Thinking of you

I'm very excited to share my first official Creative Expressions Design Team project today.
For this month, we're working with the Winter Flowers stamp sheet, so I'll be showing more projects using this set, and more inspiration can be found by visiting the rest of the DT's bloggies.

Stamp the image onto Milk cardstock using Versamark, emboss with black powder. Take a Spellbinders circle die, place over the image and mark, with a soft pencil line, where the image overlaps the circle.

Cut out the parts that extend beyond the pencil lines.

Replace the die, lining up with the pencil lines. Bring the cut out portions to the reverse of the die, so that they will remain intact after cutting. Cut out the image.

Colour the image using Distress Markers, then use Old Paper Distress ink to define the edges.

Apply Old Paper distress ink to the Meadow mask by That Special Touch. Run through the die cutting machine to transfer the ink and to emboss the card. Define the edges with Old Paper DI

Die cut a Scallop Circle and a Labels One and mat onto the card front, along with an embossed greeting on a Fancy Tags die cut. Finish with a Seam Binding bow.

Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to check out what the rest of the team have been up to by following the link on the left.

Silver Ribbons

Sue Wilson has today launched the first, of what will be regular craft videos on her blog. The way Sue uses Spellbinders dies never ceases to amaze me, so I'm sure this new venture will provide lots of inspiration.
http://www.particraft.blogspot.co.uk/

For the wings of a dove

Another altered box; this time, I couldn't resist this cute little soap box.

It's covered with some thick, brown paper sack that our chicken feed comes in, which I slathered in PVA and dried with my heat gun. The crunched paper was then coloured with Distress Paints.

The soaps came in a pack of 4, so I'll probably make a little library with them!

Crunchy Nut

The cover for this book started life as a crunchy nut cornflakes box; I opened the box flat, glued in all the flaps and then covered wit hbrown paper - the effect I was going for was a sort of metal patina, it kinda worked, but would've been better if I'd not gesso'd the brown paper. Still I got some very textural effects with spray inks and rock salt.
I wanted to make something to hold the birthday cards from Molls 18th, so I used the box as a book cover and made the cards be the signatures. The spine was initially square and boxy, but then I decided a better look would be a rounded spine, so I just rolled the side. I finished with some texture paste and Cosmic Shimmer gilding waxes.

Creative Play

It seems like I've spent the last couple of weeks having all sorts of fun with various bits and pieces without actually making many finished 'things'. One of the main things I've been playing with are my new Dylusions inks - blimey are they fab! They were one of those things I didn't need until I saw a youtube, (I really think that phenomenon should have a name as I'm sure I'm not the only victim) so I asked for a few for my birthday, loved them and had to have all the colours! Now I have a whole pile of backgrounds waiting to be transformed.
For now, I'm sharing a small canvas, plus my Tim Holtz September tag.

18

Only last week, we brought our little bundle of awesome home from special care - she was 7 weeks early and clearly could wait no longer to get showing the world what for. Well some kind of time warp has occurred and she's now 18 and still being awesome - as you can tell I'm totally unbiased. To commemorate the auspicious occasion, I wanted to create something very different, something that reflects Moll and says something of who she is.

After watching amybutterflykisses12 Youtube from CHA, I really wanted to produce something in that vein, and it actually turned out just as I had it in my head - it's just Moll!

Making your mind up

Some time ago, I wanted to do a black and red canvas, so I too a white canvas, painted it with black gesso and a layer of black paint....then I changed my mind and wanted it white again. Well the black was a bugger to cover over, took several coats of paint, getting rid of the canvas texture in the process, but there it was covered......then I changed my mind again. I wanted texture! so I covered it in scrunched tissue - tissue would've covered the black quicker and cheaper than all that white paint! So now I had texture, but added more in the form of texture paste and I wanted colour. I went with ochre, but found it flat, so once again I painted it! Indecisive? Moi? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm done messing about with it now, I highlighted the paste with black rub'n'buff and added my 'topper'. This was also an unfinished piece, just because I was having a play and making backgrounds ready for inspiration to hit. I got as far as putting clear texture paste through a stencil onto book page and sticking it to corrugated card. I used DI to colour the book page, then added string and a glassene flower. I really roughed up the edges and stuck the corrugated to a deeply crackled board.