow stamp from Inkylicious.  It shouldn't really look like this and somewhere on the floor at the show is the wrapper....  I didn't pinch it and it wasn't taken out the wrapper because I was pulling that old chestnut.. "I've had it for ages" routine.  But about an hour before I was chatting with Tracey while she was demoing brushos and she needed a loo break so asked if I'd step in for 5 minutes.  Well, she'd been demoing sprinkling brushos directly on to a red rubber leaf stamp, misting then stamping so I took a deep breath and had a go as well.  Must admit every time I stamped I had fingers crossed, metaphorically speaking, because not only was the light not great but I didn't have my specs and couldn't see if I had actually sprinkled any colour on the stamp!  Didn't help that Tracey had forgot the blocks so I was stamping freehand lol.  One of the ladies watching was quite impressed, or at least she gave that impression, and asked if it would work on clear or detailed stamps.  I couldn't see any of either in Traceys demo stash so seeing as I was buying the willow stamp any way thought I'd give it a go and grabbed one off of the stand... nowt like falling flat on your face in a totally untested demo lol.  As it turns out it did work though, it wasn't as impressive as using the chunky leaf stamp and the delicateness wasn't as obvious but it worked and I could breath a sigh of relief lol.

and my last purchases, I seem to be in a seasidey mood lately so added a sheet of indigo blu stamps to my collection and finally bit the bullet and bought the spellbinders tool to help clean the bits left in dies.  I've seen Martine use it loads and am always wishing I'd bought it next time I use fiddly dies so fingers crossed I don't lose it in amongst the chaos that is the playroom.

Fab day, spent with fab friends and fab stash to play with when I get chance, what could be better than that lol.

clingfilm meets brushos

Well the caught in acetate didnt work very well with the brushos, they're too intense for the look I was aiming for, could have been that I was too heavy handed or that I really should have got proper wrapping tissue not kitchen towel.  The one that I flooded did lose the effect I wanted so I doubt I'll revisit the technique with them.

Back to playing with clingfilm as I'd enjoyed it so much and was determined this time to actually make a card rather than just post pics of the papers which you can't really see on screen anyway.This one was made with spring, leaf & olive greens.  Firstly I sprayed the clingfilm with biscotti perfect pearls mist, sprinkled the crystals, scrunched around a bit and left to dry.  It was only ever intended to be used for diecutting not as a background but I did make me wonder what I was going to use as a background for the card.

I had a bit of a eureka moment then.. cream card with mild gold streaks to complement the veins in this one, but how to do it... easy peasy when you think about it... clingfilm technique but with just the perfect pearls spray.

One spritz and a while later I had a square large enough to be the backing sheet and a strip to stamp the sentiment on.

Yet again blogger is rotating the image, grr.

The flower in the middle is a Tim Holtz tattered pinecone die that I used to cut some sandstone, yellow ochre & dark brown clingfilmed card.
Quick double bow from ribbon I've had in my stash for years, bit of matting and layering with a soft gold stardream and one finished card.

It's make your own background as this weeks challenge on Simon Says Stamp so I think this fits the bill lol.

Edited to add I've found how to cure the rotating pic problem.  When you go to insert a pic if it looks as though it's been rotated don't insert it, just go to your picasa album in another tab (https://picasaweb.google.com/home) find the pic in amongst the folders, rotate and save it.  Now go back to the blogger tab and go to insert again, this time chose to upload from your picasa album and chose the pic you've just saved.

more brusho play

I havent had a lot of time to play in the last week, the chaos that was the rewire is still in force and with no end in sight.  On the upside Ade has now cleared a lot of his junk out of the box room ready for Nates cot, and hopefully some of his art supplies.  Box room is next to my playroom so it's going to be even easier to pinch borrow his stuff ;o)

As I'm typing this I've got a couple of experiments drying (going to take several hours) but I'll let you in on one.. I'm trying the brushos with floor polish aka caught in crystal technique.  I did have an omg this is going to be way too dark moment but it seems as though a lot of the colour is going to disappear into the excess tissue (I shouldn't have used so much polish.. oops) I "think" this is going to be one where you add a very thin layer of polish and sprinkle the powder on top rather than mist the acetate with perfect pearls, add colour then polish.  Mind you I managed to get a really cool effect when I was pouring the polish over, don't think it's going to survive the drying but we'll see.

Anyway I did get chance to play around this week and thought I'd have a go at being a "proper Artiste" lol.  Started off with a dl sized strip of white stamping card and I roughly coloured in a tree trunk with white wax crayon.  Next I used a large wet paint brush and coloured in a sort of circle at the top of the trunk, sprinkled a couple of the greens over the central area before a very light mist and a wobble.  Once this had dried I coloured in the rest of the area including over the trunk with plenty of water and sprinkled over cobalt blue & turquoise, a more generous mist and more vigorous wobble to blend.  Once dry you could see where I hadnt coloured in the trunk properly (where there's some blue splodges) but in the main it was nearly all white where the wax had resisted the paint.  Would have looked daft if I'd left it so I very carefully used my nails to gently scratch down the trunk to remove most of the crayon before going over with my favourite water, sprinkle wobble using sandstone and dark brown. 

Quick stamp with some black versafine, lavina toadstools and seaweed (I didnt have my specs on lol) and (I think basic grey) fairy.  I took the pic while the tag was still damp and have since added glamour dust fairy trails.  Renoir I'm not lol, in fact I think I'd even be booted out of nursery school art classes but I did have some fun with this one and I think the wax crayons will make a reappearance soon, possibly in connection with some wax paper embossing folder resist...

This one is where I curse and bemoan how difficult it is to get a true pic when using micas.  In real life these look like fantasy marbles with veins of shimmer running through them.  You'll just have to take my word for it this time.

For those who know the clingfilm ripple technique this is attempting it using perfect pearl biscotti mist and brushos.

The first one uses a blue, purple and an edging of red, sprinkled over some sort of scrunched up and smoothed out cling film before the card is pressed into place, turned up the right way and left to dry naturally.. (no speeding up with the heat gun and no pulling off the plastic every five minutes to see if it's dry yet, leave it alone for a few hours.)  Most people lift the cling film, turn over and lay on the card.. if I did it that way I know I'd end up dropping it straight in my lap lol.

The 2nd one uses gamboge and a red with the same technique but instead of using cling film I went with a plastic carrier bag that had been scrunched up and kept in a pot with all the other gazillion bags waiting for Jane to smuggle over the border into Wales.  Probably not visible in the pics but using the clingfilm gave me much closer together veins of shimmer and because it's see through you can push and prod the cling film around to concentrate and highlight areas. 

Regular readers will know I love my biscotti mist, doesnt clog and it's a nice subtle effect and for this it's even more luscious.  Never noticed it when spraying over coloured backgrounds but with this technique & these colours it appears silvery with the purples & blues but golden with the yellows & oranges.


On a slightly different note, storage.. if you're going to puncture a hole in the top of these pots it's most important to keep them from falling over and wasting precious crystals.  I used my trusty scal to come up with dividers to fit in to a5 storage boxes for them.  I've not quite worked out how to add svg files here so have converted it to a black & white jpg for anyone that uses a digi diecutter.


I never did like cutting thin lines to score because it weakens the fold so use small white dots as a scoring guide, this is my easy way to see where I need a ruler and stylus and it's not noticeable on the finished project.  This was created at 90dpi and was drawn to exact size, you might want to do a right click save target or email me for the svg.  You will also need to cut into the corner along the fold lines.