I am an on-the-side and increasingly up front papercrafter who loves nothing more than getting inky and creating pretty things with paper and stamps!
I am also a wife to lovely hubby and mummy to a wonderful 14yr old princess.
Last Sunday we chose, as a family, to do a watercolour class with Matthew Palmer online. I had been seeing the excellent paintings my friend Darcy has been doing with these classes so was eager to see what I could do, and whether it would interest my princess.
Well it was hard work, but fun.
Here is the end result…
And here are some process pics…
And here are the three finished pieces.
We all really enjoyed the class, so much so that we booked for the next one this weekend. So will of course share what we make after that class.
The great thing is that we can rematch the video as much as we like to have another go at the picture… might do this one again to work on some of the areas I was less happy with… but I must admit I am super happy with the end result!
Ooops I am late with my blog post today for my design team contribution for Craftyhazelnuts Christmas challenge blog. I managed to make the card yesterday but only just getting round to blogging it today. It’s amazing how busy you can be when on lockdown! I guess as I’m still working a full time job the only difference in my day is a lack of commute to and from work so the week is as busy as it ever was, just with more anxiety and less driving!
Anyway that’s enough about that… onto crafting!
This week’s Christmas card theme was to include a house or building so I went for the gnome house/ Santa’s workshop!
I kept it simple with watercolour pencil colouring… And a dark red card blank.
I also added a little piece of patterned paper under the main image to give some contrast.
So now it is back to the house cleaning tasks I’ve decided to achieve today! Hope you enjoyed this little crafty interlude into your day!
42 years of marriage is what my parents celebrated today… So I made this card. Unfortunately not managed to get the card to them yet… But as they know getting cards to people on time is not my strength… lockdown or no lockdown!
I kept it relatively simple. A piece of Art by Marlene paper that I stamped the Clarity stamps wired heart all over, and then edged.
Then I stamped and embossed with pearl powder the heart onto white and cut it out.
I added a strip of lime ribbon and stamped the sentiment onto the card blank. I then grabbed some sequins and added those as the finishing touch!
Simple but a lovely modern anniversary card for my mum and dad.
I have another set of coins made from scraps. This time for my UK Stampers Forum swap.
I used gelli prints left from the Russian art dolls project. I covered the background entirely with one print and then stamped the letter and number stamp (from Craft stamper magazine) onto the whole base to make them all similar.
I then added the canvas heart sticker and took some other scraps and embossed the flower stamp (another Craft Stamper stamp) and fussy cut them out.
I added the paint dried up bit off the top of the bottles and a gem to the centre of the flowers.
I then used a Darcy stamp for the sentiment embossed on black card.
Yesterday I shared the “scraps” from this project… Today I share the actual project.
My friend Chris who runs the Mini Marvels group suggested something a bit different for a swap… we were to make Russian art dolls which was inspired by some thing she saw on Instagram.
I knew I wanted to join in immediately! I started by creating a batch of gelli prints at random … no rhyme nor reason to the colours or patterns I used. Just played!
Some of the papers I chose were plain paper, some were book print or patterned.
I then created a template for the base and cut them from mountboard.
My mountboard cutting skills are not good so each one ended up as an individual but hey ho! They were roughly the same size and shape so they would do! I decided to paint them with black gesso front and black.
Next I decided to add stamping and mark making to the gelli prints before I cut into them. A relaxing 30 mins went by in no time just doodling and adding random additional patterns with posca pens in pink, blue, white and black.
Next I decided to make one doll as a trial… and I needed to decide on a face. I tried a few different ones but settled on this one from my Badass artchick stamps. Love the funky look!
So first one made it was time to cover the other dolls in prints and start layering up.
I also added more stamping and doodling. The stamp set the face was taken from also included a stamp with the words
Empowered women
Empower women
I decided this would be added to each of the dolls as well as used on the back of each doll in some way. Wondering if you can spot it on all the dolls?
I then gave each doll a coat of glossy mod podge to seal and protect the papers and the doodles and added the pearl gem to the hair flower to finish off!
Once they were dry I added black gesso to the edge and covered any messes I created on the back with more gesso before I added stamping and details to the backs of the dolls.
Done!
The dolls have now been split into three pairs. One pair for me to keep, and two pairs have gone to their new homes.
Loved this challenge. Well done Chris on suggesting it and of course credit to @catherinescraftcorner on Instagram for the inspiration.
Today I’ve got the coins I made for the Facebook swap group I run. Each month we do a swap with a theme. This month the theme I chose was “use your scraps”.
I chose this as I had lots of mini scraps on my desk of gelli prints and wanted to use them.
So I collaged the scraps onto coin bases and then mod podged them to give them a glossy finish.
I then embossed the Tim Holtz butterflies onto other scraps and fussy cut them out.
I then added gems and the sentiment which I embossed onto black card. I edged the coins with black gesso and called them done!
Love them!
And the project that I made to create the scraps … well I will be sharing that in another blog! Consider this a sneak peek!
Here are the daylight pics to show the colours better!
This week Hazel challenged us to use a sentiment… easy as I rarely don’t use a sentiment. So I decided to use a big sentiment stamp as the focus of my design.
I started however by lightly brushing over a stencil from clarity to get the snowflakes on the background. Then I stamped the sentiment in Black soot distress oxide.
Next I added the small snowflake stamps to frame the sentiment and added sequins for some texture and shine.
I’m back with another of the cards I made for my parents stash of “male” themed birthday cards.
Just like the one I shared last week this has the distress oxide on glossy photo paper background. Such an easy way to create something dramatic. This time I added to it with the partial stamping of a map to add more interest.
This time, in keeping with the transport theme of the last one, this one I used a Creative Stamping magazine stamp of a ship and mounted the panel onto a pale bronze cardstock.
Really pleased with how this came out.
I will be back next week with another one of these “male” themed cards.
Inkyfingeredcat 