WOYWW 265

For details of how to join in the world’s most famous nosey fest, click on the WOYWW icon in my sidebar, which will take you to our hostess Julia’s blog, where all will be revealed.

Now we are back from our holiday and over all my hubby’s retirement celebrations, I hope I can now return to WOYWW on a regular basis. Here’s what my desk looked like late on Tuesday evening:

As you can see, I am working on my recycled mini-album, and I’ve done a few pages now. It is resting on a nice scratch paper which is developing well into a usable background sheet, and to the right is a similar piece, a sheet of kitchen paper that I’ve used for mopping up with. It’s nice enough to use for a background now, and it will eventually be incorporated into the album.

You can see from the picture how the borders are working on the pages which decrease in size to the centre of each signature. If you look carefully, you can see on the right hand page, one of the gorgeous little bicycle die-cuts which Julia (our WOYWW hostess) sent me a while back – it began life as lime green card, but with the application of a bit of Tea Dye Distress Ink, some careless application of gel medium and finally some copper gilding wax, it’s ended up with a nice texture and colour and looks lovely and vintage!

There’s a little tag between the innermost pages of the signature, the sides of which I have glued together to form a pocket for the tag. A semi-circular punched hole allows for the whole of the tag puller to be visible.

Surrounding the album you can see the various gel mediums, acrylic paints, brushes and ink pads etc. that I’m using in the project. Just visible on the right is a pile of stamps which I may or may not be using in the project (mostly background stamps).

Please see my previous post for further details and pictures.

Also this week I’ve started editing quite a lot of raw video from recent projects so hopefully I shall be uploading some videos to my Youtube channel again soon, and updating my blog accordingly. The trouble is, making and editing a video of a project seems to take longer than the project itself!!

An update on my recent health update – the result of my blood test did reveal that I was anaemic (probably as a result of bleeding from one end or the other – there may be bleeding from the throat inflammation caused by the acid reflux, and I’m almost certainly bleeding from the other end as a result of the ulcerative colitis) so I am back on iron again. I have also been on the 5:2 diet for a week now, and in just one week, with two days’ partial fast, I have lost 5 lb!! At this rate I shall be skinny in six months! This diet is definitely do-able, because you only have to eat less on two days a week (reducing your intake to 500 cals max) and the rest of the time you eat normally.

Happy WOYWW everyone, and may the coming week be creative and productive for you all.

Card Inspired by Helen Allen

My lovely blogging and Youtube buddy, Helen, is in full creative mode at the moment – you could say she’s In the Zone!! Her work is totally inspiring, and this week I decided to try my hand at a card inspired by one of her recent projects, Arty Card Tutorial. Hope you like it, Helen, and thanks yet again for sharing your wonderful creativity with us!

I’m afraid I had some problems with my camera during the making of this project, and some of the photos seem to have come out quite out of focus, for which I apologise – I did not notice at the time – the auto focus seemed to be working OK at the time, and it was only when I came to edit them that I noticed the problem.

Here is all the stuff I got out at the beginning of the project. I didn’t use all of it, and also added in a few things along the way that weren’t in the picture.

Helen worked her two examples on plain card, but I decided I wanted a bit of a background to work on first, so I took some A5 white card and cut it down by an inch on one long and one short side, and shooshed it into some Milled Lavender and Dusty Concord Distress Inks spritzed with water on my non-stick craft sheet. The Milled Lavender proved too pale so I didn’t bother to use any more of it during the project. I added a small amount of Spiced Marmalade with an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

The offcuts from this piece of card I smooshed with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink, and mopped up the rest with another piece of card which will eventually form a background for another project. The strips would be used later in this project.

Now came the fun part – making ink splats! I love doing this. Distress Stains come in a bottle with a fabric applicator and if you strike this firmly down onto some card, it makes a fabulous Splat! Pow! Zap!! Good for working off one’s aggressions. In this case I used Picked Raspberry and Seedless Preserves Distress Stains, the lighter and darker splats respectively.

I then took some sequin waste and used this as a stencil, pouncing acrylic paint with a foam applicator – I made a mixture of Permanent Magenta and Ultramarine to produce a dark rich purple colour. However, I felt that this was a bit too strong, so I made a wash with Titanium White acrylic paint and toned it down a little.

Following Helen’s instructions, I took my bottle of Pure Sunshine Dylusions spray ink, and unscrewed the top. I pulled the tube out of the spray bottle and used this to “scratch” some ink onto the card, parallel to, and at right angles to the design. This is a great technique.

After this I took some of the purple mix acrylic paint and spattered some of it over the card, concentrating on the design part but also adding some spatters to the background.

I chose a script background stamp to add a bit of texture to the background.

Using the rubber stamp without an acrylic block, I applied some of the acrylic paint to part of it and gently laid it down repeatedly over the design, not always applying more paint between each application, so that some of the impressions came out fainter.

I then mixed up a small quantity of Vermilion and Cadmium Yellow acrylic paints and stamped this onto the design using a pen cap.

Returning to my offcut strips, I added some Dusty Concord Distress Ink. Some of this would be used as the background for the sentiment.

Stamping the sentiment. This is a “Happy Birthday” clear stamp that I have had since I started several years ago, and I have no idea what make it is, or where I got it.

I matted the sentiment strip onto a strip of purple cardstock and rounded the corners using my corner-rounder punch.

I rounded the corners of the main card piece, and then cut narrow strips of patterned card – odd scraps I have had for ages – you can see them in the first photo. I cut the ends obliquely and stuck them down with soft matt gel medium, and trimmed off the excess around the edges of the card.

Using an old credit card dipped into Titanium White acrylic paint, I added the white lines across the design. This is an exciting touch that Helen added to her cards, which really lifts the design.

At this stage, I added some more scratched lines with the Dylusions ink, as the original ones had been somewhat obscured by subsequent layers. After this, I painted on some iridescent gel medium randomly, mostly on the background but a little on the design, which really makes the surface of this card shimmer. This is gorgeous stuff, and can either be painted on direct, as I have done here, or mixed with acrylic paint in any colour and then applied. It has a lovely silky finish.

The card base was formed from a sheet of heavy white A4 card which looked a bit stark against the card, so I inked the edges with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink which toned it down nicely and made it co-ordinate with the design. I also inked the inside in the same way, adding some Dusty Concord in the centre part.

I matted and layered the card topper onto some gold mirror card and the same purple cardstock that I used for the sentiment.

I took some rayon seam binding and smooshed it around in some Dusty Concord Distress Ink spritzed with water on my non-stick craft sheet. I kept screwing it up and then applied some ink direct from the pad, to give a nice uneven colour, continuing to spritz and screw it up until I was pleased with the result.

I added a small amount of the Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

I tied a shabby chic style bow using three lengths of this ribbon and fixed it in place with hot glue, before highlighting it with some gold gilding wax applied with my finger.

The sentiment attached to the card topper.

A set of decorative brads that I’ve had in my stash for several years – I chose one with a purple and yellow colour scheme.

I cut off the fasteners from the back of the brad and attached it to the centre of the bow using hot glue, and then used more hot glue to attach the bow to the card.

The final step was to attach the card topper to the base card, which I did using quite a large quantity of double sided tape glue from my ATG – the card topper was a bit wrinkly from all that had been done to it, and it is now nice and flat. I rounded the corners of the card base, and here it is.

Thank you, Helen, for an inspiring design! I think there is a lot of potential in this technique – as Helen says, it is reminiscent of art journal pages with the building up of the layers.

P.S. Can you spot the deliberate mistake? A real “duh” moment!!

Birthday Card for Gisele

Today is my friend Gisele’s birthday, and rather than choosing one of the (so far very few!) cards from the Card Factory, which she may well have seen as she follows my blog, I made her a card today from scratch.

I used a couple of die-cuts from the marvellous pack that I recently received from Judy in Australia. I added a little distressing to both circles, and hand-embossed around the edge of the smaller one which has some music on it.

The pink flower was made from some die-cut pieces which I also hand-embossed, and assembled with Pinflair gel glue, and decorated with Flowersoft and Stickles, and the leaves were some ready-made rose leaves from my stash.

I cut the swirls and the sentiment using Sheba, my Black Cat cutter (see my sidebar for details of this machine). The swirls were from a cut file of Penny Duncan, and the sentiment was my own design using Edwardian Script font. (This file is on my SkyDrive, available for free download.) The sentiments were cut from a shade of green which echoed the leaves. All these items were cut from American Crafts cardstock which cuts beautifully on my machine. The swirls were darkened with Vintage Photo Distress Ink before being stuck down onto the die-cuts, and the flower added on top.

The decorative paper was part of a stack I bought when I first started, from Ebay. I haven’t used a great deal of it because as time has gone on, I haven’t liked it much. This particular sheet had been toned down with Picket Fence Distress Stain some time ago when I was working on another project, and seemed to be right for this pink-themed card.

The card base was plain heavy white cardstock that I’d bought at a craft fair some time ago, distressed around the edges with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink.

Inside I distressed the edges with Spun Sugar Distress Ink and added a music background stamp using Old Paper Distress Ink, and a Happy Birthday sentiment using Festive Berries Distress Ink. We both signed the card using a pink glitter gel pen.

All very pink and girly!!

Off to a party tonight to celebrate her birthday.

The Annual Card Factory Begins–Judy’s Topper

It’s that time of year again… and no, I don’t mean the dreaded “C” word! It’s time to replenish the card stash, and also to make up a set of birthday cards for a Christmas present for my mum. As she’s got older, she’s wanted to downsize, and really doesn’t appreciate a lot of “stuff” as presents, and it’s become quite hard to think of things to get her. Last year she asked if I would make cards for her to send to family and friends, and at first I balked at the idea, as I am really trying to move away from card making these days, but then I thought, “If that’s what she wants, what a good Christmas present it would make!” You know what they say – you only have to do something once for it to become a tradition! So out comes the card making stuff again, and I’ve made a start.

I also need to make cards to send to family and friends myself, and because most of our family have their birthdays in the first few months of the year, I need to get ready. I am also planning on making a lot of generic-type cards that I can put different greetings and sentiments on, so that I’ve always got something ready in an emergency, and a collection of different toppers so I can assemble something quickly. There are always thank you cards to do; people always appreciate a hand-made card after they’ve invited you out, for instance.

I so appreciate Judy, Julia and other friends who have sent me packets of die cuts over the past few months! These are coming in handy as I start to make toppers and card bases.

My first card  in the factory (A4 folded to A5 size) has utilised Judy’s wonderful card topper that she put in with her die cuts. Although it is quite thick, each layer is stuck down with a foam pad so it squashes fairly flat, and there’s nothing to get damaged in the post. I’ve just matted it onto some dark red card (from Paper Mill Direct), and the card base is heavy white cardstock which has been inked with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink and then spattered with water, blotted and dried with the heat gun. (I love this technique! Instant gorgeous background!)

Every now and then I cut a whole sheet of “Happy Birthday” or “Thank You” etc. greetings on Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. I’ve got various files (svgs) of these sheets saved, so that I just open them up, bung the card in and start cutting! (I’ve also done this for flowers that I use a lot.) Each greeting file includes an equal number of matching shadow (mat) layers for the particular greeting, and cutting them all from plain white cardstock or watercolour paper, I can then quickly colour them with Distress Stains to co-ordinate with my project. For this card, I used Bundled Sage for the actual text, and Forest Moss for the shadow layer. After I had stuck them together with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, I stuck them down onto the card using the same glue, and then carefully separated the letters with a matching marker.

Inside, I partially inked a background text stamp (“Calligraphic Mat #4” from the Artistic Stamper) with Old Paper Distress Ink so that it ended up with an irregular outline, and then stamped Happy Birthday (“Happy Birthday” from The Stamp Barn) with a dark red ink pad (“Pretty Colour” Pigment Stamp Pad #30). The edges of the inside are distressed with Spun Sugar Distress Ink just to soften the white a little.

I’m very pleased with how this one came out! Thanks Judy for a great topper.

Village Craft Fair

Last Saturday there was a craft fair in our village church to celebrate the creativity of the local people and as a local fund-raiser. I was offered a table and readily agreed, and offered to do demonstrations throughout the day.

Some of the work on display was of a very high standard; for instance, the lady who had the table next to mine had only been painting for about a year, and was producing work such as this:

There was also someone who was exhibiting a wide range of items including miniature embroidered rugs for dolls’ houses, taken from original rug designs:

seen here with some of her exquisite silver spoons. She also worked with enamel on copper, and made silver and bead jewellery. I was particularly taken with her marine life jewellery.

Further acrylic paintings:

This artist also created fairies from hand-made felt, which you can see on the display on the left of her table.

A great display of beautiful quilts.

There are more photos of the show in my Photobucket album.

Here I am at my table, ready to start.

This is my display board. I am so grateful to my hubby for finding some pegboard panels for me – this turned out to be ideal for hanging my mirrors and prints, and it took the rest really well with Blue Tack.

As you can see, I tried to display as much variety as I could – my mixed media mirrors (for further details, click on “Mirrors” in the RH sidebar of my blog – there are several posts), ATCs (likewise), pages from my ongoing mixed media Fine Art Album project, some experimental pieces, small paintings, and prints of my zentangle art – I printed these on semi-gloss photographic paper and am very pleased with the quality, and the intensity of the colour.

As I worked on my demo pieces, lots of people came up to watch and to chat, and ask me about my work. On the far left of my table, beside the zentangle print, are the cards and coasters. As well as offering these black and white zentangle cards for sale, I also managed to make up nearly 2 dozen coloured ones. I shall be doing a separate post about these in due course.

Of all that I had on offer, I only managed to sell nine cards, unfortunately, but at least my work got some exposure, and I had great fun being creative all day, so it was worth it!

Now for some photos of the work I did during the day. Most of these were small in size so that I could demonstrate several different techniques, and as usual I worked on ATC-sized card much of the time, as any successful samples can then be used for actual ATCs, and anything not successful won’t break the bank because hardly anything has been used!

I started with a plain white ATC which I stamped with versamark, and heat-embossed with clear embossing powder. I then inked this with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters, and finished it off with a bit more distressing round the edges with Vintage Photo DI. The stamp was Calligraphic Mat #4 from The Artistic Stamper. The embossing acts as a resist, showing the white card beneath the ink. On the second sample, I inked it first using Weathered Wood DI, then embossed with clear embossing powder, and inked again, this time with Bundled Sage, and finally a touch of Vintage Photo around the edges to distress it. This resulted in the resist showing the initial inking colour, in this case blue. This stamp is the Music background stamp, again from The Artistic Stamper.

You can see how through many layers of stamping and inking, many different and interesting effects can be created.

The next thing I demonstrated was rubbing the ink pad on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzing it with water and smooshing the card in this ink. For the first sample, I used a mixture of Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo DIs. The quality of the card wasn’t that good for this technique, but I didn’t mind in the end that the initial smooshing came out quite blotchy; with the added stamping and extra ink, it just added to the general grunginess of the effect. To get a smoother effect, watercolour paper would be better as it stands up well to a soaking.

I stamped with gold embossing powder onto the background of the first piece, and in the second, used the stamp as a resist, as before. The stamp in the first sample is a flower head stamp from The Stamp Barn, and that in the second is from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge Collection by Stampers Anonymous. This sample was first inked all over with Spiced Marmalade DI, stamped with clear embossing powder and then smooshed into Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo. To finish each of these samples, I spritzed them with a DIY glimmer mist made from Wild Honey Distress Re-inker, water and Perfect Pearls (Perfect Pearl colour), which has given an iridescent finish, and some nice blotches of a more intense effect.

The next sample was somewhat similar, but smooshed, stamped and inked repeatedly, building up the layers until I got the effect I wanted. In this case I used the Personal Impressions Pebbles background stamp with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and the Crafty Individuals large swirl stamp, also with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and finally with gold. This one was then sprinkled with water and blotted with some kitchen paper.

I did a quickie demo showing the effect of sanding Core’dinations paper – I had prepared a piece of Whitewash Core’dinations at home, embossing it with the Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folder “Cracked.” After sanding, I inked it with Dusty Concord DI, showing how the ink is intensified by the roughness of the sanded surface. To finish this one off, I rubbed on a little Treasure Gold in the central part, but it doesn’t show up too well on the photo.

I did a few examples with one of the stamps from the Stamp Attack JoZart Design fans collection, using Versamark onto black card and then adding dry Perfect Pearls in various colours with a soft brush. Once I had brushed off the excess I spritzed them lightly with water to activate the binding agent in the mica powder. These will be cut out and used as small tags, with the addition of some ribbon and a bit of bling.

My final sample was done with acrylics and stencils. I had intended to do several of these, but time was marching on, and I had other things to do as well.

For this, I laid my Increasing Circles stencil onto some heavy watercolour paper and painted on some gesso with a foam brush. After drying this with my heat gun, I proceeded to paint the surface roughly with alizarin crimson acrylic paint, placed the stencil back and rubbed with a baby wipe. This removed quite a bit of the paint from the gesso which acted as a resist, giving some interesting overlapping partial circles. I repeated the process with some ultramarine blue, and then stamped with scraps of extra large and extra small bubble wrap, using gesso. The effect was altogether too bright at this stage, so I made my favourite dulling-down acrylic glaze from a touch of Payne’s grey acrylic paint mixed with acrylic polymer, and after drying this, stamped with archival black ink using the ink-spatter stamp from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge collection from Stampers Anonymous, and finally stamped with copper metallic acrylic paint using the circles stamp from the Bitty Grunge collection also from Stampers Anonymous. As always, using gesso and acrylics, I had to try and remember to clean the stencil, brushes and stamps immediately or it dries on very quickly and becomes impossible to remove. This is a bit of a bore, especially when one is on a creative roll and is desperate to get on to the next stage! (How nice it would be to have a flunky to do it for me, like the artists of old, who had apprentices to grind their paint for them!!)

This is a technique that you can just go on adding to, layer by layer, colour by colour, shape by shape, whatever you want, until you like it! The possibilities are endless. Here’s a detail shot.

I really like how the texture of the watercolour paper works with this background.

My second demonstration was making some paper flowers with Penny Duncan’s rose design cut file, somewhat adapted to give a more frilly edge to the petals. I deliberately made these quite large so that people could see what was going on. Here are the materials I used.

The pieces were drawn in Inkscape and cut out using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. Distress Stains are the best method of colouring the petals and leaves, in my opinion. They are easy to apply, and you can build up the layers of colour to the intensity you desire. Once coloured and dried with the heat gun, each petal and leaf is hand-embossed onto a piece of fun foam, and then assembled using the hot glue gun. I ran a nib across the surface of a distress ink pad and drew the veins on the leaves. Here is the final result.

My final demo was intended to be zentangle drawing, and although I did do a bit, it was not enough to photograph – I will upload the finished drawing when I have done it. By the time I got started on that, the numbers of visitors to the show had thinned out considerably, and then people started clearing up, so I had to call it a day, as it took a very long time taking down my display and packing it all up ready to take home.

WOYWW 156–Altered Boxes, Zentangle Art and a Birthday Card

Time for the world’s most famous nosey fest again – courtesy of our lovely Julia who tries to keep us all under control – click on the link in my sidebar to take you to her blog to find out what it’s all about, and join in if you dare like!

Today is my birthday, and we are going out, and I’m already running pretty well on empty so I can’t guarantee how active a participant in WOYWW I shall be this week. This is my desk as of yesterday.

I’ve been working on a birthday present for a friend. It’s her birthday today too and as usual I’ve been working at the last minute. We’ve been too busy for comfort recently and what with all the extra activity and also the hot weather, I’ve not been very well and haven’t had any reserves for being in my ARTHaven but it’s been a bit cooler these past couple of days, and I’ve been working hard, trying to finish the project in time. I bought some little plain boxes for altering at a craft show a while back, and I’m giving my friend one of these. I thought I’d work on two others at the same time. They are being covered with different coloured scraps of tissue paper, stuck down with regular matt gel medium and then embellished. I’ve got on quite a bit further since this photo was taken, and my friend’s box is now finished apart from drying time. I shall be doing a separate blog post about the whole project so won’t go into a lot of detail here, but if you’re interested to see how the boxes turn out, watch this space!

On the desk you can see bits of the tissue paper, my gesso and gel medium, some acrylic paints to paint the small embellishments (a starfish and a shell, and a few of my air dry clay pebbles made for my on-going Choc-a-Bloc project – no, Julia, they really are NOT Imperial Mints lol!!). I’ve added some yarn to the first box as well, to make a wave/ripple texture. Also on the desk is my palette with a piece of damp kitchen roll draped over it in an attempt to keep some acrylic paint from drying out! Looks pretty manky, doesn’t it.

For the benefit of those of you who only visit my blog for WOYWW, I thought I’d show you my latest zentangle art which I did this week, which I have propped up at the back of the desk. Here’s a larger version. She is called “La Bella” – “The Beauty” – and I hope she lives up to her name! (The link will take you to the post about this, which also includes some sketches from my zentangle journal.)

Last night I made a card for my friend to go with her present – when I made my hubby’s card for our anniversary, I made two almost identical backgrounds and used the second of these, and I deliberately made the box to co-ordinate with it. It’s a relatively simple card, with a stamped heat-embossed sentiment, and some flowers cut with my old Cricut cutting machine a while back, which I had in my stash of flat white flower cut-outs which I can then colour and embellish as required. In this case they were coloured with Distress Stains (Faded Jeans, Broken China, Peeled Paint, Pine Needles and Picket Fence) and hand embossed, and the veins being painted in with Pumice Stone Distress Ink, and layered and applied with Pinflair glue. The centres of the flowers were done with Stickles. The whole thing is matted onto some plain white card which I have distressed using Broken China Distress Ink.

Sorry to be so hopeless at visiting everyone last week – given how busy I’m going to be this week too (and no doubt having to recover afterwards) I can’t guarantee I’ll do a lot better this week. Thanks to everyone who visited last week – I really appreciate all your lovely comments, and those who have decided to follow me.

Happy WOYWW, and have a great week, everyone, with lots of opportunity for creativity.