WOYWW # 210

Morning all! Where did that week go?Wednesday again, time for our regular drop-in at Auntie Julias Stamping Ground. Show & tell for this week then:

This arrived in my Happy Mail on Monday, from my ATC swapper, Monique. Fab ATC, gorgeous cover for it, a bunch of gloriously old dictionary pages, and a beautiful stamped mail art envelope holding it all. Did I get enough adjectives into that paragraph, do you think?

 Also arrived since last week, a lovely card from Debs, (Pen Pot),as a thank you for the flower die cuts. Already putting them to great use I see, thanks so much Deb.



What I'm doing at the moment:( well, what I would be doing if not typing):

I came across the stamped image while I was sorting stuff to take to the crop- another one of those things I keep meaning to use up. I've had the unmounted stamp set, there is four of them, for so long, I have no idea who made them, but they are old style botanical prints. I used a sheet of watercolour paper, torn from the pad, and did the crackle glaze thing, using two colours of acrylic paint, with a layer of crackle glaze between them. Overstamped it with Staz-on, and they are coloured with H2O's, I think.I'd intended using it for a card, but having seen the Art Journals going on at the Crop, I'm thinking to make either an Art Journal, or a Garden Journal, or maybe even an Arty Garden Journal, lol. I'm such a decisive person, ..... not!

 By the way, this will get me into all sorts of trouble, I know but yesterday, Tuesday, was Maggies ( Silvercrafters) birthday.......

 ENABLER ALERT........... Skip this part if your ability to resist temptation is not at its best!

I had a link in one of my e-mails the other day, from a place called  Creativity Direct. The link takes you to the page to get the free catalogue.  This LINK takes you to an e-version of it. If you like altering stuff- don't we all- you will love this!

You name it, they've got it- Canvases, frames, bird houses,magazine holders, journals, shapes, door hangers, animals,torso's, boxes - the list is endless, in wood, card, papier mache, foam,  porcelain, glass. Pretty much every craft you can name is covered too- embroidery, sewing, knitting, altered art, decoupage,glass/ceramic painting, Christmas crafts.
 Loving my night shifts- never seemed to have so much time to myself, or been less tired. Nights aren't part of the rotation shifts where we work, everyone  who works nights has asked for it. I can imagine it being miserable if you HAVE to do it & don't like it- the way I felt about having to do earlies. I was born to work nights, lol. I remember reading a long time ago, that the time of day that suits you best depends on the time you were born, and I was born in the evening. So I'm an evening/night person. Its still weird getting up and its still the same day you went to sleep though.

Craft a Scene- A Winters Tag

Well, this is my second post for the DT challenge this month.
 I remembered seeing an interesting piece on Kevins Stampscapes site a while ago, so I went and had another look at it, and I thought it would work well for this challenge.

You can see Kevins original tutorial here, called 'Winter Flurry'.








What Kevin did was to use a piece of pearlescent card as his base card, and streaked on colour using a stylus tool. He used Marvy inks, which I don't have, and I have not really got a good technique yet with the stylus  tool, so I streaked ink direct from my inkpads onto an A5 sheet of pale blue pearlescent card.
    First colour was an Ancient Page inkpad called Flannel- a mid grey colour. I dragged this across the cardstock in a few places, lightly.
 I followed this with Stonewashed & Denim Adirondack ink, and then Weathered Wood Distress ink. You can see that I haven't bothered about completely covering the cardstock, and because its a pale blue, you get a lovely shimmer to the rocks & snow.
Next I watered down a little White Acrylic paint, and used an old toothbrush to flick this across the inked cardstock. 
 I used only one stamp, Pines & Rocks, 195G, which I stamped in Versafine Onyx Black, varying the height of the image, and also using a 'second imprint' sometimes, for depth.
 Once the image was dry, I used a white gel pen to add snow detail to the trees and some of the rocks.
A while ago I made myself a tag template out of acetate, and I used this to select the area of the image I wanted for my tag.
  Once it was cut out, I punched a hole in the top and threaded some fibres through, in colours to blend with the tag. Two silver star brads finished it off. As you can see from the second picture, you could get at least three tags from an A5 sheet- perfect for multiple cards!
 By the way, for my fibres I use fancy knitting wool- you can find balls of this really cheaply, in all sorts of colours and types, and one ball will probably last a lifetime! Great idea is to share with friends- they buy one colour & you buy another, then split them.
  Thanks to everyone who commented on my first piece, I am glad so many of you liked it.
   I hope this one shows that you can get really cool results with the minimum of stamps & ink, and that you can always substitute what you already have for what someone else has used, and still get a good result.
 Quick recap then:
Pale blue pearlescent card (white would work too)
Mid grey dye ink
 3 shades of blue ink.
Black Versafine, Memento or Archival ink.
White acrylic paint.
Cheap toothbrush.
Stamp (195G Rocks & Pines)
Fibres & Brads.