WOYWW #443

So here we are, at the last post before December-just- and is it me, or has this year suddenly flown in the last couple of months? I mean, the whole year has gone quite quickly, but these last few months it's been sort of blink and you missed it.
 Leaving our links over at Julias again, The Stamping Ground- I reckon there should be mince pies too soon, *wink, wink*.
Still not a lot of crafting being done, I have had some more practice time with the baubles, and I seemed to get a better result by outlining first, letting that set, then brushing on the ink. I think the nib of the pen was clogging on the ink. Might try doing the inking, then outlining a few hours later, see if that helps.


Tried  on the kraft card first- I've never really got into the whole kraft thing, the colour is just a bit to 'meh' for me, and although it inks nicely, the contrast just doesn't work for me.

Returned to black, and I'm much happier with the result, still not perfect, but much better.



I also decided to sort my UFO boxes- yes, I've now upgraded to Boxes 2.0-and I really need to get a grip and finish them all off, or get them made up, which is all a lot of them need.



 Exhibit A- and those piles all have 6-10 card fronts in them. At least. The one top right has closer to twenty.

 Masterboards bottom right, a couple of random card fronts above them, two Sweet Poppy Stencil fronts, done if I remember rightly with Imagination Starlights paints- a couple of stamped & heat embossed snowglobes, and the start of some sponged snowy scenes.

A random selection of stencilled backgrounds- all stencils are 7x7 from Clarity.

Another Sweet Poppy stencil, the cat on a wall, all done with stencil paste & glitter to get different coloured cats. I also varied the glitter on the walls on some, and two have been finished off with some foliage & tree stamping. Oh, and a masked off moon & sponged sky.

Doesn't look quite so bad when you hide them in plastic wallets!

There are also canvas UFO's- all are done with Sweet Poppy stencils & paste, a few have glitter flakes. Some backgrounds were swiped on with a baby wipe, some are Bleeding Art Tissue.  Bottom right with the Cat is Brushos straight onto the canvas.

Top right here is Bleeding Art Tissue, bottom right & centre are Brushos- centre one straight onto canvas, right hand one is a dried baby wipe from cleaning up.

Top left I have plans involving Bees- I have a Honeycomb stencil or three,😁, and the background is DI reinkers in Wild Honey & Carved Pumpkin, wiped on with a baby wipe. Bottom square has had ink brushed through a Clarity stencil, I think it needs more, and I think the other two are just random DI reinkers wiped on again with a baby wipe.

I actually found three finished cards- well, apart from the insert- these were done with the Laminator/Foil method, and a Sweet Poppy stencil.

These are again all done with a stencil- Top two are Dreamweaver ones- stencil paste and a Laminator & foil, matted onto silver glitter card, and blue. These came out fine.
 I was really disappointed  with the bottom two though. I was very happy when I foiled them, as they came out a treat- I loved the mulicoloured ribbons and baubles on the left one, and pleased I managed to get the green foil on the holly, and some assorted coloured foil on the baubles.
 I matted them onto Green glitter card, and that's when it went horribly wrong.

I always, always use Pinflair Glue Gel when matting onto glitter card- if it's not a smooth type- so that it grabs. This green glitter card has leached colour into the glue, and then through the cardstock. So, lesson here is that not all glitter card is created equal! I think that green will be consigned to die cutting trees or suchlike, where I can use DST/ sticky tabs. That may also be solution for this- foam tape on the back, then a little Silicone glue on the tape to stick it to the glitter, and the tape should- hopefully- provide a barrier.
 My problem is I love trying out new products/techniques, and get easily distracted by a new one.  So, no more experimenting till I finish these off!
 UTI seems to be clearing, now I've picked up a cough/cold, which seems to be resolving itself into a chest infection, so I'm back on Antibiotics, and extra use of the inhaler! My poor immune system just needs to catch a break so it can build itself up again after all the battering it's taken in recent weeks.  Running up to Christmas we have a few things going on- Wednesday (tonight) we are off  to Birmingham to see Stone Sour, then Friday night it's our works Christmas meal. Monday I have another works meal, for Long Service achievements, as I've been there for 15 years this year. Then next week we have a Marilyn Manson concert, and the week after, 5 Finger Death Punch, so it's all go, lol.
And now, it's time for And Finally.....

WOYWW 423

First thing this week is an ATC I received  last week, from Anne at Copper Beech Crafts. Love the colour, and the stamp. Smashing card that came with it too.

 Right, this desk shot is going to be a bit of a shocker. All of those joining us from The Stamping Ground will find this hard to believe.😲








I decided it needed a complete clear up, and cleaning- I had a few rainbow stripes at times, as stray Brusho crystals got activated!
But as we are off on our holibobs tomorrow, I thought it ought to be done. So that's what it's going to look like for the next 10 days, but I'm sure it won't last past us getting home again.






There has been some stuff done in the last week- that canvas I was working on is very almost finished- these are some wooden pieces I wanted to add.



Sprayed with a mix of Dylusions and Distress sprays, and a Cosmic Shimmer pearl one for good measure.










I'd added some paste through a Tim Holtz stencil.

Then stuck down my various pieces using Glossy Accents. Apart from the clock face- that has silicone glue so the spinner will still turn.


I'm just going to add some runs from the top with diluted ink once this is all dry, and then I think I'll call it done.



Well that's it, I'll be round to visit as many people as I can today, and I shan't be joining you next week, but I'll be back the week after.

I'm sure this will make a few of our WOYWWers laugh!

WOYWW #422 (I think)

Well here we are again, and I have to say, this time next week, I'll be in holiday mode, as we go away next Thursday. But, my desk this week,for our weekly meeting at Auntie Julias, The Stamping Ground.
It has a few things on it, to be honest. First off is this fab Dragon, kindly sent to me by Sue Dyer (Graceful Greyhounds) , when I admired a dragon on her desk a week or two ago.
He's smashing, thank you Sue.

Then I started work on a couple of canvases. I keep saying I'm going to, and I have two ideas in mind, but I'm only right at the start of the process.

The first one so far has had a mix of yellow & orange Acrylic paint spread on with baby wipes.

That's as far as I am with that one at the moment, as I'm more concerned with getting the second one done, as I'm planning on adding it to Eldest Sons Birthday pressies, and that's the end of July.
And I'm already on to Plan B, as Plan A didn't work as well as I hoped.

The canvas has been coloured using the ink & shaving foam technique. Wasn't sure how well it would work, but it works fine.

 Plan A was lighter, and then I added some images stamped on tissue. Unfortunately, the tissue around the image picked up the dye ink, and it had a sort of dark halo around the images, so I wet it and got them back off. Then re- coloured the canvas a bit.

 Used an assortment of blue Distress Inks, and as I had plenty of usable foam left over, also covered 3 sheets of card.

Still had foam left, so I tried something else. Patting it through a stencil.

I did try spreading it, and dragging some off, but you end up with it going under the stencil, so I took to just scooping up a little on a palette knife, then patting it on, and leaving it to air dry with the foam still on, after I'd removed the stencil. This does seem to take a few days, especially if you leave the foam too thick.

Like I say, they don't turn out perfect, but I reckon I will be able to stamp an image over the mistakes.

Used all the blue, then made a small batch of green.That ones still not dried out completely yet, so remains to be seen how successful it was.

For the non knitters, just substitute any craft item of your choice, lol.


Had my MRI on Tuesday, and I now have an appointment to see an Oncologist at the QE on the 1st of August. They did actually offer me one for next Tuesday, the 11th, but I asked them to swap it. Partly because I don't want to run the risk of getting there, and they haven't had the report from the MRI- it would only be 4 working days after the MRI, and partly because I really don't want to be doing it two days before we go on holiday!

WOYWW #404

Well, here we are, two months down already. Time flying past, and to be honest, not a lot yet happening this end, other than a bit of organising.Did get one gorgeous piece of Happy Mail, from our lovely Debbbie, of Tattered Rocks.
 Isn't it just awesome?
















Next on  my desk are these- water soluble oil pastels. I've seen a lot of good things written about these, people comparing them very favourably to Tim Holtz's Distress Crayons, and to Gelatos as well. Notice these are water soluble ones, not just bog standard oil pastels. This pack of 24 cost me £8.50 from Amazon, plus shipping.So a lot less than the other two products mentioned.

Nice range of colours too, so I'm intending to have a play with them in my practice journal and see what happens.

As you can see, with a bit of a water spritz, they do indeed blend really well.

Last thing for this week, the Distress Oxide pads arrived. I'm going to see what I think of these, and whether they are different enough to justify the outlay when more come out. The one thing that really caught my eye so far was how even the palest colours show up on dark cardstock, even black, when they dry. So that will be an interesting experiment with some scrap black cardstock.
 Well then, time to link up with our Julia, at The Stamping Ground, and I'll be visiting in between naps, lol.

Canvas calendar

I had to wait a while to blog this, as it was a gift for a FB friend, so needed to wait until she'd received it.
 A while back I posted about some stencils I bought at Happy Stampers, and my friend Erika said she had the same one, and that we ought to make something for each other, which I thought was a lovely idea.My WOYWW visitors will remember seeing a picture of lots of punched flowers recently, which were for this project. As usual, I made way more than I need, so the rest are filed away for later use.


This was the card Erika sent to me, a gorgeous Copper paste embossed card, with a background in shades of purple.









 I also gone with a similar colour scheme, oddly enough, using a  canvas board base from The Works. I'd just roughly sponged on some shades of blue & purple Distress inks, then left it to dry.
 I added a sheet of Tim Holtz Tissue paper with Matt medium, and left it to dry again.

Next day I stencilled on the image, called Flower Tree. I used Pearlescent white stencil paste, also from Sweet Poppy.

While this part was drying, I punched out the flowers.Many years ago at the Hobbycrafts NEC I purchased some Paper Blox pads, which are pearlescent/glittered/metallic papers, some in a square format, some long narrow pads. I pulled out a selection of sheets, and gave them a blast with Crafters Companion Iridescent Glitter spray before punching.

In the end, I didn't use all the colours I punched out, but what the heck, now I have some punched flowers in stock, lol.

I used a selection that blended together well, and added one to each of the flowers on the tree, having shaped them a little first with a stylus tool.




The flower centres were created with Crystal Stickles.

I added some toning Liquid Pearls in pinks and purples to the dots in the image.



I knew the wording that I wanted to add, so sorted out some white tissue paper, to make it sort of blend into the background, rather than stand out.

The 'Believe' and 'Never let go of your dreams' are both from Lavinia stamps, and I stamped each twice, as I had to tear them out, and that was a recipe for something going wrong! I used Archival Cobalt ink to stamp, and Crystal Embossing Powder for some sparkle.
 By the way, the phrase is in individual words, which is why the stamping here looks a bit weird.

 I placed the Believe word to follow the shape of the tree,after tearing into individual letters, then added the phrase at the bottom on either side of the tree trunk. All done with Matt Medium.



So I was almost done, when I thought I could add a small calendar to the bottom, to make it functional, as well as nice to look at.
 Cue trip to the shops- I'd actually expected to be able to buy them at the NEC last week, but didn't see any. I got them in a card shop in town, in a pack of 5, for 99p, if anyone needs to get any. Pretty sure it was called 'A Write Card'. If your shopping centre is anything like ours, there are so many card shops, they sort of all merge together!

 I added the calendar with a couple of strips of pale purple ribbon, and made a hanging loop from the same ribbon.
Final touch, I thought a flower tree needs butterflies, so punched out a couple from some glitter paper.

WOYWW #384

Well I seem to be on a roll, as there is yet more crafting this week. Behold, the Bleeding Tissue technique!
 No, I'm not mad at it, honestly, that's what it's called. It's like regular Tissue paper to look at, but when you get it wet, the colour transfers to whatever it touches. I got mine off Amazon, it's really cheap, as an 'add on' item- when you are spending £20, it only costs a couple of quid, and free postage. As this time of the year my Christmas buying from Amazon tends to start, it was a bargain.
I'm doing this onto canvas boards- a pack of 6, 5"x7", are £2 from The Works. Doesn't have to be canvas of course, watercolour paper, or any that will cope with being wet works just as well.
 You just spray some water onto your base, then add tissue paper, in bits, or strips, or whatever takes your fancy.
Give it a short while to dry- maybe half an hour or so, depends how much water you've used and so on.
  












When it's dried, remove the bits of tissue, and there you have your background. Looks a bit like a Brusho background, but you have a lot more control of the colour placement.
 And the best bit, it's not a one shot deal with the paper either. Use the bits two or three times before it loses all it's colour. Obviously each successive one gets paler, but it still looks great.

This canvas was already covered in some printed tissue paper, then I spritzed it with water again when it had dried. The tissue pieces have already been used on one canvas, so this is a second background from them.








Paler colours, but I think it works really well, and some white space from creases just adds to the effect. 

 







Here I've stencilled a tree on it, when it's dry I'll add either glitter or gilding flakes, not sure which yet.








I've also done a few more Brusho backgrounds to play with, some on canvas boards and some on watercolour paper.

I've saved my mop up baby wipes and left them to dry out! The three pieces front right.



One final thing I should have shown you last week, but I forgot.

I bought this from Ali Reeve (Clevercut), at Happy Stampers- an awesome MDF sign for my door. Just need to do some work on it, not sure at all what I'll do yet, so this may be in the pipeline for a while.
 So thats my desk this week, I'm off to add my link to our Julias  regular Wednesday blog hop at The Stamping Ground.
 The Polar Bear cards from last week are in the post below, and later this week I'll blog the card I made for Beloved Hubby for our Wedding Anniversary, last Monday.