Made with He{Art}

This card combines some of my favourite things right now... Brushos and VLVS plates of rubber. The background panel was Brushos over glossy card with edges sponged with archival ink. The scribbly star, wording and the random scribbly drops are all from one of the newest releases from VLVS. Simple but effective...and of course "in real life" the background card has that glossy sheen to it that the camera has not picked up.

I'm happy.
Until next time
Cxx

New plates of rubber

This week I took delivery of three brand new plates of rubber from Viva Las Vegas Stamps and they are  gorgeous. The latest release consisted of five new plates and the three I chose were 1471, 1472 and 1474. These plates comes as  a flat rubber sheet with as many stamps crammed onto each sheet as is humanly possible. You then simply cut them out and mount them in the way you prefer. I actually don;t mount mine at all. I prefer to keep them as plain rubber and I use them with a block that has tack'n'peel on it. That stuff is magical and it saves me a ton of money of mount foam and  loads of time because I do not have to faff about and there is zero stress involved.

For the above card I used  stamps from plate 1471 for the scribbly background and border,  the flowers and the wording and plate 1474 for the quirky little creature.

It was a very quick and basic effort but I was dying to try these out...and I shall be back in the craft room in a little while get all inky as I try out some of the other fabulousness that landed through my letter box this week.
Until next time
Cxx

Running lady

We recently returned from a USA trip and I picked up a selection of stamps I had pre-ordered from the wonderful Viva Las Vegas Stamps store (in Las Vegas of course!)

I absolutely love this running lady image and could see it working for a number of situations/occasions. This was my test stamping and I chose to keep it really simple, stamping in black archival ink on linen textured card. A simple red mat was all it needed and I will add a sentiment when I decide how to use it.

Sometimes simple is really good.

Until next time
Cxx

HeArt

I recently took part in an art swap where the remit was to make a heart using recycled or reclaimed materials...

So I grabbed an empty cornflakes box and a marker pen and roughly drew a heart shape and cut it out with scissors. I used this as a template for another layer and I stuck the two together to strengthen and allowed it to dry.

At this stage I will admit I have no idea what I was going to do...so I grabbed the gesso and coated each side of my heart with white gesso and left that to dry... while I gazed around for items I could recycle to use in this project...

and I spotted a pile of pretty paper napkins on the shelf and among them was the plain white backing layer that I had removed from a napkin used in a previous project. It had a little texture around the edges but otherwise was really plain, so I took some archival ink and a grid stamp and randomly stamped over the tissue paper and then tore it into little pieces and added that to both sides of my heart and once again left that to dry...



The drying was time was really useful because it allowed me thinking/gathering time in between stages.

I knew I wanted to decorate both sides of the heart but I also realised I would need to add a string to hand it and so the reverse side needed to be fairly flat....and I needed to work on that side first.

By this time I had an idea of what I planned to do and I wanted a contrast between the two sides and decided to stick with monochrome on the reverse side. I added extra tissue to give more texture and stamped more of the grid onto the dried base. Then I chose the wording stamp (SU) and stamped it centrally before adding a heart frame using liquid pearls.

Once that was dry I could start on the front of my heart. I decided I wanted something pretty and I wanted there to be texture. I chose two stencils and applied texture paste through each one and left them overnight to fully cure.

It was at this point that I found some scrap red card and punched a heart. To this I added some white cotton mesh trim which I adhered to the red heart with gel medium. Once this was dry I trimmed it with scissors, leaving a little overhang all round.

Then it was time to add colour. I used a whole mixture of colourants including luminarte powders, brushos, distress paints and inks. I started with a generous dollop of gel medium and added the colour bit by bit, mixing as I went and using water spritz and tissues to blot and add layers of colour. When I was happy I set it aside to fully dry.

Now all was left was the finishing touches..I made up the teeny locket which had been lurking in my craft room for over two years (shame on me), sealing the image inside with gel medium and topping with a dome, I attached this to the heart and adhered the heart to the project.  I added liquid pearls to the flowers and around the edges of the heart  and used stickles shimmer to the butterflies and once I was happy I went around the edge of the heart on both sides with some diluted soot distress ink and then added the rescued ribbon to finish it all off.

I have been sitting on this project for a while because my swap partner was away and I wanted to be sure she saw the heart at her house before it appeared anywhere on-line.

That is it for now..my recycled heart has a new home.
Until next time,
Cxx

Bookmarks

I love books (real ones) and bookmarks and so it was an easy decision for me  to take part in a bookmark swap. For this swap we had to make a pair of bookmarks based around a favourite book. Now asking me to choose a favourite book is like asking a mother to choose a favourite
child, but since I had a set of gorgeous Alice stamps it seemed only right to use them here...and who doesn't like the Alice books eh?

I made one wider and slightly longer than the other but basically used the same process to link the two. I started with mixed media paper and used a variety of inky sprays to from a background base - letting each colour dry before adding the next to avoid the possibility of "mud" colours. Once the base was dry I added some texture paste through an Um Wow Studio stencil and when they was dry I added colour using a variety of colours in the perfect pearls range...this gives the text a little bit of sparkle.

The stamps I used for this are from VLVS and I stamped them onto the background and then again onto another sheet of moondust  paper. I  coloured the background to the image on the right and then fussy cut the characters out of the the moondust images and adhered them over the top using gel medium.

For the tails of the bookmark I punched and set the bookmark with my cropodile and then used some wool fibres. I rolled paper beads around the tail ends of the fibres to finish them off and sealed them with a gloss finish. I placed the bookmarks on the worktable with the tails hanging over the edge to allow them to dry overnight and to prevent them form sticking to anything or to each other.

I was quite pleased with the end result and sad to have to have to put them in an envelope and send them off. I think I may make a second set for myself...I do love a nice bookmark!

Until next time, take care
Cxx

Because you're awesome

I made this card for an awesome friend of mine with a birthday soon.

The butterfly was triple stamped and embossed onto glossy card and has split fibres for antennae. It was cut out by hand using scissors.

The background was a triple mat of gold foil card, chocolate brown textured card and a pretty pastel card which I embossed with a crafter's companion texture 8x8 embossing folder

The wording is from a Stampin' Up! set called Botanicals for You and I stamped it onto vanila card, cut it out and used a distressing tool and some vintage photo distress ink to age it slightly.

End result is a very simple card that says what it needs to say and I know my friend is going to love it.

Until next time
Cxx