This month, the Creative Expressions Design Team were given the choice of the new masks, and promised some of the new colours of Cosmic Shimmer Sparkle Texture Paste. Imagine my delight when I chose the Dainty Daisy mask and found Rich Plum, Periwinkle and Emerald Sparkle Texture Pastes in my goodie pack! They complement each other so well, and thus this textured, and sparkly, card was created.
I’ve been using the tarmac technique again today, again on a trusty Ikea mirror. This time, I’ve used my Silhouette Cameo to cut shapes and letters from 300gsm card which I’ve stuck down directly to the frame. I kept the waste to use as a stencil later to layer the colours. Both colours are metallic, and much more iridescent in reality than in the picture. Careful masking with the waste layer and touching up with a brush allowed the lettering to be picked out against the main colour. I put an Art Deco style border around the mirror itself just to pick it out a bit more – of course, the viewer will be framed nicely. Add a bit of bitumen, rub back, and the piece is done.
Available to purchase (or order), £25, p&p extra. Please email with your requirements.
As promised, here are some more 500th post winners… several prizes weren’t claimed, so here’s a list of new winners – if you want the prize, drop me an email using the link on the sidebar with your address so I can send it to you! Once again, if there are any unclaimed prizes in a week’s time, another winner will be selected.
The De-stress with Distress Techniques Tag book is now going to Denise Fletcher.
The Quilt Square has been won by Sarah Stainbach (perhaps my oldest follower?)
And the limited edition print has been won by Lila.
It’s a lurve theme over at The Crafting Cafe this month, and the DT got to work with digistamps from the fabulous Bugaboo Stamps. Ava and Deacon’s Love Word was perfect inspiration for this 12×12″ canvas board layout. I coloured the image with ProMarkers and the board with acrylic paints and added my new favourite tarmac technique. For a bit more detail, see my post at The Crafting Cafe.
I’m quite organised… and I have a pile of stamps that I have mentally labelled ‘I will not put these away until I have used them at least once’. Each show I go to, or order I place online, sees the pile grow by at least one stamp per time – and it doesn’t seem to reduce in size. Today, I decided to do something about it, and created these two tone-on-tone cards featuring Stampendous Cling Stamps ‘Cherish Heart’ and ‘Wild Roses’, with the tag from the Lily of the Valley ‘Set 51 Tags Monsieur’.
In the last of the summer seaside theme posts for this month, I’ve made use of the new Pronty MDF crown available via Creative Expressions as the inspiration for my ‘King of the Castle’ project, also featuring their new Singles stamps ‘Treasure Seeker’ and ‘Sandcastle in the Sun’. I’ve used their acrylic inks to colour the images and added bling with polished silk glitters and pearlescent PVAs. It would be ideal to add to a layout or use as a standalone piece.
For a shopping list and full (printable) step-by-step tutorial: click here [PDF].
More bling next week!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my 500th post on my little corner of blog-land. In a little over three years, I’ve enjoyed hundreds of thousands of visitors, views and comments, and in celebration (and as promised) I have a giveaway for my readers.
Here are the prizes:
And here are the winners:
Terri Young – Tangle Pattern Book
Sam Smithard – De-stress with Distress Technique Tag Book
Denise Fletcher – Mini-Quilt Square
[Please email me via the sidebar link with your details to send the prize out if you’d like it. Any that are unclaimed by next weekend will be added to the public giveaway below.]
And the final prize, a limited edition hand made print of one of my tangle patterns mounted for a 4×6″ frame, will be given to a random commenter on this post. Closing date: 0001 GMT on Sunday, 29th June. Winner(s) will be announced later that day. Good luck!
I was wondering how to use the fabulous beach/summer themed stamps from Creative Expressions for this week’s DT card as the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped. Though it’s allegedly summer (according to the meteorologists), this card captures memories of beach-side sun far better than the grey clouds outside! Framed by a Polaroid instant photo size frame, the individual images are layered to give depth and allow easier stamping and colouring. A perfect snapshot of summer.
Welcome to the Creative Expressions June 2014 Blog Hop! Hopefully you got here from Donna’s blog, but if you didn’t, here’s the start at the Creative Expressions News Blog!
The four new large Frame stamps from Creative Expressions have been designed with co-ordinating mini frames inside, which can be used separately or as a whole and also swapped with other frame designs in the range. There are also an additional four mini frame designs, plus sentiment sets which have been designed to fit inside the various frames.
One randomly selected person commenting on this blog post before the closing date will win a fabulous prize of some of the new stamp designs.
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Here are my blog hop makes (as seen on TV, well, two of them!):
For the boxes, I created a cut file to cut the box from an A3 sheet of 300gsm card using my Silhouette Cameo so that the sides were sized to fit the large frame stamps. It has a crash lock base, so will fold flat for posting. For the coloured decoration, I embossed with Cosmic Shimmer Bright Gold Metallic before colouring with the CS Pastel Iridescent paints. Cut out the centre of the frame, and replace with heat proof acetate stamped with the centre square and embossed with the same powder. The purple box is embossed with CS Tropic Violet Lustre for the large frame and CS True White Detail for the centre and sentiment onto Foundations A4 Card – Amethyst. For the wedding box, I created the niches by cutting a square out of the centre of each side leaving a 5mm border that I could fold inwards to stick the centre square onto (also with a 5mm border folded upwards). It’s all embossed with CS Arctic Pearl Lustre. The classic blue on white is CS Denim Lilac Aurora, which matches the CS Purple Violet Pearlescent PVA wonderfully for the raised dots. Reprint and emboss the centre and rotate to create the raised diamond sentiments, mounting with foam pads. Finally, I made the card by mounting the frame (CS Arctic Pearl Aurora again) onto a card with the centre cut out, using foam pads. I embossed the sentiment with CS True Black Detail and mounted that in the centre with foam pads again, leaving a gap. The lilies were left from a previous card.
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Thank you for visiting my blog, please leave a comment below in order to be in with a chance of winning a prize! Here’s the allocated prize for my stop-off on the blog hop:
If you’d like to receive notification of new posts on my blog, don’t forget to sign up using the box at the top of the side bar to the right of your screen.
Once you have done that, you will need to click here to visit Tracy’s blog.
To help you along the way, here is a list for the Blog Hop:-
1. Julia Watts
5. Neil Burley – you are here
6. Tracy Heaton
8. Pam Smith
Start page, prize details and how to take part: Creative Expressions News Blog. The blog hop started on Thursday 12th June at 10am and ends Tuesday 17th June at 5pm.
Thank you for taking part in our Blog Hop – good luck!
This next card on the seaside/nautical theme is again designed by Sam Poole and part of the Creative Expressions Singles range. ‘Lighthouse’ includes both the image and sentiment. I wanted to highlight the light element of the sentiment and image, so used a dark background to highlight the iridescent pigments and white opaque pens. This created a colouring challenge, as you need to take account of the dark background and the layering of dye based colour in the distress markers. I’m actually quite pleased how well it matched my internal image!