Kraft away.

Welcome to Sunday in a cold and chilly UK, please can we have summer?

I have been so busy with the new challenge blog I haven’t had much time to create and make this week, but I wanted to do something for the  Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge where they want to see us use kraft in our projects.

I started with a piece of kraft card and some die-cuts glued on then scraped gesso across.

Next came some black paint, some white gesso through a mask and some dribbled white gesso.

Using corrugated card I die-cut one of Tim’s beautiful butterflies and distressed with gesso, black enamel accents and walnut stain DI.

I used more movers and shapers to create the little arch and a corrugated fleur de lis.

Having used walnut stain, antique linen, picket fence and a touch of rusty hinge distress paints on kraft card I die-cut using the tattered flower garland, painting white gesso round the edges of the petals and text stamped each one with black archival.

I also used one of Tim’s metal book plates to create the focal sentiment, again shabbying it with white gesso and using remnant rubs for the words.

Then with hessian, lace and some more remnant rubs I created the collage.

Oh and nearly forgot I added some little flicks of watered walnut stain DI.

Have a wonderful day whatever you have planned and a fabulous week ahead.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Sun, Sea and Beach for Crafty Individuals

This is my DT sample for the ‘Sun, Sea and Beach’ theme this month. Don’t forget if you have used a CI product and enter the challenge you will receive a whopping 25% off any order you make before the end of June. Everyone’s a winner then eh?

This is one of those paper machie frames from the Range with four spaces, so I have created ….

… the inside of a beach hut showing the wall and a shelf ..

.. the beach with the girls going for a paddle …..

.. the dunes with the beach huts all ready for the summer and a light house in the background …..

… and under the sea …..

I used Fresco Finish paints in Snowflake, Pumpkin Soup, Butternut, Guacamole, Smoked Paprika, Toad Hall, Inky Pool and London Night. There was also a touch of Claudine Hellmuth Modern Red and texture paste through stencils.

My artistic learning started with drawing and then went onto painting before moving into papercrafts and altered art. Here I have dabbled a bit with a paint brush.

I have added a range of embellishments both bought and natural found on the beach .

I also added a skeleton leaf and wooden items.

I was going to add loads of shell die-cuts to this as well, but changed my mind and kept it quite minimalistic. Not sure if I did the right thing or not.

Let’s hope we get some more sunny weather to enjoy being able to go to the coast.

It's Friday and the weekend starts here - yay, have a good one.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Crafty Individuals Workshop

A quick post from me today to show some of the cards made at my first Crafty Individuals workshop last week. My local craft shop, The Art of Craft, now has these stamps as a stock item and over the summer I will be doing three cards using different designs.

We used the masking technique to put together a trio of ladies, the wrinkle free distress technique for the backgrounds, the water stamping technique and used crackle paint on the flourishes.

As you can see the ladies did a magnificent job in creating these and loved the outcomes. The workshop was overbooked so I will be repeating it again this week.

Here is my sample card.

Thank you to everyone for the good wishes you have sent me on the opening of the new ‘Crafts-Too Challenge You’ blog, it really is an exciting adventure.

And just to finish off here is Ken and I on Saturday at the Isle of Wight Festival, freezing, but sunny and dry.

Look I had to go and buy a hat cos I was soooo cold lol.

Headliners for me were - The Killers (they did an amazing show), Emili Sande, Jake Bugg, Ian Hunter and The Rant Band, Steve Harkey and Cockney Rebel, Newton Faulkner, The Boomtown Rats (never liked them particularly in the 80's but they did a good set here), Paloma Faith and The Script.

I hope you are having a good week whatever you are doing and if you haven’t already please do pop over to -

hugs {brenda} x0x

New Challenge Blog

Hi Everyone

This is just a quick post to let you know there will be a new monthly challenge blog starting on Friday the 5th July called

'Crafts-Too Challenge You'.

It will be for all and every type of crafter and you will be able to enter as many times as you like over the month but there is a 'Twist' to the challenges each fortnight.

At the moment there is a Give-Away being promoted -

All the details can be found on the blog - just click HERE to be transported over.

I do hope you will join us - yes I mean 'us'. This is my newest project lol. A new challenge blog for a national craft wholesaler/distributor.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Shabby Chic at UPA

I have an article published today at Unruly PaperArts where I look at what elements we might include in our artistic projects to make it part of the Shabby Chic genre? 

What would you say these were?

Shabby Chic in room decoration and as a form of interior design is well documented, but what about a canvas, a card, an altered box? What do we choose to use to get this style?

Please hop on over to UPA today to see what I think it means for us crafters.

Have a fabulous weekend. I will be at the Isle of Wight Festival when this is published and at the time of writing the weather looks unsettled, but fingers crossed. I will catch up with you next week when I get back.

hugs {brenda} x0x

On Safari with Crafty Individuals

Just love this grungy tag using one of the two stamps in a new set from Crafty Individuals. Yes CI – 390 has this gorgeous giraffe on it as well as the most endearing elephant and calf, so if you are in summer mode, if you are going on safari this year then this could be the set for you.

I started by cutting a tag from a corrugated box using the Tim Holtz tag and bookplates die, then tearing some of the paper down one side to reveal the corrugations. (It is a real word, I looked it up lol – it means the state of being corrugated so I think it fits ok). Next I smooshed antique linen, walnut stain and broken china onto my craft mat and used the wrinkle free technique to cover my tag.

Next I rubbed the same three colours and a tiny bit of Decoart transparent yellow iron oxide on a piece of craft card, spritzed with water and used my finger a bit to move the paints around to get this amazing effect.

When it was perfectly dry I stamped the giraffe using coffee archival and heat set it. To finish off I again used the translucent yellow iron oxide to paint in the giraffe and a tiny bit of Fresco Finish translucent inky pool for the stamps, mixing the two paints together in places.

I used the CI crackle stamp to create some texture on the tag and maybe it looks a bit like animal skin?

I then mixed more paint to stamp the sentiment.

Use covered flower wire for the embellishment

I gathered up my other bits and altered everything including the pin, the journey tag, the string and even the staples for the tiny attacher.

I hope you are having a good week. Anyone off to the Isle if Wight Festival this weekend. We are and hoping for a return if that lovely sunshine we had last week. Fingers crossed.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Sticky Post - please scroll down for my latest post

I have recently changed my blog address to www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com. This has caused some problems with readers not seeing my posts in their blog reader. If this has happened to you, please add my blog again to your POST READER with this new address. That should solve the problem. Thank you.

hugs Brenda x0x

The Sewing Room - Anything Goes at PanPastel UK

Today we have an open challenge for you at PanPastel UK and anything goes.

I have used a size 10 tag this week and had in mind the challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show which is the letter 'S'. It just had to be my favourite theme - Sewing, but I also included some Stamping and I used the Sewing machine.

I used my most favourite sewing stamps which come from PaperArtsy and PanPastels for the background. I sewed round the edge of the tag using white thread then rubbed it over with the pans to match the colour of the background. The dress form image was stamped with versamark and coloured with the pans.

The sewing room frame was stamped in coffee archival onto fabric.

Smaller images stamped in coffee archival onto card I had left over from another project that had the wrinkle free distress technique on it.

Some small embellishments and we are done.

I hope your Sunday is going well, enjoy the rest of the weekend.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Gelli Printing and tag

I had a brilliant day with Andy at the Craft Barn last week attending his gelli plate workshop with Lucy and Petra. I have been playing some with one of the prints and produced this tag. I just love how you can add inks and stamps over the top. In fact if you count the gelli print as one layer there are in fact 8 layers overall. Amazing!

The layers include -

Gelli print

Masking with black paint

Stamped plastic tops from small bottles in black and white paint.

Bubbles coloured with inktense pencils

Stamped Curio and flourishes  with black archival ink(Andy’s stamps)

Stamped text using picket fence distress paint

Added washi tape

Lastly the focal image, quote and other embellishments

I forgot to take a photo of the print before I started masking, but this is an early stage.

Adding the final layers.

Well definitely different for me but greatly influenced by the work of Andy Skinner and his use of Decoart products.

.......................

We have lost the sun today and it’s showery, perfect for the grass and garden though.

Have a great end to your week.

hugs {brenda} x0x