Mosaic Card Using Silkies and Small Kasbah Template

This is another of the cards I made for Imagination Crafts, again using the Small Kasbah stencil, and sponging through different shades of Silkies.

Some Good News!

Sorry I have been very slow to give you my good news as I have had problems with Blogger. After a wonderful month as September Muse on Gingersnap Creations Blogspot, which I was sorry to see come to an end, I was delighted to be asked to stay on as Contributing Artist for a further term.

Ali and Shar have been great to work with, very relaxed, and that has made me feel more confident and comfortable about contributing, which has made me feel more creative. If you haven't joined in with Gingersnaps before, do have a look. They have some really good tutorials, with very original topics, and there is a very user-friendly index with cross-referencing so if you have a few minutes, you can have a browse and pick up some useful techniques and inspiration.

I am so happy to have been given this opportunity, and will pop the info on here when I blog for them, which should include some stepped projects/tutorials!

Children Framed Collage

This is a little collage in a frame I made with images and text from the new Crafty Individuals stamp CI 277 and an Art Journey set. The frame was painted with a coral acrylic paint then a crackle medium and then a lighter pink paint. The images were coloured with Intense pencils and an Aqua Marker blending pen, just as an experiment.

I am having huge problems at the moment with uploading photos on Blogger so I'm afraid I have been a little quiet.

Trellis Card with Silkies

I recently made a batch of cards for a lovely lady called Sue, from Imagination Crafts, the company who make Silkies which are my new favourite product! The company specialize in mica based products which have a high degree of shimmer, but what sets the Silkies apart from other similar products I have used before is that they have very good coverage, so you can use them on grunge (covering that awful grey!), shrink plastic, and other difficult surfaces. They come in little nail polish style bottles with a brush, but you can sponge or brayer them on.


This isn't the card I intended to show you but I have been having massive problems with Blogger for several days, and have literally spent the whole day today trying to sort it out, as the kind people trying to help me can testify. If I can upload the other cards I will. For this card I used the Small Kasbah stencil from Imagination Crafts. The other cards I made used it in a Moroccan Screen style, but for this card I wanted it to look like a garden trellis with a plant growing up it, so I sponged Paris Trunk inks in Sprig and Sepia through the stencil. I stamped the fuchsia twice on white card and decoupaged it, curving the petals slightly. The main bloom has been coloured with Silkies to make it stand out, so you can see how opaque the coverage is over the veins, and the centre filled with Deko Ice from the Altered Element, which I coloured with alcohol ink. The others were painted with the pearly paint palette, also from Imagination Crafts.

Hallowe'en Alice!

Just when you thought it was safe to come back to my blog and there would be no more Alice in Wonderland obsession, Graphic 45 have kindly given me the perfect excuse! I don't normally celebrate Hallowe'en but I love these Alice with a witch's hat papers! I started off with a lovely frame from the Artistic Stamper
painted with Spiced Marmelade Distress Crackle Paint, also from the Artistic Stamper, and rubbed in some Silkies from Imagination Crafts.


I then positioned one of the papers over the roof shape and rubbed over it with an emery board to make an indentation so I could cut the shape accurately and stuck it on. The Mad Hatter clock was a die cut so I popped it in a Poundland frame, glazed it with Glossy Accents, and added a crown charm. For my main image in the frame I used a piece of the 12 x 12 papers and added some book text that related to the Cheshire Cat. I added a bit more book text below the clock and the die cut header. I then used the Oxford Impressions Alice stamps but coloured them in the colours of the papers rather than the classic Alice colours I normally use. I cut a witch's hat for Alice with a scrap of black card. For Tweedledee and Tweedledum I echoed the design of the papers by colouring their faces as pumpkins and giving them a mouth like a carved out pumpkin using a black pen. Don't they look scary now! I gave one of them a pumpkin charm to hold just in case it wasn't clear enough that they were meant to represent pumpkins! I folded their legs under the frame so they didn't cover the caterpillar (is he a caterpillar? I can't remember!), but unfortunately I forgot I had intended to pop them further to the right so they didn't obscure the book text about the Queen wanting to have the cat removed!

Finally I added scrabble tiles to spell Alice and glazed them with Glossy Accents, and stamped out a shrink plastic Cheshire Cat!

Hope you like this bit of fun!

Gingersnap Creations Blog Challenge - Neutral Plus One Bold

When I saw that the Gingersnaps Colour Challenge was for neutral colours plus one bold, at first I thought it would be easy, but then the ideas wouldn't come. So I thought to myself, what is my favourite bold colour - Red. What does Red say to me, and I thought Poppies! I have this lovely poppy stamp on a ledger background from Crafty Individuals, and had just bought a piece of Tim Holtz Distressables paper with a ledger design, so that was then my starting point. I had planned on making a card but then realized that the paper was 9 ins x 9 ins, an unusual size, and I didn't want to cut into it, so I decided to make a wall hanging by cutting mountboard a tiny bit bigger. Having said all of that, I am very disappointed with my photos because I was fairly pleased with how the hanging turned out, but it doesn't look very good in the photos.





I rounded the corners on both the mountboard and the card and distressed the edges with my new Tonic distressing tool, scratched some lines on the paper, and inked all the edges and across onto the scratches to emphasize them, using Distress Ink in Vintage Photo, then adhered the paper to the mountboard. I added a plain Crafty Individuals ledger stamp in Vintage Photo and some of their clock faces. I stamped the poppy three times so I could decoupage the poppy head, which I then glazed with Glossy Accents and added black seed beads to the centre. I also had a tiny poppy stamp which I used in the same way, as an embellishment.

I added a clay art mould clock in gold, with brad legs for hands and an adhesive gem in the centre, top left of the design, and some neutral coloured buttons bottom right. I also added a pen nib and completely flooded it with Glossy Accents so it was set into it. I added some cogs made from the Tim Holtz die but on shrink plastic. To finish I punched some holes and added eyelets, and a piece of twill to hang it up with, with the words Made to Measure stamped on them, as I thought the ledger could be for an old fasshioned draper's shop, like the one my granddad had. I hope you like it and can see past the lousy photographs! Thanks for looking.

Christmas Tree Book Ring Decorations

This was a wonderful idea of Helen's, when we saw her demonstrating last week, of making Christmas Tree decorations from large bookrings. I went straight back to the shop to get some of the big book rings and when I got home I realized I had some which had been too large for a previous project, so I can make loads! So thanks Helen for the brilliant idea!

I used Crafty Individuals stamps, and added glossy accents and a fine glitter, and Deko Ice dyed pink (from the Altered Element), around the edge. This is just a first play around with the idea but when I have more time I would like to try lots of more of these.