The Stamp Man - Colours of Spring/Easter

Hi Everyone

This is a scheduled post as I am at the Five craft show at Farnborough today and tomorrow I will be demoing all day at The Art of Craft shop, just down the road from the Five show, so if you are in the area do pop in and see me, it would be lovely to see blogging friends. Jane (store owner) will be at the show, so if you are not sure where the shop is pop over to her stand and she will give you directions, but I can assure you it is less than a mile away.

This tag is my take on Tim's Tag 10 of the 12 Tags of Christmas 2011. Have you seen he's not going to do them anymore BUT HE IS doing 12 tags of 2012. So cool. I've got to get into these now.
Did you see him on QVC? I spent a bit of money on Tuesday - but never mind.
In fact some of the things have already arrived.

Supplies -

Stamps - Spiralling floral bkg by B Line, Natures Moments by Tim Holtz

Tim Holtz Seasonal paper stash

Distress inks - Bundled sage, Victorian Velvet, Aged Mahogany

Dies - Tattered Banners, Tattered Florals, Mini Florals, Typeset

Distress Stains - Victorian Velvet, Wild Honey

I hope you can join us at The Stamp Man for our new challenge and be in with a chance of winning a £10 voucher to spend at Jill's store. Please go take a look at the amazing inspiration from the design team, their wonderful art will surely get you kick started.

Hope you have a fabulous weekend.

hugs {brenda} xox

PanPastels - Animals

Hi Everyone

Today I want to show you how to create a vintage feel to your image and background. This is my DT piece for the PanPastel UK challenge this week and as you can see the theme is animals. So let's see what you can do, you don't have to use PanPastels to be eligible to enter.

The card used for the back of the stamped giraffe image is Bazzil Basics in a weathered wood colour, covered with magenta, orange and turquoise shade PanPastels. I just love the texture it has created. Stamps are from TH Papillon and Katzelkraft Cirque 01. The main images stamped in timber brown Stazon first then masked off to stamp the background with iced spruce DI. Sealed with Daler Rowney fixative and then embossed all over with clear embossing powder.

The backing paper was made from a piece of patterned DP which was then given the embossing ink through a mask and PanPastels turquoise added and fixed, then over-stamped with a dotty stamp using fresco finish vintage lace paint. 

The blue squared effect is the PPs on top of the DP.

The other pieces for the backing have been distress edged and inked. The rosette has been topped with a vintage elephant image downloaded from the Graphics Fairy in a bottletop.

PanPastels can really give you so much more depth to your papers and can also enable you to produce fabulous vintage effects. If you haven't tried them yet watch out for a give-away I will be doing soon, you never know you might be the proud owner of some. Or if you can't wait why not pop over to Your Creativity Store to see the colours and get a fantastic price on them.

Next week we create a completely different look and use mirri-board in two different ways to create a shabby feel to a card. There is one technique I prefer over the other though.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Altered matchboxes and PSE tutorial

HI Everyone

I have been out today to see my sis and we had some time to finish a project we started back last November, but more about that another day.

It was fabulous to have Shirley (FSC), Irene, Claire and Amber come round for some crafty time together last night. 

Irene had been collecting matchboxes, so our challenge was to alter one in any way we wanted. 

We had great fun chatting whilst creating and making and the pics tell the story.

Left to right - Irene, Shirley, Amber and Claire.

You can see both the inside and outside of the boxes.

The girls did very shabby chic styles using gesso, paints, inks, fabrics as well as music paper.

Mine was more grungy and is meant to look like a suitcase - that's because I know exactly who this is for, but I can't share who that person is at the moment.

I think you'll agree everyone did a great job altering their matchbox, we had such great fun.

Yesterday I showed some photos with faded edges. I decided I wanted to learn how to do this and have found several ways of experimenting to get the sort of style I like. Sue asked if I would do a tutorial to show how I had done it. So here goes, I am using Photo Shop Elements 7.

1. Open the photograph you want to use; crop and edit.

2. Select the Eliptical Marquee Tool.

3. Click the image in the top left hand corner and drag to the bottom right hand corner to get the shape you want to work with.

4. Go to Select on the top menu bar and click 'Feather', then enter a radius amount. play with different numbers to see what effects you can achieve. Press ok.

5. Go to Select again and then click on 'Inverse' and ok.

6. Go to Edit and click 'Fill Layer' - here you can choose what you want for colour etc. I had my background set on white so I chose that.

7. Save your new photo with a different name so that you don't lose your original.

This one was feathered at 75 pixels

This was was feathered at 50 pixels.

I hope you find this useful Sue. As you can see I haven't used any brushes at all using this technique.

Have a good end of the week and thanks for stopping by today.

hugs {brenda} xox

Birthday Hybrid card

Hi All

Did you have a good Valentine's Day yesterday? My OH had a meeting in London which only lasted the morning, so I got the train up and met him at Waterloo and we had a lovely afternoon walking round the streets, with a visit to Covent Garden where we sat sipping wine and listening to a quintet of violinists with one oboe player, playing music. We explored the market and after a great meal we headed back home walking across the golden jubilee footbridge and taking in the amazing sky line of London in the dark.

So for today here is another card created in PSE using downloaded image, papers and elements and just a couple of 3d embellishments on it.

I used the same elements to create the insert for the card.

Another easy one to put in the post box!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by to see me.

hugs {brenda] xox



EDIT and update

I am trying to learn some functions in PSE and have found out how to fade the edges - thought I would see what this looks like on the blog. Not bad but must try some other effects.



Update 2
OK found another way to fade the edges, think I might prefer this way!!

xox

New baby hybrid cards

Hello Everyone


I had a surprise phone call today from Shirley (Fashionable Stamping Challenges) who is back in the area for a week and we met up today with Claire, Amber and Irene to have a natter and to craft a little bit. I had hoped I would be seeing her Wednesday night but wasn't expecting to see her today, so that was a lovely treat. Thanks for a great day girls.

So onto my cards for today. My son's best friend and his wife have just had a baby girl and because they didn't know what sex it would be I made a card both for a baby girl and a baby boy.

I used downloaded images, papers and elements to create these in PSE, then added some decoupaged and 3D embellishments to them once I had finished. I need to make more of this type of card as they are flat and will post with a normal stamp on them. You know how expensive it is now to send anything that won't go through that thin slot in the post office!!

I found a fabulous site selling scrapbook digi kits called 'Digital Crea' and very reasonable prices too. Just love the elements that are included with papers. My images I think came from 'The Graphics Fairy'.

I hope your week goes well. Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs {brenda] xox

Tag - keep me flying high

Happy Sunday to you all, I hope it is a good day wherever you are. I had a text from Maddie early this morning to say she had landed in Singapore and was on her way to the hotel.

Well this is my third post for today (never been known before!!), the other two are DT pieces, this one is just for me.

I am really disappointed I can't go to the Stamperama show. My car is still in the garage and is gonna cost me mega bucks as it needs new tyres, new windscreen and new cam-belt just to name a few bits. So that's my purse strings tied for a while.

Anyway instead I've had some fun amalgamating a number of challenges to produce this tag. Inspired by Simon Says Stamp and Show - a recipe of torn (I cheated a tiny bit, I haven't got torn edges but I have got torn fabric for the top), DIs, button and wings, Gingersnap Creations - glorious greens and Rogue Redhead Designs - a stamped background. It was Saturday show and Hels - picket stain distress stains resist that started me off and fits the Sunday Stamper challenge - I will always love you. Thanks Hels. This also reminded me of 'High' by The Lighthouse Family and the sentiment is some of the words from the song.

I have used a number of different stamp sets - Crafty Individuals, B Line Designs, Oxford Impressions, Darkroom Door, Our daily Bread and TH. I used shabby shutters, peeled paint, forest moss and pesto for my gorgeous greens. The bird cage was stamped onto some Basic Grey paper. Do you like the bird sitting on her nest? Roll on Spring I say.

The bird cage wings were painted with DIs and the covered with rock candy crackle paint and the birds were heat embossed to make them 'pop' more.

I will keep this tag for my Hubbie when it is his birthday later in the year.

Have fun and thanks so much for stopping by, I really appreciate all the lovely comments you leave me.

hugs {brenda} xox

PanPastels - Love and Romance

Hi Everyone

I am so pleased with my project this week. I have altered a box that my PanPastels came in and made it into a gift box that I am going to put some choccies in for my DH for Valentine day and on top of that I have made a matching card. This is my DT piece for the new challenge starting today at PanPastel UK challenge blog.

Whilst playing and making this box my Craft Stamper magazine arrived and I pounced on the free stamp to use and had a read of some of the articles. Trish Latimer made a selection of things using the heart stamp, one where she stamped several onto music paper and coloured them up. I had covered the box using TH seasonal papers and thought I would use that technique for the hearts to go on the lid. But whilst playing around I experimented mixing a little red PP to some multi-medium matte and covered the hearts (and some extra papers to use later). I really liked the artsy effect it gave, but I went on experimenting - see pics.

I sanded the edges to give a more vintage look......

.... and then covered with vintage photo DI.

This and the next photos show the difference it made when I then added clear embossing powder.

It created a super shiny effect, making the colour really pop.

Here you can see the before and after.

This is the finished box......

... and what it looks like on the inside.

 

I sponged the edges with embossing ink and added gold embossing powder.

I added metal wings made with metal sheet run through the Vagabond using TH heart wings die. The blue metal was rather dark so I lightly sanded the raised parts of the wings, added stream alcohol ink and sanded again.

The tattered banner, another TH die, was also heat embossed once made up and some little hearts, punched from the extra paper I had covered with the PP and multi-medium mix, again embossed with clear ep.

I used the same papers for my card, another large heart and two smaller ones - one on top of the mini rosette.   The sentiment was made using the Dymo machine. The card was also edged with gold ep.  

Rather a long post today but I wanted to show you this amazing technique and the finished effects.

I hope you will come over and show us your 'love and romance' projects and you could be in with a chance of winning a set of two colours and tools for yourself from Your Creativity Store. A fabulous prize and worth £11.99.

Please come back again next week when I will show you how to create a vintage background using bazzill paper and PPs.

Have a great week ahead.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox