Altered Bottle with Chocolate Baroque Harlequin Rose

I thought it would be fun to join in both the Eclectic Paperie Altered Bottle Challenge and the new Chocolate Baroque Challenge, which is a colour one, using the colours of blue, green, yellow, and red. I thought these colours would work really well with their lovely Harlequin Rose set which has such a lot of stamps on the one plate. I painted the bottle, which was an M and S port decanter which Colin kindly emptied for me (!), with Fresco Finish paints in Sky, Space Cadet, and South Pacific. I stamped various images from the set onto tissue paper and painted them from behind with Snowflake and then coloured them with Inktense pencils and adhered them to the bottle with gel medium.

I added a little glitter to the roses and some Treasure Gold in Ice Fire to the rim and top edge of the bottle, and finished off with a ceramic door knob by way of a stopper.

Celebrate Burlap Panel - Gio's New Stamps for Crafty Individuals

Today I am celebrating the lovely Giovanna Zara's new stamps for Crafty Individuals with this mini burlap panel. Gio has brought out two stamp designs and Crafty Individuals have also launched some other new designs including a fabulous bicycle, and you can read all the details here.

For my make I mainly used this set which is on special offer at £3.70 - isn't that amazing! But I also used the bird cage from this set, so the two work really well together. I added a little door onto the birdcage. I added the word Celebrate from another Crafty Individuals' set as I was so delighted to toast Gio's success! I have stamped all the pieces onto various Crafty Individuals' background papers and cut them out.

Just wanted to mention the technique in the central section which I picked up from an absolutely beautiful blog which I now subscribe to called Layers of Ink by a very talented lady called Anna-Karin. Here is the link to the technique which Alison, Butterfly, drew our attention to, and I know I will return to it time and again.

Well done, dear Gio, and glad to have recently added the word 'Dalek' to your ever-growing English vocabulary!

Crafty Individuals' Seaside Scene

I made this Crafty Individuals' Seaside scene for the Artistic Stamper challenge, the theme of which is by the seaside, and the That's Crafty challenge, which is to use stencils and masks. I used a reversed canvas and Crafty Individuals' background papers, with the seaside paper in the middle and torn strips of their other papers around the edges and some canvas textured ribbon to tidy up the inner rim. I stamped the bather, shells, and beach huts, and coloured them with Fibralos, and stamped the text from the two sets CI 272 and 278 around the edges. For the sea I used bubble wrap coloured with alcohol ink in Pool, Stream, Clover, and Bottle, and then added gesso for the spume on the waves. For my stencil I used But is it Art script with Grunge Paste.

Marie Antoinette goes Paddling, inspired by Helen Chilton for Paper Artsy

One of my favourite people, Helen Chilton, popped up on the Paper Artsy blog on Friday night with a delightful sea casket full of brightly coloured fish! Although I've already done a challenge entry this week, my dear friend Petra has just kindly given me two of the seaside Hot Picks stamp sets including the one Helen used, and I loved the way the anchor background made the casket look like wood, so I had to have a go.

 

For the casket I followed Helen exactly. For the images I painted some heavy smoothy stamping card with Nougat and then stamped them with black archival and coloured them with Fibralos and fussy cut them. I am loving the Fibralos!!! Thank you Darcy for test-driving them; I am not sure how I lived without them.

As I'm still in art doll mode following Penny Nuttall's wonderful inspiration this week I decided to use the beautiful 'Marie Antoinette' Lynne Perrella image as it has a shell for a parasol and I thought it would be fun to have her paddling amongst the shells. I supported her on a coffee stirrer (do people actually stir their coffee with these or are they just for craft purposes?) and glued it into a wooden stool so it is self-supporting. I then popped it in the casket surrounded by shells and used a piece of net from fruit packaging (thank you, Jean!) for the fish.

 

 

This was a very quick project and such fun and I am entering it into the challenge, inspired by Helen Chilton. Also wanted to mention that I found my missing stamp. Phew! I hadn't thrown it away, it was stuck to the bottom of something. Can I have back the hours I spent looking?!

Meg the Peg Inspired by Penny Nuttall for Paper Artsy

This week Penny Nuttall brought us three kinds of Art Dolls! Adorable! Well, I had to join in, didn't I? So here is Meg the Peg. She is made from a large peg which was in my Monster Mondays box when Paper Artsy was doing them, as I like self-supporting art dolls.

All the elements are from Lynne Perrella sets apart from the bird cage skirt and corset which are Hot Picks. I used feathers for her arms, and boots on clear shrink plastic for her legs so that I could turn them over to make a left and a right, otherwise she would walk funny. I painted the cardstock with Nougat first and then coloured with Fibralo, which as Darcy says, blend beautifully over Frescos and are very vibrant. I added hooks (as in 'hooks and eyes') to the corset and pearls for her earrings.

I am entering her into this week's challenge. Thank you, Penny, for such fun!

Leaf Stencil Card inspired by Keren Baker for Paper Artsy

So much inspiration on the Paper Artsy blog this week! I say that every week, but this week I really wanted to find the time to embark on all the projects. I wanted to make Lin's notebook and Alison's reversed canvas, in fact I started them both. I was so annoyed with myself as I have the gorgeous stamps Lin used but I have lost one of the flowers! I think maybe I have washed them in the sink and thrown it out with the kitchen towel I was drying them on. So frustrating. So I gave up on that one after a lengthy search. You may have noticed that searching for things is a common thread on my blog!

The main Guest Designer this week was Keren Baker and she seems such a delightful and fun person with a very varied style; I just love the way she experiments and gives things a go. As soon as I saw the watercoloured stencil effect on day 2  I wanted to try it, and made loads of backgrounds, following the same colour scheme with Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers, and Dusty Concord. What did we do before Paper Artsy brought out stencils?! I hope they bring out some more designs. I used Lin's leaf stencil 006 and made a shrink plastic birdcage with Hot Picks 1004. I used one of my left over backgrounds to stamp the bird from Hot Picks 1007. I used the Distress Colours to colour some seam binding to tie on the bird cage. I made some rosettes using crunchy wax paper which was Keren's idea on the following day and dabbed a bit of Snowflake on them, followed by the Distress colours. Finally I matted it onto a piece of white cardstock which I coloured to match using Peacock Feathers.

I am entering this card into the Inspired by challenge for this week.

Giant Tag Inspired by Sue Carrington for Paper Artsy

Such a lot of inspiration this week over on the Paper Artsy blog that I wanted to make a second item, this time inspired by Sue Carrington. It's a bit of a rushed job, a case of 'I've started so I'll finish', as I'm off to the Artstamps show at Newbury tomorrow so tonight is my deadline. I loved Sue's background layer which I've copied here:-

 

And I loved her technique of using the Satin Glaze and then rubbing the black paint off to reveal some of the blue:-

I also loved her use of the black paint on the blue background for the flowers, and I've used a little white gel pen:-

So I'm entering this into the 'Inspired by' challenge for this week.

Lynne Perrella Collage Card - Inspired by Liesbeth Fidder for Paper Artsy

It has been Liesbeth Fidder's week as Guest Designer on Paper Artsy and I really love her style and her vibrant use of colour. On night one she did a 'simple but I never would have thought of it' and very effective technique using the wonderful Lynne Perrella large collage stamp from LP030 . She used Fresco translucent paints in a sort of 'Wrinkle Free Distress' way and I really loved it. I have pretty much followed what she did. I just added a couple of buttons which my friend, Jean, gave me as she was sat here crafting with me whilst I was making it and they matched perfectly.

I am entering it into this week's 'Inspired by' challenge.