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A Spring Card

January 13, 2012 By 7 Comments

I am longing for Spring.  I’m literally counting how many minutes earlier sunset is each day and savouring the extra little bit of light.  We haven’t had the really wintry weather we had last year, but what is it this year with gales?  I don’t remember it being very windy last year, but we seem to be living in a permanent storm force ten at the moment.  The garden shed has blown off its base and is perched at a very drunken angle in the corner of the garden.  It was in a pretty derelict state when we moved here, so earlier this week I got permission from the landlord to let Adrian loose on it with a crowbar and lump hammer.  I am hoping there may be some planks I can salvage for artwork.

So with thoughts of mild, warm, sunny Spring days ahead, I made this little card with the Breath of Spring stamp set.  It’s stamped in black Versafine on watercolour paper and coloured with Inktense pencils.  I’ve layered it onto some card coloured with Distress stains (Crushed Olive and Pine Needles I think).  It’s mounted onto a lilac pearl card and stuck onto a deep purple scalloped card.

The layered panel stands a little taller than the card itself so it’s almost like a mock stepper card.  I put decorative paper on the back so that if you look at the card from the back, the sticky up bit isn’t just plain.  Well that’s what I’d like you to think, but I actually made the classic mistake of putting my double sided tape all over the back and just as I was about to stick it on, realised there would be exposed adhesive on that back piece so if I ever stuck it in an envelope, it might never come out!

According to the weather forecast, it looks like there’s a lot more Winter to come before I’ll get my warm Spring sunshine.  Ah well, I’ll go hibernate a bit longer in my craft room with those new stamps …

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Sunburst Video

July 28, 2011 By 13 Comments

We have just launched our latest stamp set – Home Sweet Home – a set of sweet cottage stamps in a vintage Clarice Cliff kind of style.

I was so inspired by all the sunbursts that the girls came up with that I’ve recorded a video of the card above, showing how to create a sunburst sky with masking.  It’s a ‘reductive’ masking technique, which basically means that you mask off part of the design, then after colouring, you cut the mask to reveal a bit more.  The mask is effectively destroyed in the process of using it (though if you are careful, you can keep the bits you cut off and re-use them) which is why I’ve called it a ‘reductive’ process as that term is used in lino printing.

There’s actually two videos – the first shows the masking technique and the second shows me colouring the bottom half at warp speed (it took about 20 minutes in real life).

If you can’t see the embedded video below, please visit my YouTube channel and you will find them there.  I’m known as glendawww on YouTube (yes, that’s three Ws).

There is an introductory price on this stamp set until the end of August – just £12.50 instead of £14.99 and it is actually the current Offer of the Month for Baroque Guild members at £9.99 – just one of the many benefits of being a Guild member!

So, enjoy the videos and watch out for more samples and a giveaway on the Design Team Blog.

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Fluttering by

June 15, 2011 By 12 Comments

I may be quiet, but I am being very creative at the moment and getting my head into Christmas while dealing with sunburn (yes, I’m glowing like Sellafield on a dark night) is a bit weird.  But it’s gotta be done, Christmas stamps will be released to trade next month!

Anyhow, this card has been a work in progress for a long time.  I created the stamped panel for a workshop last year using one of my all time favourite stamp sets, Breath of Spring which really is a beautiful set.  The background is the leafy flourish from the set, stamped with Adirondack dye inks and misted with lots of water.  The image is stamped with Versafine and coloured with Inktense pencils (not water blended, just dry). I then covered the butterfly with glossy accents and stamped the sentiment with Versafine.  The paper is from the Essence of Nature CD.

It has been sat in my ‘bits box’ for ages and finally got made into a card.  The twiddly bit at the bottom is from one of the Nestability pendant die borders and the pearls on it have been coloured to match the paper with Copic markers.  Click on the image for a closer view.

Right, back to those Christmas designs …

 

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Butterfly Collage

August 3, 2010 By 17 Comments

I found this coloured butterfly image when I was tidying up and knew that it would go beautifully with one of the Essence of Nature papers.  This paper has been bleached out by the camera’s flash a bit, but you can still see the soft greens and golden yellows that tie in so well with the daisy butterfly image.  The stamped image has been coloured with Derwent Inktense pencils on watercolour paper and the decoupaged butterfly has a touch of stickles on it.

I got some more pics of Smokey yesterday, so hope to get those up for you soon.  I have photographic proof that rabbits eat leylandii hedges!

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Cute stamps and peel offs

July 7, 2009 By 53 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to someone.  This is maybe not what you would expect from an Elusive Images stamp, but this is the first of a brand new range of stamps, by a new and very talented designer called Polly Greathead.

Seaside Ted

His name must remain a mystery for a little longer as we want you to guess what it is.  He does have a name already, and he has several friends who will be joining him over the next few months.  If you think you know what he might be called, then please leave a comment below and anyone who guesses right will be put in the pot to win a set of the stamps.

I think he has a sweet little face and he stamps up just lovely.  He is a joy to colour in with my copic markers too – see, here he is in bright colours.

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I used masking on this card, something I will be going into in detail in this month’s Guild newsletter.  This was stamped on glossy card and the sea was created with stripes of different shades of blue.  I love the way the copics layer – you can really see it in the effect of the waves lapping over the sand.  I’ve highlighted the surf with a white inkssentials pen from Ranger.

This one was done with Derwent Inktense pencils and gives a much softer effect, perfect for a baby announcement or congratulations card.

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A little bit of shading under the feet grounds him so he’s not floating in mid air.  The “boy” word is a Magenta peel off, believe it or not.

See, I can do cute cards with peel offs too!

Anyway, we’d love to know what you think of him, and don’t forget if you want to win a set, take a guess at his name by leaving a comment below.  Good luck!

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(PS – thanks to all of you who were asking after Derrick at the open days – please send a little positive thinking his way, he’s not very well at the moment and may end up back in hospital if his kidney function doesn’t improve soon.  More on the open days to come including pictures of some of the things I was demonstrating. )

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Bong Tree

January 4, 2009 By 34 Comments

On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo …

I painted this postcard today:

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I’m not entirely sure, but I think that it’s a Bong tree – they are mentioned in the second verse of The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo by Edward Lear. Why on earth did I paint a bong tree surrounded by lollipop flowers?  Because I felt like it!  It is done using Derwent Inktense pencils, something I’ve had for a while, but not really explored to their full extent.  So I set out to do a little doodle and really put these pencils through their paces, which I did, and I learned some useful lessons about how they differ from normal watercolour pencils along the way.

You see just before Christmas I spent a couple of hours with a very nice lady from Derwent and I’ve been sitting on the news over the holidays -  Graphicus is about to become an official stockist of the Derwent pencil range – yay!!  We are expecting our first delivery in this week and I will be featuring several types of pencil on my next TV show on Create and Craft with tutorials on how to get the most out of them.

I have always had a real addiction to pencils and have tried many over the years, and I’ve always been fond of Derwent because I am a Cumbrian lass born and bred and spent my last two years at school in Keswick where the Derwent pencil factory was at the time.  In fact several people at the school used to work there at the weekend, including one boy with white blond hair who used to come into school on a Monday morning with his hair coloured by whatever pigment they had been using in the factory that weekend!

There’s another reason I painted this too – a desire to just play.  I’m not doing New Years resolutions, but I am making some personal committments to myself to step outside of work-related creativity and do more creative play for myself.   Don’t worry, there’ll still be lots of stamp-related creativity going on here – there’s got to be because we have LOADS of new stamps coming out this year, starting with a whole bunch of gorgeous stuff for our annual trade show in mid February.  Start saving your pennies now because I honestly don’t know how you’re going to choose!

And talking of stamps, I’m back off to my craft room where a rose collage is taking shape …

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PS – if the new look blog is slow to load, it’s probably because the old page was cached in your browser, making it load quicker. The same thing should happen with this one too, but it would help to know which bits take the longest to load – background, header, images in the posts??

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