I haven’t got as far as cards, but making a few tags has got me thinking. Here I have used Dusky Damask with my latest favourite inkpad combination – Spanish Moss and Crimson Red – both Versafine. I’ve also used the background stamp from Pears and Baubles then added words from Warm Christmas Greetings. The ribbon is the lovely two-tone ribbon that we stock and the holly leaf is a Crealies die.
It’s a start …
I managed to get a very quick bit of playtime with the new Spring Distress inkpads. I used all three colours and I do like the palette. I started by inking the top with squeezed lemonade and the bottom with shaded lilac, then I stamped a couple of different lace stamps top and bottom with peacock feathers and the bottom two corners with the corner stamps from Lace Fragments. I misted the top with quite a bit of water and let the colour bleed and run down the tag. I misted the bottom a bit too, but not as much. After drying with a heat tool, I flicked a little clean water over and blotted it off.
I then stamped the phrase from Artistic Affirmations about three or four times over the background using squeezed lemonade and added a little more shaded lilac at the bottom. The lilac stamped corners were a bit faded out by this point, so I added another lace border in shaded lilac. I then stamped the words and border swirls with Onyx Black Versafine and added a piece of decorated Stampbord.
I can see the lilac and lemonade combination would work really well with our Elegant Iris stamp set – definitely Spring like. I just wish the weather was!
PS – I’ve been tweaking a few bits and pieces around the blog – menus at the top, side bar content and a little slide show thingy at the top of the main page. You’ll now find a list of links in the side bar, and in the menu bar right at the very top, there are now links to Cards, Mixed Media and Video which show you blog posts from those categories – like little galleries. It’s a constant work in progress, but I feel like it’s a bit more organised now – hope you like it!
The Paris tag I made last week used a gessoed magazine page with text on it, which always makes great collage backgrounds. The magazine I took it from was an old issue of Country Living and there’s more pages of images in there than there is text, so when I was demonstrating it in the backgrounds class, I just used a page with some nice garden photos.
In my new found tidy mode, I nearly threw it away after the class, but then I had an idea for it and these two tags came about.
I glued the gessoed piece to the tags, covering them completely and trimmed the edges. I then stamped over them with Wild Meadow stamps, using any green inkpads I could lay my hands on. There’s Brilliance, Versafine, StazOn and Adirondack in there. I let the inks dry then stamped the tall tree from the Arboretum set (Glade) and embossed with gold embossing powder.
Some of the other stamping wasn’t dry so picked up the embossing too, but I like the effect. I then stamped the dotty stamps from the Glade set in several shades of red and orange Adirondack pigment ink and embossed it with my sparkly transparent powder that I’ve had so long I don’t know what it is any more. I think it’s Rainbow Sparkle by Stampendous – it’s basically a clear powder with a holographic type glitter in it.
I rubbed the edges with StazOn Olive and popped a copper eyelet into the hole. I found the perfect shade of green ribbon to finish them off.
The light had gone by the time I took these photos, so these were all taken with flash which does distort the colours and bounces off anything shiny. What you can’t see at all is the amazing sparkle on the tree tops coming from the holographic glitter. So I tried an old trick I learned when I did a photography course years ago (I was young and single and thought fumbling around in a dark room would be a good way to meet interesting men …). I took a tissue and separated it to one ply then draped that over the flash to diffuse the light.
Yep, that worked – you can see the pretty colours much better.
I said I would show you a tag and this one features a pot of gold from the Underwater Kingdom plate.
The background is Distress inks (Mustard Seed and Crushed Olive mainly with a touch of Tumbled Glass). I stamped the mermaid silhouette with Scattered Straw I think, then I used some of the seaweed fronds sideways to look like waves.
I stamped the pot with Memento Tuxedo Black, then stamped the starfish next to it. I stamped the starfish onto Eclipse masking paper and stamped the seaweed over the top with Crushed Olive. The images are all coloured with Copics, then the treasure was enhanced with Gold Stickles and Beadazzles (Macarena is the colourway I used – golds, copper and turquoise, perfect for sunken treasure).
The sentiment is from last year’s Seashell Collage stamp set and if you haven’t seen those ones, then you need to take a look at the Marine & Nautical stamp department on the website to see all of them.
I finished the tag off with another gold punched seahorse and a little pearl. I am really pleased with how this turned out. Here’s a close up of the pot of gold.
And reading the comments I realised that many of you didn’t realise that these stamps were released at the Open Days on Friday – they’ve been on the website since then, though the images just went up yesterday. Here they are – if you click on the image it will take you to their detail page on the website. They are all A5 in size, so to answer one question – yes, that mermaid is huge and you will need our large 7″ x 4.5″ acrylic block for it.
Mermaid Queen
Underwater Kingdom
Seadragon
I’m up to my eyes in preparation for a wedding fayre tomorrow night, so gotta go put on a different thinking cap now!
Yay! I got time to craft last night and apart from stamping a sentiment upside down on a really nice tag, I am quite pleased with my output. Inspired by Lesley’s class last week, I made these scrunchy flowers with a nestabilities die, ecoline watercolours and three different embossing powders.
Then I looked around for something to put one on and found a tag I started a while ago with Wendy Vecchi stamps – coloured with Ranger’s Clover pigment ink. I stamped an Elusive Images sentiment on from one of the bird sets.
There’s a bit of shadow on all my images today – I forgot to change the settings on the camera when I took these photos this morning.
Then I felt quite inspired to dig out the Wendy Vecchi stamps and they’re in the same place as my Tim Holtz stamps so some of those came out to play as well.
The result was another couple of tags.
And yes, another scrunchy flower – I’m just addicted to making these. This one is made with a sheet of paper from Decadent Brocade, crumpled and sanded, then inked with Rusty Hinge distress ink. The finished result is almost like worn leather.
This tag is my favourite.
It’s a little fuzzy (note to self, don’t leave Aperture priority set on the camera), so it might not be obvious that the patterned bit under the words at the bottom is a gorgeous printed paisley ribbon that I found in Target or Walmart last time I was in the states. The sentiment is Crafty Individuals and the butterfly sticker is by K&Co – I’ve had them kicking around for a while and just spotted them in a box.
It was so nice to just have some pottering, non pressured play time. I left things in pieces before I went to bed and actually got up early and stuck things down and finished these off this morning. I also made another card, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. I also still have my Regal album to share once I’ve finished editing the photos for that.
While I was finishing off this morning, the garden filled up with rabbits. With no cats to scare them off, they’re getting pretty cheeky and this morning we watched a big bully chasing all the tiny baby bunnies around and around the trees. We both got a bit choked up at the one little black baby – I’m still trying to get a photo of him, but he’s managed to elude the camera so far. One of my nicknames for Sesame was Rabbit because of his mottled, brindle colouring.
As you can see, even early this morning, the sunshine was glorious. We all got rather overheated upstairs at work today – our unit has a metal roof with skylights in and the upstairs does get very hot in sunny weather. Adrian and I had a meeting in town today so on the way back we got ice lollies for everyone – I was very virtuous and had a frozen raspberry smoothie. Just as well as we finished our day with fish and chips on the way back from the hospital!
Medically there’s not much change in Derrick, but he was very fed up and down tonight. He is determined though to fight through this and get home – the will, the drive and the fight is there – you can see it in him. He is grateful for all the well wishes coming his way from you guys, though (like many of his generation) he doesn’t really understand the community spirit that can build up on a blog or how people he has never met can be interested in his welfare. But he appreciates the kindness of the comments that people leave and the way people are always asking after him.
We appreciate it too and know that this is likely to be one of the most difficult times in our life, but we can’t put our lives on hold. We have to make a conscious effort to seize moments, pockets of happiness where we can.
As Max Ehrmann said, “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
So I shall leave you with a couple of pictures showing the view we enjoyed while having our fish and chip supper tonight.
It is a beautiful world, you can’t ever forget that.
There are some beautiful hand crafted Christmas cards starting to arrive at the office. We appreciate each and every one of them and I would like to make this my public thank you to all of you who send cards to us – we do appreciate it, but we simply don’t have enough time to get in touch with each person individually who sends us a card. Sometimes they are signed with a first name only and there’s no other clues to tell us who it is! Sometimes there’s a hand written email address, but it’s not legible enough to fire off a quick message.
So if the only response to your lovingly hand crafted card to us is a resounding silence, don’t take it personally, your card has been gratefully received, lightly stroked, cherished and admired and displayed for all to see.
Adrian and I took the decision last year to donate money to charity instead of sending Christmas cards and we extend that to the business as well. We are matching the amount of charity money raised at last weekend’s open days and adding in a sum of our own to donate to the PSP Association.
Now one canny customer has ensured a mention on the blog this week – forget cards, Jackie brought us cake!
Jackie and Grace came along to our Wednesday Crop ‘n’ Craft and arrived with this beautifully decorated Christmas cake for us all. The snowflakes and lettering are dusted with beautifully twinkly edible glitter and it tastes as good as it looks. Much appreciated and there’s still plenty left, so if you’re popping into the shop this week, we can offer you spice cake with a cup of tea!
While tidying up from the open days, I found a simple tag I made.
The flourishes are from the Patchwork Butterfly stamp set, the bird is a cute little McGill punch which we just keep selling out of. I’ve stuck some glitter behind the aperture the punch creates, then put matching glitter on the punched bird. The tag is coloured and stamped with Ranger pigment inks. The glitter is holographic gold and it has a wonderful range of colours when the light catches it.
I still haven’t unpacked all my stuff, who knows what else I’ll find!
PS – I think I need to make the point that cake is welcome at any time of year …
Hi I’m Glenda - welcome to my blog!
I run Chocolate Baroque Ltd, a company which makes rubber and clear stamps and sells all sorts of inky, painty, papery goodies associated with stamping and mixed media.
My goal is to educate and inspire while having fun playing with my stash. Please join me for the ride.
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