Welcome Home card

My card was inspired by a Pinterest find the other day. About time I actually used some of that 'inspiration', lol.This is the card that I CASE'D, and the ladys blog is HERE.












 Made a slight alteration, this is a one layer card, but I did my panel on a separate piece of card.










I started by sponging on two shades of D I, Squeezed Lemonade and Mustard Seed.

 Then I added some of the new Fossilized Amber and Dried Marigold.
 I found out a mask, TCW (The Crafters Workshop) Mini Bricks.
 Through this I sponged Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade D I.

Moved the stencil down and finished off the strip. Gave it a blast with the heat gun to dry it, so I could stamp.
The stamp I chose is called Agapanthus Cluster, by Stampendous, stamped in Versafine Onyx Black.


I stamped the first one about halfway up, and extended the stems with a stem from another stamp set. Re stamped it again lower down,then added a partial stamp over the left hand edge. The butterfly stamps are from an Inkylicious set.

I changed my card up a bit more, by adding some double sided adhesive sheet to the front, then sprinkling with Glamour Dust.

Once the adhesive sheet was in place, I brayered over it with a hard rubber roller, to make sure it was completely flat.
I also put the backing sheet back over the top and brayered it again, over the Glamour Dust to make sure it was stuck firmly.





Next step was to mark the width of the panel on the inside of the card, then score lines to border the panel.

It looked like it still needed something, so two butterflies were punched out of sparkly vellum, and coloured on the reverse with DI markers in matching colours.Folded up the wings, then stuck down with Pinflair glue.

 At this point I discovered that in all my stamps, I do not have a single 'Welcome' or 'Welcome Home' stamp! Neither do I have anything in my ageing peel off collection, so no other option but to hand write it. I added a small orange flat back gem to the exclamation mark. Some orange ribbon wrapped around the spine to finish.

I'm linking this to 'A Focused Journey' blogspot,
 for the 'Stop pinning and make something' party, which is Diane's idea to encourage us all to actually use some of those ideas we Pin for inspiration!

WOYWW #240

Good Morning everyone- heres hoping its not too wet/blustery where you are, and that none of you are affected by all the awful flooding. So back into it we go, Wednesdays popping up faster all the time, it seems. Our esteemed leader, Julia, is over at The Stamping Ground, awaiting your link, to display to the world your creativity and tidiness (or lack thereof!).

And here you have it, I'm having a go at week 2 of A Documented Life, and sticking at it for 2 weeks counts as a long term project for me,lol.
Inks, diary, sponges, pictures, and an inked sheet in the background. Towel on my chair, for drying rubber stamps after cleaning.

Now heres the inked sheet in the foreground, with some stencilled bits on it. And gessoed, to tone the colours down a bit. I Added the stencilling whilst the inked background was still a bit wet, and the colours were quite strong. I thought I'd ink a background sheet, as I didn't want the colour to keep seeping through onto other pages, as the diary paper is pretty thin.

This was it before the stencils/gesso, and next to it, my storage solution for stencils & masks. A document folder thingy from Poundland. Keeps 'em flat, and I get to see what I have. It has a sheet of white paper in each pocket, so you can put two masks in each pocket, one either side of the paper.
 So thats my Wednesday Show & Tell, now its your turn.

A Documented Life-1/1

So New Year, New projects! I have to thank BJ for mentioning this one, and also how she is doing it, which I have shamelessly borrowed.Despite never having completed more than about 1 weeks worth of entries in one, I still buy a diary every year, with the intention that this year will be different. You do not want to know how many unused diaries I have, stored to use in some project or other. BJ mentioned the project A Documented Life,  and that she was going to use a diary for it,which sort of made me curious.
 Now I have to admit that I am not following the way they are doing it entirely, as they have added a pocket to each week, to add memorabilia etc to. I'm not adding one to every week, I'll just incorporate one if I need it- I do not need encouraging to collect any more bits! We already have a boxful of 'mementoes'- parking ticket stubs, entry tickets, you name it, from places we have visited. I'm just glad photos are digital these days.
 The idea is they give a weekly challenge for you to incorporate into your planner, and the first was Photograph, sketch, paint or incorporate your front door.


So, off to trawl through photos on my PC for a photo of our front door. I was just about to give up and go take another picture when I found this one- taken on what was clearly a nice sunny day, and with the door slightly open- perfect.








Printed it off, and here it is on my desk, along with the said diary, and a stencil I cut out with my Silhouette, of brickwork. I had a rough idea in my head where I was going with this subject, which was a bit of a shocker, to be fair.

Distress Inks and the stencil gave me a cool background on one page.










 Added my photo, torn down rather than cut. This will make you smile- I'm sitting here at my PC writing this post, just added that picture, peered closely at it, and thought 'where the heck have those numbers come from?' Then remembered, its a diary. Not entirely sure I should be allowed sharp pointy things, lol.

Completely gratuitous shot of a mid-craft coffee and Stollen break. You don't want to know how many stollen we need to get through. Thats what happens when you forgot you already bought some.

 Forgot to photograph this page before I finished- I printed out a selection of pictures of the inside of the house, as well as Beloved Hubby, Ambrose & myself. The house pictures were layered up down the page, just torn and overlapping. Then I added Hubbys pic, along with Ambrose and me, torn and stuck over the others.

The writing I did  with a DI marker, and the heart is a triple embossed chipboard piece.
 It was the phrase 'Home is where the Heart is' that gave me the idea for how to do this challenge, and for once, it came out pretty much exactly as I saw it.
 The other bonus with this, is that I keep saying I will do an Art Journal- so I may well be killing a couple of birds with one stone here.
 I'm not actually expecting to do every week- I'm already a week behind, they posted a new one today-I will just do the ones that appeal. I mean, this weeks is 'use a selfie'- thats never going to happen. It takes at  least a dozen attempts to get a picture of me I find acceptable- another good thing about digital pictures. Oh well, off to browse for a reasonably presentable photo of me- that should occupy most of the week.

The post Christmas clean up

I always find myself doing this at this time of year. While I'm putting all the Christmas crafting stuff away, I get into tidy & organise mode. Last year I unmounted almost all my wood mount stamps- the only ones not done are some really large ones, and my Christmas stamps, as they were still packed in their box.So doing the Christmas stamps was something I intended for this year.

Here they all are, off their mounts, and labelled with post-its, so I can add the info to the catalogue pages. Not something I bothered with years ago, before blogging, but I do like to be able to include that info when I use a stamp, although, to be truthful, many of these stamps I've had for years, and most are probably discontinued now.
 This time I have not added cushion foam to them, leaving them as bare rubber. I've bought  a few packs of Tack n Peel, which I've applied to some acrylic blocks, and I'm going down that route now. Takes up even less storage space. As the Tack n Peel only goes on one side, and is completely clear, I can still use the opposite side of the block for foam mounted stamps.Now theres a thing- I had a look at a few with foam on, and wondered how difficult it would be to strip them all back to bare rubber. I discovered that a number of my older stamps actually separated from the foam cleanly with complete ease.

Stamp on the right, mounting foam on the left. No residue at all. I also found any dried on sticky residue can be removed with a pan scourer- saves on the fingerprints, lol.
 Not all of the foam would come off easily, some was still well adhered, so I'm leaving those. Clearly, over the years the adhesive loses its stick, and I can live with unmounting from the foam as a gradual process.


So after this it was time for a bit of a clean up. Especially since Beloved Hubby has been renovating my old craft room for him to do all his computer repairs in, there is enough dust about to carve your name in, even with closed doors.Removed everything from my desk and gave it a good clean. Thats the last time it'll be that clean and tidy!

                                      Told you it wouldn't be long.

Anyway, while I was tidying, I set up my Silhouette for a couple of projects I had in mind. A few weeks ago, I saw some stencils in use that looked really useful- one was letters & numbers, another was circles.I considered browsing the net to see where they were on sale, when I saw my Silhouette out of the corner of my eye, and thought ' don't be daft, cut your own'. So I spent an hour or so making them up, and I stored the files till I got round to them. Today seemed the perfect opportunity.

 First one, the letters & numbers.With some patches of circles to break it up & fill up the spaces. Bonus is I also have all the letters & numbers it cut out to make little masks.

 Next one was some circles- just made this a half page size- I got bored making circles, lol.

 Final one I cut was some stencil font numbers.

WOYWW #206

Not a huge difference to last week, to be fair. A few of the stamped images have been used up in the previous posts, a few more at the back waiting to get used.
Some shadow stamps I've dug out, I thought I'd give that a go at some point this week. I'm also going to have a go at making some out of fun foam, rather than buying any more.
On the left, a really exciting find in The Works!
 That mask shape is awesome, lol.
I love masks, I really do, and these decorate yourself ones are only 99p.
I also thought I could use it as a template to make some more, maybe papier mache, or with polymer clay or air drying clay. We shall see,my craftroom is stuffed to the gills with good intentions.
The reason I was in The Works- Tell the truth, why don't I, I'm always popping in there, no excuse needed,- is that its Mikeys girlfriends birthday today, so I needed a pressie. She loves drawing, and The Works always has loads of good art stuff. I got her a fold-up easel/art stand and one of those mini-mannequins I had on my desk a couple of weeks ago. Then spotted those masks.Seemed rude not to bring one home.

This is the corner of my desk, artfully overflowing onto my rubbish bin.Makes a useful stand for trays of stuff, I've discovered.
Actually there are two bins, a rubbish one & a recycling one, so in an emergency I have two stands!
You can see my box of embossing folders on top of a drawer unit, I thought I would actually use them more if they were in my line of sight, and it does seem to be working. Now all I need to do is put everything in my room in arms reach, and I'll be using all sorts of forgotten treasures.
Well, it might work.
The tray on the desk has some sheets of cardstock I've sprayed with mica mists, and the one on the bin is full of alcohol inked sheets.Those little DL document pockets are ace for keeping scraps in.

I said Mikeys girlfriend, Katy, likes to draw. This is a piece she did for me back last year.
 Mikey commented to me last night, that he and Katy were talking the other day about this drawing she did me, a cat with one eye hidden.
And what did they end up adopting? A one eyed cat- how weird is that?
If you've got this far, and wonder what on earth I'm waffling about my mess for, go visit our Leader of the Pack, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground, and show us what you got!

Going back to the ATC swap- if anyone wants to swap with a first--timer, you can email me with your addy via the link on the sidebar. I have no idea what you might end up with, lol, so be prepared!

Lest we Forget.......

This tag came about because I was reorganising some stamps and spotted an unmounted poppy, which was a free stamp with Craft Stamper, a few years ago now, when Jane Pinder of The Stamp Bug was the editor.


This is the stamp, and I thought it would lend itself nicely to layering.


 
   I stamped two images onto a handmade paper, and then four more onto Mulberry paper.

I used one of the Handmade paper poppies for the base, then cut up the four mulberry paper ones into sections, then scrunched them up. Opened them all out again, and began to layer them onto the Poppy base with a little silicone glue.


This is the Poppy all layered up, and with a large Black brad in the centre, which also help to ruffle the petals a little.

Added a leaf, from dark green mulberry paper, embossed with clear powder, and the edges cut with a pair of fancy edged scissors.

For the tag, I used a white index card, which I just
sponged in greens, using a torn piece of paper for a mask, and added blues for the sky.The stem is part of another stamp- a Lavinia stamps dandelion head. You can see a bit of a black smudge where I caught the edge of the flower head with the inkpad, but the Poppy head will cover it,lol.
 

 
 Now I matted it onto Red then Black cardstock. I don't have a stamp for Remember, but I do have one that says Remembering, so I just masked off the unwanted letters with lowtack tape, inked the rest, then peeled off the tape before stamping.

The Poppy head is stuck in place with some more silicone glue.

 To finish it off, I added a few dots after Remember with a Promarker, Punched a hole in the top and added some black & red fibres.

Halloween Pumpkin for 2011.

     Here's this years Halloween Pumpkin-Dougs annual  carving task.

 

Whilst he was doing this, I was busy playing with my tags again,so here is another effort. This one is the part finished one in the previous post, to show you the masks I made.

As you can see, I added the words from the Tim Holtz set, then a Dragonfly made from Fusible Fibres. The flourish was sponged using Distress inks, as was the tag.