Monday 30 May 2011

Dream .........

Goodly day everyone. Happy Monday to you all! It's my turn over at Katzelkraft to share so here's a sneaky peek...... Do pop on over to take a look.

Sunday 29 May 2011

Sorry; I've been a bad blogger lately!

Hi there everyone.
Hope you haven't given up on me yet! I've been up to my eyeballs planning and prepping for next week's demos at the Craft Barn. Hope I'll see some of you there!
But here's just a quick little sneaky of a box done with a paper I'll be showing you how to make on Saturday.
I've LOADS more to show but you'll have to wait til after the weekend!
Take care everyone and be blessed......

Wednesday 25 May 2011

WOYWW

Hi there, well I know I'm late as it is almost 8pm here so some of you will be tomorrow already! It's just been busy so with no further ado, here was my place this morning.....
Some new masks and more distress stains (I've fallen in love with them though I thought I would not!)

Then some bits and pieces of things I've been playing with...... Love that Elephant!
3 guesses what new toys were added this last weekend at our visit to The Craft Barn? Umbrella man, jalopy and small cogs dies. Yay!

And then, I almost forgot this.... Yes, a configurations.......
Now, I can hear you all saying "with all this where are your projects ?" Well, I've been busy with loads of stuff, but I can't show it at the moment as it's all DT stuff........ But I am doing stuff  that I will hopefully get round to sharing with you soon!
Until then, pop over to  Julia and from there off to the world of WOYWW...
Be Blessed.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Scraplings at Try it on Tuesday

Good morning everyone
If it's Tuesday then it's time to Try it!
This week we are talking scraplings... what on earth I hear you say, is a scrapling? It's the bit you cut off to turn a standard rectangular card blank into a square one! Like this.....
Deceptively tiny, quick to make and pretty fun too. A good thing to use some bits and pieces on to say hi, thanks or add as a tag on a small gift.....
For this one I used a stamped piece of grey card, the two small cogs are Tim's movers and shapers dies, embossed with cosmic shimmer EP
and the sentiment is Tim too and "enamelled"



Do pop on over to Try it on Tuesday and create a scrapling too!
Be blessed in your art today.

Monday 23 May 2011

Little box

Hi there everyone
Hope you all had a lovely weekend and did some crafting; we went off to a bootfair and visited the Craft Barn. so did not do too much crafting but had a good time. Today I picked my mother in law up from Heathrow and been catching up all the news.......
 But I did manage to do this little box for Katzelkraft to share with you using KTZ70.
I'm sure loads of us have some of these little gift boxes at home. I painted the lid in silver paint and when dry stamped the corner stamp in black. I stamped the main image section onto the lid and random sections on the sides before adding  microbeadz.

Katzekraft Stamps are available from the website here and are sold exclusiveley in the UK at The Craft Barn

Beatrice from Katzelkraft will be at The Craft Barn June Extraveganza weekend too demoing her fabulous stamps too. So make a note in your diary for the 4th and 5th of June........
Have a great evening!

Friday 20 May 2011

Bingo at The Stamp Man

Hi there everyone
It's bingo time over at The Stamp Man for challenge number 23.
This week's host Lisa has set up a bingo card of techniques from which you need to choose a line and use those 3 elements in your project. Great fun so do pop over there and play along.

I selected Blue, Torn and Die cut as my line and made this card
I covered the black centre panel with gesso and stamped the dragonflies into it roughly before drying with a heat gun. (remember to was your stamp well immediately after using it!)
I inked using faded jeans and broken china distress ink, sprayed with water and blotted dry. I love the texture you get
The cogs were embossed in silver and stamped with Tim Holtz slight alterations stamp for texture; there is also a torn piece of paper inked in the same colours and stamped with the same dragonfly peeping out at the bottom
The cogs were cut and mounted with 3d pads and everything assembled as seen with a piece of old jewelery in the centre of the small cog.

So that's that folks, hopefully this post will appear as scheduled as I am unfortunately not here today till much later..
Hope you are all blessed in your art today and remember, live every day and savour the moment.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

WOYWW #102 with added wax

Hiya everyone
Still spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast but always time to pop over to Stamping Ground to visit Julia and then onto the rest of the worlds desks!
Here's mine; didn't take long for it to get messy but not a huge amount to show (YET!) In the middle are two little bits but more on that later, the folded material is an art apron, at the moment just colourwashed but I have plans! On the RHS are some bits of WIP discards and dreams!
This is where I have homed my dies. The containers are metal so the movers and shapers attach nicely so I can see what's what......
So, yesterday I mentioned that I had been playing with some wax candles, these are the results
Now, I've not used wax before and don't have a melt pot so I kept it simple. This image I just popped some pieces of wax onto , heated with a gun and brushed over. Then when cool I used an embossing stylus to add some designs to the background and leaves. I have to say it gives a lovely look!

For this one I just melted wax onto the blank tag, stamped a seal into it. Melted more wax onto the mesh and onto the butterfly/moth....

Adding the flower and leaf just finished it off nicely.
So there you have it; my first foray into the world of beeswax. Definately not my last though!
Have fun wherever (and whenever) your wednesday is and be blessed today.......

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Back to the 70's with Try it on Tuesday

Hi there all you lovely people; it's time travel back to the 70's at Try it on Tuesday and looking at the design teams samples on the blog is a real treat!

For me, I think of pop art, all swirls and curves, a bit of paisley for good measure. Of course, me being so young and all; it's really just what I read in books .......... yeah right, believe that you'll believe anything!
So this week I revisited the time with this fab paper from Lawrence Llewellon Bowen. I cut and layered the flowers, stamped a LLB paisley image and splashed a bit of watercolour around!
Quick and simple but it has a real 70's feel to me.
Do pop over and join in the fun; i'd love to see your memories!

I've also been experimenting with a bit of beeswax for the very first time so hopefully i'll be back later today to let you see what i've been doing!

Monday 16 May 2011

Just catching up, well, sort of!

Good afternoon everyone.
Sorry for the lack of action on this blog last week. I have had one of those weeks really where I seem to have been spinning wheels more than anything.
So there's not much to show you at the moment as I'm trying to get some stuff done that I can't share just yet!
But this is the ATC that I have done for The Stamp Man ATC swap blog where this month the theme is friends.
I Used distress inks to do the background, Tim Holtz mini muse stamp plate is the car and harlequin pattern source and the sentiment is from The Artistic Stamper. I used a fiskars punch to shape the edges and added some microbeadz for texture.
Other than that we went out on Sunday early am to the first car boot sale of the year for us, just had not got round to it before now. It was suprisingly quiet but I still found some pretty good stuff!

The frame is one that I had seen on the high street for upwards of £20.00 but this one which was still sealed was only £2.00. Then some beeswax candles (destined to be melted) a necklace of oriental charms, 60 tags for 20p and I picked up a spanish scrabble set for 25p which had wooden tiles! (the rest of the game is already in the bin!) And lastly this brilliant belt which definately will not be a belt for long

Not bad I don't think!
Then it was off to do some prom dress shopping. Now that could have been stressful but we found a dress that eldest loved and more importantly, no-one else had! Yay, one less thing to stress out about. Funny, in my youth the girls bought a dress and hoped no-one else had it. Now they have a place on FB where they all post pictures of what they have got then no-one else gets it...... well there are only so many options for a formal prom dress so it was getting to the stage of well will there be one out there still that had not been bought!
The other bit of news I am excited about is that I will be demoing at the Craft Barn's extravaganza weekend on the 4th and 5th of June! So if you are in the area do pop in and say hello, I'd love to meet you. There are going to be over 20 of the industries finest (and me) demoing a vast array of fabulous techniques in 4 venues in the town with plenty of space to pull up a chair and absorb creativity!
Details are HERE
Well; all that crafty stuff is crying out my name so i'll be off!
Be blessed in all that you do today. God loves you!

Katzelkraft Design Team Debut

Good morning everyone. I hope you are all well.
If I managed to get it right then over at the Katzelkraft blog you should be able to find my debut project. Here's a sneaky peek

I used KTZ 67 and KTZ 68 available from Katzelkraft and exclusively in the UK at The Craft Barn

Wednesday 11 May 2011

WOYWW#101

Hi there everyone. Wednesday again so it's time to pop over to wonderland aka Julia at Stamping Ground to see what's going on on the desks of the world!
Well, it's taking me forever to sort my new space out but I am finally getting round to using it! (Still can't find everything but no suprise there is there?)
On the left you can see the 3 cards I did the other day, along with some more images done ready to use.
In the middle there is a little wall haging in the process of being altered and next to that is the beginning of a little book.

Then I thought you may like to take a look at my cupboard which is beginning to take on a personality!
Outside:

Inside:
12 x 12 scrapbook shelving storage houses papers and other bits. The storage containers at the top are where I keep some of my rubber stamps.
So there you are. My place this week. Hopefully I'll see more of yours this week........
Be blessed in your art today.

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Try it on Tuesday - Tag week

Hi there everyone.
It's tag week over at Try it on Tuesday. This week, it's one for the guys-ouch I hear you say. Well, we guys are not that difficult to please really but in case you are still hyperventilating at the thought do pop over to the Try it on Tuesday blog where my teamies have produced some brilliantly inspiring tags to get your creative juices flowing! And there's a prize too.....
This is mine for this week. Clean and simple (Sometimes less can be more!)
I guess we all know someone who's a bit of a clown, don't we? I used this fabulous juggler stamp from Katzelkraft as a starting point. I cut the tag out of glossy white card and stamped the clown in black stazon. Masking him off I stamped this calligraphic background (from The Artistic Stamper) over the whole tag to create a bold background.
I coloured the whole tag (Masking off the clown) with Distress ink in faded jeans, peeled paint and a bit of aghed mahogony. I coloured the clown with copic markers to add the zing.

To finish I used a few square blue gems, some black blingy ribbon and just to be a bit quirky I added the back off an old earring at the tag hole.
See, something ready to gove to your own clown! You could always add the tag to a card blank and there's Father's day sorted. (I know I'd be happy to receive it!)

Monday 9 May 2011

A day trip and One stamp 3 cards

Goodly day everyone. Hope you all had a lovely weekend. We did. We had a brilliant day down at Dover Castle on Sunday. Weather was fab, we had our own personal tour guide through the Keep, and discovered loads of things. Even our daughters (Who are at the stage where family days out are generally met with groans of "do we have to go?") had a great time.
Costume players always add interest to historical places, here is the court minstral and a wealthy unmarried maid, a ward of the King.....




These are just some of my favourite pics, from old graffiti, shield, architecture and this little spotlight shot down in the medieval tunnels......
Anyway, enough of that ; don't want you to get too bored! I still had a bit of time to play with one of my Katzelkraft stamps.(KTZ 55) This image is one of those images that I just absolutely have loved since I saw it and I now have got my grubby little mitts on it I am so happy! I made 3 very simple cards, all using the same stamp.
Number one
I stamped the mask onto silver metal effect plastic in black stazon and trimmed leaving a silver border, mounted onto black and then onto embossed silver card and then black again I cut and embossed a piece of black card to fit a white card blank andded the sentiment from the same plate and mounted everything as seen.
Card number two
I stamped the image onto glossy cardsock in white, and inked the whole image in aged mahogony Distress ink before mounting onto black, I stamped music onto the card black in aged mahogony and used the same ink on the embossed matt, torn cardstock and everything mounted as seen. A very different feel to the card.

Card number 3

For this card I stamped onto glossy white in stazon; added a tint of colour with Distress ink and then carefully coloured in sections using copic markers. Again, a very different effect but one I like because of the theatricality of the finish. Matted and mounted as before.

I think that this is an amazing set of stamps, great if you like the theatre, giving gifts of theatre tokens or even if you have a trip to venice to scrap!
Hope you like them, You can of course use these techniques on any stamp and get very different results. Great to make a batch of similar cards/notelets etc for a gift.
Be blessed in your art today.

Friday 6 May 2011

Shadow box and news

Hi there everyone
I finally finished the project I was working on but I'll warn you now, the photos are not brilliant as I could not move the glass!
It's a shadow box frame that I picked up a while ago now and I decided to create a frame to house the Tailor dummy I made at the Lovin Ink retreat
Sorry I think this is about as good as it gets! I lined the back and sides with a masterboard made with all sorts of inks, bits and pieces, micobeads, washers, a UTEE medallian and glossy accents, stamped with some small cogs (from The Artistic Stamper)
There are a couple of grunge roses lurking in there too!
The outside of the frame was covered in paper made with Moonshadow walnut inks and salt, stamped with the small cogs and two statue stamps (Also from The Artistic Stamper)

I stamped one of the statues as well as a column from the same set onto the glass in brown Stazon.
Overall it looks absolutely fab but impossible to photograph properly!
Still, hopefully you will get the idea.

In other news (Now doesn't that sound like the 6 o clock bulletin!?) I am thrilled to be able to tell you (at last) that as of today I have joined the Design Team of Katzelkraft!!!!!!!!
If you have not checked out their amazing stamps yet, you are missing a treat. I have loved their stamps since I first saw them at The Craft Barn (who are the exclusive UK retailer for their stamps) and was lucky enough to attend a class with the extremely talented Beatrice. So you can just imagine how gobsmacked I was when she contacted me to ask if I would consider joining them......... still can't believe it really.
So, I look forward to showing you more of their fab stamps as I've just stocked up!
So all in all, it's been a fun day, now I need to tidy up a bit as I've made a bit of a mess!
Be Blessed today.