Pansy Birthday

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #43
NOT Clean & Simple - Layer It Up

This fortnights challenge theme has been chosen by DT sister Jennie. This challenge gave me the opportunity to make my own flowers using the Sheena Douglas Pansy Perfect Partners (stamp and die set).  I had tried it before but maybe I was not in the mood or just not daring enough but this time I went all out and just love the end result of the flowers.  OK so starting from the beginning, I coloured the card base and another sheet of paper with Distress Inks in the same colours I was using for the pansies.  I then embossed the paper sheet I had coloured and used this to place behind the die cut background.  To make the die cut background I used a repeating lattice die from Tattered Lace, a really handy die as you are not restricted to a card size.  I then made a square frame border to place on top which covers the rough edges and added a piece of lace to the bottom and pearls on the crossed over sections of the die cut.  Onto the flowers and boy, did I get inky lol but first I had to cut all the petals and leaves then stamp the images onto each section, for this I used Distress Inks. Next it was out with the Crafters Companion Inks which I have had for ages and a lovely big paint brush to paint each of the sections front and back and then an extra spray of water so they were lovely and wet.  Time to crumple them up to get some wrinkles into them and then open the sections up and bend into the shapes I wanted.  I left the sections to dry for several hours and then attached to the card font with silicone glue.  To complete the card I used a Happy Birthday sentiment die by Sarah Davies of Crafters Companion.

Image used:-  Pansy Perfect Partners by Sheena Douglas

Colouring:- Distress Inks, Crafter's Companion Aqua Tints.

Other items:- Lace, pearls, lattice die, birthday die cut, silicone glue, embossing folder

Challenges entered:-

• Art Impressions Stamp Challenge 2W,2E,SIO (tab at top of page)  #242 Vibrant Colours (W1 of 2)
• Aud Sentiments Challenge 2W,E5  #212 Use A 2 Word Sentiment  (W1 of 2)
• Through the Purple Haze M 1st Thurs, E3, C10 Sept-Bright Colours
• Always Happy Birthday (M, P1, E4, must be birthday)- October - Birthday
• Try It On Tuesday 2W, C5, 2nd & 4th weeks - Slap It On (get messy and inky with paints, textures and papers) (week 2)

Birthday Owl

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #42
The Natural World

This fortnights challenge theme has been chosen by DT sister Sall.  I love a challenge like this as for me, nature cards are always a delight to make.

For this card I went owl mad as my eldest daughter just loves owls :)  The large owl stamp is from Sheena Douglas and the smaller owls used to create the background paper and inside of the card are from  The Works.  I started by using Distress Oxides to create the backgrounds then coloured the main stamped image with Promarkers and stamped the other owls with the same Distress Oxide colours used earlier.  I had lots of fun making my own washi tape using micropore tape lol and stamped 'owl always love you' again with Distress Oxides.  To complete the card for Natasha I mounted the coloured image on black and then hand made paper, added a wooden owl embellishment again coloured with Distress Oxides and a couple of black pearls.

Image used:-  recycled magazine, coffee tin and twine

Colouring:- none

Other items:- hot glue gun and PVA glue

Challenges entered:-

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Imagination

IKEsWORLD

Challenge 112
Sexy September

Welcome back to the IKEsWORLD challenges :)  do pop on over to IKEsWORLD to join in the challenge, it is always so much fun and  Ike produces the most amazing stamps, everything from off the wall to cute and fluffy :) :) :)

Oh what fun making this card, I so love Ike's female images, not OTT but they scream seduction in the most beautiful way LOL.  For this card I went with a totally different colour combo, browns, olive and burgundy.  To start with I found some burgundy paper and embossed it with a key design, this was then used to back my card blank.  I then used Distress Inks to do the background then ran this, when dry, through my laser printer to add the text ready for foiling.  Such fun adding the text with foil and great when you don't have a suitable sentiment stamp.  The background layer was then mounted on gold card.  The image was coloured with Prismacolour pencils, again not the usual skin tones as I tried to pick up some of the colours I used in the background.  Simple die cuts in gold and burgundy along with a metal embellishment completed the card front.

Ingredients:-

• image - Girly Pin Up, by IKEsART
• colouring medium - Distress Inks and Prismacolour pencils
• other items - gold card, key embossing folder, gold foil, Sizzix dies and metal embellishment 

I am entering this project into the following challenges:-

Himalayan Blue Poppy

Aurora Wings

Sketch Challenge #70 - Sketch 

Time for a new challenge at Aurora Wings and this month it is a SKETCH challenge.  So here we go with the sketch we would like you to use and we can't wait to see what you come up with and how you interpret this challenge :) :)

For my DT inspiration to get you in the mood I have used the image Himalayan Blue Poppy available here from Aurora Wings Digital Stamps and also from the Etsy store.

I chose to use the Himalayan Blue Poppy image to decorate the outer side of the circle instead of putting and image in the circle and using other embellishment on the outside.  The image was flipped so it fitted beautifully on the top left of the circle and for the bottom right I removed parts of the image so I was only left with the flowers and reduced the size.  Once that was done I printed the two bits ready for colouring.  Usually I would colour and then fussy cut but this time I was a bit concerned about the fussy cutting so did that first.  Then the fun and games began as seems to be a common trend with me at the moment.  I coloured most of the image but did not like what I had done grrrrr, so printed and cut again ready for a second round of colouring.  Now the second attempt was much better and I was half way through it when I got sidetracked and started thinking about the background.  My plan was to rubber stamp a poppy background in colours to match what I was using (fatal mistake).  I hunted through my stamp inks, nothing suitable there, Promarkers possibly but not what I wanted then I remembered I had some Aqua Tints from Crafters Companion and there I found the perfect colour.  Time to play and see what I could come up with and my stupid hand knocked over the bottle of ink and I think you can guess where it went, all over the half coloured image which I had not moved out the way - I could have cried.  Time to leave the craft room after wiping up all the spilt ink before I did something else rather stupid.  I left things for a couple of days and rethought what to do with the background - that ink went back in the drawer and won't be seeing the light of day for a wee while hahaha.  I ended up using a poppy design paper which I converted to greyscale in Photoshop and then overlaid a colour I thought would work well, hurray, got it pretty good first time.  Next was to print and fussy cut the image for the third time and get the colouring done.  All going well so far so fingers crossed it would continue and it did, no more accidents.  The images were coloured with Polychromes and completed with Liquid Pearls in the centre of each of the flowers then a blast of Crafters Companion Spray and Shine to give a nice sheen. To finish off the card I die cut a background flower die I have and trimmed it to size to fit behind the inner circle, lace was added to the top background poppy layer and this was mounted on dark maroon, then cream vellum and added to the card base.  Behind the image I added some maroon dried leaves, pearl sprays and a glass bead spray.  Finally I stamped the sentiment and added a wee pearl bow to complete this project.

Aurora Wings Digital Images Store

I am entering this creation in the following challenges:-

• Just Us Girls W - #456 - Celebrate
• Always Happy Birthday (M, P1, E4, must be birthday)- September - Birthday
• Creations in Pink (M, P15, E3, mostly pink) #1 - Anything Goes in Pink
• Digi Doodle Studios Challenge Blog (M, P1, E3, must have hand coloured image) - #9 - Mythical/Magical
• Digistamps 4 Joy (M, P1, E3, SIO) #152 - Anything Goes + optional : Flower Frenzy
• Alphabet Challenge - 2W, 1E - I L IS FOR LEAFS  (W1 of 2)
• Brown Sugar – M (First Friday of M), E2 - AUG - No. 281 - FAIRIES AND FANTASIES
• Just Add Ink – W- No. 424 - TEXTURE*
• Cardz 4 Galz 2W,3E #79 Beautiful Backgrounds (W1 of 2)

School Time

Just a very quick post with a card I finished off this morning using the image from IKEsWORLD Progressive Challenge on FB.  I had so much fun with this on and finally got my Promarkers out of the drawer they have been hiding in for the past year.  It seems I have fallen in love with my pencils but it is a shame that the Promarkers got put to one side.  Now they are out and about again I really must try to use them more often :) :) :)

Image - From IKEsART Progressive Challenge
Colouring medium - Promarkers
Background - digital paper

Challenges entered:-

• I love Promarkers  2W,3E Must use Promarkers, #364 - Anything Goes/Option of Die or Punch (W2 of 2)
• 2 Crafty Critter Crazies (M, P1, E5, must have a critter) #18 - Anything Goes with a Critter
• Tinker- Dream (M, P15) #68 - Back to School/Work
• Kitty Bee Designs - 2W,2E, C10 - No.126 - ANYTHING GOES W/OPTIONAL TWIST:ANIMALS  (W1 of 2)
• Paper Shelter Challenge  W, 3E, SIO, #353 - Back to School

Recycled Coffee Tin

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #41
Use a non-craft item on your project/Recycle

This fortnights challenge theme has been chosen by DT sister CG.  I have a love hate relationship with this challenge theme lol, so many ideas I get sidetracked.  I was going to make flowers out of coffee filters but then knew the hubby had kept our just finished coffee tin for something so decided to use that instead.

To create my project I used an empty coffee tin and free magazine from our pet store which was ready for the bin.

A quick check on You Tube for some tutorials led to this one showing the making of paper tubes from magazines to cover a container, you can check out the video tutorial here.  Lots of fun to do and not hard at all, the only downfall was the burnt thumb from using my glue gun grrrrrr.  I started by creating all the tubes from the magazine, these were then glued to my container with hot glue, yep, very hot glue.  Next I trimmed each of the tubes to the correct length and applied a couple of coats of PVA glue.  To finish off I found some old hessian string which came off some packaging at Christmas and wound this around the top of the paper straws to cover the holes, 4 circular layers in all and a couple more layers to the bottom of the tin to tidy things up.  Yep, super easy and even got a 'coo' from my daughter when she saw it lol.

Image used:-  recycled magazine, coffee tin and twine

Colouring:- none

Other items:- hot glue gun and PVA glue

Challenges entered:-

• Catch The Bug  W,3E,SIO - Anything Goes
• Use Your Stuff - W,  #327 LOTS OF COLOR