Alcohol Inked Notebook

This is a close up sneak peek of an alcohol inked notebook I have made for the Artistic Stamper Creative Team Blog. Hope you like it and will find it easy to follow!

Gingersnap Creations Blog - Altered Spice Rack Tutorial

Over on Gingersnaps I have my second tutorial of my 'Muse' Month! I have altered a wooden spice rack to house all those lovely little inky bottles!

The stamps I have used are the Wildflower and the Crackle stamp sets CI226 and 116 from Crafty Individuals.

I do hope you will like it.

Gingersnap Creations Blog Challenge - Using Inchies

Over on Gingersnap Creations Blogspot they are having a challenge to use inchies. I haven't actually made inchies before! I thought I would use this compartmented tray which had housed some embellishments. I painted it with crackle paint and then rubbed Apple Lace and Sunshine Satin Silkies into the paint. I used Emerald Gold Silkies on the leaf swirl which is a Tim Holtz die cut. I made the inchies by stamping various Crafty Individuals stamps, punching them out with a one inch hole punch, then mounting on white card and glazing with Glossy Accents. I made the bird and bird cage in shrink plastic, and added some tiny buttons and a metal flower from a Primark necklace. That necklace seems to be going a long way!

Gingersnap Creations Blog - Using Punches Challenge

Over on Gingersnaps today, they have launched a challenge to use punches.

This is my entry:-

The punches I have used are square and corner rounders for the shrink plastic tiles around the edge, and a crown punch for the border along the top. I don't use punches very much anymore as I tend to use my Cuttlebug - I guess a lot of us would say that, so that's why it is set as a challenge!

I hope you won't mind that I have used Sheherazade as my main image again. I felt she fitted with the Ancient Ages focus of the month but to be absolutely honest, I bought this gorgeous stamp set a few months ago and have resisted touching it as I was saving it for this opportunity, so I am going mad over it now! I popped her on Stampbord this time. First of all I carefully dabbed the colours, coffee and mauve, where I felt her face and the rest of the image would fall, then did a bit of scratching back, and wrapped silver trim around the edge of the tile. Her forehead 'jewel' is actually a tiny piece of the silver paisley trim I used on the lantern last week. I added silver stars over her head, again to represent the 'thousand and one nights'.

The main part of the item is one of the deep papier mache frames you can get from the Artistic Stamper now. They are so useful (and good value!). I painted it with Crackle Paint and then rubbed in a range of Silkies colours from Imagination Crafts. They have a huge depth of colour and shimmer and are my current fave thing (and likely to remain so).

I must admit the crown border was an afterthought because I didn't think I'd been 'Punchy' enough and it was looking too much like the next challenge, the Inchies one! It was fiddly so I popped each tiny crown on sticky tape and then stuck them on. I am not sure this really added anything much to the piece. The other confession, as if that wasn't enough (!) was that I forgot that the frame had a right way up when I stuck the tiles on, as it has a hanging hole on the back and I completely messed up! So I would like to give it to one of my friends now but they would have to prop it up instead of hanging it, and it would be a reminder of my flaws!

The tiles were made by punching 2 ins square pieces of cream shrink plastic and rounded the corners. I used a selection of stamps from the Sheherazade set but also my Paisley Elephant set and a Basic Grey Moroccan set as I felt they had an Arabian Nights feel to them (in my mind, anyway!). I stamped with StazOn and then used non-alcohol based permanent markers. After I had shrunk them I used purple and blue Silkies as my background colour.

Bread and Butter Pudding!

Jack just reminded me that I never did show you the uses my heat gun gets put to:-

This was 18 months ago so I can't find the photo that had me in it - honest! Is it really that long I have known you, Jack?

Gary Rhodes, eat your heart out!

Art Themed Stampbord Mirror

Do you remember this, some months back:-

Well, it has gone through a re-incarnation into this:-

.... using the Artist Plate from the Artistic Stamper.

Gingersnaps asked me to do a tutorial which should be up today, and their focus for this month is tiles, so I thought this would fit the bill. So if you would like to know how it was made (it is a really straightforward project) please do pop over to Gingersnap Creations Blogspot and have a look!

Artchix Happy Hour Heart

I made this wooden heart wall hanging using some of my remaining Altered Element items which seem to be lasting me a long time! The heart itself is extremely thick wood and very solid and was a lovely present from my friend, Petra, along with lots of other bits and pieces which will be appearingon future projects.

 

I used Crackle Paint and Cosmic Shimmer powders first of all, then did an image transfer of the Artchix image and adhered it to the centre of the heart using gel medium, so that the colours underneath showed through. I then dotted the surrounding area with glossy accents and shook on some Deko Ice in Amber, and some Flowersoft. I then added some distressed bits of music script, some lace, a button, a metal flower from a necklace, and finally, a friendly plastic art mould key.