Stars and Stripes

This tag uses some Wendy Vecchi stamps for the background, my first time using them. The stripes and mesh were stamped in Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink, and then areas were masked off into stripes and inked with Distress Pads and a foam applicator.

The stars were stamped using a black Memento ink pad, and the large stars were coloured with a lime green promarker, the small with a white gel pen. Finally the edges were distressed with more Brushed Corduroy ink.

A bit of messing about...

I met up with a couple of crafty chums yesterday, for lunch and a little "play" time. They both had rather large projects to continue with, while I found myself messing around with a few tags.

This is the first one I made. The bottom-left corner uses the faux batik technique (stamp/clear emboss, ink over the top, iron off the embossing powder with brown paper) and the rest of the tag is a LOT of layered stamping and inking. The 3 main figures were stamped and promarkered separately and then adhered to the tag.

Metal Gift Box

Another recycled item, this time a gift box made from 2 bases from Tria pen boxes. You can see what the bases look like below. I removed the inner lip from one of them, and it became the lid, fitting perfectly onto the other base!

The main part of the lid was created using a Fiskars Texture Plate. Using a paper stump and rounded silicone tool, I taped the metal onto the plate and then rubbed it into the design. I combined brown and green acrylic paint and a lot of water to make my own distressing spray, which I poured into a mini-mister. After each spritz, the metal was dried with a heat tool, until I was happy with the result.

The tile on the top was made several months back, on a metal class at LB Crafts. The copper was embossed on a Ten Seconds Studio mould and distressed with a patina spray. A square of patterned paper was cut from a Crafty Individuals sheet and placed in a silver Ranger Memory Frame, which had been rubbed with copper wax.

That’s about it, I hope you like it! :o)

Recycled Tria Box

A friend who's been buying Letraset Tria markers recently gave me 2 of the boxes they come in (actually she was going to discard them, so I saved them from a landfill future!). I figured that by removing the base I'd be able to make 2 desktop tool caddys (perfect for larger items like cropodile, texture hammer, rulers etc) plus 1 gift box. Here is the first tool caddy, the gift box will follow tomorrow (if I get it finished!)

The 4 sides are shown above (they are all perfectly rectangular - they look a little wonky because of my amateurish camera work, lol)

Starting at the top left -
Copper top embossed using Ten Seconds Studio border mould. Silver metal embossed in the Cuttlebug. White acrylic paint applied over whole box then partially buffed when dry. Molten UTEE poured over copper crown motif on non-stick craft sheet, then stamped with cookie cutter while still hot. Copper tile embossed with TSS mould then aged with glimmer mists and UTEE element fixed to centre.

The other 3 tiles were embossed using TSS moulds and tarnished with glimmer mists.

Mort Journal

I picked up several of these little hard-backed kraft-covered journals last week, thinking that they'd make good stocking fillers, once suitably decorated.

I stamped the word "journal" onto the front cover, then made this sleeve to go around the book. The stamp is called "Mort had a pin curl", by Stampotique. Isn't that a great name? He was coloured in using promarkers an then masked off and the background was coloured with distress inks. Since he's sporting a great set of fangs, I'm going to enter him into my friend Hels' Sunday Stamper Challenge this week, which is "Monster Mash".

All's Well That Ends Well!

Ok, so I think these are the last of the halloween cards!  The raven border is a Lost Coast Designs stamp that I got recently, and love how it's possible to bend it into curves on the acrylic block before stamping!  I'm also loving the huge gingham backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms!

On a separate note, this is my first post using the new blogger post editor - I'm not impressed! Next time I might give Windows Live Editor a try :)

Death and Taxes

They say two things in life in unavoidable – death and taxes. I’d add one more – Halloween cards!! I’m sure you must be getting bored with seeing these, I know I’m bored with posting them, but one more post after this one and they'll all be done! :o)

Finally Organised!

I love promarkers, don't you? I hated them at first (I hear your shocked gasps, lol) but now that I have finally figured out how to actually use them, I love them! The biggest problem has always been finding just the right colour from a disorganised heap of pens - a problem no more!

I went on to the popular auction site (you know the one) and got these clear pencil cases for 99p each. I measured the pens first (15cm) and found that there were a lot of 16cm and 17cm high pencil cases available. Factoring in the thickness of the pens I opted for the 17 cm size (23cm wide), and 15 promarkers fit snugly inside. Of course all I have to do now is to figure out what order makes for the best arrangement!

Oh, I know that in the pic it looks like these cases are clear on the front and brown on the back, but they're actually clear on both sides, it's my brown floor showing through from behind! :o)

2 More Halloween Cards

I dunno what you think, but in some respects I think the 2nd card here just doesn't work. I think that's why it's one of my favorites of the ones I've made, the fact that there's something not quite right about it almost makes it even more Halloween-y! :o)

Live Life!!

2 more pages for my little book today - these aren't actually going to be sequential in the book, but I've put them together here as they use the same colour pallete, so I thought they'd look good on the page.

On a separate note, yesterday was apparently "Evaluate Your Life" day (thanks for the info Hels!), so it's also timely that these appear today (even if it's a day late!).

Inks are all Ranger Distress pads, stamps on first one are PaperArtsy, Stampers Anonymous and the "Live Life" is from a clear set I have but I forget who they're by. Stamps on the 2nd page are S.A. for the cityscape and Lost Coast Designs for the pencils.