Christmas in July

I caved in and bought those adorable Tim Holtz Bird Crazy stamps and now I see there is a set of crazy accessories too. I have them on pre-order from Oyster Stamps. They are due mid August but I can't wait for them so I made a Christmas hat for my little bird from last year's half tone set.

I used watercolour card stock and distress markers to colour her. Fun flock is added to the hat and ground for snow.

This got me in the mood so I played with my Tim Holtz  Sizzix Alterations set called Merry Christmas that I picked up in the sales earlier this year. This one is almost a copy of the example on the back of the packet and I think a good one to make a bunch of quick cards for Christmas.

I used distress markers direct to the stamp, die cut and mounted with foam pads.

Colours used were Barn Door, Frayed Burlap and Wild Honey. I still love the names of the TH colours.

Happy July 25th!

Patchwork

I've lost my mojo. In an attempt to get it back I played with my patchwork die.

Stamp : PaperArtsy Lin Brown ELB16
Sentiment : Penny Black Snippets
Die : CREAlies Modern Patchwork No.1

Life Memories

I love the nostalgic, collage look of the Tim Holtz May tag. It is possibly my favourite so far this year. I say possibly my favourite as each month I think the tag is better than any I have seen before.
The tutorial is on Tim's blog:
http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2015-may/

My version this month is pretty close to Tim's example as I had quite a few of the ingredients this time, including the lovely photobooth embellishments. I chose the same photo for my tag. Colour tinting photos with distress markers is effective, I like this.

This is my version:

I like the look of the stencilled texture paste on the burlap background but as usual, struggled with the words so I chose "life memories" as the tag seemed to say that to me.

Penny Black Demure Take 2

I have been playing with my Penny Black Demure stamp again, this time using Brushos. Its always a good idea to have more than one project in mind when you buy a new stamp and I have thought of at least four ideas using this one.

Penny Black stamp : Demure
Brushos : Brilliant Red and Leaf Green
Highlighted with Pink Candy Stickles

This is stamped onto ordinary white stamping card using versamark and embossed in white. The Brushos paint is added afterwards and spritzed with water. Leaf Green is so full of different colours, see the turquoise and yellows it makes.

Watercolour Effects

A quick post showing two cards I have made using Rubbernecker stamps.

Fall Tree

2 Daisies

These are so ridiculously easy to make. Just colour the stamps with distress markers, spritz with water and stamp them onto watercolour card. I added a bit of detail to both with the fine point of the pens then mounted them on cards.

Distress Markers meet Alcohol Pens

The sun is shining, Spring is here and it is still light after 8pm. I do love this time of year.
This weekend I have been having a go at the technique I learned from Kay Carley last weekend.
Have a look at Kay's beautiful work on her blog:
http://kaycarley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/may-class-at-glitter-pot.html

I cannot claim the colour schemes used on the flowers as my own as they are the same as Kay used on the example I saw in the demo but I shall play with this again using different colour schemes.
My first card uses the new Penny Black Demure stamp and for the second I used a Lin Brown flower for one of my PaperArtsy sets. The sentiments and sprigs are from Hobby Art sets.

The flowers are coloured using Copics and the background stamping and watercolour effect is achieved with distress markers. 

Enjoy what is left of the weekend,

Julia x

P.S. Note to self ..... I must do blog updates more than once a month!

Free Stamps

We spend all this money on craft products and just once in a while, free stamps come your way that just work so well together. My friend gave me the Stampendous cling stamp called Parasol Portrait as it was just not her thing and she thought I would like it, I do, I really like it.
The free stamp that came with Craft Stamper magazine this month is by Visible Image and is a grunge flourish which I thought would work perfectly with the portrait.

The background is distress ink : Weathered Wood, Victorian Velvet and a touch of Milled Lavender.
Stamped the flourish part of the freebee stamp in sky blue memento around the edges of the A6 shiny card to get a pale and interesting background.
Then I added the image in black stazon and stamped the grungy part of the stamp around the edges. I like the graphic look of it stamped in black. The sentiment and rose text was added later and the roses coloured with distress markers.

That's all for today, the Sunny day sent me outdoors so minimal crafting has been done.