Category: Art and crafting styles

Another project where I transformed a piece of paper and then used it to make some ATC’S.  I am entering this into the Wicked Wednesday challenge… embellish it. 

The paper itself was a grey and white marble effect. I started by stamping some leaves, flowers and dictionary print. Then I added distress stains in three colours.  I must admit I was disappointed with how it looked. It didn’t blend very well on the paper surface. 

So I did something rather drastic… black gesso and a stencil… 

Ooooh now I was happy.  I set it aside to dry for a bit. Then decided to use another another stencil and some white acrylic. 

Right time to cut it up into pieces for ATC’S.  I cut it into 2.25″ x 3.25″ pieces so it can be mounted on some backing card.

I decided that the circle motifs needed more definition and used a white pen to doodle round. I then had to work out what I wanted to use as the feature and decided to use some bird chipboard pieces I got a while ago from the Range. I painted them with a couple of coats of white paint first to give them a base. 

Then I chose a couple of ink colours to add colour to each of the chipboard embellishments.   They are subtly coloured and not as vibrant as I expected but I am really happy with them. The photo of them all together shows them when they were wet and a bit more vibrant.  I chose picked raspberries and spiced marmalade and then some orange cardstock to back them. I thought these colours added a nice contrast. 

And next to choose titles and stick them down. I mixed them up and some had one word titles made from letter stickers, and the others a phrase made up of word stickers. For both I framed the titles with the same orange cardstock to make them pop! 

I must admit I love how these all turned out. 

And the last one… 

So I hope that these are liked by others… if not… well I get to keep them for myself! 

Happy crafting! 

Catherine 

Hi

I have more distress oxide fun to share today. This is a journal page I made in response to the theme of spring and Holland. It is the closest I get to a tulip! 

The page is in my Dylusions journal and I had a fair amount of product on the page already wiped off from other projects. 

It has some texture paste and some paints and inks I think. I wanted to use my new distress oxides though and so decided to put them on straight onto the page. 

This created some blocks of colour… to which I needed to add water to move them and oxidise them.   

Once I had done the initial water spray I dried the page and then started adding more ink using the smooshing packaging application that Missy Widden uses in her YouTube videos. This softened and blended the colours and the beautiful oxide inks give such a pretty and chalk type look when they have been wet and dried.

Now time for the focal image. I used the flower stamps from Paperartsy and after stamping in archival I watercoloured using the distress oxide ink. 

I finished the page off with a sticker quote and some rub ons and doodling. I also flicked some black ink onto the page and added little white lines using gesso. 

Love how gentle this page ended up.  

Happy crafting! 

Catherine 

Hello… it’s March the first… so happy St. David’s Day and even more importantly … Happy birthday to my Auntie M! X

Today I have my contribution towards the Craftyhazelnuts patterned paper challenge blog.

I found this fab paper (Print poetry from stampin up) in the stash and realised that the writing stamp from Paperartsy would work well with it! 

I decided to emboss the image and sentiment to add some texture to the card. I also made the card blank out of the soft suede cardstock that goes so well with the paper.

Now off to see what my team mates on the design team for the blog have been making… 

Happy crafting! 

Catherine 

I used a scrap of textured cardstock that I had got some pattern and colour on already. Not entirely sure how I did this to be honest… it might have been gelatos? 

Anyway… I added the stamping using White acrylic.  Then added the shading using Inktense pencils and blended with water. I also added the little scrap of fabric and the stamped bird. 

Finished off with doodles and a stamped quote. 

Happy crafting! 

Catherine 

Well this post is a bit bittersweet for me as it was meant to be accompanied with a YouTube video. The only problem is that during the edit I managed to delete some of the video which meant it no longer made sense. So now no video! 

I loved playing with these inks for the first time and came up with some interesting backgrounds. This first one is the usual wrinkle free distress background but using distress oxide.

I then used a Lynne Perrella stamps and water coloured it using the same inks and made this card. 

Next up is a splash background…. I saw this on a Jennifer Maguire YouTube video. This provided a fun confetti background … perfect for this Zinski stamped bird and sentiment. Once stamped the bird was coloured using the oxide ink too.

This next one was using the oxide inks and blending tools… I love this so much as so creamy and smooth a finish. I then also stamped with the oxide ink and again when adding a small spritz of water they also oxidised. 

Whilst playing with these inks also did some comparisons with distress inks and stains… 

From that I ended up with a really interesting panel which I finished with the bird from the Hot Picks Paperartsy stamps.

And finally I also did a distress ink version of the wrinkle free distress background. 

This I finished off with these Clarity stamp garden stamps… love it! 

So yes I love what I made just frustrated that the video didn’t work… of course I couldn’t let it be… and so late on Saturday I filmed another video… 
And from that made a card and a background for another project I can’t share yet! 

 here is the link to the video!

Happy crafting!

Catherine 

My lovely friend Helen has got me scrapping again… and courtesy of her class and Missy Widden YouTube videos it is a lovely mix of traditional and mixed media. 

So this is a page in finished from Helen’s class a few weeks ago. 

Helen had designed this using the heart cut file she had got and then using some Stampin up stamps and papers. I’ve finished mine off with thread and lots of word stickers from the stash box and some dots of liquid pearls. 

The techniques we employed were lots of smooshing of inks using packaging  (as per Missy style!) and spritzing inks. This was such great fun! 

I chose to place my picture (my princess when she was a tiny little cutie!) towards the bottom right of the page whereas Helen chose the top right… she also did lots of inking on hers. I had meant to do that too but stuck it down before I had a chance…  me and my eager sticking down! 

Here is a pic of Helen’s original…. isn’t it lovely?

I have two more pages to finish that we started in the class… looking forward to getting them done and really enjoying getting my scrapping mojo back! Thanks Helen… fun times make something big and not just an ATC! 

Happy crafting! 

Catherine 

Hello…. another couple of ATC’S to add to the tally… 

Again scratch paper cut up and used as the base. Over this I added texture paste through a Finnabair stencil. When dry it was time to add more colour.  I used Distress crayons in blue and green to cover the whole card, then used another stencil to remove some colour using a baby wipe. 

I then used both Inktense and pens to add doodling around the shapes and a little bit of white paint on a sponge to add some different tones. I decided against adding an image to these and instead stamped a Stampotique sentiment onto paper to cut out and added to the cards. 

The same sentiment for each but both done differently.

Really love the colours in these… and the fact that the layers underneath are still visible in places to give the cards some depth. 

So that’s 99 made… wonder if I can get another 1 in before the end of the month? 

Happy crafting !

Catherine 

A change of pace tonight and instead of atcs I have some cards to share. I am not the biggest fan of making cards for males… they don’t seem to appreciate pretty things like flowers and ribbons and bling! Grrrrrr… so I have instead resorted to robots and spaceships! 

A simple robot stamping experiment… and finished with a little doodling. 

And this is a repeat of the card I made back in early Feb for my cousins sons’ birthday. 

Pretty happy with these even if they are missing some bling !!! 

Happy crafting!

Catherine 

I found a little bag I made with my friend Helen some time ago at the back of my craft shelf and decided to take it apart and use part of it for an ATC… 

I can’t remember the stamp set name or the dsp the strip of lemons comes from but the technique we used was black embossing and then colouring the words in. 

I added it to a base made from packaging onto which I stamped the Dictionary stamp. 

Love it. 

Gave this away as a RAK a week or so ago. 

And as for my challenge…. so close to 100 and well ahead of schedule too so may be able to take an ATC holiday at some point. 

Happy crafting! 

Hi there

I’ve been participating in a few random atc swaps over the past few weeks … all part of keeping my inspiration going for this 365 challenge.  Now is the time to share some of these… 

This is the first one… the theme was monsters! 

I used the Make a monster Stampin Up stamps and scratch paper and distress stain, clear glossy texture paste and a whole host of different random mediums to create this cool atc. Fun! 

I also made this second one for the same event…

For this one I used the cute digital stamp from All dressed up and coloured them with distress inks. Then tore it out and layered onto a prepared atc which had tissue paper and black gesso on it. I then edged it with embossing powder to give it a metallic finish. I love how cool this looks.  

The next challenge I joined in was a purple themed one… I did share a couple of ATC’S I made for this a few weeks ago but I also made this one… 

This was a piece of cardstock I painted with the deco arts fluid acrylic paint and some white Dylusions paint.  I added some tissue paper and some scraps of white paper to the base and then stamped and embossed around the edges.

I added the finnabair butterfly (my princess actually coloured this is for me) and then the sentiment. I added some Inktense to edges and to define the features.  

And another one for the purple on purple swap…  I used scratch paper and Inktense pencils and the fab art alchemy paints to create this and then used a piece of book print as the base. 

 

Finally I have two cards made for the #52cafecards challenge…. eclipse and folk art. 

This was so satisfying and easy to make. Black gesso on the base with white gel pen and then torn black cardstock with silver paint wiped on the rip. Then a sticker circle and the words.  Done! 

And the folk art below was hand drawn using pictures on the Internet as inspiration and the painted with the art alchemy paints then doodled over the top.  Fun and shiny! 

OK so I think that’s the random ones caught up for now! 

Happy crafting!

Catherine