Happy Valentine's Day! A Card for Col

This is the card I have made for Col for Valentine's Day today:-

I used a piece of red heart tape across the middle of a white A6 card blank in a landscape orientation, and then added various different kinds of hearts, at different heights. There is a shrink plastic one saying 'To the One I love', and art moulds made up in friendly plastic, together with some wooden hearts and heart gems and padded hearts. The one third from the left is a Tim charm made into a mould with Siligum, then made up in clay with a dusting of mica powder. I added a bit of dangling chain to grunge it up a bit. It is really a bit girly for Col overall, but he wouldn't want to have an un-girly wife, would he?!

And a sneak peek ........

What could this be? 

 I am posting this today as a sneak peek, for the sole reason that it has a Valentine theme, but it isn't finished yet! So I am wondering if you know what it is going to be? If you can't guess, I might post a clue!

Another Charm Piece

When I was making the piece for Gingersnaps Charms challenge, I made this one as well. I wanted to try out using tissue tape to cover one of these little Crafty Individuals containers. I love the designs of tissue tape and the idea behind it, and the range of uses, but I get frustrated with it as it sticks when you don't want it to, but not when you do. It was fairly quick though, to cover the whole thing, and I then blended on a little Fired Brick as you need a strong colour on tissue tape as it comes out quite muted, and then sealed all the edges with watered down PVA.




I decorated the sections as before, adding some little children and love themed charms. The butterfly was made by stamping a butterfly onto book text twice then adhering to a piece of laminate left from laminating a stamp image sheet. When it was dry I cut them both out and layered them together. I filled each of the sections with glossy accents and left to dry overnight.

The back, showing the tissue tape more clearly

Charming - Gingersnaps Charms Challenge

Today's challenge on Gingersnaps is to use charms in your creation. The charm at the top is an Art Mould, made up in gold friendly plastic.

I used the Baroque Sizzix die to cut two pieces of mountboard and two pieces of Vintage Shabby paper to give strength to the hanging and so I could sandwich the dangling charms in place, and neatly finish off the back. I used a selection of charming Art Journey children stamps, some of which I borrowed from Alison when she was here last week (thanks Alison!). I used some of the words on the background, then the images for the inside of the container, which was from Crafty Individuals.

I finished it off with some german scrap, again from Crafty Individuals, and an ABC charm.

The baby themed charms are hanging from a clothing tag, sandwiched between the layers of mountboard

A close up showing the Crown mould

Gingersnaps Challenge - Kings and Queens

Over on Gingersnaps today they are starting a challenge, featuring Kings and Queens in your artwork.

I thought it would be fun to depict the Queen Bee as my entry. I used a mask from Creative Expressions on the card blank to represent honeycomb, put it through the Cuttlebug, then inked it up with Distress Inks to highlight the embossing. I cut a Baroque shape from mountboard and inked this up, and stamped it with the frame and the word Queen from a Pink Paislee set. There are three sizes of bee so I used the largest to depict the Queen Bee and highlighted her body by using Deko Ice in Amber. I used the small bee all over, including some secondary stamping. I wanted the sense of bees crawling over the honeycomb. I also inked through some sequin waste.

The crown is a Tim Holtz charm which I pressed into some moulding silicone to make a mould, then made it up with clay and gold mica powder. I finished it off with a few adhesive gems.

Birthday Card for My Renaissance Man!

This is a card I have made for my lovely Col's birthday today:-

The stamps are from a gorgeous Katzelkraft da Vinci set which my dear friend Pauline gave me for Christmas, apart from the Mona Lisa which is a Tim Holtz one. I used both da Vinci and Calligraphy papers from Joanna Sheen, and then made the Mona Lisa and the round plaques with shrink plastic.

Leonardo, Vitruvian Man, and one of his drawings, on shrink

Mona Lisa on shrink plastic

Filter Paper Album - a Tutorial for Gingersnaps

I have been a little quiet on the crafting front as we stayed with my in-laws in the North East for Christmas, and then went to France for New Year. Since I got back last week, I have been making this project for Gingersnaps, which I have enjoyed SO much! As there are lots of sections to it, I was worried about taking over their blog too much, so I thought I would post some of the individual pages and tags here, mainly just with captions, with the step by step tutorial over on Gingersnaps. Hope that will all make sense!

The stamps I have used are Oxford Impressions Bonbon and Afternoon Tea sets, Art Journey Celebrate, and Crafty Individuals CI 277.

Here's the final album, which has individual tags in each of the filter paper 'pockets':-

Two little girls in their best dresses, being taken to the chocolate shop

A selection of tea and coffee advertisements stamped to look like a vintage newspaper

Chocolate related images. I used gold pen for the chocolate cases

The tea pot sits on a white crocheted coaster. The other images are on shrink plastic to be in scale in relation to the tea pot, on my imaginary tea table! The tiny beads create brown sugar.

The little girl from Art Journey 'Celebrate' was a perfect fit to sit on the cup and saucer, again on a crocheted coaster.

Cupid and hearts, with some tiny heart embellishments

Kept this simple to show the chocolate wording in the paper!

More tea and coffee advertisments. I divided the 'poster' image into two sections, separating the images from the words

A tag with a little girl in her party frock, on shrink. The words at the bottom are on shrink, and the awning is German Scrap, from Crafty Individuals

Chocolate related advertisements/logos

A romantic couple taking tea together. The words have been used to frame the image.

More tea advertisements

The poster image, whole this time. Tea definition on shrink, bottom right

Chocolate price list and chocolates. Paper cases coloured with gold pen

Christmas Gift Boxes

Col asked me just before we went away for Christmas if I would make a couple of little gift boxes as we were giving his Mum and Sister Pandora charms for their bracelets. The first one is a papier mache box which I painted with pink Viva Precious Metal Colour, and then added some bronze Viva Croco to the top. Whilst it was wet I 'stuck' a few tiny pieces of left over friendly plastic onto it and melted it in with the heat gun. I then made a grungepaper rose using Hels' Stitchels stamps from the Artistic Stamper, coloured with Distress Inks.

A side view to show the little pieces of Friendly Plastic

This one was a wooden magnetic clasp box and I painted it with a cheap shimmery blue/green paint and blasted it with the heat gun to make it blister, in the same way I did the notebooks recently. I added some Angelina fibres around the edge and some tiny blue beads. I then made a friendly plastic frame from my new Krafty Lady art mould, which I love. I added a Crafty Individuals Father Christmas image to the centre and filled it with Glossy Accents. I was quite surprised that my MIL and SIL liked the boxes as I thought they would just look at the gift inside, but they seemed to, which was nice. Although they don't do the same sort of crafting as we do, they are both very crafty and they take an interest in the things I make, which is lovely.

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