Entomology tag for Easter

I have a pretty Spring like tag over on the Country View Crafts project blog today and I think it's a perfect gift tag for that Easter egg or present for someone special. 

I have outlined the steps with photos if you fancy taking a look at how it came together.

Easter is only a few days away. I love getting out my seasonal decorative pieces for this time of year.

Hope you have a good week.

hugs Brenda xxx


Updated from CVC Project Blog

Begin with distress oxides in spiced marmalade, broken china and cracked pistachio and create a dip and dry background.

 Stamp some flying bugs, I used the Entomology set of stamps by Tim Holtz and used his stamping platform to get a strong outline ( I stamped it twice using coffee and black archival inks)

Take forest moss, pine needles, tea dye and rusty hinge ordinary distress inks and with a paintbrush paint in the wings. I also used some white linen ink spray by dylusions to highlight the bodies.

Next take some scraps of paper and tear pieces to cover the butterflies and stamp the text stamp, also from the etymology set, with broken china doxide.. 

Before removing the paper lightly spritz over with water and heat dry.

Stamp the small butterflies from the classics 17 stamps and remove the little Fig. numbers, cut, distress ink the edges and adhere. Also stamp the special delivery from the correspondence set directly onto the tag.

I always 'frame' my tags, cards etc and didn't want to rely just on the normal distress inked edges so I searched my boxes of old unknown stamps and found a fabulous forgotten distressed border stamp which I used with cornflower blue archival ink.

Finally I covered the winged bugs again and splattered some white gesso and then finished with the distress inked edges.

A lovely gift tag with springlike images and colours don't you think?

Eileen Hull HeARTfelt Journal When Rust and Nature Collide

How lovely it is to be back sharing another of the journals from the lovely Eileen Hull. If you missed my vintage mixed media one you can find it here. This one is still mixed media but more in the timeworn style I enjoy using.

The inspiration for this journal came about by sitting in the work room looking out over my back garden and thinking why don't I document the changes of the seasons in the garden and use this three sectioned journal to do it.  So the seeds were sown (pun intended lol).

I'm not sharing all the process steps with you today as I will be teaching this at Country View Crafts on the 11th May and at Let's Be Creative on the 24th May but suffice to say we will be covering some simple aging techniques using the DecorArt Media range of fluid acrylic paints and mediums .......

..... on several of the layering elements for the front cover.

Including this beautiful textured butterfly ......

.... and these very realistic looking bees.

I will go through how to paint and put the covers together ......

.... and making some crackle panels to create the background for the covers.

We will put all the elements together .....

.... and stain some seam binding ribbon for the ties.

The workshop time will be taken for making the journal and the decorative elements on the front cover, so there will not be enough time to make any inserts for it. If you sign up and attend either workshop and would like to bring papers the double pages need to be 81/2 inches across and 81/4 inches long with the 81/2 inch sided folded to make pages 41/4 x 81/4. We will have a long arm stapler ready to make your pages into signatures, or you could bring them ready sewn and we will have elastic ready for you to add your inserts when you have finished.

I have made three inserts for my one ......

... and will use them to record the changes in the garden over the the year. Insert 1 for Spring; insert 2 for Summer and insert 3 for Autumn and Winter combined.

Thank you Eileen for giving me this opportunity to create alongside your team and a huge thank you to the lovely Anne (Redanne) who sent me the journal covers to use. I should also say the journal die has a closure and a label to cut as well although I have not used them yet, I will cut some labels later to add to the three sections of the inserts.

You can find some of Anne's gorgeous journals HERE and HERE.

Susan at CVC has the journal die on pre-order at the most amazing price which you can find on her website so if you are interested I would get in quick so she can pack you one off as soon as it arrives, oh and I should tell you the price is fantastically affordable for this xl scoreboards die.

Thanks for taking some time out to stop by my blog today. If you have any questions please ask them in the comments section below or email me - the address is on the sidebar. I look forward to hopefully seeing some of you at my workshop if you can make it.

Have a wonderful weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Inky and Messy at FSC

Welcome to Sunday. We had a big BBQ yesterday and this post is scheduled so I will let you know how I am later.

Today I am sharing my DT piece for Fashionable Stamping Challenges where the theme is inky and messy. Well I got messy with inks, paints, gilding flakes, embossing powder, glue - in fact you name it and it could be on here.

I am also trying to use up scraps and left over pieces of chipboard hence the unusual shape of this.

The background was layered with Eco-Friendly and Fresco Finish paints and heat dried, then edged with Crown chocolate suede paint. The next layers were Walnut Stain and Bundled Sage DIs followed by a wash of Picket Fence DS, both heat set. For the fourth layers I stamped the text and dots with Archival inks and then Fresco Finish painted die-cuts stuck over the top before  misting with Blue Patina and Cappuccino Perfect Pearls. 

I painted the large butterfly wings in gold and added small book paper butterflies, finally I stamped the bees in black Archival and added some gold pen to their bodies and wings.

I added gilding flakes to the flower heads and butterfly wings. To embellish it I made some rolled roses and sprayed hem with cosmic shimmer and used die cuts for the fence, gate and vine. 

Lastly I added some dark brown embossing powder round the edge.

Well have a great day whatever you have planned and I will be back later with my PanPastel DT piece.

hugs {brenda} xox

The letter 'B' - (bumblebeesandbutterflieswithbrenda)

Hi Everyone

It's a brighter Saturday, although the clouds seem to be looming in. Mum is also brighter today, she has been very slow and lethargic since coming out of hospital but she seemed much happier and was organising herself when I went to see her earlier. I hope the progress continues.

This week's theme at Theme Thursday Challenge is 'Your Favourite Letter' and of course this caught my eye immediately and I chose the letter B, what else could I choose???

I had great fun creating it and a saying I found helped me to have more confidence in putting it together quickly, rather than spending hours 'thinking' and changing my mind.
"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them".   Pablo Picasso

As you know I cannot see the end product in my head and although I have an idea of where I am going, I always end up stopping along the way and going back over bits and changing them. But I guess that is the process of creation for me and the way my brain puts things together.

So, the letter 'B' - B for Brenda, B for Brown, B for bumblebees, B for butterflies and more .......

I had a card with a pre-printed border down one side and used Dusky Concord DI round the edges to pull it together. I have several bee stamps and used two of them here, I also stamped the honeycomb, the postmark, the handwriting and the square heritage design. I added a bee and butterfly, both printed from the computer. Across the centre I stuck torn, brown paper with ink distressed edges and some ribbon and added the ornate letter B in the top left, taken from my stash. I also printed the sentiment by William Shakespeare which starts with the letter B and ink distressed it to fit in with the rest of the card. I added a wax seal with my initial, of course the letter B.
Hey presto, completed in less than a day and I really quite like the finished effects.

Challenge List

Theme Thursday - Your favourite letter of the alphabet
Tuesday Taggers - It's a bug's life
Creative Card Crew - Vintage / Aged
Papertake Weekly - Open challenge
Simon Says Stamp - It's so distressing
Crafty Creations - Anything goes
For Fun Challenges - Anything goes
Sassy Cheryl's challenge 5 - Distressing
Allsorts Challenge - No design papers
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle - Wings

ATC - distressed bumblebees and butterflies

Oh I have missed being able to create and blog this week, but, more importantly, Mum is home from hospital. Between us, my sister and I have managed to overcome some of the beaurocracy and get Mum back into her own environment. She needs care, and at the moment that is me, (hence no cards or blogs this week) but she is on the list and we hope to hear very soon.

That said, I did manage to grab a few hours last night which resulted me staying up till 1.00am, but this is the outcome. The two photos show the difference light can make to the same image. The first one was taken laying flat, the second one was standing up, and you can see what a difference it makes, but by comparing the two, the details and the shimmers can be seen.
I haven't made ATCs for a while but found Fun With ATCs challenge blog and this week shadows need to be included, so I thought I would experiment to see what I could do. It is just possible to see shadows behind the foliage and the butterflies and I double stamped the bee to get it to look as though it was really buzzing around. I used the swirl and butterflies stamps from the Shabby French collection by TH, the bee and the foliage are tiny stamps that I purchased at the weekend at the Farnborough Make It craft show and are from Lavinia Stamps. The Tuesday Taggers challenge this week is to include swirls and curls, they are being sponsored by Crafty Individuals. The flourish has been coloured with Promarkers (and I added to my collection at the weekend - money, money, money!!!). The background is distressed using TH distress inks and water, spritzed onto my craft mat and fits in with the Pollycraft challenge for distressing. I added perfect pearls to it as well to get the shimmer.  I highlighted the foliage with sepia accents and the butterflies with crackle accents to get the glossy, glassy look for the Cuttlebug challenge. The colours fit Think Monday ATC orange challenge and the Pink Elephant green challenge. Finally I edged the card with my Sakura glitter pens.
I love all this experimenting with new techniques and feel this is a good result for what I set out to achieve. It just so happened ,when I had finished, I realised that the content fits my blog name. Result!!
I am adding some photos at the bottom of the page that show that Spring is really on it's way. They were taken Tuesday morning along lovely Oxfordshire lanes as I was on my way to work . It was such a gorgeous morning and, as I was early for my appointment, I was able to stop a few times to take photos. These I just love for the colours and fabulous blue sky, but also because I felt very uplifted to feel the warmth of the sun and see the beautiful snowdrops.
Thankyou for looking I hope you are having a good week.
Take care. Luv Bxx

The start of something new

Well today I have started to blog - how did that come about? Its because I have been reading so many craft blogs recently and been inspired by the fabulous designs that have been published, I thought I would have a go and see what happens. Bumblebees and Butterflies - BB - thats me. So here goes, the blog is set up and I am learning new skills, where will it take me? Exciting or what? I will try to post fairly regularly and upload pictures of any of my creations as I finish them. Lets see what happens.