Marche aux Fleurs

I've made this canvas framed panel for this month's Artistic Outpost referral programme as I like to join in each month. I love their stamps! I have used almost exclusively Flower Market, but the floral edging round the canvas piece is from Flapper Fashions. On the wooden frame I have used a stencil for the corners with grunge paste and highlighted it with Treasure Gold in Ice Fire. I have used Fresco Finish paints for the frame and the canvas piece. On the frame I mixed Bora Bora with Pewter to make a metallic turquoise which is a technique Leandra has been showing at shows and over on the Paper Artsy blog. You can make any Fresco into a metallic colour by adding the Old Gold or the Pewter.

Tim's Tiny Things Trinket Box

Here's a sneak peek of my final piece for my Guest Designer month over at Eclectic Paperie. It's a little box with tiles on the top made with Tim's Tiny Things stamp set and his French Industrial Papers, both of which I love! It's been such fun doing this guest month, and has really taken my mind off my worries and given me a challenge to focus on. I did make a number of other projects that I either wasn't happy with or gave up on though, so I did have a major wobble along the way. I always enjoy doing a mixture of work for other people, where you are motivated to do your best as you want to represent their company well and justify their faith in you and their generosity, and doing work for yourself where you can have a dabble without any pressure and experiment and maybe teach yourself some new techniques along the way.

So I hope you will pop over to Eclectic Paperie and see me there. Kim, the owner, has been very good to me, and the particularly talented design team she has have been kind enough to leave me thoughtful and sweet comments each time, which has made me feel very welcome.

Last week I didn't tell you too much about the story of the valve gear thingy embellishment on the top left of the tart tin. I thought it had a definite Tim Holtz accoutrements look about it. We've had lots of puddles of DIY stuff sitting around the house over the past year (just realized last week, it's been a year since we returned home from the rented accommodation, and not much progress really). Some of it has been left over from the builders, and some of it things Colin has been working on. There had been a red valve sitting on the window sill in the kitchen for ages and I thought, if no-one claims it, I will have it for a project, so I asked Colin and he went mad! He said, do you realize, that operates the boiler and is really important! He was quite unreasonable. I said I just wanted to stick it on a project. It was so unfair!! So I waited until he had gone out to Tesco and took an impression of it with Mould N Pour and quickly popped it back into the boiler cupboard. I then made a mould out of silver oven bake Fimo, baked it, and painted it red, then glazed it with Fimo glaze. I then chipped some bits off with my craft knife in the same places as the chips on the original. The silver clay underneath wasn't quite metallic enough so I touched it up with a bit of re-inker from my Silver staz-on and a brush. He got back from Tesco and walked into my craft room and spotted it immediately. He's got eyes in the back of his head! He said I told you you couldn't have that! He was very cross. It was so funny! You can't kid a kidder though and he realized very quickly it was a replica.

Can you tell them apart:-

I thought of taking a mould of the Stop-Cock but after burst-pipe events of last year, perhaps that would be a joke too far!

Eclectica Pen Holder Inspired by Carol Quance

This week on Paper Artsy the Guest Designer is one of my faves, Carol Quance. She has made several gorgeous projects and having searched high and low in my craft room to try to find my pencil cases earlier in the week I had a reprieve when she made a pencil pot here, so I thought I would make one of these instead, using the beautiful Lin Brown Eclectica stamps which are quite new to me and I am really enjoying using. So that was my first problem. My second problem was that I had lent my new set to Petra when I gave her back her tulip set, so I was using things I had already stamped out the previous week. This is what I had already done, and following Carol's suggestion I added the stamped script on the leaves which I really liked. I used Snowflake Fresco:-

The other thing I had made the previous week was a bunch of shrink plastic pieces which ended up being the focus of my project. Because I didn't have a tall pencil pot like the one Carol used, I couldn't really have climbing stems of flowers which had been my intention, so I mainly used these:-

For my colourscheme I painted the main part of the unit in Little Black Dress, then Crackle, then Snowflake, and the drawers in Snowflake, then Crackle, then a mixture of Hyde Park and Hey Pesto, with a little Pansy round the edges as Carol had done, which I loved, and wouldn't have thought of myself. I stamped script from LP 014 and the Letters and Number from Words Plate 2. I added the shrink plastic pieces to the front as shown, and the Artful Blooms wording, stamped in Snowflake on black card. The tulips have been stamped with various shades of Frescos on black card stock with some shading added and some Metallic Glaze, then clear embossing and then the petals added and peeled back. I had to cut away then re-add the leaves so they didn't overlap within the pencil pot section.

Just a side view to show that the stamping on the top follows on down the side. I had intended to cover the top with the big flowers but I don't think it would have worked.

I am entering this into this week's Paper Artsy challenge which is here.

French Tarts!

Here's a sneak peek of my third project over on Eclectic Paperie where I've got a bun in the oven! I have been really enjoying my guest month, and it's come at a good time especially as everybody seems to be having a holiday this month except me so it's been nice to keep busy. I'd like to say a huge thank you to my beautiful friend, Petra, who gave me the jam tart tin and who has helped me, lent me things, and talked over ideas with me whilst I've been doing these projects. You are such a dear friend, Petra!

Shrink Plastic Distress Stain Splats!

Over on the Eclectic Paperie blogspot it's my second guest designer appearance and I have made this little canvas using a gorgeous Dina Wakley silhouette woman script stamp:-

I had fun doing an experimental technique so I would love you to have a look and see how I made the circle embellishments. Thanks for looking!

Crafty Individuals' Holiday Suitcase

Over on the Crafty Individuals' blog I just spotted a little suitcase I made is on there, together with some gorgeous creations by Jean, Effie, and Helen, so do have a look at what they have made! I hope if you are not on holiday at the moment you will join in the Anything Goes challenge this month, for a chance to win a choice of any of their exquisite stamps!

These little suitcases are great for taking with you to craft classes or for keeping marker pens in, in your craft room. I have decorated this one with the following stamps:-

161 (Script)
294 (Ship etc)
034 (Sand words)
084 (Script postmarks)
171 (Harlequin)
022 (Day Trip Ticket)

and added a huge Shrink Plastic tag tied on with Baker's Twine.

I am entering this into the Artistic Stamper Challenge which is Travel, Postcards, and Holidays.

Clay Tulip Frame

This week on Paper Artsy, Sue Carrington has been back as Guest Designer making some tremendously inspirational pieces. I particularly liked her box frame here which has inspired my make, which I am entering into the challenge here.  Coincidentally I had already painted and crackled a deep frame and covered a piece of chipboard with canvas to go inside it and it was knocking around on my craft desk. When I saw Sue's I had intended to copy it as I had most of the same stamps but the peachy-pink I had already painted my frame spoke to me of flowers so that dictated my choice of stamps. The lovely Petra had kindly lent me her Lin Brown tulip stamps and the matching die and I also had a new Hot Picks set with a flower spray on it and a couple of new stencils from the Newbury show. I started off by using the script from LP 014 which Sue had used all around the frame with Fresco in Orchid.

I applied grunge paste through the Mini Ledger stencil onto the canvas piece and then sponged various shades of Fresco over it and highlighted the ledger with Treasure Gold in Ice Fire. I painted the bloom from the Hot Picks set with Frescos. I edged the canvas piece with tiny blue beads to fill in the gap between canvas and frame.

For the frame I mixed Frescos with Grunge Paste and applied through a flower stencil, isolating the individual flowers, and the reversed chicken wire stencil. I didn't overdo it as I liked the patches of crackle. I used a leaf stencil and highlighted the grunge paste with Ice Fire.

I made the tulip out of clay and painted it with various shades of Fresco, finishing off with Metallic Glaze. For the stem I stamped with Frescos onto grungepaper for some strength as it would be overlapping the frame. Finally I stamped the word Artful Blooms at the bottom of the frame in black.

I kept things quite simple and didn't fill in every spare inch as it was looking so pretty and I didn't want to cover up what I had already done. I tend to overdo things. In real life the colours and shimmer are lovely. Pauline was admiring this whilst she was here this week so I'm going to give it to her!

Eclectic Paperie Guest Designer - Embracing Imperfection - An Altered Bottle

I was absolutely delighted a few weeks ago to be asked by Kim of the Eclectic Paperie to be Guest Designer for August on the Eclectic Paperie Blog. I will be posting on the four Wednesdays of this month. I absolutely love making altered bottles and was lucky enough to win their altered bottle challenge a while ago so I thought it would be fun to make another one for my first post for them, but make it completely different in style and colourscheme. Here's a sneak peek:-

 

All the details of how I made it are over on the EP blog and I do hope you will pay me a visit over there. I thought I would share the blunders and out-takes on here though, but don't tell them, as they will think I am such a klutz, and I want to keep my image intact at least for August! Well, I messed up so many things along the way. You know that danger period, when you have finished a project, but haven't photographed it yet? That's the worst time to have a disaster isn't it? Well, as I mention over on EP, I had bid for the decanter stopper on e bay and it is absolutely stunning and dictated my whole colour choice. It just sat perfectly in the neck of the bottle whereas the one that came with the bottle had screwed in place. I said to Colin, 'have a look at my project and see if you like it', picked it up and the glass stopper went flying across the laminate floor and sheered in half. (well, pre-flood we had carpet so a softer landing). So it is now smoke and mirrors (and blu-tak) for the purposes of the photographs. I am thinking I will use the original stopper and colour it with alcohol inks. Colin is going to grind down the blue one so it is smooth, so you will spot it on a future project in a new guise as a knob!

 

Hope I can get through the rest of August without dropping anything!