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

War-bonnet Wilderness

Today, I am sharing another card that I made using the new range of stamps from Bee Crafty. They were launched on Friday 20th May, if you missed Bev's shows they are still available on Hochanda's website, via the TV schedule, using the catch up feature. Please be quick as they're stored for 7 days.

I started off with a sheet of A4 velvet card. I didn't know exactly the size of my finished project, but I was hoping for approximately 7-8''. First I drew a simple hat in pencil and then fashioned it into the base of an Indian War Bonnet. When I had rubbed out all of the excess pencil lines, I went over the required shape with a waterproof black fine liner pen. Then I masked off with Pebeo Drawing Gum.

I worked out which part of the large wing I would need to complete the head dress and applied washi tape to mask off the unwanted part of the stamp, then inked up using Versamark, removed the tape, lined up the stamp with the hat base. I used black fine detailed embossing powder to emboss the feathers.

I then took the small straight feather from the same set to be the hanging side feathers of the head dress. Then took the medium curled feather and masked off the base with washi tape as I only wanted to use the tip. Using black versamark I positioned them about 5-10 mm away from the wing. I added black dots between the head dress and the feathers and joined them together with a very fine line using a black fine liner. I wanted the feeling of movement so they appeared free to move in the breeze. I then applied drawing gum to the whole image.

I cut my project down to size and drew two deckled lines around the edge at 5 and 10 mm with my black fine liner.

I stamped the sentiment I had chosen from the collection. Then added the landscape using Antique Linen,Tea Dye and Frayed Burlap. I added some Brushed Corduroy in the mountain range. I then placed my mask for the Sun/Moon, For the sky I used mainly Shaded Lilac, then from the outside blended in some stormy Sky and finally a little Faded Jeans just around the edges blending into the rest.

To create the Tippee's, I cut a triangle from copier paper and ripped a slim strip also to lay across the base. I blended Frayed Burlap inside the triangle. I drew the base, posts and door flap with my black fine liner. I removed the Drawing Gum and coloured the head dress with a selection of Alcohol markers.I then coloured the inside deckled frame with my black marker.

Finally I mounted the card onto a black card base leaving approximately 5 mm around the card.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today. I hope you like the card I have made using these beautiful stamps from Bee Crafty and enjoyed my step by step of how it came alive. Thank you for all of your lovely comments and I hope you will visit again soon. Tomorrow I will be sharing another card that I made using Leonie Pujol's new stamp collection and I hope you will stop by for that. Take care xx