Path of Positivity - Desire 2

I was thinking of the desire to do something positive in life, however small, and love this Indigoblu sentiment.  I made a background of timepieces, and added a small sparkly dragonfly as an illustration of a breath-taking moment.

Path of Positivity - Desire 1

For the older married couples among us, I thought is sentiment from Visible Image was great, and it goes well with a vintage heart stamp by PaperArtsy.  The couple in the heart remind me slightly of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, now our Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, whose marriage has lasted an amazingly long time.  Distress ink background, stazon stamping, with sakura pen on the roses, gold pen around the heart and distress sparkles over the heart.

Block printing

Made a card using acrylic block printing technique - lots of interesting texture but I found it hard to show this in the photo.  I stamped a bit of small text around the edge, and stamped the Craft Stamper flowers onto another printed sheet. Left the tag with the sentiment plain so it would show up well.Very messy and great fun!

Embossing background

Played with the Craft Stamper Magazine's embossing background idea.  I thought I would make an ATC but I backed it onto black card so its too big.  As I did not have very many coloured embossing powders, I used dull silver, dull gold and pink, then the stencil was embossed with silver pearl, which added texture but not colour, then I put a bit of sparkly gold on using my finger to add the versamark ink, and the stamping was embossed in black.  I love the way the images slide around a bit, adding to the distressed look. The final layer of the background was to add some sprinkles of sparkly gold powder, without any ink, and heat from below to melt them.  Mind you, I got a similar effect on the flowers I made, by adding gold glitter glue, but still... it was embossing!  I made a few matching flowers separately, and put them on with sticky pads.  Nice idea, I'll try it again sometime.  I like the fact that it looks a lot more textured than it is, although the background is not completely flat.

Some cards

Never seem to have enough time to blog, but I have done quite a bit of crafting this year though I forget to photograph most of it.  Anyway, here are a few pictures.  I made some inchie cards inpsired by a Craft Stamper mag article a few motnhs ago.   I'm still managing the daily art journal - see pictures of the calendar on my other blog.

Jan & Feb ATCs

I'm using the Craft Stamper mag free stamps to decorate my Art Journal Calendar this year, so I thought I would make a series of ATCs each month using them too. The backgrounds are watercolour paint, then stamped and for January coloured with Sakura pens. I gave away most of the January ATCs, so the two pictured here are not the best ! I also bought some things in Create and Craft TVs sale, and made the vintage style ATCs in January with some of those bits - love the roses. And I found some super Tim Holtz stamps for sale on ebay, so I had to buy them and use the umbrella man to make ATCs in Feb. He is stamped onto acetate, heat embossed, and fixed using brads over a background made from distress ink stains splattered on blue card - I was playing with the stains to see what effects I could do.

ATCs

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Somehow I never got back to it after our holiday, I was so busy. Anyway, for my 2012 calendar see my brand new other blog - Sheila's 2012 Calendar. And here are a few ATCs I made in 2011. We decided to give up having themes for our monthly swap, and decided to do "Anything Goes". Inspiration was flagging in November so I did dome random choices using a die, and for December it came up red and black, cute style, seasonal theme, so although I don't usually do cute, I dusted off some unused stamps made ATCs.








For November, my random choices were yellow and purple, distressed shapes. I forgot to distress the edges of the shapes so they are not really distressed style, but I did use some purple shamrock brads I got ages ago in a mystery parcel. And blue and brown, oriental, flowers (a great idea - I enjoyed doing htis, and I did use a bit of distress ink round the edges of these!)









And here are a few ATCs I made for UK Stampers network swaps. I got the panda stamp in a craft shop's closing down sale - sad to see the shop go, but we still have the chance to meet fro workshops in local halls now we can't met at the shop in Twyford.