The Red Shoes

Not only the title of this card, but also a great classic British movie and a fantastic album by the amazing Kate Bush! :) In both of those cases, the red shoes are ballet shoes of course, not a battered pair of Converse sneakers! I doubt that they make ballet shoes to fit my canoe-sized feet and I wear Converse Chuck Taylors ALL THE TIME, so it was always obvious which way I was gonna go with this :)

All of the stamps are from Tim Holtz@Stampers Anonymous (except for the sneakers, which is my favourite stamp and seems not to be available any longer If it was I'd buy a second so I always had a spare, lol).

There's nothing specially out of the ordinary technique-wise here, apart from the red background which was acrylic paint applied with a moist wipe, and the orange which was 2 squirts of sunset orange in a full mini-mister of water to give a softer (and more economical) spray of colour.

I'm really enjoying card-making at the moment, expect more soon! :)

It's rude to point!

A few weeks ago, while on an outing to York for the day, I bought a box of 5"x5" square cards and envelopes and have been itching to have a go at one ever since! I also got a few of Tim Holtz's new stamp sets a day or two ago, and this card includes some of the images from the "Steampunk" set. The house was inspired by some I saw on the Paperbag Studios blog (though I think theirs may be stamps and mine was hand drawn).

During the Tim Holtz class I took a couple of weeks ago, he gave us a dictionary page to use as we wished. I didn't use mine on the configurations box project, so made use of it on this card. I stuck it to white card and cut out a square for the main panel, a smaller one for the house and a triangle for the roof.

I distressed the main panel with Walnut Stain DI around the edges and stamped some splatters from the "Bitty Grunge" stamp set in Brushed Corduroy DI. I blended Rusty Hinge DI on the roof and Fired Brick on the house. Using a black pen and a white pen I drew freehand lines around the roof, window and house and then used a red and an orange promarker to make the edges a little more punchy.

The doors were white card, embossed with large dots in the cuttlebug then sprayed with Red Pepper Color Wash spray. I cut a "T" with scissors in the panel then folded the doors back, drawing panels on them with a white pen. I then used PVA glue to fix the doors to the house. The Steampunk man was stamped in Walnut Stain DI and cut out then glued in the doorway.

The hands were stamped and coloured with promarkers then cut out. I placed a strip of tissue tape down the right side of the main panel and then the house, roof and hands were fixed to the background and edged with grey promarker. Finally I cut a mat from some patterned cardstock and coloured the edge using the same brown promarker as I had used on the sleeves, to tie the whole thing together, colourwise. I glued mat to card and main panel to mat and Bob's yer uncle! :) I had a lot of fun making this, I think I need to go out and find an old dictionary somewhere so I can do more! :)

I've entered this in this week's Theme Thursday challenge, which is "hats".

Gingersnap Creations - "Office Supplies" Challenge

"Office Supplies" is the theme over on the Gingersnap Creations blog this week. After completing the configurations box that I blogged here I had 3 of the small boxes left, which I thought would be perfect for this project.

I started by joining the 3 boxes together with my ATG gun, then covered them with paper from the Tim Holtz "Crowded Attic" card stack, finishing off the edges with Tissue Tape. I pierced 4 holes in the bottom and inserted large chrome brads to act as feet. I added 2 metal handles to the front and filled the compartments with office supplies (of course!). The tickets were from the "Lost & Found" card stack and the vintage eyeglasse came from the Artistic Stamper. Click one of the images for a larger view.

Pop over to the GC blog to see how the other DT members have interpreted the challenge - go on, you know you want to! :)

Moi? Je ne suis pas branché!

Which is to say "Me? I'm not trendy!", and believe me, I'm not! LOL (A fact that I'm sure can be vouched for by those who know me!) But I did think this guy from one of the PaperArtsy Urban Snapshot plates is kinda cool looking, hence the "branché" on the tag.

I sat down to start work on this with absolutely no idea in my head as to what I was going to do, other than start out by spraying colour onto a blank tag. I tipped a load of metal stencil letters onto my desk to see what I could spell with them and the word "branché" just jumped out at me, which tied in nicely with the choice of stamp for the main figure :) I've also been listening to a bit of french music in the last couple of days so I'm sure there's a residual influence there too!

I sprayed the tag with Cranberry and Stream Color Wash sprays and then laid down some of the stencil letters and sprayed again with Sunset Orange. The top panel is a leftover piece from a sheet from the Tim Holtz "Crowded Attic" card stack. The guy was stamped seperately and cut out then fixed in place and coloured with Promarkers. I used the stencils with a white pen to spell out the word, and then doodled a bit with black and white pens. I stamped the star, cut it out and fixed it in place, then finally edged the whole tag with some Walnut Stain distress ink.

As ever, click the image for a better view! :)

It Ain't Heavy Metal!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge this week is "Metal", so when I started making a frame for last week's piece I decided to encrust it with metal embellishments to fit with this week's theme!

I painted the frame with a mixture of Red Pepper and Espresso paint dabber and sanded it to give a smooth surface and to distress the edges. After that, it was simply a case of raiding my embellishment boxes! All items were fixed in place with Claudine Hellmuth's Matte Multi Medium.

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Doing what comes nature-ally!

The theme set by my friend Hels over on the Sunday Stamper today is "Nature". I thought this frame, decorated with variagated leaves fitted nicely with the theme, so, um, here it is :)

I painted the wood frame with white acrylic paint dabber, then sanded it to give an even, "limed" look. The leaves were stamped with tuxedo black memento ink, then coloured with a variety of green promarker shades. I didn't want to post the frame here with nothing in it, so I filled it with an image cut from Tim Holtz's new "Crowded Attic" card stack.

As ever, click on the image for a better view! :)

Tim Holtz Class Project

As I mentioned here a couple of days ago, I was lucky enough to take a class with Tim Holtz a week or so ago. I've finally finished off the project I started in class, one of his "Configurations" boxes. It hasn't photographed that well, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I have 4 more of these waiting to be started, so you'll be seeing more of them in due course! :)

As ever, click either of the images to get a better view!

Something Just for Me!

It suddenly occurred to me tonight that every single time I've made one of these framed moo pieces I've given it away to someone else. Since I still have a lot of empty wall space to fill, I thought it was time to redress the balance a little, so this is one is all for yours truly! :)

Made from bits and bobs of things I had left lying around so if you look carefully you might recognise parts of things you've seen here before! :) As ever, click on the pic for a better view!

Oops, I nearly forgot!

A week or two ago I "upcycled" some of my recently made tags into a framed gift for a friend and then proceeded to completely forget to blog it! The windowed moo central panel and the mount that surrounds it were designed in Inkscape and cut on the Cricut using the Sure Cuts a Lot program.

As ever, click on the image for a beter view! :)

ArtsyCrafts Workshops, Part 1

As some of may know (because you saw me there - or heard me, I seem to be recognised by my voice a lot!) I went on the ArtsyCrafts Workshop last week. This was a 2.5 hours class with the awesome Lin and Leandra and a 4 hour class with Tim Holtz himself!

Needless to say, a wonderful time was had by one and all - many, many thanks to all involved for their tireless hard work and preparation for this great event! I'll show the Tim Holtz project in part 2 (I've got a few finishing touches to add to it), but shown above is the project we made in the class with Lin and Leandra. Great fun to make and I got to use some cool new products - PaperArtsy's new range of chalk acrylic paint, metallic "goop" and metal card among them. They even gave me a "boy" alternate to use instead of the dangling pearl embellishment it featured (nice, but not really my "thing" lol)! I have to say, I think it's one of the nicest things I've ever made in a class!