Life's Work

Morning, Well I have recovered from filming yesterday. If you have seen the demonstration for the silk ribbon roses, then I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't please take a look they are a really handy thing to have up your sleeve for embellishing cards or crafty project.

Today's card is made from the beautiful feather collection of stamps from Bee Crafty, drawn by Sam. A fantastic job, I am sure you will all agree. I started of by dying/ageing some papers using cold strong tea. Hung to dry overnight.

Next I stamped the old invoice stamp onto the paper. I did the original stamp in brown ink, but felt that the Black Archival would suit this project better.

Next I masked off the end of the large straight feather as I wanted the nib to be at the end to make the pen. I stamped this with Versamark and embossed using black fine detail powder and heated using a heat gun. I had previously done the same with the nib only with gold fine detail powder. I cut this out and set aside.

Separately I stamped the ink bottle with black Archival and now had all the elements I wanted for the card, including 3 old invoices in black.

For the background, I took a sheet of tissue paper and built up a pattern using a mixture of stamps across the collection, along with the words Life & Memory, both from sentiments found in the Wordage section of Bee Crafty. Obviously you can change the words depending on the theme of your project. There are some really amazing sentiments on the website.I used a selection of inks to stamp the tissue: Black Archival,Walnut Stain, Brushed Corduroy and Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink. I wanted the colours to come from the background and therefore these colours are fairly muted.

To provide the background colour, I took a sheet of A4 watercolour card and saturated it under the tap. The took Violet, Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue Brushos and added them here and there with the end of a mini screwdriver. I let the colours spread naturally before taking a straw and blowing to get some trails.

I wanted an 8'' square for my finished project, which gave me ample left over to stamp my sentiment.

I cut the sentiment to size, cut a mat for it approximately 5 mm larger and blended Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink around the edges.

I covered the watercolour card with PVA let down 50/50 with water. Scrunched my tissue paper, unravelled it and stuck it down, keeping creases and folds to add texture to the card. Leave this aside until completely dry before trimming the excess or you wont get a nice sharp edge.

Having played around with the composition, I decided something else was needed so I stamped the same straight feather onto shrink plastic, coloured with a red pencil and heated until completely shrunk. I also coloured my Quill pen with a selection of alcohol markers.

I layered my sentiment with cosmic shimmer, I arranged the old invoices and also secured them with cosmic shimmer glue. I shaped the ink bottle and used 3D glue get to secure, I then stuck the shrunk feather so it was sitting in the ink bottle.Finally I added the sentiment and large quill feather pen with 3D glue gel.

I really hope you have enjoyed my post today and hope that you will stop by again. Don't forget tomorrow night is the Launch of Leonie's new One Day Special on Hochanda at 8pm.I will be sharing some of my samples at the same time, but watch the show first, you dont want to miss out. Take care xx

Watercolour Words

Hello and thank you for stopping by to take a look at the projects I have been creating using Leonie Pujol's New Collection of Stamps. I hope you have been enjoying the step by steps I have been sharing.

On a piece of 8 1/4'' square of watercolour card, I stamped the sentiment from Leonie, in the top left hand corner, about 1 cm from the edge of the card. Directly opposite, I stamped the Kaleidoscope of flying butterfly scribbles. I then chose 3 words from across the collection that fitted in with the theme.

Very lightly with a pencil and ruler I drew a double box around the sentiment and all of the words. Also I drew a box at about 5 mm and 1 cm in from the edge of the card to create a double frame. I then went around all of these with a Black fine liner creating a deckled edge.

Before masking off with Pebeo drawing gum, I joined the boxes I had created to a dot that I had made in the centre of the card. The gum was put all around the edge of the card, all the boxes and drawn lines.

When dry, I wet the card with water and a brush around the centre and added yellow ink. I let it spread out, also blew it around the card and left to dry. 

I repeated with green Brushos and again left to dry. Finally I sprayed the remaining white card with water and sprinkled Crimson, Blue and Violet Brushos using a dry brush.

I coloured the cubes and lines in 2 shades of grey. The very outer edge of the card I coloured with a black alcohol marker and the same for the frames around the words. I set this aside before mounting to allow it to dry thoroughly and for the card to flatten.

Later, I decided I didn't like it and tore it in half, I think I was a tad stressed at the time. I made an alternative card, which I will share another day. Anyway as the day went on I decided that I really liked this one, so I tried to fix it. Not too badly either, I think so I mounted it on white card which I had coloured using Mediterranean Blue Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Polish. 

Hopefully you have enjoyed this share along with the step by step. Thank you so much for visiting and for your support. It means a lot to me and without you I wouldn't have continued with my blog. Take care and hope to see you soon.

Funky Door Hanger Using Leonie's Collection

Morning, I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my other designs over the last few days. Today I am sharing the Door Handle sample I made for the launch of Leonie Pujol's new collection.

Once again I forgot to take step by step photos, so my only option was to make it again to show you. I have to admit that while making this i had a disaster with the masks, my spray was faulty and by the time I realised that water was pouring out it was too late. So I have altered the final step and used the stencil to add the two words rather than the original design. I have included both photos at the end. I think I like both ways.

I painted the MDF hanger with 2 coats of white gesso. Once dry I stamped my sentiment in place, I used a sentiment stamp from Bee Crafty.

Next, I positioned my masks, using Crafters Companion Stick n Spray (re-positionable adhesive spray). Then I added my stamps in the areas I wanted. I stamped around the small art stencil with solid stamps as I wanted the inside to just be the ink.

Then I masked of the mid section with copier paper and washi tape. I wanted this area to remain white to highlight the sentiment.

I then used Pebeo Drawing Gum to mask all of the open stamps before sprinkling Brushos across the surface. I used Violet,Scarlet,Cobalt Blue and Emerald Green. Before I spritzed this with water to activate the colours I added yellow Ink spray in a couple of places.

I allowed this to dry, but as I mentioned before, the water completely ruined the masked words and therefore I decided to stencil the same words using Indigo Blu Sleeping Beauty and Vodka Martini.

On the original I used Leonie's bubble stamp inside the words and coloured with alcohol markers, For this I used the same stamp but coloured using a white Sharpie marker.

Lastly with both Door Hangings, I removed the drawing Gum and used alcohol markers to colour them. Here are both finished projects.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope that you have enjoyed this step by step. Please stop by again soon. Take care xx