OOTH challenge

Out of the hat are asking us to make a shrine for this weeks  challenge , I had no personal reason to make one, so thought I'd start with a sentiment which I put  between 2 of Tim's cabinet dies .
The sentiment is from Elusive images, the background stamp from the Artistic Stamper and the images La blanche

 

Now I really must get my finger out and make a Christmas card or two .......can we please restart December I need more time AAGGGGHHHHHHH 

 

Challenge 19

Well here we are at our last challenge of the year BUT it will run till the new year just in case your at a loose end .

Neets choice a recipe ... Blue, Female image, Ribbon and some sparkle and you choose what you make

As a follower you can choose whether or not you choose to do the theme, but as a team member it's the challenge of doing a theme that other wise you might run and hide from that I enjoy so this was my third try, I got the blue and the female image but when it can to the ribbon and sparkle I was flumuck to make it work, so like eating veg I started with what scared me most ...... the ribbon so rummaged through  the box and found a piece I didn't even know I had. next came the image just right to go with the ribbon, humm back ground gotta be sorta retro. I decided to go with paint and blended the colours , cool peri, cloudy blue, sail boat blue and denim then stamped in white and pink to tie it in with the ribbon and the skirt and I don't  think it's turned out to bad well it made the OH laugh though he could or wouldn't say why MEN !

 

Oh and where's the sparkle I here you ask will it's the little dots on the skirt :)

Thanks for popping by and look forward to seeing how you will use the recipe

 

Feeling a bit chuffed this week as I was lucky enough to win the Die cut challenge at the Craftroom so will share with you when it arrives :)

A little heart

Brrrr it was  frosty this morning so much so that the drivers side door was frozen, so had to  go in through the passenger side and give it a good shove lol and scrap the ice off the inside :( can do with out to many morning like that.
Anyway getting back on track Simon Says  stamp and show want to see some hearts though I'm not sure if these polymer heart earring qualify but I have been having a playing after watching a demo at the NEC

 

Have a great weekend all and keep nice warm and dry

 

Challenge 18 Artfulful Times

Woo-hoo it's anything goes at Artful Times , so a fab excuse to make something something useful for yourself or a present for a friend of just try out something different.
So taking inspiration for the Craft stamper I stuck some die cut shapes to a block of wood and covered with crumpled tissue paper and built up the colours of acrylic paint . The flowers are made from a scalloped border punch. A domino has had an image collaged onto it and and given the resin treatment

 

Hope you will join in the fun :)

 

I'm also entering this to the following challenges

Craftroom Challenge    Punches and die cuts

The Artistic Stamper      Anything goes

Happy Daze            Brighten up the month ( ice resin)

 

Stash buster for Out of the Hat

The lovely lassses at OOTH are asking us to use up  some stash, well these frames along with a few more have been hanging around for ages and I wanted to give them the Andy treatment, can't believe I left the Craft Barn with out buying the crackle medium ! but found a one step one at Hobby Craft .
The image transfer isn't as crisp as I would have liked probably due to the pixelation  and looks better IRL and I use black on the top of the crackle which was a thick coat and varnished,  the smaller frame the same base colours had a dark purple used after the crackle which was applied much thinner and didn't varnish
The frames aren't finished but I didn't want to miss the deadline again !

 

Thanks for popping by :)

 

 

Black it is

Over at the Anything but a Card challenge they want to see black so I'm limboing under the dead line with a hair comb made with beads that have been wired together, then wired onto the comb.

 

Oh and I forgot to say the necklace was posted to Chrissie as she was brave enough to say she wanted it.Off to the NEC tomorrow and hoping to find some inky inspiration
Have a good weekend and thank you for popping by

Challenge 17 at Artful Times

What fabulous brown orange and white creation you all made last week all very inspiring :)
On to the next challenge chosen by Neet to make a make a fabric tag, NOW don't say but I don't sew you don't even have to pick up a needle if you don't want to I didn't :)
Using the same shirt I made the lavender bags from I cut a tag shape then set about spraying it with colour wash, I then stamped my image from Crafty Individual onto the tag and another piece of fabric with Archival black. White acrylic was then scraped on I coloured the image with the colour was and darkened the edge with a pro marker cut it out and stuck it down with double sided tape, I then stamped the flourish and added some dots with liquid pearls finally added the text again stuck with double sided tape....... Opps I lied I did stitch the flower and the trim on

 

So come on and give fabric go and join us at Artful Times

 

Happy Halloween

Happy haunting to you all.
There has been a serious lack of Halloween on my blog but I have made a simple neckless to give away, sadly it's not black but dark blue and distressed

 

So let me know if you would like to own this before 9 pm Thursday and it will be in the post Friday morning address permitting

It's a Gift

It's the last week of Christmas at OOTH challenge is to make a gift, the ladies have made some inspiring pressies.
Well the lavender in my garden is a poor excuse for a bush but a friend kindly gave me some of hers, so I set to making a few lavender bags.
I've used one of the other half's cream shirts destined for the rag bag and stamped with versafine ink and coloured with promarkers very quickly and carefully (if you linger to long on the fabric it just sucks out the ink and bleeds)

Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by :)

Craftroom Challenge

It's been a while since I have made something for challenge but I noticed that the Craft-room are having an orental challenge,  which fired me up to make a card, I'm not sure who made the stamp but it's huge !

 

Fingers crossed Challenge 16 at Artful Times

Why fingers crossed you may ask, well Neet has check my grammar and spelling but who knows  if I have done the linky right, so fingers crossed
Before Sam decided to leave she had set the challenge of Orange Brown and White, which we have decided to stick with. Not a colour combination I found easy but I'm pleased with the result :)

For the background  I have blobbed  acrylic paint in the said colour and scraped it down the card with a credit card, once dry I dry brushed with white, then stamped foliage with the same brown and orange paint. The girl was then stamped with sepia ink onto some card inked with spiced marmalade and rusty hinge, bleaching out the face and socks. The text, cut  from a page spoke to me .

So hope you like my atc and join Neet and I  in this challenge at Artful Times

Thanks to Alison I would also like to enter this for Twisted Tuesday Challenge a touch of orange

Bah humbug for out of the hat

Yep I'm bah humbug but as it's Christmas  in October  at Out of the Hat so thought I had better get my act together and make a decoration or two. There are some lovely examples from the team so do have a look :)
Very simple to make with craft wire, wind around a knitting keeping the coils close together like a spring then slip off, make a little loop at one end for a hook to hang it by. then all you have to do is wind it around your finger with the base of the tree being at the thickest part of the finger then it's just a matter of manipulating the wire until you are happy with the shape .Finished off with some dollops of stickels, they would make fun earing too ha ha

 

And now something with a little more finesse some wire earrings. I have some commisions for these in all sorts of colours

 

Challenge 15 at Artful Times

For the next 2 weeks at Artful Times it's fur or feathers and you can make what ever takes your fancy :) I have made a card using kraft card stamps from dylusions and a cat stamp I got from the US some years ago, nothing to complicated or messy simply stamped and coloured with regular colour pencils and the cats embossed with white wow embossing powder and I did try and lighten the cats with bleach but the card just went darker lol

Just editing... what a ***** I can be at Times first I posted at the wrong time then Thought OMG it's not this week so deleted it only to realise yes it was this week so I'm sitting in the naughty corner :(

Please do check out what Sam and Neet have come up with for this challenge

Andy Skinner Workshop

I was lucky enough to get a place on the Andy Skinner workshop where I met up with lots of lovely bloging crafters
Well I  have finally finished , and hopefully it has kicked my mojo back into gear

Instead of the paper I used the acrylic paints to distress some lace so it looks like iron work

 

Resins to be cheerful

Ok so it a bad pun but love the song  ( remember Ian Dury and the Blockheads)  and I have been happily playing with resin mostly trial and error with the help of some you tube videos mostly American where they like to make cute things agghhhh

 Dhu I did realise this photo was so out of focus. In some of the videos they used Chocolate mould with and without a realising agent (what ever that is no one ever said !) well I can tell you they stuck and I had a devil of a job getting them out and ended up recking the moulds but all is not lost because I like the heart shape so much I made my own mould :) but because the the finish of then are dull when you remove the resin it has a dull surface.These are still to be finished

 

 

The circle is UTEE topped with the resin and the cabochon my biggest failure I'd experimented colouring the resin with Pan Pastels but the result was far to opaque so used the rest in the leaf mould and it took ages to cure, the lady which looks very pretty  also didn't work to well  it's a bamboo tile which has rounded edges so one drip too many and it was straight over the edge  and made a mess might try that one again some time

 

Here I tryed adding different things , a stamped image sealed front and back with mod poge before being  stuck in and adding the resin, the pendent has pearl powders and bizantia looks nice ing the flesh, then 2 bottle tops a heart and a plastic type fabic bow that one took longer to cure as well.

 

A few of the finished and nearly finished items .

So far my favourite for colouring the resin is  perfect pearls or adding torn tissue coloured with inks but I do seem to get more bubbles when I  do that .

Sorry  I am rambling a bit so here's my finding and please feel free to email me if you want to know more I might have the answer lol



1. It takes long to cure than you think
2. Before it is fully cure you can take it out of the mould a manipulate the shape ( gonna try that with some wings when I get a mould)
3. Glossy mould equal glossy finish
4. Something lose there colour eg holographic foil and some gems
5.  You can use blister packaging but only once (unless you know what this mysterious releasing spray is)
6. Al way seal paper unless you want it to go translucent
7. BE PATIENT

Now for my finale and favourite piece which I'd like to enter into the Happy Days Challenge Steampunkery 

 

 

 

 

Challenge 14 at Artful Times

What a fab array of trees we had last week , a real feat for the eyes :)
Now on to this months challenge at Artful Times a postcard 6x4 and we are asking you to use script text or numbers but other than that you can choose any image you like

I started with a page from a book and sprayed with dylusion inks and used a small alphabet stencil with black ink and I think you can just see the perfect pearls the large text stamp I've had a very long time and I think it's from the then dimension forth, so there I am looking at the background think what shall I add as my image oh if only I had some of those wacky bird stamps but hey ho never mind I'll draw my own ;)So stick to the theme and follow the rules and you could be in with a chance of winning a £10 voucher from Oyster Stamps
Have fun and I look forward to seeing what you  make :)

halloween

Halloween for the Out of the Hat ladies thought I had missed this one but just remembered a 5x5 I made a while ago and hadn't bloged phew :)

Hope this fits the bill I wasn't thinking Halloween at the time, I stamped and embossed with white embossing powder before masking and spraying the background with dylusion inks
Thanks for popping by and hello to my new followers love to have your company

Out of the Hat

Just a quickie for the lovely ladies at Out of the Hat who would like to see something oriental and I've only just made it in time I hope

 

So what have I been up to, well I've been faffing about and playing with resin a bit of knitting, sewing and more jams and chutneys but more of that later when they are finished
Take care all :)
 

Challenge 13 at Artful Times

Thank you all for sharing your inchies with us over the last fortnight we certainly saw a lot of inspiring ideas :)
It's my turn to choose the theme for the next fortnight At Artful Times and I would like you to make a tree your main feature be it card tag or altered art but as you can see I still have metal and wire on the brain but I think I have got it out of my system for now :) back to inky mess now I think
The tree of life is quiet easy to make and I followed a tutorial on You Tube



Check out what Sam and Neet have made both very different
 Come and join us and we will be only to pleased to visit you and if you have followed the rules one of which is to give some idea as to how you made your entrie, you could be in with a chance to win a £10 voucher from Oyster Stamps

Packaging for Out of the Hat

Not so much the packaging as  I use that a lot, a lot of the time but what holds the packaging together, I mean the staples in big boxes you know the ones made out of the corrugated cards friends think 'm batty hording trash but I do get round to finding a use for it eventually :

I can't remember where that spring came from but it came in handy for making the links .

Now pop on over to Out of the Hat as see what the lovely ladies have made over there :)

Altered Book with Jennie

Today I've had a really good time time when I did the Altered Book class With Jennie from the Stamp Connection who came to a local shop at Fareham so nice not to have to travel to far :)
Of course we all started by looking at what our book was call and most of us Oh I want to read it mine was called the Age of Elegance expecting a Romance but no it was about wars anyway I digress
Lot's of different product Terra paste spray inks gesso UTTE. The front back and spine is gesso through a stencil and stamping with gesso dabbed with colour wash

Somewhere in the middle we did the folded page with tags

Then at the back we did the niche  it could have been deeper but I was losing the will to live sticking all the pages together lol it was then covered with Terra paste and stamping into it

 

 and then onto the melt pot for a mold to go into the niche

I shall have to continue this book as I'm so pleased with my results,

Thanks for popping by and if you get the chance for a class with Jennie you won't be dissapointed :)

 

Vintaj Bracelet and a new challenge in blogland

The first Tuesday of the month at Pickwell Farm is Jewellery making and last night we made bracelets using the Vintaj collection from Ranger pretty cool stuff ! so if your in the Southampton area pop by it's an aladdin's cave of crafting goodies

 is the challenge blog where I'm entering my bracelet A fab DT with lots of inspiration

Favourties for Out of the Hat

Out of the Hat are asking this week what's your favourite well for me it's got to be stamping oh and of course I love masking and then there's my new favourite tools the ink dusters and Less is More are having another colour challenge of pink and brown which spells vintage shabby chic to me in a CAS style.

The lady from Paper Artsy was stamped in brushed corduroy on a background of tattered rose applied with the ink duster, the corner flourish from Creative Expression was then stamped over the masked lady with victorian velvet.
Hope you like it and thanks for popping by :)
I'm also entering this in Addicted to stamps who also want to see a CAS card

Artful Times Challenge 12

Neet has the reins for the next two weeks at Artful Tmes with her theme of inchies they may be small but you can think as BIG as you like, just use more of them lol

I have made a bag charm/keyring, I cut 2 inchies out of mount board and covered the surface with egg shells then coloured with alcohol inks, after sticking the 2 together I made the hole with a crop a dile and coated with glossy accents
Come and join us and we will be only to pleased to visit you and if you have followed the rules you could be in with a chance to win a £10 voucher from Oyster Stamps

Out of the hat

Those lovely ladies at Out of the Hat want to see some black white and one other thought I think mine is more white black and one other in the guise of Acrhivals magenta hue

DT call for Creative Expressions

Creative Expression are having a DT call until Friday 31st August so thought I'd give it a shot .
The  brief is to make anything you like but must include texture and stamping so I looked to some of my favourite challenges for inspiration The Craft Barn would like you to use one of the colouring techniques from the blog and I choose Neils which was to use distress markers, the stamp I choose from Lost Coast Designs lent it's self perfectly.
Sir Stampalot's theme is take flight well I have the bird so now I have used the butterfly embossing folder from Craft Concepts for my texture, a touch of distress inks to make the butterflies pop and some black soot around the edge, the background I made a while ago with gesso and watercolour crayons. Other stamps used are Tim Holtz and Woodware

Wish me luck and thanks for taking the time to pop by :)

Acetate and Challenge 11 at Artful Times

Thank you all for your fab Mona works of art it sure was fun using her again :)
Well this fortnight  at Artful Times, Sam has set us a really challenge of using acetate as a layer so thought long and hard over this Embossing seem to me  the obvious thing to do how ever you could stamp,  print or heat emboss onto it .
For my card I have recycled some packaging and embossed it with a cuttlebug folder and coloured with alcohol ink, made a background with distress stains and attached both layers with some washi tape topped off with a Timmy style butterflies (mine is lager as I used a spellbinders die)  .

Please come along and check out what Neet and Sam have made at Artful Times and you could be in with a chance to win a £10 voucher from Oyster Stamps

I'm on my hols at the moment and will be back sometime today and will catch up with you all tomorrow :)

Von x♥x

Thank you card

A thank you card for 2 challenges Less is More want to see blue and green and Out of the Hat would like to see lines

Kaleidacolor inks Rivera
Stripe stamp Anna Griffin
Text Creative Expression
Flower Dawn Bibby
Broken china distress stickles
Thanks for popping by :)

Mona Lisa at Artful Times Challenge 10

At Artful Times Challenge I'm  taking you back a few years to when Mona Lisa was one of the most popular images, but she hardly gets an outing these days so thought it would be nice to bring her back into the spotlight. You can make anything you like. be it stamped or collaged

Just for a change I have gone all T!m Holtz, my hanging is made on glossy card using one of the techniques we learnt on the chemistry 101 course, the top is cut with an on the edge die and the  bottom thing cut in grunge board and embossed with a mixture of gold and verdigris and to hang it I have used some staples reclaimed from a packing case

You mght be thinking I don't reconise that stamp ! well here she is :)
The background stamp (papillon) is inked with archival inks (Oyster Stamps have a lovely selection of colours) then distress inked before carfully inking the part of the stamp I wanted to use again with archival, love the way it didn't come out perfect  she seems to look happier to me with the flower in her hair which appeared in my hand after fiddleing with a bit of scrap die cut waste
So come on folks blow the cobwebs off Mona and let her come out to play again and you could be in with a chance to win a £10 voucher from Oyster stamps as long as you follow the rules

A bit of this and that

I'm in love with my new Ink duster that dropped through my letter box at the weekend, so have had a play with them and they certainly give you a different look the cut and dry blending colour is a doddle ! I cut a circle to ink through with spiced marmalad and barn door

 Just a touch of tumbled glass

Now Out of the Hat want us to do some sewing, so I've done a simple card useing the movers and shapers tattered florals and felt