The Magic of Christmas

Merry Christmas from blogland! Here is a configurations book I made for my mom and dad; it was really fun to make and to decide what to put in each section and basically it was any excuse to cover the entire thing in as much glitter and sparkle as possible!

The cover is painted mostly gold and a bit red inside with some added gilding flakes and chipboard letters painted and then some inka gold in red and them some glitter paint and inside some gilding wax and then I used red sparkle medium through a stencil to make the stars. The snowflake is 3d printed.

Inside the snowman is 3d printed and then painted; then the little tree and wreath I inked and then added some white paint to the tree for snow. Then I used some snowtex type stuff. Wooden letters to spell out noel with some berries. Mini bells, string beads, a 3d printed angel; the little green house is cut out on the cricut, mini pretend lights, a wooden 25th December decorated with gilding wax, glitter in tiny bottles; another little bell; a gingerbread man which is patterned paper and then loads of added glitter and sparkles. And it all couldn't have been done without loads of heavy body gel medium to stick everything down.

Cards

Here are some cards I made. The first one is a Sweet Poppy stencil coloured in with Wink of stella pens and a craftwork cards greeting and some distress ink.

 This one I a skyline stencil coloured with distress ink and a greeting.

This one a Stampotique stamp on a dylusions background  and some modelling paste through a stencil and some little pearl drops and some glitter paste and a greeting

 This one is some Tim Holtz stamps coloured in with derwent inktense pencils and a little gelatos and another Craftwork cards greeting.

Canvas

Here's a canvas I decorated, I had quite a few books for Christmas to take some inspiration from and so this is a bit of experimentation.

So basically there's a whole bunch of paint, gel medium, modelling paste, grunge paste, mod podge, collage, Dylusions, pebeo, stencilling, gilding wax, scratching and probably some things I've forgotten.....

Christmas cards

Here are some more Christmas cards I made...well actually this first one is Lee's birthday card, which is a Stampotique monster stamp slightly coloured with wink of stella pens. I added some inka gold in blue and also some ink through a stencil and some washi tape.

This one I used sparkle medium through a star stencil.....really love this stencil. Then I stamped snowflakes, the tiny snowman and Merry Christmas and added a little colour with promarkers on the snowman and then a little distress as well.

This one is two stamps with a touch of promarkers and some festive wash tape on the corners.

This one is a Hobby Art reindeer and the cool yule stamp (not sure which company that's from) mounted on some glitter paper and some washi tape on the top and bottom.

This one was the little robins also hobby art I think and the background was the same star stencil as above but this time with glitter embossing powder.

This one was a little leftover from the star stencil with the sparkle paste and then a robin and postbox stamp from Hobby Art with a little added snow and a craftwork cards greeting.

Christmas cards

Here are a couple of Christmas cards I've made....

I got this gingerbread house stencil last week and tested it out.....actually worked even better than I thought.....really love the effect. Basically you get two slightly different stencils that you use one and then the other with different colours to get this effect. It's made by That Special Touch. I used distress ink through the stencil is evergreen bough and festive berries. Then I just added a stamped greeting and mounted it on some patterned paper.

This one used a splodge away snowflake stencil with some clear texture paste and then I used silver distress spray stain plus some distress ink.....that must be evergreen bough as well I think and also some gold gilding wax. Plus a stamped greeting at the bottom (from Hobby Art). The paper in the background is patterned as well but you can't quite see in the photo.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

Here is this years birthday card....

A balloon stencil....I get all my stencils mixed up so can't remember who this one is made by......I used extra heavy gel medium mixed with fresco paint and also luminarte silk paints to get the greens and blues through the stencil. A little distress around the edge and a craftwork cards greeting.

Logic

Howdy!

This weeks words are logic or imagination.....for the Craft Barn challenge.

I chose logic and a quote from a poem called A Recipe for Civilization by Thomas Hood.

It's a bit strange, but strange is generally my cup of tea.

The background is some fresco paints plus I then used some white fresco paint through a flame stencil and there is also some purple gilding wax but you can't see it on the picture. Then the trusty posca pens and wink of stella came back out to draw the letters......think it'll take my a while to get fed up of these pens hehe!!

Cards

Here are some cards I've made recently, don't think I've posted these.....

This one is gilding flakes stuck to flitter glue through a splodge away owl stencil. With some colour bloom sprays and distress inks.

This one is clear texture paste through another splodge away stencil and then distress inks over the top, and some fine sparkle medium on the leaves.

 This one is another splodge away owl stencil (some kind of theme going on here hehehe!), this time I dyed some paper artsy grunge paste with distress reinker and then added some distress ink round the edge.

Cards

Here are some cards I've made recently...

All my cards lately seem to end up the same colour theme.....I think it's because I've had a whole series of male cards to make. Anyway this on is using silk art paints and then Tim holtz little balloon stamp. Then I used a posca pen to write happy birthday and outlined it with a wink of Stella glitter pen. I edged the background paper with distress ink and then stamped on some spots and added a touch of gilding wax.

This one I found a piece of paper that had remnants of dylusions on the background, I then used a stencil and some gelatos to create to sunshine effect, then I sploshed on a little blue colour bloom spray, added a little distress ink to get rid of most of the white paper and finally added a craftwork cards greeting,

Happy Mother's Day (for last week!)

Hello!!

I had a cross stitch I'd been working on here and there for ages.....I decided to set myself the target of finishing it for Mother's Day.....just about managed that give or take a week hehe!!

Here is the finished article...it is stitched on an Aida panel on a towel. The pattern in from a book called The Ultimate Cross Stitch Companion.

I was supposed to do some extra French knots but I managed two, and I think I've finally got my head around them though for future patterns....hehe!

Here are the cards I made as well one for my mom and one for Lee's mom.

This one is some Tim Holtz paper with the butterflies on which I stuck down some alphabet masks...tim holtz again! I then sprayed the paper with Dylusions in yellow/orange and then removed the masks. I cut it out with a spellbinders dye and used walnut stain around the edge. I got a couple of chipboard shapes and coloured them possibly with distress stain I can't actually remember! I then used some distress stickles on them as well. I used a grass stencil at the bottom with some paint and then I also added a flower which I inked a little and a couple of ready made bees.

This one I had some new sparkle mediums and a stencil so I used three colours on black glossy card and it worked pretty well and I managed not to get them too intermingled as it just did each colour at the same time as I'm too impatient to wait for them to dry. I then cut it into a circle and stuck it on a card and added some picked raspberry distress ink and a greeting.

Others things I've made

I've not posted in a few weeks so here are some more things I've made...

This one is pretty much all craftwork cards stuff; plus some added picked raspberry distress ink

This one I used a stencil with some texture paste and then used distress ink over the top; then a couple of mats and gems, and I cut out the 40 on the cricut

 This is a ginger and treacle tray bake, from one of the Great British bake off books

This one I used a new stencil in the background using pastels and distress inks; added a couple of mats and pearls; I coloured the little wooden robot I think it was with alcohol inks and metallic glaze and a craftwork cards greeting

Finally I made this with my new Lavinia stamps......love these!! I made a background with Dylusions and then stamped the fairy houses etc and added some colour with distress inks and a craft nib, and added a touch of glitter and a greeting

Marriage and age

Gooooooooooooood Evening!

Here is my page for the latest Craft Barn challenge this time the words are marriage or age. Well I thought there must be a good rhyme about marriage but I searched for ages and couldn't find anything I liked, until eventually I found the poem The Chaos by Charivarius aka Gerard Nolst Trenite which is all about the nuances of the pronunciation in the English language - which is perfect because I'm always on about stuff like that and it contained both marriage and age!

To create my page I used a background of distress stains, then I printed off the poem and distress stained that as well and folded it a bit and stuck it down so that you can just see a portion of it. Then I used black soot distress ink through a stencil, then I used a fluorescent pink gel pen to write the words, title and also used that a little through the same stencil. Finally I covered most of the page with Paper Artsy metallic glaze.

Up

Helloooo! Well one challenge ends and another begins.....the new Craft Barn challenge has been announced....this time it's all about quotes and song lyrics featuring certain words.

This time the words were smile or up.

Well I thought for a while what to do......I don't really use quotes that often and there are so many songs I felt like I could be there for a year choosing something as nothing came to mind to inspire me. So instead I've decided to go down the route of taking quotes from poems and limericks - well at least that's what I've done this time I guess it will depend on what the words are each time, but I rather like nonsense verse so I may continue with that theme. I also decided to create pages in my art journal (this is just a random art book that I create pages of various things like my chemical elements pages so this won't be a completely separate project just forming part of the whole book instead). I have to say it was good to be able to work on a large flat surface rather than trying to hold open the little dictionary to work on.

Here is the finished piece.

Just in case you can't read it the quote is "A poor little monkey one morning; complained that the weather was hot; so he ran up a tree in a terrible rage; and tied his long tail in a knot" which is from Nursery Nonsense or Rhymes without Reason by D'Arcy W Thompson

Here's how I made it - I started off using Paper Artsy fresco paints - can't remember the actual colour names but a lime, yellow, bluey selection. On a separate piece of paper I wrote out the poem and cut it out one word at a time and mod podged it down on to the page, I then used some foam to apply some distress inks to the words to match the paint, then I used a craft nib to colour black soot distress ink round the edge of each word. I stamped on a couple of changito monkey stamps from Stampendous, I used a stitches stencil with some distress ink as well. Then I used some lids to stamp black gesso and blue paint, a little silver distress stain here and there and then some white gel pen to brighten it up a bit.

Card

Here's a card I made for my uncle who collects glass bottles, which is great because it's another excuse to use my poison bottle stamps from Craft Individuals.

I used my ink blending mat to create a background with distress inks, then I used some gloss mod podge through a stencil then once that had dried used some more ink over the top with the mod podge acting as a mask. I stamped the bottles on some separate paper and coloured those with distress ink as well and cut them out, added in a little shading and stamped a birthday greeting and stuck that on too.

Zigzag

Hello, it's alpha challenge time again.......and it's letter Z....oooh not many to choose from, I wanted to do zombie but I couldn't think how to so I opted for zigzag instead. Now I've had a bit of an ink blending mat weekend (more on that in my next post!) and so I knew I wanted to use that somehow. The page was already half yellow from yo yo on the previous page and coincidentally I also used some zigzag washi tape to outline the definition that I had also used on my yo yo page as well.

I picked out a stencil with zigzags on it and I picked out three distress inks picked raspberry, peacock feathers and evergreen bough and set to work creating zigzags all over the page using ink off the blending mat and some squares of cut n dry foam with the ink on them. Then I wrote on zigzag and highlighted it with a white gel pen and that was pretty much it, simple but effective.

Here is the link to the Craft Barn

Little canvas

I made a little present for Lee.....again I used the Spotz Botz set to stamp out a robot on to a Dylusions, perfect pearls and swirly paint background and then I cut out the image and used a fine liner to fill in any parts I hadn't quite cut properly.

On the canvas itself I used a stencil and some texture paste which got slightly blue when it mixed with some ink on my craft mat, I left that to dry and then I sprayed on some more Dylusions, and I painted over the 3D area Paper Artsy metallic glaze which gives a lovely shiny effect that you can't really see in the photo. I glued on some micro beads and added a touch more ink around the edge. Although it didn't really want to dry properly probably because I'd made the surface shiny from the glaze so I probably should have used Staz on rather than distress but I've left it as it was for now.

Finally I drew on a few lines for the ground and then glued on the robot to make the finished piece.

Some more cards

Here are a couple more cards that I made....I should remember to post them nearer to when I make then because otherwise I forget what I did!

The first one I used some texture paste through a stencil  and I moved the stencil round creating a square left in the middle. After it had dried I sprayed with Dylusions and wiped off some of the excess so that the stars were more visible. I stamped on the dragon which is a Queen Kat designs stamp and I painted it using a couple of colours of perfect pearls. I tore out the page using a ruler and added some ink around the edge. I mounted it on the card and added some candy and a Craftwork cards greeting.

The second card again I used Dylusions red and yellow and then I used walnut stain distress stain to make the splats and I tore that part out using a ruler and some distress stain around the edge. I stamped the Happy Birthday which is a Papermania stamp and coloured it with Promarkers. Then in a backwards fashion I decided to add in the background colour by using pastels red/orange colours blended. I then tore out that section and edged that with distress stain and mounted that on some Coredinations card and then put that on the other piece and then put it all on the card. Finally I used black soot distress stain on the edge of the card.