Demos and Inspiration

I so enjoy going along to these demo days that our local craft shops run. It is such a good day out and you come away brain loaded with inspiration and maybe a few new things to add to the stash.
On Sunday I went to The Glitter Pot near Burgess Hill with a friend, we didn't know about the demo days at the weekend until I happened to notice a blog posting from Imagination Crafts mentioning that they would be there. So, a quick bit of organisation, like who picks up who and who is driving and off we went. The Imagination Crafts stencils are so nice and they have brought out some thicker ones that you can use for embossing with a 6x6 embossing mat, interesting.

Fab demo from Kay for IndigoBlu and I resisted buying the Kroma Crackle which was stupid because I think I want some of that, yes, I do want some of that! Kay was amazing, she showed us a demo of the flitter glue and mega flakes then did a one on one for my friend to try it, how kind.

One of the demonstrators was from Hobby Art and she showed us a quick card using some of the elements from the Butterfly Kisses set "Old Crock", a lovely image of an old car. So, I bought the set and Monday morning I had a go. This is the card I made:

Materials and recipe:

Butterfly Kisses stamp set - Old Crock BK-HA008

Background coloured with distress ink, shabby shutters, tumbled glass and edged with vintage photo.

The branches and foliage are first and second generation stamping, I used an old green marker pen.

The car image was coloured with Promarkers.

Mounted on pale turquoise card from Craftwork Cards.

Just as well we had a Bank Holiday on Monday so I had a chance to play. 

Watercolour Paper

The free stamp on the Craft Stamper magazine this month is a JOFY design from PaperArtsy and its a lovely one. I tried it out stamping on watercolour paper and then used distress markers to colour it, nice result on the watercolour paper.

I am entering this one in the new Twinchie blog challenge where the theme is "Free for All" although Zoe from the design team already used the same image, mine uses the technique from the magazine and I wanted to try using the distress on watercolour paper.  I really love this little stamp and I can see I am going to use it a lot. 

What a lovely bank holiday weekend its been so far, what a difference a bit of sunshine makes. Hope you are enjoying your Sunday wherever you are. 

Doodles

Zentangles are structured patterns, drawn by hand and usually filling in white space. Some people describe it as doodling. Doodles are unfocused, sometimes unconscious drawings which doesn't quite fit with structured patterns but the patterns themselves are often unplanned, at least they are for me. This card started off as an experiment with a Dreamweaver stencil of a cat. I just decided he might look good with zentangle patterns and was quite pleased with the results so made it into a card. I left it black and white as black cats are supposed to be lucky and mounted it on red textured cardstock just to get a little pop of colour.

Materials :

Dreamweaver Stencil LL3020

Sakura Black Micron pen

Ribbon and cardstock from stash

Good Luck die cut sentiment from Craftwork Cards

The Less is More Challenge for week 120 is a theme, the cue card is Cats and/or Dogs so I shall enter this one for that challenge. Lets see if anyone likes it.

Poppy Scene

Wow! It did not rain today after all so I went out for a wander around Borde Hill Gardens, a gem of a place in West Sussex with a particularly nice little art gallery and a great tea room. I just had to share this photo of a poppy I saw today, the blue was stunning.

So on to the artwork. Yesterday I was playing with my Hobby Art Poppy Scene-it set (CS044D). The design for this card isn't entirely my own work as its loosely based on something I saw at The Craft Barn last time I visited. The example I saw had a scene framed with poppies around it so I wanted to have a go at something similar. My scene and poppies are coloured with promarkers and the poppies and leaves cut out and added to the frame. All mounted on red cardstock embossed with a Cuttlebug flower embossing folder.

Having seen the blue poppies today, I think I need to try something in blue.

Hope you are all having a great weekend and a big thank you to all those who comment on my posts, means a lot to me.

Floral Tiles

Maybe its because it is Springtime but I'm in a floral mood at the moment. I was experimenting with Cosmic Shimmer Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals, I love the effect you get layering them up, very satisfying to see them melt.

Stamp : Penny Black Slapstick Cling - Mosaic

Coloured with Promarkers, cut into four and embossed with the UTE crystals (3 layers), mounted on black card and then arranged on gold sparkle paper.

The birthday circle is a die cut sentiment from Craftwork Cards.

I'm wondering what else I can do with this stamp, perhaps something monotone with one of the flowers highlighted in colour or maybe stamp it with various distress inks and use it as a background for something vintage. When I first got this one in a sale I wasn't sure what to do with it but as always when you use something for the first time other ideas come to mind.

For Those in Peril ......

I've missed a few months of the Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2013 but having a few days off work this week I had a go at the May technique using rub ons. I'm not keen on them but had a sheet of vintage nautical images that I bought years ago and never used so they were ideal to use to try out the technique that Tim descibes this month. Details are on his blog so I won't repeat them here.

Its as well the tag should be inspired by Tim's example as I had none of the materials used except distress stains and ink. So, the main image is from a PaperArtsy set, the rub-ons represent the sea and in particular fishermen. I didn't think the film strip tape suited the theme of my tag so I used rope instead. The distress stain colours I used were Stormy Sky, peeled paint, dried marigold and shabby shutters.

Here is my tag:

I have a number of ancestors who were seafaring folk, including my Great Grandfather who was a fisherman and a volunteer lifeboat man so it was nice to do this tag with him in mind.

All the best,

Julia

Lavender and Lace

The May challenge at the Show us Your Twinchies Challenge blog is Lavender and Lace. I was very pleased to be asked to be a guest designer for the challenge this month so go take a look at the blog and check out the design team's great examples. This is the last challenge as the team are saying Goodbye to us so a big Thank You to Zoe, Eileen, Barbara and Sylv for all the inspiration and fun we have had over the past year.

My designs for the Lavender and Lace theme:

The top twinchie uses the glitter and lace technique for the background. Using double sided adhesive paper, lay real lace over the paper and smooth it out. Add glitter, remove the lace and add glitter in a different colour revealing the lace pattern. For my twinchie I added decoupaged stamped images of lace doilies and the woman is from an old stamp set by Rubadubbadoo.

The second twinchie shows stamped lace borders with a flower from an IndigoBlu set. I used blue violet archival ink for the borders and used the same to colour the flowers. The petals and lace border are highlighted with a clear sparkle Sakura pen.

For the third piece I coloured the background with antique linen distress ink and stamped the lavender images with the blue violet archival ink, first, second and third generation stamping. The sentiment is from one of my PaperArtsy JOFY stamp sets and I added a border of real lace to the top of the artwork.

I hope you like them and hope you are inspired to have a go at making one of these miniature pieces of artwork.

Julia x