Sun Boy is in the house

Not too much to say about this one. It's another little house for the swap I'm involved in.

The stamp is by Elements, the little sun is by Non Sequitur.

Click on the image to enlarge it, I hope you like it! :o)

STOP PRESS:
My phone and internet service have gone down, and the fault isn't going to be looked at until Tuesday. Luckily I had already uploaded this image to the internet, so a friend has kindly created this post for me. If my service is not resumed tomorrow there will be no post as I am unable to upload images of new work. I hope to be able to see you all here again soon.

So Salsa Turquoise Tag

4 blog posts in one day? It's practically unheard of! What can I tell you, I must be in a "crafty" mood today!

The So Salsa tag challenge today was to use the colour turquoise. I decided that I didn't really have any turquoise ink, so was going to try to complete the challenge using a mix of broken china and shabby shutters distress inks. Then I remembered that I had an Ancient Page ink pad in a turquoise colour, so problem solved! Or at least it would have been.... when I sat down to make the tag, I forgot all about the Ancient Page pad, and used the distress inks instead. Ah well, we all make mistakes, me more than many! :oD

Click on the image to enlarge it, I hope you like it!

Edit:
To answer your question Christa...
Boy and girl stamp - Paper Bag Studios
Ribbon stamp - Perfectly Clear Stamps - Ribbon border
Jumbled letters and binding strip - Just for Fun stamps (I think)

Sunday Stampers - Sisters

Sunday means Sunday Stampers, my friend Hels' weekly challenge. The theme this week is "Sisters are doin' it for themselves", so the Paper Bag Studio stamp I used on this tag was just crying out to be used!

Not too much to say here, lots of stamping and masking and blending of inks. A quick word about the main image though... It was first stamped in Fired Brick distress ink, then the stamp was cleaned and inked with black versafine. I used a wet baby wipe to remove all the ink from the background parts of the stamp, then used a stamp positioner to restamp over the red original, highlighting the sisters in black.

I hope you like it! Click on the image to enlarge it.

Woo hoo! An award!!

Many thanks to my friend Linda, who has honoured me with this award! Her wonderful blog can be found here. What is even more touching, is that it is actually her in the picture. I was with her that day, and she'd just finished a tray of chips and curry sauce on the seafront, when a seagull swooped down and stole her blouse (hence the irritated expression I think!). I am sad to see you still have that circulation problem in your legs Linda, I hope it clears up soon! xx

I'd like to thank my Mom and Dad for always being there for me, my sister Andrea, who has been given many challenges in life, but never faces them with anything less than courage, and a total lack of awareness about the importance of flossing. I'm wearing D-squared, thanks for asking, and I should just give a big shout out to my stylist, LaHels, who really knows how to dress up a dog's breakfast when she has to! Back in the day, when I was just starting out, there were many heroes who didn't hesitate to lend a hand and a word of advice to a.... (music fades in, microphone is turned off).

Dans ma maison, il y a... la couleur verte

Another week, another great challenge from the Dans ma maison... blog. This week it was "in my house, is the colour green".

I thought I'd try another forest scene, not a million miles away from others I've done in the past, but this time made more interesting by the fact that I limited myself to only using green, black and white in it.

Background is blended distress inks, stamping is black versafine and the moon is white acrylic paint. I hope you like it! :o) Click on the image to enlarge it.

House Tag Challenge

It's Friday again, so it must be time for the Tag You're It challenge!

This week the challenge is called "Our House", so how could I resist, seeing as I was already making houses for a swap I'm in?

Nothing new about this one technique-wise, just lots of the usual masking, ink blending and overstamping.

I hope you like it, click on the image for a larger view! :o)

It's a housing boom!

Just when you say to yourself "I haven't made any little houses ever in my life", what happens? All of a sudden you've made 8. Isn't that always the way?

3 more for the "little boxes" swap. I must say, I'm really enjoying making these! I'm going to have to slow down, or I'll be sad when they're all done! :oD

I hope you like them, click on the image to see a larger view.

Wednesday Stamper Squares Challenge

This weeks challenge on the Wednesday Stamper blog was "squares". I took a sheet of printer paper and cut a 1in square out of it, to act as a window. I then used this window to stamp onto a 6in x 3in tag.

Each image was stamped using black versafine ink, and then hand painted.

I ended up making two windows, as the ink started to soak through the paper on the first sheet. I think they look quite interesting in their own right, so I have included an image of them here.

I hope you like it! :o) Click on any image to enlarge it.

The long arm of the flourish

This is my attempt at this weeks Gothic Arch Challenge. The theme is "flourishes", and I think there are enough of those on here to qualify! :o)

I started out by using cut'n'dry foam to ink the white arch with spiced marmalade and fired brick distress ink pads. I then spritzed with a little water to make drop marks on it. Using black Versafine I did all the stamping, and then went mad with my white pen! :o) Finally a little walnut stain distress pad around the edges to age it a little.

This piece is roughly A6 size, using a template from the challenge site. I really enjoyed this, I hope to try more of the gothic arch challenges in future. Click on the image to see it larger. I hope you like it! :o)

3 more houses, somewhat on the small side

3 more houses to add to my "estate". I have to say I'm a lot happier with these 3 than I was with the two I posted here last night. I know that some of you have said that there was nothing wrong with last night's offering, but I'm entitled to my opinion, LOL!

Not much more to say about these three really. Also, I should add that I'm not actually home tonight, so this post has been made in advance, and I've used the "schedule" feature to automatically post this in my absence. I hope it works! :o) The smarter ones amongst you will also realise that when I said "I know that some of you said...", I will have egg on my face if no one actually came on here and said that they liked them! LOL I'm keeping my fingers crossed! :o)

I hope you like em, click on the image to get a larger view.

Home is where the art is...

... is a quote we've all heard before, I'm sure, but I couldn't resist it today! :o) I've just joined what I think is going to turn out to be a really fun swap! Each person has to make 21 itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny houses, send them off to the organiser, then gets 20 back from other artists in return.

Each house must be 2.5in wide and can be anywhere between 3 and 6in tall. Apart from that, all rules are off! I think 5 or 6 tiny houses arranged in a line will look awesome in the right frame, I'm really looking forward to seeing what I get sent back - I need more art on my walls! :o)

I thought I'd have a go at just a couple today, to suss out the lay of the land, see if there were any mistakes waiting to pick me to happen to or any problems I hadn't forseen - all that malarky! :)

The right hand house was coloured with distress inks (shabby shutters and broken china), stamped with basic grey and fontwerks flourishes and painted with a waterbrush and fired brick distress pad.

The house on the left uses the batik resist technique. It was stamped with the tree in embossing ink and clear embossed. After the rest of the inking/stamping was finished, I placed some brown paper over the house and ironed it with a hot iron - melting the embossing powder again so that soaked into the brown paper and was removed from the house, leaving a white image behind.

I'm not sure if I'm going to include these two into my swap or not. To be completely frank, I just don't like the one on the right. Those of you that read my blog regularly will know that from time to time I put "mistakes" onto my blog, and this is one of them, lol! I will approach the rest slightly differently I think - I just hadn't really taken on board how small they are, and am a little wiser now! :o) 3 more tomorrow, watch this space.

I hope you like them, click on them to see a larger view!

Heartfelt Tag

Another day, another challenge to be faced! :o) Or, in this case, a pair of challenges - The Wednesday Stamper (theme - include the word "art" - it's there if you look hard enough!) and Theme Thursday (theme - "girls").

I've been wanting to use these song words on something for a while, they're taken from "Strange and Beautiful" by Aqualung. My initial plan was to make the tag sleeve from vellum, and that's what I did. It looked fine in real life, but when photographed, it was somewhat difficult to read what the words said, so I remade it in paper.

The tag itself features stamps from Lost Coast Designs, The Queens Dresser Drawers and Just for Fun stamps. The pencils were stamped first in black Versafine, then the detail painted in with a water brush and distress ink pads. They were then masked, and the two girls faces were stamped and painted. The faces were then masked and the background was coloured and spritzed with water. The splatters, stitches and Identification Check stamp were then applied with black Versafine. Finally, the edges were slightly aged with walnut stain distress ink pad applied with cut'n'dry foam.

I hope you like it! Click on any image to enlarge it :o)

Imagine

Another outing for the Cricut today! I had an idea to create a figure out of boxes, and decided to link it in with the Crazy Amigo Challenge this week, where the theme was "wings".

I drew the 3 shapes for these boxes on the computer, and used SCAL to cut them out. I sized them such that the top cubic box would be used for the head, the tapering box for the body and the tall one for the legs. I selected colour themes for each layer - green/blue for the legs, citrus colours for the body and purple/yellow for the head.

After that, it was just a case of getting busy with the stamps and inks! Far too many stamps used here to credit them all, inks were Ranger distress pads, black Versafine and a few colours of Ancient Page (which I love, but am finding they are drying out pretty quick! Anyone else out there having this problem?).

Nice to work in 3 dimensions for a change, at least more 3 dimensional than 3D foam allows! :o) And, while we're on the subject, (ok, we weren't, but just go with me here...), given that I took the time and trouble to fix the wings on with brads, so they could be raised and lowered to different positions, wouldn't you think I would have had the sense to check that I'd at least positioned them level before I took the photos? :oD

I hope you like it, thanks for looking and click on an image if you want to see it larger!

Dans ma maison, il y a...une petite fille

Or, if you prefer, "In my house, there is... a little girl". I found this great challenge blog today, called Dans ma maison, il y a. Each week, you have to make a house in some form or another, and each week the thing inside the house changes. This week, it's "a little girl".

I've combined this challenge with this week's Mixed media Monday challenge, which is themed "transparency". The vellum in the house window is the transparent part. (Yes, yes, I know that vellum is translucent, not transparent, but they said in the challenge that vellum is allowed, and anyway, you're a bit too fussy for your own good, I'd do something about that if I were you! :o)

I created the house in Inkscape, and transferred the file to SCAL and cut it out with my Cricut (the old one, you know, the one that's been left out in the cold, it's nose pressed against the window, tearfully watching the Expression get all the love and affection).

The hinges and bookplate were distressed with acrylic paint. Stamps are from a range of sources, most notably Elements for the little girl, fontwerks for the plants, Green Pepper Press for the red stripes. Inks were Ranger distress pads, versafine and ancient page.
Um... I think that's pretty much all there is to say about it! I daresay if you have any questions, you'll let me know! I hope you like it, click on either image to see a larger view! :o)

So Salsa Challenge - Stitches

Having discovered a new challenge involving tags, I just had to have a go! :o) I have a weakness for tags, dunno why, maybe I didn't get enough presents as a kid or something? Anyway, the So Salsa Challenge this week was "stitches", and here's my attempt!

The stitches stamps I used are by Autumn Leaves, used in conjunction with stamps by Stampers Anonymous, Elements, Artistic Stamper, and a few others I'm sure! Inks were distress ink pads, versafine and ancient page.

Masking and selective inking were the two main techniques used. I hope you like it! Click on the tag for a larger view :o)

An experiment that went slightly adrift...

I mentioned in previous posts a technique that I was calling the painted mask technique. This is where you stamp an image, then paint it with acrylic paint, painting over any fine detail, then stamping the image again on top once the paint is dry.

I have used this technique successfully a number of times, but always on relatively simple stamped images, so I thought it was time to try something more complex.

The image above is the result - not bad, but not completely successful either! The stamp is from Stampers Anonymous, and I stamped it onto white card with black Versafine ink. Once dry, I painted the image with acrylic paints, then (tried to) stamp in the original position to put back the detail that I had painted out. With such a detailed stamp, it was impossible to do by eye as I had in previous attempts. Because of that, I got hold of a stamp positioner, the Stamp-a-majig, so that I could stamp in the same place every time.

I'm afraid to say, the results were hardly better than when I had done it by eye! The one above is the best of them, but if you look closely, it's out of position by quite a bit! You don't even want to know how many times I stamped and painted the image for each new attempt, LOL As these were experiments, it didn't matter TOO much how they turned out, which is just as well because I was getting quickly fed up with the poor results I was getting!

I think me and the Stamp-a-majig just aren't meant to become friends! :o) I've since acquired a different stamp positioner, called the Big Ugly, which I haven't tried yet, but it's considerably heavier, so hopefully I will get better results with it!

Click on the image to see it larger. I hope you like it! :o)

Um.... 5 More Triangular ATCs

Well, I enjoyed making the last 5 so much, I thought I'd make 5 more! This time, I didn't have the sense to make two of them point-side down, so they'd be easier to photograph, so they're split into 2 images here. Click on either to enlarge them.

Nothing groundbreaking to say about these really! In the second, the word "bored" is deliberately spelled that way! Honestly!! :oD The 2 stamps used in the 4th are some that I had made for me as a one-off.

I hope you like em! Ta for taking a look! :o)

5 Triangular Stamped ATCs

I have just completed these ATCs for an interesting-sounding swap. Each person taking part must make 5 triangular ATCs, 2.5in wide x 3.5in tall. The only other criterion was that they should be stamped. As I have been known to a bit of stamping from time to time, and also have a ruler that can measure in inches, I thought "why the heck not?" :o)

All images were stamped with either versafine or ancient page (my new favourite) ink pads. Cards were coloured with blended distress ink pads, applied with cut'n'dry foam. Other techniques used included masking and painting with a waterbrush.

As ever with ATCs, less time and trouble is spent on decorating the rear side. In this case, I simply stamped my "handmade by dan99" stamp, masked it, then overstamped and painted one part of the image.
I hope you like 'em! Even more importantly, I hope that the recipients like them too! All I have to do now is make sure I get them in the post on time, LOL. Click on either pic to see it larger. :o)

Basic Grey Flourish Stamp Tags

Two tags made with some flourish/swirl type stamps from Basic Grey.

The main images were stamped in black versafine then masked. Both tags were coloured with distress ink pads applied with cut'n'dry foam and flicked with water drops, which were allowed to dry. The flourishes were stamped stamped in black versafine and a waterbrush was used with distress pads to colour them. Finally they were distressed around the edges with a fine application of distress ink (walnut stain).

I hope you like em! Click on a tag to see a larger view :o)

Covers for a book and another tag

I've decided to collect some of the tags I've made lately into a book with the Bind-it-all, so I've made some chipboard covers for it today. Yes, yes, I realise I've already made a tag very similar to those covers, but I enjoyed making it so much I wanted to do it again, LOL Plus, I'll leave that tag out of the book, seeing as how you're making such a big fuss about it! LOL

The tag uses a Stampers Anonymous stamp that isn't new, but IS new to me, and some fontwerks clear botanical stamps. The man is by PaperArtsy.

I hope you like em, click on any image to enlarge it. :o)