Waxing further...

Here are 3 more tags (I guess I'm in a taggy mood!) These feature one (or more) of the following: Melted beeswax, gold glimmer mist spray, BasicGrey Flourish stamps, Autumn Leaves stitches stamps, Lost Coast design stamps. I hope you like em!

Just a bit of messing about...

I decided to have a play today, with some stamps I haven't had much of a chance to use so far, and with some techniques I don't use much or haven't tried before.

This first tag makes use of some stamps from Green Pepper Press that a friend got me for Christmas, and some stitch stamps from Autumn Leaves, neither of which I have had much of a play with. The tag was coloured with distress ink pads, then the sun was stamped using the painted mask technique I have mentioned in previous posts. I recently bought a bottle of gold Glimmer Mist spray, so spritzed the whole thing with that (to within an inch of it's life, to be honest!).

This next tag looks a bit washed out, but that's partly my poor photography I'm afraid! I'd always wanted to try a technique I once saw in a Tim Holtz video, where he melted beeswax in a melt pot and painted it onto his card project. I don't have a melt pot, but thought one of those oil burner thingies would do the job just right, and it did! Put the beeswax in the top, light the tealight, and Bob's your uncle! If you don't know what I'm talking about, I mean one of these:


I hope you like the tags! :o) Click on an image to enlarge it.

New life for an old Cricut!

I bought a Cricut last year while on holiday in Canada (one of the old Cricuts, not an Expression), and to be honest, I haven't used it much. They were on sale in Michaels, so I got it for the equivalent of £85 UK, but even so, I haven't had value out of it as I have hardly touched it. After buying 3 cartridges for it (of designs I still like, but have never used) I decided that perhaps the cricut is just not for me.

Then, a few days ago, I heard of a piece of software called "Sure Cuts a Lot" which allows the cricut to be used like a Craft Robo, ie it will plug into my pc and cut any font or shape from the hundreds I have.

Shown here is a christmas design that I downloaded from the internet, and some address book dividers. I've been thinking of making an address book with my Bind It All as a gift for a friend, and I actually designed and created these dividers myself on the PC, then cut them with the Cricut. I can't overstate my excitement with this program - now the things that I cut won't be limited by what's available or by my budget!!

Tagstravaganza - Day 3

The tag at the top of these pictures, with red on one side and yellow on the other, is tiny, perhaps only an inch wide, so don't be fooled by the fact that they all look the same size here!

More chipboard tags, and finally a chance to use a couple of stamps designed by my friend Linda Luckin, the fish and the seahorse. The fishes (fishum? fishi? oh, just "fish") were stamped with StazOn ink onto acetate, and then I applied gold metal leaf to the back of each one (and we all know, don't we children, how badly gold shows up on a scanner?).

The butterfly is only fixed to the tag in the body area, the wings can be tilted up to add a dimensional element to it. It was produced on glossy card with alcohol inks, then stamped and cut out.

The "Gibson Girl" was stamped onto the white tag and painted with distress inks and an ArtKure water brush. She was then stamped again onto a post-it note and cut out. The post-it image was then placed over the tag image and the background was applied with cut'n'dry foam.

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

A Fairy, by any other name....

.... still looks just as naff!

I have created this using the wonderful fairy stamp I won in the pass the parcel competition at Lesley and Linda's birthday party last week. It looks simple I know, to the casual glance, but those of you who are keen crafters will see the great amount of work I put into it!

The background is taken from a Butcher's Block pad. The original paper was larger than the size I wanted, so I actually had to cut it down to size myself. I stamped the fairy in the centre of the page and sprinkled gold embossing powder. I then heated it with a heat gun. This melted the powder and made it go all shiny. Finally, I cut the peel off borders to size so that they would exactly fit, then stuck them onto the page, taking care to see that they were evenly spaced.

Hang on, what's that? April the what? That'll teach me to look at my calendar more frequently, I'm 6 days late! :o)

Stamped Chipboard Flowers

These flowers are part of the new chipboard range by the Artistic Stamper. They're white on one side and grey on the other. The white sides were inked and stamped, and the grey sides were painted with acrylic dabbers and stamped.

I didn't spend too much time on them, because there is such a small amount of petal space available for stamping, that there was no point in doing anything too complicated, it just wouldn't be seen. The brown one is stamped and embossed in gold, which, as always, doesn't show up too well when scanned!

I hope you like them, click on an image to enlarge it. :o)

Tagstravaganza - Day 2

Another day, another tag!

Nothing fancy to say about this one that you haven't already read in yesterdays post, dear reader. Another of the Artistic Stamper's chipboard tags, decorated with their stamps and using the painted mask and batik techniques.

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

Tagstravaganza - Day 1 - The Painted Mask Technique

This is my first blog post in AGES so I'll dive straight in. I've been busy working with some of the new chipboard shapes from Artistic Stamper. On this large sized tag, I thought I'd have a go with a new technique I've dreamed up for colouring stamped images (at least it's new to me, if someone has claimed this before, I apologise!) I've called it the painted mask technique, and it's been used here on the pocket watches and the gothic arch. Basically it involved stamping your image, then painting it with acrylic paint (either white as I have done here, or in whatever colours suit your image). After painting, you stamp again in the same place, giving a masked effect but with coloured areas that match the stamp exactly (depending on how accurate you are with your stamp position).

The red side - text was stamped and embossed with clear powder. Tag then was coloured with fired brick and aged mahogany distress inks applied with cut'n'dry foam. Brown paper was placed over the tag and it was ironed with a hot dry iron to remove the embossing powder (Tim Holtz's batik technique). Text was stamped again with brushed corduroy distress ink. Arch was stamped with black versafine and dried with heat gun. It was then overpainted with white acrylic paint, dried and restamped. Finally the word Architecture was stamped with black versafine. I added two of natures "free" stamps (the most personal and individual of all!) and I was done.

Mustard side - painted with butterscotch acrylic dabber and edges distressed with brushed cordury pad (doesn't show up well in this scan). Watches and keys stamped with black versafine. Watch over-painted with white acrylic paint then restamped.

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

Fragments Mini-book

I'm getting quite hooked on these 2x2 books! They're a great size cos they're big enough to stamp on, but small enough that you can finish them quickly. This one is for a friends birthday, a few pages are duplicates of things in other projects, but I have mostly missed those out on the photos I've included on here. I hope you like it!

Click on any image to enlarge it.

Bits Mini-book

I've called this a mini-book, but perhaps it should really be called a micro-book, as it's only 2 inches square! It was intended as a kind of sampler, no set theme, just an attempt to incorporate a range of images and techniques on a small scale into one coherent whole.

As there are 18 sides plus covers in this, I'm not going to write about each one. Suffice it to say that the book incorporates stamping, masking, embossing, batik, dabbers and alcohol inks. That might sound a lot, but as the pages are so small, it didn't take to long to make. I hope you like it!

Click on any image to enlarge it.