Playday yesterday

We had our monthly playday yesterday and the theme was Tim Holtz Luminarys.  I only decided on this one because Kelly said she had the die and hadn't used it... so she was supposed to be in charge of the "class".  Kelly was a bad girl and didn't make any samples. didn't even have a go to tell us what we needed to bring!!  Thankfully Sandra also had the die and sent it up with Kay..Kay made a couple of samples and warned us all it was a fiddly bugger to make up!

 Normally I've made so many of whatever we're doing as samples that I sit and chat at playday instead of crafting.  Seeing as I've never used the die I decided I'd join in and make the days project...

Bit of a nightmare to photo.. it's wet, grey and windy in Bristol and if I turned on the daylight lamps it made the colours look bright and shiny.  irl colour are sort of in between both pics, a bit of a rusty aubergine colour with splashes of dirty orange & purple lol.

I started with very strong kraft card and dipped it into splodges of concord and persimon distress paint that had been sprinkled with black brusho.   Once dry I added black soot distress ink and stamped one of Dyan Reavelys web stamps in black archival.  The center panels are black vellum with one of Dyans spider stamps.  A few plastic spiders attached to the lid with hot glue and I used the tip of the glue gun to pull lots of strands of glue to make cobweb threads.

I'll probably make a few more of these because I found them very quick and easy to make.. even taking into account that I chatted until 11ish then had to cut pieces for a couple of friends.. mix the paint, clear up the spill from not having one of the daubers tightened properly, wait for the paint to dry enough to use the glue, assemble and decorate I was still finished by lunchtime! 

Top tips for making them again though..

thin card is easier to fold & glue
and if you do add paint to the card before assembling make sure it's totally 100% bone dry.. card holds moisture you can't see even when it's touch dry and it makes gluing a problem!

I could go mad entering it into dozens of challenges seeing as Halloween is a hugely popular theme this month (I wonder why lol) but I've chosen just 2.

cutitup challenge blog, Halloween and anything but a card.  Rules say not to forget to use a diecut.. hope this counts because it's nowt but diecuts lol.

and the StampingBoutique Challenge Blog which has a theme of outside the box.

Frugal Poppys

If you've read the last post you'll know I went all tight fisted and used the "ink" I'd picked up from stamping into wet brushos on some scrap white card.


The ink that clung to the clean stamp from this image.

 Became this image.

I was also tight fisted and used the black archival left on the stamp after stamping the stem on the last card.  Not bad eh, 2 cards from the same lot of ink and if I'm totally honest most of the orangey card was what I'd gutted from the previous card as well. 





Definitely another way of stamping that needs a minimalist look but seeing as I'd stamped on a strip of card I'd left from cutting a4 into 5" squares there wasnt much to do other than use a layout.  This one is from sketch & stash blog.  Apart from the stamped image there's not much to the card, some ribbon & buttons I've had lying around for yonks and a sentiment from an old docraft set.

Are you bored of brushos and that poppy stamp yet?

I don't know about anyone else but I'm a huge lover of pinterest when my mojo has deserted me and when I've got a new product.  First thing I did when I got home with the brushos was search pinterest to see what was being done with them and to be honest there wasn't much card making wise so a lot of what I've been doing has been trial and error.  One of the things I will admit to being disappointed with what I did find on pinterest was how some of the stamped cards sort of "lost" the image in amongst a heavy fireburst of colour and when I went to the Taunton show I was determined to buy the "right" sort of stamp that would show up against them.  That wasn't actually as easy as I thought, those with big bold lines aren't really the sort of stamp I like and I won't buy stamps I don't actually like no matter how much a certain technique might "need" them.  Ade doesnt even know I have a blog let alone read it so safe to admit to buying stamps I fall in love with even when I know I'll probably never have a reason to use them (going to be years before Nate is old enough for me to use some pirate stamps I bought and I bought them 3 years before he was born lol).  Anyway to cut a long story short while I was pondering the issue I wondered what would happen if I stamped into misted brushos.. not on a damp wet wipe or sprinkled over a Dylusions pad but straight on the card.. I know that the brushos can be used as an ink or direct to rubber so isn't this the same thing?

One experiment later... and here it is.

There's absolutely no other colour to the poppy than dark brown sprinkled very lightly over the rough area where I knew I was going to position the petals.  I very lightly misted around where I thought the background needed to be but slightly heavier in the middle where the petals would go.  Pressed the clean dry stamp onto the misted ink and held it in place for a couple of seconds.  Being an occasionally  tight fisted frugal crafter I then stamped the petals on to some scrap white card.. not because I thought I'd get a great impression but just to not waste the ink, more of this coming in the next post tho (or is it the previous post seeing as newest posts go in front of older ones).  Anyway going back to this card, once dry I added the black archival stem & detail part of the stamp.  Trimmed the card to size and added a peach parfait border.  Now initially this card was going to be for someone who doesnt like multi layered  or clean and simple so I spent yonks cutting and piecing a frilly border to go around it.  It looked bloody awful and the sort of thing a kid would make given a naff set of cut & stick stuff from 20 year old TSVs.  These stamps don't need frilly borders, a simple mat & layer is all they want really.  That said I did decide that I was a bit fed up with cas and went with a layout from sketch saturday blog.  Background papers are white card stamped on using dark brown brushos on a damp babywipe using a kaisercraft brick and a bubble strip I won years ago.  I deliberately went with a light coverage.  I should have trusted my original instinct and went with cas lol

Drippy Poppys

2 in one day, guess who was enjoying using the spritzer to blow paint around lol.

Dark brown and one of the red brushos sprinkled onto white card before being misted with water then blown around with the spritzer.  2 step Rubbernecker poppy stamp, main part stamped with bleach and allowed to dry for an hour.  Over stamped then with black archival.  I didn't quite get the black archival in the right place so I used bleach in a water brush to remove the bits I'd now missed.  Once dry I scuffed the edges of the card and went over with old paper distress ink to take away the whiteness of the card then because it looked a bit too flat I used a kaisercraft crackle stamp with first water then old paper distress ink and randomly went in patches around the image.  Mounted on brown pearl card which has been scuffed then small amounts of inca gold along the scuff.

Freehand Brusho Christmas Tree

On Pinterest there's a pin of what the lady calls Triad trees that fascinated me but after having a play I sound found it isn't easy to do on small scale, well either that or I can't tap the brush in the right way lol.  But it got me thinking about brushos and trees and could it be done freehand and this is my version of it.

Stupidly easy to do but I think I should have practised before going gung ho on decent card stock because I'm not happy about the blob on one branch on the right.

Very lightly sprinkle emerald green & one of the red brusho crystals in a smallish triangle, mine was about 4cms high and about 2cms wide at the base.  Super super light sprinkle because you want to keep lots of white card showing.  Quick light mist with water then using either the tim holtz or perfect layers airbrush spritzer thingy (links to both so you can see what I'm going on about) hold about an inch or 2 above the card, aim away from the centre of the tree and towards a bottom corner and squeeze the bulb part to make air come out. Keep moving and blowing air until you have a rough looking tree. Using a fine watercolour brush paint and dark brown (mixed with water) paint in any gaps where the trunk would be and a small patch underneath for the ground.  Dead simple, dead quick to do, took me longer to find the spritzer thingy than it did to make the card lol.

On a slightly different note I mentioned an easel I'd tarted up last post, finally managed to get a pic of it.  Seeing as I photoed the Christmas Tree card on it I thought I'd add it here.  Learnt a few lessons in doing it.. the pva crackle technique only works on smooth surfaces and at £2.99 including a canvas you can be sure that this one is made of cheap unfinished pine and it was in desperate need of a good sand down.. which I didnt do.. hence the next to no crackle.

Painted first with orange & copper paint.  Covered with pva and cream emulsion paint.  Stamped all over with a group of small ivy leaves stamp.  Coloured with various distress stains.  Sanded back in places and inca gold cream paint added to some of the edges.  Looks fab holding an 8*8 card or large canvas, not so great with a not quite 6*6 card.