Butterfly Twinchie

Challenge #2 on the Twinchies blog this month is Bees and Butterflies. A good opportunity to play with my Tim Holtz butterfly stamp. That lovely painted butterfly was just begging to be watercoloured but..... I didn't do that, maybe another day.
I made two twinchies with the same image. The first is stamped in black on a distress ink blended background. I used squeezed lemonade, mustard seed, peeled paint and mowed lawn. The butterfly is coloured with spiced marmalade distress marker. I added some black diamond stickles on the antennae and randomly on the card.

The second one is a prettier version. The background is worn lipstick distress ink lightly applied with a duster brush. Then I used wild honey and worn lipstick through a stencil to add some interest to the background. I like the way these two colours blend. The butterfly is stamped with rose bud memento dew drop and coloured with promarkers. Then I added a couple of gems.

I think I prefer the darker grungier one, I'm not sure. Perhaps I should have tried a watercolour version after all.

I got carried away the the butterfly and decided to make it into a card.

Black diamond stickle dots are added to the embossed frame which I coloured with mowed lawn and mustard seed ink and mounted on yellow textured cardstock. The edges were tinted with black soot distress ink to match the black accents and mounted on a white 6 x 6 card. A small bit of black soot got onto the frame hence the black paper flower which I think may have ruined the card. The yellow is too bright, I should have sanded it down I think.

You might have guessed I am not happy with this. I need to go do something else!

Rainbow Fish

The challenge on the CASology blog this week is fish. I've not played in the CAS challenges for some time but an idea came to mind last night so I made a card.

I started with a piece of white card just over 14cm long and drew 7 pencil lines 2cm apart. I don't have one of those positioning thingys so a ruler and pencil does the job fine but remember to rub out the pencil after the ink has dried or there will be nasty smudges. Stamp the fish in black archival ink 7 times and colour them red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple. Now I have rainbow fish.

I added some bakers twine and the happy birthday sentiment from my Papermania celebration set and mounted it on yellow cardstock that where the bottom edge has been punched with a Tonic Studios paper punch. All mounted on a C6 white card.

The fish is a mini angel fish from Clarity stamps.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Loves Me, Loves me Not

Inspired by Alison's lovely vintage tag project mentioned in my last post, here is  my Kraft tag, book pages and gesso project.

Two Kraft tags, stick on some pieces of torn book pages and paint roughly with gesso. The edges of the tags are distressed with vintage photo distress ink.

The daisies are from JOFY13 and stamped on the tag using black archival ink. The photo is rotated and I don't know why.

Colour the daisies with distress markers. I used mustard seed, wild honey, spiced marmalade and brushed corduroy. Tags complete. 

So, having made the tags, I had some of the book page left. To use it up I made the card using the same technique but on white cardstock and mounted on Kraft paper. This works better on Kraft card than on the white cardstock but I am pleased with the result. Love those JOFY daises, I think they are my current favourites.

Antique Songbird

Another project completed this morning, this time it is a card. I used the IndigoBlu Antique Songbird stamp, stamped it on white cardstock with Galaxy Gold, Elderberry and summer sky dew drops and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. It was hard to see the blue on the stamp so there is only a tiny bit of blue but I rather like the effect. The image was then coloured with Antique Linen distress marker and  mounted on purple card. I quite liked it at that point but there was something missing so I added the silk flowers joined together with a white brad and stuck on with Pinflair glue.

I hope you are enjoying what's left of Sunday and if you get a minute, go check out Alison Bomber's blog, Words and Pictures where she has posted a particularly amazing vintage tag project and in celebration of her one year blog anniversary she has Blogaversary Candy to give away if you leave a comment. Good luck!

Tando Frames

Just a quick post for today's project which I started last weekend and finished off this afternoon.

This is a Tando Creative Hexagonal Frame painted with Fresco paint in sky blue and then on top was a layer of Kroma Crackle mixed with a tiny bit of poppy Fresco acrylic paint. I left the frame for 24 hours for the crackle effect to happen and I am impressed. Its great to use, you layer it on thickly and it finds its own level then when it dries it cracks nicely to show the blue in the background.

The flowers are from JOFY 11 (PaperArtsy) and painted with poppy, eggplant and hey pesto acrylic paint. 

Lynne Perrella Fan

I've had a busy Sunday, the morning spent catching up on jobs around the house and the afternoon catching up on unfinished projects.
Using one of the new oriental Lynne Perella PaperArtsy stamp plates and one of the new Tando Creative fan kits, this is the result of my playing. I saw similar demo'd last weekend at the Craft Barn by Karen Gist and was itching to have a go.

Materials:

Tando Creative ORIENTFAN2 - using the medium sized fan

Lynne Perrella Collection LPC021

PaperArtsy Fresco finish acrylic paints : Squid ink and pansy

Crafty Individuals crackle background stamp

Ranger Perfect pearls : Gold, Cosmic Shimmer : Marine Aqua

Memento Dew drop dye ink : Elderberry and Brilliance Dew drop pigment ink : Galaxy Gold

Black archival ink and ultra fine embossing powder

The background is painted with pansy fresco finish acrylic paint and stamped with the crackle stamp using purple and gold. The frame is painted with the squid ink arcrylic paint, ooh, lovely colour.

I stamped the oriental lady image three times on white card (well, 4 actually in case I messed up and I did mess up) and heat embossed using the ultra fine embossing powder. Then the images were painted with cosmic shimmer mica pigment and gold perfect pearls. Then the tricky bit, I drew around the part of the images I wanted to use with a pencil using the frame of the fan as a stencil, cut them out and stuck them to the background. I used Pinflair Foto-Glue as its repositionable and this does require a bit of fiddling to get them all lined up as the frame is quite thin and doesn't leave a lot of room for error. 

The frame was stuck on with Mod Podge, I couldn't think what else to use so popped a heavy book on top of it and left it alone for an hour or so. That worked, all stuck firmly together.

I really enjoyed making this and I've another one waiting to be decorated in the pack, a smaller one. I'm thinking it needs some of those flowers in it .... you know the ones I mean.

Seaside Twinchie

The Show us your Twinchies June challenge theme is Summer at the Seaside, I love seaside themes and decided to go with beach huts. Here is my entry :

The images are elements from Crafty Individuals CI -278. The seagulls are stamped with versamark and then   two blue chalks used over the background, the different blues are so subtle they don't show in the photo. The beach huts overstamped in black archival and coloured with promarkers. All mounted on a 2 by 2 inch piece of turquoise card.

Happy Saturday.

Craft Barn Extravaganza

What an excellent weekend. I went to the Craft Barn Extravaganza yesterday and already knew I was going to treat myself to some new stamps as the new series of JOFY stamps from PaperArtsy were being launched this weekend. The demonstrators were mainly using PaperArsty products but thats OK by me, I love them.
We had a good chat with Karen Gist about the new Tando Creative products including a lovely fan that she was using for her demo. I got one and have been playing with it this afternoon but its still work in progress. Of course my favourite things at the moment are the JOFY stamps by Jo Firth-Young so I treated myself to two new minis and a large plate. I've been playing with those this afternoon as well. I think I have 5 projects on the go at the moment but here is a simple birthday card that I have completed using JM21 and text from one of my other plates..

The fuschias are coloured with Derwent Inktense pencils and then blended using water and a paintbrush and then mounted on a fuschia pink square card. I love these images, they are quirky and so much fun to work with.

Here are my photos of a couple of the demonstrators' displays: 

Jo Firth-Young

Kay Carley

Its really interesting seeing the other demonstrators' different styles using the same stamps. Perhaps one day I will get a style but for now I like experimenting, sometimes clean and simple, sometimes inky and messy and sometimes I don't know what but whatever it is I am doing I'm loving it and having loads of fun.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Julia x