WOYWW #487

 Not looking too untidy, but I have to tell the truth, I'd actually started putting stuff away when I realised I'd forgotten to take the picture. WOYWW time again, desks galore shared over at Julia's place, The Stamping Ground.  
 If you've not joined in with this, just leave your link at Julias on a Wednesday, and visit the other desks, and we'll come and visit you too. It's great fun, and we're about as close to normal as we're ever going to get.😂
 I've been playing about with Eclipse cards, hence the Alpha dies under the Stampin Up stamp case. One of my whole 3 SU stamps, lol. Behind them, some Stencil paste experiments and some foiling ones too. A couple of  Clair inkpads, some DST, and a Microfibre cloth. One from a cheap pack of 3 from Poundland. Use it to dry my stamps after babywiping them. I've noticed that wipes tend to leave fibres behind, but the microfibre cloth pulls them all off.

These Birthday cards are what I've been up to for the last day or so. You may have to enlarge the image to see the design clearly, I can see it's not too clear in this pic.


I'll blog them later in the week.

















I made 4 Christmas Eclipse cards over the weekend, they're in the post below.
 Now I'm out of white Fun Foam, but I've ordered some self adhesive sheets from E-Bay.



Took myself out to town for a walk today, and as I often do, paid The Range a visit.

These small wooden snowflakes- I have some larger ones from Kaisercraft.

Also some small Christmas wood shapes,both lots by DoCrafts.

Tubs of sequins- £1.50 each, and the bag of blue ones was a £1.

 4 Different colours in each pot, a real bargain.









So that me done, just leaves
..........................And Finally

WOYWW #383

Well that week flew past! Seems like only a couple of days ago we were linking up with Julia, at The Stamping Ground for a worldwide desk hop, and here we are again.
 Actual crafting in progress on my desk this week.
I was having a bit of a tidy- I decided I'd put all my bits of Christmas papers into one of those plastic wallets-bought some from Poundland for the job. Came across these stamped out images at the bottom of the box, so I've cut them down, and adding a little colour to them. Distress Ink Tumbled Glass onto my craft mat, and using a paintbrush & water to paint around the edges of the image, then pull the colour in.

A handful done, and they are not looking too bad.


This is a really old set, from Woodware.

Small pot of water on top of a folded sheet of kitchen towel. the theory being that *when* I end up knocking it over, the paper will catch it before it makes too much mess.

Other than that, I bought an SU stamp set, and a diagonal scoring board via our Fiona ( Staring at the Sea).

Fiona did tell me it was supposed to fit into a base, without which I wouldn't have the measurements, but as I only really wanted it to score with, not make boxes or projects, I was fine. I already have  more scoring boards than is strictly necessary.
 However, just out of interest, I tried it with a couple. It *almost* fits the Hougie board, just a tad too wide.
 But what I did find is that it will fit perfectly onto a Martha Stewart score board.

So that may be a money saver for someone right there.


The card fronts on my desk last week have been turned into cards, and they are posted below this.
There are a lot of pics coming up, from our trip to Happy Stampers, so I've put them all at the end, so you can skip over if you like. This really is a fantastic craft show, and well worth the visit. All about stamping/papercrafting, not another craft in sight. I can highly recommend a visit, if you've never been.

Sarah, Helen, me and Chris, with Neet behind us.

Mark & Helen from Visible Image.

And Pauline Butcher & her Other Half. Pauline does lots of the samples both for the shows and for the TV programmes, which she co-demos on with Mark.

With the lovely Lucy Ellis from Sweet Poppy stencils, who I learned so much from watching at a demo a while back.

Having a drink and a spot of lunch.
Ye gods, my hair needs dying, lol.

 
And yes, some shopping was done! Paper Artsy, Seth Apter and Hobby Art.

 This was a real bargain- 4 items for a tenner. So I had a three pack die set, 2 packs of card- 50 sheets of 280gsm in each- and a 12x12 Gorjuss pack.

Honey Doo stamps, some WOW embossing glitters, and some gorgeous colours of Honey Doo's own embossing glitter. Some Gilding Flakes too.

Couldn't resit some Sweet Poppy stencils, and not on here but some of their own glitters too.

And lastly some stamps again- Lavinia,Card-io, Visible Image and Indigo Blu.


Finally, on our way home.

The heavens opened, it totally hammered down. The shocking part was how few drivers had any lights on in such poor visibility.

About 5 miles on, no sign of rain or clouds anywhere!
Well, if you made it to here, well done! You'll probably have seen photos on the others blogs, but I can say it was lovely to meet up and we had a great day.

Lavinia Toadstools and SU Woodgrain.

So, this is the completed card that was knocking about on Wednesdays desk.
 To be honest, this wasn't exactly what I'd planned when I started. It sort of grew as I went along. I was going to say it mushroomed, but that would have been a terrible pun.

  It started out with the Stampin Up Woodgrain stamp, onto a sheet of white pearl card, using DI Gathered Twigs, and adding some extra markings along the plank lines & around the knots using the Ground Espresso marker.












 Next up some grasses along the bottom, and I used some stamps from an Inkylicious set called Essential Grasses, and a few shades of green from Adirondack.


Then I made a light mark across the top of the planks, about a half inch down, and cut the triangle peaked boards.

 I used a Vintage Photo Distress marker to colour all the edges, including the peaks. Tip here, if you are doing this sort of edging with a marker pen, work with the marker at the back. That way, if the marker slips- and I can pretty much guarantee it always does for me- the resulting line will be on the back of your piece, not the front.

Next I added some Lavinia Stamps Toadstools at the bottom, and also stamped out some Lavinia Spotty Toadstools to colour,both in Versafine Onyx Black. This is where it went off plan, as I hadn't intended to add cut out toadstools until now, but I'd sort of got the 'Fairies at the bottom of the garden' idea in my head.

First off I used a couple of H2O's, a purple and a blue, intending to do the toadstools in two colours and blend them in the middle.
Not too bad, but the blend didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I think it was the wrong type of card for the idea, to be fair. It sort of started to pill a bit. So I swapped to Distress Markers, and did a couple of different blends- a pink/red, and I've also tried a yellow/orange  which worked quite well.

The Spotty Toadstools is a pair of stamps, one large, one small. As much as possible I tried to leave the spots blank, but I think next time- and I've just realised this while typing- it would be easier to dot the spots with masking fluid first. My plan anyway was to cover the spots with Liquid Pearls in White Opal.

It does give a nice sheen to the spots, and afterwards I decided to add a little Diamond Stickles on top for a bit of shimmer.

With the toadstools stuck in place, I stamped the two small fairies, again Lavinia Stamps. You can't see it in the picture, but I also added some tiny dots of Diamond Stickles as fairy dust falling from their hands.
The whole panel was matted onto black, then red card, then mounted onto a  Black card blank.
Final touch was to stamp the Lavinia Stamps word stamp, 'Those who don't believe in magic will never find it', onto a scrap of white pearl card, then matt the same as for the main image.

Scrapjourney: favourite 5 (or so) of 2013

I visited ShazinOz this morning, and she had linked to  A Scrapjourney, a blog by Debby, where crafters are invited to list their favourite 5 projects they made in 2013. She's not being picky over the number, lol, just that they are made in 2013. Which is good, because I had an extra couple I couldn't decide between. I actually found a few I enjoyed for different reasons- trying something new, came out better than I expected (always a bonus), or ones I really enjoyed doing.
 So, in no particular order, here are my 2013 favourites:








This is one of the simple, came out better than expected cards. Just a brayered background and silhouette style stamps in black.

This was a ' I wonder if this will work/came out better than I expected' card, using the SU Swallowtail Butterfly in a triple stamping format, with colour just sponged over & around the image, after it had been stamped in Versamark & heat embossed with white powder.

 
I really enjoyed making this one, for my eldest sons birthday,as we are both huge Edgar Allen Poe fans. It was a couple of new techniques tried, lemon juice heated to age the paper, and a Stampbord removable fridge magnet.




 This one was a real experiment, and definitely falls into the 'came out better than expected' category. I wanted to try using artists pastels, as I have loads, so really can't justify Pan Pastels as well. I stamped all the images in Versamark, onto a background of sponged Distress inks. For each image I grated artist pastels over it, using a nutmeg grater, then buffed off with cotton wool balls.




I was pleased with how this one came out, as I was CASEing a card seen on Pinterest, using an Indigo Blu stamp. I don't have the stamp, but had a fairly similar one, and was hopeful it would produce a similar effect, which it did.









 I loved the dramatic gothic imagery of this stamp, and simple black stamping on a background of various sponged reds really did it justice, I thought.

 Last, but definitely not least, as its probably my favourite, is the card I made for my Beloved Hubby this Christmas. The image, Snowy Postcard, by Stampendous, was stamped onto white pearl card then cut out with the Spellbinders Heirloom Ornaments 2nd to largest die.The white backing was cut from the largest. I stamped the image again on a post-it, and masked the buildings & snow, then sponged an assortment of blues for the sky. Then it was sprayed with Crafters Companion Iridescent Spray & Sparkle, which is hard to see, but gives the snowy areas a lovely sparkle.To get the black matt for the bauble, I drew around the outside of the die, and cut by hand. The Poinsettias are a Le Crea die, which is smaller than most Poinsettia dies, and works well on cards. The two hearts are triple embossed, using UTEE over Anitas Blue Glass embossing powder- the one heart then having a texture stamp inked in silver pressed to it while still molten.So my Favourite 5 is actually a Favourite 7- but what's a couple of extras between friends?

Swallowtail Tags

These came about as I wasn't happy with the colouring on one of my butterflies. It was the first one I tried, and got a few ink lines from not having the sponge folded properly.

I cut the image down to two tag shapes,positioning the wings to one side of the tag, which got rid of the centre piece, where the smudges were. I decided I would overstamp with the French Script stamp, in Versafine Black. What I didn't do was mask the butterfly first. This sort of did & didn't work. It worked well because the script appears to flow behind the butterfly, but didn't work as the black Versafine didn't wipe cleanly off the embossing. Probably would have worked better if I'd used a different colour.

 You can see its gone a little grey, but I decided I could live with it. I think if I'd have used a Purple to stamp the script, it wouldn't have been so noticeable. Oh well, we live & learn.













 I've added some butterfly die cuts to the one,  and haven't gone any further with the second yet. Just goes to show, there is often a way of retrieving mistakes before they get binned.




 Supplies:
Stampin Up Swallowtail Butterfly
Stampin Up French Script
 DI in Milled Lavender, Dusty Concord & Shaded Lilac
Versamark
White Embossing powder
Onyx Black Versafine
 Butterfly die cuts/punches

Triple Stamping Butterfly

As the Swallowtail is such a large stamp, I was curious to see if I could get this to work. I cut three stamping pieces, based on the size of the stamp. They were: 6x 4 3/4,5x 3 3/4 and 4x 2 3/4. The mat layers are 1/4" bigger than the stamping pieces.( 6 1/4 x 5, etc)
 Layered the stamping pieces on top of each other, holding them together with re-positionable tape. Then I stamped & embossed the butterfly in Versamark & White embossing powder, and coloured him in the same way as the others.
 Tip here, separate the layers as you heat emboss them, as the heat makes the re-positionable tape separate, and you have sheets of card sliding everywhere.

 This one was coloured with DI in Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmalade.  I matted all the layers up, and it fitted together quite well.  The base card is covered in a sheet of DP, Dovecraft Earthtones, 8&8 pad..  I have masses of paper I never get around to using! I grabbed a sheet from a 6x6 pad, by K & co, called Hydrangea stripe. I tore it at an angle, and sponged Spiced Marmalade around the edges, then ran it through an embossing folder with butterflies on. I think it was a magazine freebie. I added this to the left hand side then mounted the butterfly panel on top.  A greeting stamped in Spiced Marmalade and matted in the same way finishes it off.

Supplies:
Swallowtail Butterfly, Stampin Up
DI in Squeezed lemonade,Mustard Seed & Spiced Marmalade
 Versamark
 White Embossing Powder