Sandy Toes and Salty Kisses

Hello there, and welcome to my new followers.......WelshPixels and Christine Bedford, thank you both for joining me.

I've entered a couple of my cards in this month's challenge over at Crafty Individuals. I didn't really feel that my first card met the criteria of CAS but I was happy enough with my second card which featured the Sweet Robin Redbreast.  I didn't have any intentions of entering a third card until yesterday when I received a photograph from my Son. The photograph is a picture of our little Grandson enjoying his first time at the seaside.  As soon as I saw the photo, it reminded me so much of the stamp that I won a few weeks ago from Crafty Individuals called Sandy Toes and Salty Kisses.  

Here's the card that I've made, inspired by our Grandson's first time at the seaside :)

Here's the photo of our little Cherub seeing the sea for the first time :)

Wishing you all a happy weekend, Sandra x

One For The Boys

Hi there, and welcome to my two new followers.........Cynthia and Lesley, thank you for joining me.

I'm here today with a card that I've made for the challenge over at Stamping Sensations which  is called 'One for the Boys.'  I'm quite late with my card this month but it's a challenge that I always love to take part in, so better late than never as they say;)  Here's my card:

The stamps that I've used on this card are by Flonz  Craft and are from a set called True Gentleman.  I think the stamps lend themselves perfectly for a Vintage Masculine card.

I started my background by adding Distress Tea Dye ink with Ink Dusters then randomly stamping Clocks and Hats.  I stamped the Gentlemen and the other focal images using Ground Espresso to give me a nice dark image, without using black. I then used the Tea Dye ink as a water colour to paint the dogs and the Gentleman's suit on the left.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you have a lovely day x

My Mixed Media Book Box

Hello there my Crafty Friends, I hope to find you all well and happy today :)

I have a few new followers....... Leanne, Mary Cheryl, Maggie, Bobbie, Anne, Ria, Karen and Stephanie and I would like to 'Hello' to you all and thank you for joining me on my crafting journey. I have tried to find out if you all have blogs but without much success, so if you do have one, then please leave me a comment and let me know so that I can pay you a visit in return and update this post with a link.

Right then, moving onto crafty things :)

On my last visit to Inkylicious, Darren, Deby's husband was busy making lots of different projects with his new laser cutter and he was kind enough to give me an MDF Book Box that he'd just made. This post is to show you how my project progressed.

I'm really new to mixed media, having only done a couple of canvas' before, so the box sat in my craft room for a few weeks until I felt inspired enough to have a go at decorating it. So this is how the story goes:

This is the box as it was made and given to me by Darren, so the first thing that I did was to give it a coat of black acrylic paint.  I don't have any Gesso, so I hoped that this would be okay and it was.  It was a tube that wasn't very expensive that I had purchased from 'The Works' but it covered perfectly, without the need for a second coat.

The faux hinges, lock and clock stencil were given to my by Deby and Emma, so thank you to you both as I think they all worked beautifully together.  It's the first time I've used the clock stencil and I made a batch of embossing paste to use with it to give the project some dimension.  I've seen lots of clocks used on mixed media, so I thought i'd give it a go.  The other pieces of white that you can see on the picture are Tim Holtz die cuts that I stuck on.  The last thing that I did here was to add some braiding to the top and bottom of the box.  This was something that I picked up in a charity shop years ago and it's the first time I've used it.

The next thing was to cover the whole project with a second coat of black acrylic. I think you can see it starting to take shape now :)

I then dabbed on various colours of acrylic paint and blended them slightly with a screwed up ball of cling film, and then with the flat part of my fingers. Di, if you're reading this it was......VERY, VERY MESSY.  I think at this point that you just have to embrace the mess and release your inner child!

As I wanted a nice metallic look to the book, I then covered the colours with a bronze acrylic paint

.After letting the whole thing dry, I then used gold gilding wax to highlight the clock and all of the other part that you can see are gold.  The frame inside the clock face ia an MDF shape that I painted with bronze acrylic and I stamped and Inkylicious sentiment on the inside of it.  

Just the finishing touches to add now and so I made some roses which I covered with black acrylic and then used Cosmic Shimmer UTE powder on them whilst they were still wet. I added three coat of the embossing powder which left the roses rock hard.  I was really pleased with the result at it means that the roses are much more robust than they would have been if I had just left them as they were. The black Ivy was made using a Memory Box Die.

So there is is, my mixed media book box. It does actually look much better in real life, unfortunately, the photo doesn't do it justice. I'm not sure I would have ever done something like this if I hadn't have been given the Book Box, so many thanks to Darren, Deby and Emma at Inkylicious for believing that I might do something wonderful with it.

Take good care of yourselves and Happy Crafting x

Crafty Individuals - Take Two

Hello my Crafty Friends,

I'm here today with the second card that I've made for this month's challenge over at Crafty Individuals.  Now, it's only as I'm writing this and putting in the link that I've found that I may have made a big mistake here, lets see if you can spot it........The Craft Individuals stamp that I've used is called  'Sweet Robin Redbreast'  Oh Dear Me!

Okay, let's start again....... I've made this card with a beautiful stamp from Crafty Individuals as the main focal point, and I've used my 'Artistic Licence' to paint the Robin in different colours. Phew, I think that  just about covers it!  ;)

I started by stamping the Robin with Versafine ink to give a crisp, clear image and I then stamped the branch below to give the little bird something to stand on. I masked off the Robin whilst I used Ink Dusters to create the background.  I used an Inkylicious sentiment that I thought would work well with the Robin stamp and I added interest to the background by using a Harlequin stencil. I then removed the mask and painted the bird.

The inks that I've used are:

• Distress- Blueprint Sketch 
• Distress- Tea Dye
• Distress - Twisted Citron
• Memento - Dandelion 

I'm not sure it's absolutely CAS, but it looked far too plain and uninspiring at its most basic, I'm now happy with the end result and I hope you like it too :)

FSC Autumnal Colours

Good morning my crafty friends.

It's time for a new challenge over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges and the theme this time is 'Colours of Autumn.'  

I've taken some time here and actually remembered to take some photographs of my card and it's progression.

I started by cutting out a circular mask for the Sun and then coloured it using my Ink Dusters and Distress inks. I always use a deeper shade, or a second colour of ink on approximately one third of the outer edge of the sun to give it some shade.  You can see this here at the top left:

Next, I used a VersaMark embossing ink to add my silhouette image which is from Flonzcraft.  You shouldn't really be able to see the image at this stage as the VersaMark ink pad is clear but unfortunately, mine has been well used.  This isn't a problem when using dark embossing colours but it wouldn't be suitable if you were wanting to create a clear or white image.

I used a detailed black embossing powder and heat embossed it to create the silhouette figure.

The next bit is where my colour of Autumn come into play.  After masking off the Sun, I used a Stampin Up leaf stamp from the 'Lovely as a Tree' set to stamp randomly all over the card.  I used a Big and Juicy ink pad to do this as I knew that the colours would then all bend together beautifully. Unfortunately, these fabulous ink pads are no longer available.

The next bit was definitely a labour of love as it took me most of an afternoon to water colour each leaf that I'd stamped.  I tried to ensure at this point that I had a good selection of each of the Autumn colours.  Once again, I used the Big and Juicy ink pad for my colour palette. Once this was all dry, I used a sponge dauber around the sun to give it a warm glow and then dusted around the edge with a deep red to help fame my image.

Last leg now as I just needed to find a base card that would compliment the colours in my image, so I opted for a rich gold.  As you can see, I also layered my card with cream and black card too to create a frame.  

I think I've hit the brief here and I hope that you like the end result.

More August samples

Good morning to you all and I hope that you are all well and happy :)

I'm here today to share with you a few more of the cards that I made for the Inkylicious show that was on Hochanda on the 26th of August. For any of you who wanted the products but didn't get through fast enough, I know Linby mentioned this, you can always buy all of the products directly from Inkylicious through their own web site.   Here are the cards and I hope that you like them:

Wishing you a happy day x

NUBUS September 16

Hello there, and welcome to my new followers too.  Thank you for joining me on my crafting journey.

I'm here today with a card that I've made for the lovely Darnell's NBUS challenge. I was hoping to meet up with Darnell on her recent trip to the UK but unfortunately, due to our own holiday plans, this wasn't possible, although I did enjoy reading about her UK Roadshow :)

As many of you may have read in an earlier blog post, I was so lucky recently when I won four new stamps and a stamp set from Crafty Individuals and this card was made using their 'Home Sweet Home' stamp.

I masked each part of the card off individually before adding colour to each section.  For the background, I spritz my Ink Dusters before using them with Memento Dandelion, Distress Carved Pumpkin and Adirondack Mountain Rose to give a greater depth of colour.  As it's a New Home card, I wanted to give the card a warm and cozy feel, and the background reminds me of flames on a real coal fire.

I am also entering this card into the Crafty Individuals Challenge which has just started. I hope this will still count as 'Clean and Simple' as I haven't done anything but colour the stamp. As it's a collage stamp, there is rather a lot to look at, so I will probably make another entry that fits the brief a little better!

That's all for now but I hope to add a new post sometime over the weekend with more of the Inkylicious August samples. So until then. Take care and be happy :) X