Getting Grungy

This one is another card that I made for the Elusive Images Design Team Application - remember I said in my previous post that the Lighthouse Scene is a lovely image - well it is an I couldn't resist making a very different card with it.  As Glenda has posted a photo of  this one over on the Elusive Images Design Team Blog I thought I would share how I made the card.

The image was stamped with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and I used a wet paintbrush to drag colour from the stamped outline to create extra shading in the image.  Where I needed more shading I dabbed the ink pad onto my craft sheet and used my wet paint brush to pick up a litte more colour.  If you look carefully there is also a tiny touch of Aged Mahogany in the image.  The ink was very watered down on my craft sheet then picked up on my paint brush and used to make the sails on the boats stand out just a little more.  Once the image was dry I used  the blade of my scissors to distress the edges a bit then used Cut 'n' Dry foam to blend more ink from the Vintage Photos pad around the edge to create a vignette effect.  Finally I dragged and smudged my Versamark pad around the edge, sprinkled on Gold EP and heated.

The finished image was mounted onto black card which I embellished with some kitchen twine that had been grunged up to look like old dirty ropes from a sailing ship. I did this by  using just about every shade of  brown distress ink I own, from Frayed Burlap to Brushed Corduroy!  It was easy enough to do, just splodge the brown inks onto a craft sheet, spritz liberally with water then roll and scrunch the peice of twine around in the inky puddle so it soaks in the inky water.  Let it dry then repeat as needed to darken.  Once the twine was nearly dry  I made the browny shades more uneven by smudging a little ink directly from the ink pads onto the twine and lightly spritzing so as to make the inky smudge bleed into the twine more - it bleeds better if the twine is still a little damp when you do this.   The knots were tied using an authentic sailors knot - in this case a figure of eight knot.  I wanted the knots to be the Real MaCoy, so I did some research online and found this web site with some great instructions on how to try proper sailors knots.  Just click on any of those knots and an animated page opens that shows how to tie the knot.

Finally my background layer - once again I turned to my Distress Inks in assorted shades of brown and used the wrinkle free technique to create the background.   Once this was dry I overstamped with Versamark using an anchor image from the Seashell Collage themeplate and dusted this with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls then very lightly spritzed with water to set the Perfect Pearls.  The edges were treated in the same way as the edges of the main image - distressed with the blade of my scissors, a little ink blended with Cut 'n' Dry foam, and smudgy gold embossing.  The whole thing is mounted onto black card from the same stock I used to mat under the main image.

If you got this far, sorry it's such a long post, but I wanted to share how I made this card because I had a lot of fun making it!

OMG - On Cloud 9!!! & WOYWW 60

OMG I can't believe this - I got picked. The only sure way to fail at something is to never try.......so try I did, but with no real expectation of success. What am I wittering on about I hear you ask? The Elusive Images Design Team Call,  I applied and got chosen! For me this is a dream come true and my feet haven't touched the ground since! I am both extremely humbled and incredibly proud to be a part of Glenda Waterworth's Design Team. Humbled because I see so many wonderful creations on other people's blogs and find myself thinking every time.... "if only I could make something so beautiful"; and  proud to think that someone as talented as Glenda considered my work worthy.

At this stage thanks must go to my 2 most wonderful friends Fabyon and Jess. Fab thank you, your support and belief in me when I was trying to put together projects for the DT Call submission helped me to not loose faith. Jess - you know what you have taught me about life and giving it your best shot no matter what - if not for your wisdom I would never even have applied.

Now you may have noticied my blog has been a little quiet, my father in law's death followed by an intense 3 weeks of overtime at work left me with not a lot of time to craft recently.  However normal service has resumed and I can now share some of the projects that I made as part of my DT submission.... so here's the first.  Nothing fancy, just a simple stamped image from the Elusive Images Seashore Scenes themeplate, coloured with Derwent Inktense Pencils and a brayer for some of the sky, then matted an layered on black gloss and white linen card.  This image is so lovely it really doesn't need anything else. However if you scroll down a little bit you will see a different treatment in this post.  The greeting stamp is one from Hobby Art and was stamped and embossed with black embossing powder so it would be shiny to co-ordinate with the black gloss card.

What's On Your Workdesk Wedneday (WOYWW) - hmmmm gotta be careful about what is camera view now - but this is what was on my workdesk when I went to bed last night - I am trying to flatten some card that curled when it got wet - Glossy Accents being the culprit in this case.  The bits under that acrylic block weighed down by the tub of Rock Salt are for a Design Team project, but I hope I can share the results with you soon.  Off now to take a wee peek at some other workdesks, why don't you join me by visiting Julia's Blog.  Julia hosts this little bit of fun every Wednesday and lots of crafters join in, I guess we are all a little bit nosey about other crafters workspaces!

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What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday.

Well my desk has not changed a lot since last week. Due to a family bereavment I have not had much time to craft as I was engaged in other activities in preparation for the funeral.  After that I needed to make some "thank you" cards for my mother-in-law to send out.   Stuck to simple ones of which you can see 2 in my pics.  Materials were just card stock, vellum printed with designs from the Artylicious Decadent Brocade CD,  oval nesties, floradoodle flowers and some peel-off corners.  The "Thank You" sentiment is heat embossed using a stamp by Elusive Images.    I took a better shot of the cards to let you see them closer up.  If you wan to join in the WOYWW fun visit Julia's blog to find out more.

Someone asked last week about my ink pad storage - it's free cassette tape storage that came with boxes of Oxo years ago - hubby found them in the loft a while back and I nabbed them with glee cuz I knew they would be ideal for storing ink pads - just wish I had enough for the rest of my ink pads - they are stacked to one side, or in various tubs and draws.  Oh and the mess - err I haven't shown all of it yet - I am too ashamed to show the real extent of my clutter!

Heading off now for a snoop round some other workdesks.

My Messy Desk

I found this bit of fun on Stamping Ground today - its called What's On Your Workspace Wednesday. Thought I would join in even though my space is a mess.  In the Messy Crafter Oymipics I could win gold on a good day! As for my craft mat - well that's soggy toilet paper - saw something on TV that I decided to have a go at last night - still waiting for the soggy stuff to dry out - more on that later if it works!

Two Tags and an Alcohol Ink Background

Recently I have been playing with some stamps I bought last year from Graphicus, they all have a nautical/sea theme. I have a card idea in my head for the image of the sailing ship, but it's not quite there yet. I thought I would stamp out the images last night and see where they took me. While I was playing I thought I would try out a background technique I have been wanting to have a go at since I bought some Isopropyl Alcohol a month or so ago - a much cheaper alternative to Alcohol Ink Blending Solution and it's pretty good for cleaning up that tacky gunk that cutting sticky things leaves on our scissors too! You can get it through any Pharmacy tho you may have to ask for a special customer order.

Anyhow on to my tags. First step was to chop open on 3 sides one of those tough cello bags that I get every time I buy unmounted stamps from Graphicus so as it could be opened up like opening the pages of a book. Next I dripped Alcohol Inks (the colours are Denim, Stream, Stonewashed and Lettuce and a tiny splodge of Silver Metallic Mixative) inside my "cello book" and spritzed this with some of the Isopropyl Alcohol which I had decanted into a Tim Holtz Mini Mister. Closed the cello pages and sorta smeared things around with my fingers, then opening the pages back up, I took 2 semi gloss tags I bought in Grapicus some time ago, laid them back to back and placed them between the pages of cello and once again kinda smeared things around with my fingers - I really liked the end result, the colours are lovely and soft and best of all permanent so they won't bleed when you do other stuff with them.

The stamping itself was simple enough, stamps from the Elusive Images "Undewater", "Seashore Scenes" and "Seashell Collage" themeplates stamped in Midnight Blue Stazon. The gulls in the tag with the sailing ship are from a stamp by Clarity Stamp.

On the tag with the seahorse I tried adding a little colour with Twinkling H2O paints to the shells and sea bottom to get a more sandy look - it think it looks OK even tho the paints are transparent so some of the blue/green tones of the background show through. On the tag with the sailing ship I used a white gel pen to add some foam to the waves under the ship.

With hindsight the silver mixative may have been a mistake as Stazon does not work so well with the metallic mixatives - the silver floats up to the surface of the stamping - must try this next time with Archival ink and see what happens.

Nautical Card

A few months back it was Fab's birthday and I made this card for him. The stamps are by Elusive Images and come from the Seashore Scenes and Underwater themeplates. The full range of these stamps can be seen on the Graphicus web site.

I stamped the lighthouse scene image using Broken China Distress ink, used a wet paintbrush to draw a little colour into the image to deepen the shaded areas, and finally blended a little more of the distress ink around the edges. The shell stamp was stamped with Versamark ink onto brown bazzill card and then heat embossed with clear embossing powers. The sentiment comes from the Seaside Scenes plate and was also stamped with Broken China Distress ink. Some brads and ribbon in a shade that complimented the colour of the ink added a finishing touch. Then, just because it was for Fab, and because he not only knows, but actively enables my weakness for sparkle I added the tiniest amount of Broken China Distress Stickles to the roof of the lighthouse. I guess it wasn't really necessary, but it's a sort of signature from me to Fab.

A Birthday Card

Pink 'n' Girly without being saccharin sweet, or at least that's what I was aiming for when I made this a while back for a friend's Birthday. The card base is some ice blue pearlesenct card - chosen because it would look well with the silver embossing I planned to do. The papers are from an Artylicious CD - "Decadent Brocade" . I addes some shimmer to them by spritzing with Glimmer Mists, blended a little ink round the edges then embossed the big swirl stamp in silver at two opposing corners.

The flowers were embossed in silver onto more of the same pattern paper. I spread a thin layer of Stickles Stardust glitter then cut them out. The large Birthday greeting stamp is from an A6 plate by Elusive Images. It was also stamped onto the printed paper and heat embossed in silver, then matted onto some of the same ice blue card I have used for the main card.

The flowers and swirl stamps are by Sheena Douglass.

Two For One?

Can I have a 2 for 1 please? The card was made a few weeks back for my husband who was transferring jobs and needed a card to thank his staff for the gift they gave him when they heard he was moving on. It seems appropriate to post this because it is a thank you card and, while it was made for hubby's work colleagues, I want to say thanks to all the kind friends who have popped in to visit when they saw I had posted on my blog again after so long. Thanks folks, your kind word are much appreicated.

The card itself was made using a stamp from the Stampin' Up set "Lovely as a Tree that I received from my "FAB"ulous freind Fabyon for Christmas last year - he's an SU demo - go visit his various blogs because he's a wonderful card maker and scrapper - and his other half Vince ain't half bad either - between them those 2 have so much talent!

To make this card I brayered a background using a Ranger Big N Juicy ink pad - Waterfall, then stamped the trees with black Stazon. Used a nestability die to cut it out and matted it onto some black card cut one size up from the same set of nesties. The main card was simply stamped with the same stamp across the center, the greeting is from an Elusive Images Themeplate, and the birds at the top right left are from Lavinia Stamps. A simple card to make really, the only tricky bit was the birds - I tried to stamp them quite lightly to keep them back in the distance, but that made it hard to get a crisp impression. Anyhow I hoped the final result was a suitably manly for my husband to give - somehow to me it just didn't seem right for a man to give a card that is all flowers and butterflies to a group of colleague who are mainly other men! But heck maybe that's just me being a lil' conventional!

Geeeeze my poor neglected blog!

A new job, lots of training and I guess my biggest sin - procrastination are to blame for the neglect. Today I was browsing some photos of my stuff looking for an idea and realised I really ought to have blogged this cuz I had so much fun making them. Um forgive me for posting Christmas stuff in Summer but I do want to share.


The Christmas Tree decorations were cheap as chips from Tesco - but rather nasty - just festive shapes cut from cheap plywood that was badly finished. They all had a little loop of red ribbon embedded into them so they could be hung on a tree. Anyhow my first task was to sand them to make sure there were not going to be any splinters.

With that done I set about decorating them - I used a variety of ideas and materials, Tim Holtz Acrylic Paint Daubers, Stazon inks, sticky aluminium foil, alcohol inks, printed papers from an Artylicious CD, Luminarte's Polished Pigments paints, stamps, emobssing powders, Glossy Accents, Stickles Glitter and Gems .... I think that's a fairly comprehensive list! Lord knows by the time I was done - 3 days later - my craft room looked like a small tornado had visited!

Anyhow I really loved how my drab little wooden decorations turned out! The individual photos are some of my favorites. Gave them to freinds instead of giving them a hand made Christmas card. Hoping Tesco have something similar this year so I can make a few more.

Thank You Card

I got the new Artylicious Decadent Brocade CD recently and have been printing stuff off - stupidly I forgot to take a photo of the first of the card I made but this is the second card from the CD.

The stamped sentiment is by Elusive Images and can be found on the Words of Gratitude Themeplate. The paper was inked round the edges with Memento ink and then spritzed with Gimmer Mists to make it shimmery. The Prima flowers were also spritzed with the Glimmer Mists.