I’m glad there’s five Wednesdays in January this year, as it’s given me more time to work on my final project for Creative Expressions using this month’s featured Antique Dressforms stamp set. This sewing room assemblage was fun to put together and features many of my favourite techniques as well as some innovative uses for some of the other CE products. A room-by-room guide follows and a printable worksheet is here. The complete assemblage is available to purchase – contact me for details.
Tag Archives: distress ink
Stencilled – Day Two
Day Two of my online class ‘Stenciled’ – guess it’s American… Three more techniques suitable for all stencils. Todays are Tim Holtz’s Splatter, That Special Touch Distressed Checkers and Dreamweaver Trees Silhouette. And todays techniques included stamping, watercolour and coloured pencils.
And todays most important learning point – always mask areas outside the stencil as it’s amazing how far the back edge of a distress ink applicator tool can actually reach…
Stencilled – Day One
I’m doing another Online Card Class – this time reviewing the different ways of using stencils. None of it is rocket science for me so far, but it’s always good to see what others are doing and to share creative tips, tricks and which mediums work with which.
These four cards are my take on Day One tutorials – using a stencil as a patterned background, spritzing though, using for emboss resist techniques and layering with colour. I think all the stencils above are from The Crafters Workshop and are the 6×6″ variety. The cards are 12x12cm. The black text has been cut out as a bespoke design on the Silhouette Cameo.
Bijou Hexagonal Card (for Creative Expressions)
Back to the bags this week – specifically the Creative Expressions Bijou Bag Singles pack, containing the bag and the sentiment stamps. I decided to quilt the bag just to give a bit of a different appearance and texture. The principle is simple enough to make the card, though it’s not a quick make due to all the fussy cutting! This would also work well to frame some home decor pieces too.
Sewing Room Door Plaque (for Creative Expressions)
Another of my projects featuring Creative Expressions’ Antique Dressform stamp set. This one is sporting a few embellishments that I wouldn’t consider to be my normal style, but the ribbon roses (also from CE) matched the theme perfectly and made a great pin cushion for the various pins I nicked from my quilting stash. No step-by-step photos this week, but there’s still a kit list and instructions for those that want them:
Time Flies – thirty cards and a gift box
I fell in love with the ‘Time Flies Collection’ from Craftwork Cards at a recent Woodware Retailers’ Day. I got hold of the 8×8″ paper pack and the elements pack and set to work to create as many individual cards as I could using the elements and as little additional kit as I could. Using mainly Pumice Stone Distress Ink and double sided tape or glue, I made 30 cards and decorated a left-over chocolate box to make a gift box. Additional materials include foam pads; Onyx, Majestic Purple and Pewter Liquid Pearls and a bit of ribbon. A really fun project for the bits in between all the Christmas festivities, and a super collection of papers and die cuts. Several of the cog background cards are suitable for the ever elusive ‘man card’ as well. Clickable gallery follows…
UPDATE 02-JAN-14: Anyone attending CHA 2014 may just see some of these 🙂
Winter Snow Blues
I’ve created this card for my Crafting Cafe DT post this month – more details here.
CC102: Day 1
The longer-term followers of this ‘ere blog will probably vaguely remember that I did Tim Holtz’s Creative Chemistry 101 online class last year. He’s only gone and started CC102 today – there’s thirty more techniques he’s sharing – and of course I had to sign up. So here’s Day 1: six things to do with Distress Paints. I’m not allowed to share the techniques, but you won’t need to look far elsewhere on my blog to see where I have used them with conventional acrylics. That is, all but the first – the marbling effect is unique to Distress Paints because of their make up.
Design Team Call: Second Round
I managed to get through to the second round of the Creative Expressions Design Team Call 2013-14, and the next challenge was to create a project using their ‘Belle of the Ball’ stamp set. This comes as a rubber sheet which needs cutting up and mounting on the foam backing suitable for use with acrylic blocks – some of the images could have done with a little more space round them, but I managed 🙂
The closing date was yesterday, which allows me to share the projects with you – and yes, I did more than one: one to show I can make a card, another to demonstrate I can think outside the box, and a third to demonstrate altered art and making something out of a cheap pound-shop photo frame. The centre canvas one is quite a size, and even the bow is adapted from the dress stamps. The frame one is a 4×6″ aperture, with the centre coloured dress mounted in front of the glass – printed with Versacraft black ink onto white cotton and coloured with ProMarkers.
I’ll share another tip with you – the label that accompanies the rubber stamp sheet laminates well, and the foam covered stamps stick nicely to it and the whole lot still slides nicely into the original packaging. Perfect storage solution 🙂
Altered Art Book Pages for a card
It’s my turn to post again over at the Crafting Cafe, and this month the theme is ‘altered art’ with the sponsor once again the fabulous Delicious Doodles. I’ve printed their Pansy & Butterfly digistamp directly onto old dictionary pages – for more details, go to my post on the design team blog.
