Victoriana Goes Pop!

I've been busy crafting away on a few different projects lately but nothing I can share atm... however, I did find time for a bit of a play tonight and made a quick ATC:

I used my new Promarkers for this ATC... they are a limited edition set of summer colours that I stumbled across in Hobbycraft the other week and just had to have them! They're so bright and juicy (and a lovely contrast to the gloomy weather we've had for most of the "summer" here in the UK!).

I also used my Wendy Vecchi stamps that I bought a few months ago and hadn't gotten around to playing with yet. I used the Promarkers and alcohol blending solution (love this technique!) to make the background and stamped over it with the Wendy Vecchi background stamp, using turquoise Archival ink. I then stamped the Stampotique "Bla bla bla" stamp randomly over the background. I stamped the flower part and the victorian lady onto card and coloured them with Promarkers, cut them out and layered them onto the card.

I rather love the result. It's kind of steampunk meets pop art! :lol: Victorian lady a la Andy Warhol! :D

I'm entering this card into the current "Hey Girl" challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show and the "Feeling Fruity" challenge at Passion for Promarkers.

Why have I never done this before?!

I bought some FIMO aaaaaages ago. And I've picked up a few push molds here and there too along the way, thinking I could make my own embellies etc. But I've never really gotten around to having a proper play with it. Until today.

And check this out!

How cool are these? I'm especially loving the flower ones! I got the push molds for those off a US-based Etsy store and they are so worth the postage (and it was really good service too)! Aren't they gorgeous?! And I can make as many of these flowers as I want, in whatever colours I want (I've even mixed two colours together in some of these flowers)! Fantastic! When I think that I paid about £5+ for a pack of 8 similar design resin flowers by Prima!

I think I'll be making more of these. :D

WOYWW 164

Another quick "on the way to bed" WOYWW post from me again.

I've been busy creating today (today being, seeing as I've not gone to bed yet, still Tuesday! :lol:)... DD1 was in nursery and DD2 went for her afternoon nap and slept for 3 hours! Meaning mummy actually got chance to get in her craft room for a bit during daylight hours! :lol:

So lots of stuff "in progress" atm...

On the main desk there's cardstock and photo and various acroutrements about to be turned into a scrapbook page. There's also a selection of push moulds and FIMO that I'm contemplating having a play with:

Over to one side there's also a piece of Basic Grey paper set aside for the gesso I've added to it to dry:

And over the other side there's a little printer's tray that I've painted and now need to assemble and decorate:

Too many ideas, not enough time! :lol:

Right. Gotta go - busy day ahead tomorrow...

Digi-Scrapping

I've been in the mood for scrapping lately but don't seem to have had the time... or the willpower to get off the sofa in the evenings! :lol:

So, thanks to the wonders of modern technology (i.e. my laptop and PSE 10!) I've been digi-scrapping. :)

First of all I made a double page of photos of my gorgeous girls playing in the garden the other weekend:

All the digi elements on these pages are from the Summer Wings kit by Creative Victorian.

Next up I did the Weekly Challenge at UKS:

I used a Creative Victorian kit again, this time Winter's Deep... and also used one of the actions that comes with the kit to wash out the photos so they all toned nicely.

And finally, I had a play with a page using photos of DD2 (mildly inspired by an article in a recent issue of Scrap365 about using small photos on scrapbook pages):

This time the kit was Secrets of the Heart from Creative Victorian.

I do plan to actually get in my craft room this week and do some paper scrapbooking... but I do love being able to craft on the comfort of my sofa! :D

That's It!

I've had enough of this gloomy flipping wintery light. It's making it impossible to get a decent photo of my craft projects, even in the conservatory, which gets load of natural light.

I'm going to have to make myself a light box. :/

WOYWW 163

Another wet and windy Wednesday is upon us (okay, so it's pretty early in the am and I'm assuming that's how the weather's gonna be when I get up but, let's face it, based on recent experience the odds are in my favour! :lol:) and it's time to brighten up your day by taking a spin around crafty desks the world over!

Not much to share on my desk I am afraid. I have actually just finished up a card but seeing as it's a DT one, I can't really share it with you just yet. Darn.

So instead, to add a bit of interest to this week's photo, I've dumped on my desk a few pretty new craft purchases for you to nosey at:

A bunch of U-Mount, to mount more of my ever-increasing stack of Sweet Pea Stamps. A set of Andy Skinner stamps, a funky new Sizzix stamp and emboss set, and another Sizzix die, and a few random packs of embellies.

I do also have something else to share with you this week, although it's not something tangible that can sit on my desk. Instead, it's some exciting news. I've actually known for a while but things were a bit too crazy busy last week for me to get chance to blog about it so I thought I'd do it today instead...

I've been invited to join the Design Team at the One Stitch at a Time challenge blog. :D

I looooove Stitchy Bear digi stamps (you may have seen me wittering on about them previously on this blog) and am thrilled to bits to join such a friendly, creative team - and to get to play even more with these fab images! So expect to see plenty more of Stitchy Bear's images cropping up on my blog.

That's it from me. My bed beckons and it's a busy day tomorrow as I've a good friend and her two little ones coming to stay for a couple of days... so there's gonna be 4 kids aged 3 and under in the house! Eeep! :)

WOYWW 161

Yargh. What you see on my desk this morning is an exercise in frustration.

You see, I recently bought a rather funky looking doily die. "How fabulous!" thought I. "I can make doiles to match my projects, as many of  them as I like! Yippee!"

Or... not. Now, it's an intricate die and I'm not daft... I realised there would be some work involved in popping out all the teeny tiny little pieces. However, as it turns out, there's a lot more to it than "popping out"... mainly because even after being run through the BigShot twice (turning 90 degrees between runs through), the darn thing *still* didn't cut completely through in places. So I've ended up having to push and pull with a pokey tool, and occasionally try and re-cut lines with a craft knife, and generally it's taken me faaaaaar longer than I even care to think about to produce just one usable doily (and I wouldn't look too closely at it as there's a fair few ragged edges here and there).

So that's what I've been doing at my craft desk - that and a lot of swearing! :lol

So, to end on a more cheerful note, I shall also share with you the finished CJ page that I made using the background that was sitting on my desk in last week's WOYWW post:

I used a Dylusions stencil and a Stempelgelde stamp and handwrote the journalling. The CJ is now winging its way to the next recipient.

And that's it from me this week. I've stayed up faaaaar too late (or early, really) fighting with that doiley so I am taking myself off to bed! :)

Distressed Page

No, not a page that's sad but a scrapbook page made entirely with Distress products! :)

The new Scrap Map challenge is up over at Creative Craft World's challenge blog.

The challenge is simple - just make a scrapbook page using the sketch for inspiration, upload it/pop it on your blog and add your link to the Scrap Map challenge post. You've got till 4 August to enter and you could win yourself a fabby scrapbooking kit and a DT guest spot! :)

Here's the sketch for this month's challenge:

And here's my take on it:

I started with the idea of swiping Distress Stains across the page to make blocks of colour behind the photos, echoing the rectangles on the sketch. I added a bit of texture and interest by dabbing Distress Ink through a stencil of small circles and replaced the large circle in the sketch by dabbing Distress Ink over a decorative mask. I mounted my photos with foam tape for a bit of added dimension and finished things off by doodling frames, a few decorative flowers and some circle borders using Distress Markers. I drew and coloured my journalling and title (cut out and mounted with foam pads) with Distress Markers too. Et voila, a scrapbook page made entirely with Distress! :)

FFS stop raining!!

My cellar is flooding again, dammit, and I really really REALLY don't want my kitchen to flood too. Can the rain just PLEASE stop now?!! :(

Grrr... men!

Why are they so difficult to make cards for?! :lol:

And while I'm ranting... grrr... weather! It's July and we're currently experiencing what seems to be a monsoon out there! The front drive is a boating lake, it's so dark we've got all the lights turned on and (I'm not sure whether this is related) our landline has stopped working - it's just making awful crackling noises.

It's also a real pain trying to photograph craft projects when the light is so poor. Even in my nice, light and airy conservatory, the light is very dull and grey today.

So I've had to resort to photographing this card on my craft desk with the daylight lamp on:

As a comparison, this is how it looked when I tried to photograph it in the consevatory:

Anyway, crummy weather aside, this is a funky little card that I've made for my mum's partner's birthday. Men's cards can be difficult so I decided to keep it simple and bold, using a funky Stampotique stamp and a background made by colouring a piece of card with Promarkers and dripping/squirting alcohol ink blending fluid onto it (a technique I've not tried before). I used my Stampin' Up! postage stamp punch to punch a hole in the card front and stamped the greeting inside the card so it was visible through the hole.

I'm entering this card into the current challenge ("outside the box" - the very clean and simple look is a bit different for me and I've also used a technique I've never tried before) at the Stampotique Designers Challenge. :)

WOYWW 161

For once, I actually have a work in progress to show you on my desk this week! :) For some reason, on Wednesday mornings my desk always seems to be either completely covered in (often non-craft related) bumf, sorely neglected, or, more usually, showing only the debris of a recently-completed project. But not this week. :D

Today was the UKS sponsor blog hop and what a fine hop it was! Some fantastic projects and inspiring ideas... and one of them - some textured background tutorial vids from Just Scrapbooking - inspired me to get my paints out. Something I've not done for far too long!

As it happens, I have an entry to do in an art journal CJ, so what better excuse to get painty? :)

So here's the desk this morning:

And here's my painty, texturey background:

It's still a work in progress in that I still need to "decorate" the page, as it were. But I'm quite happy with the background.

That's it from me this week. Short and sweet. I've already stayed up later than I should cos DD1 has recently taken to waking up a good hour or so earlier than she usually does *and* coming and opening her bedroom door and making a noise on the landing, which then wakes up her baby sister in her room, which in turn means that mummy's then got to get up at silly o'clock! Argh!

So. Bedtime for this little crafter. Goodnight and thanks for stopping by! :)

Happy Birthday Yasmin!

It was my cousin's birthday... erm... yesterday! Whoops! Am ashamed to say with everything that's been going on here I completely forgot to make and send a card, until today! So this will be a little late getting there, but it's the thought that counts, right? ;)

The image is a Stitchy Bear digi stamp and the papers and ribbon were recent freebies with a craft magazine. I also had a play with the second of the new Memory Box dies I recently picked up. :)

I'm entering this card for the Passion for Promarkers challenge (ice cream/cupcakes) and the One Stitch At A Time challenge (use a digi).

Happy Birthday, Yas! Sorry it's late....