Vintage/Shabby Mini Album

Oh dear my workshop for Saturday has been cancelled, not enough people want to learn distressing techniques, still never mind. It looks like my Christmas card workshop and this mini album workshop will go ahead.

So I thought I would post some pictures of the mini album I am teaching in November at The Art of Craft (details on the page under the header). I think I have been very adventurous trying to fit alot into the time allocated but we will give it a good go.

Front cover

If you can get to Farnborough in Hampshire, come and enjoy a couple of hours, inking and sticking with me. I am soooo looking forward to it. I hope you like this one Irene.

Hope your week has been good and that you have some nice things planned for the weekend. I have the choice of 2 x 60th birthday parties and a meal for another friend's birthday on Saturday night. Aren't I the lucky one?

Have fun whatever you do and thanks for stopping by today.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Button Up

Hi Everyone

This is the title over at Divas by Design for the next challenge and we want to see how you use buttons on your projects and I have chosen to make a tag this time round.

Recipe
Tag
Die cut tag.
Cover in black acrylic paint.
Stamp and clear emboss.
Cover with lighter acrylic paints.
When dry rub paint away from the embossing.
Adorn with your favourite embellishments.
Corset
Stamp onto scrap paper.
Spray with mists.
Colour in with pens.
Sew buttons on and add lace.

Supplies
Stamps - Clear Expressions, Andy Skinner, Personal Expressions, TH
Eco-Friendly paints, black, peony, lilac, white, clam shell
Buttons, lace, vintage image
DIs - spun sugar, broken china, vintage photo

Hope you are having a good week.

Take care.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

 I would like to enter this into these challenges -
Cards and More - Lace and buttons
Ribbon Carousel - Anything goes

Halloween Printables

Are you having a Halloween party or are you making projects for challenges like I am. Well having made a couple of my own bottle/jar labels I then find there are a number of freebies on the internet.

If you would care to share any Halloween project you make with me, then please scroll right to the bottom to link it up. I would be so pleased to see it and leave you a comment.

These I found here and here.

And more here.

These were the ones I had made.

Have fun with your Halloween projects. Please link back to me if you use any of these labels, or in fact any Halloween project at all, and show me what you have created. I will come over and take a peek.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Leave your Halloween project link here. You have until the 1st November. I look forward to coming to see your creations.

October Sunrise

What a glorious day yesterday, we got out our garden tables and chairs, that had been packed away for the winter, and had a BBQ.  But I had to share these pics of the sunrise at 6.30 this morning, the sky was so beautiful just as day was dawning.

 Have a wonderful day wherever you are and whatever your plans are.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

PanPastel art journal pages

These are my PanPastel (PP) journal pages in the style of Donna Downey. I found Donna's blog whilst searching for anything on PPs and am in awe of her fresh creative style with techniques I just wanted to try out.

I stamped with PPs and water using a hero arts set called dotted flowers. Having stamped, edged in some stalks with the soft knife and blended the blue around them I then sprayed with acrylic sealer/finisher as I don't have a fixative. Using cotton buds I then coloured in the flowers, sprayed with the sealer again, added a quote and dripped paint down the page. Different eh?

I am adding this to -
PanPastel challenge - Anything goes. My third entry in a week!
Just For Fun - Anything but a card,
Crafts 4 Eternity - Anything goes
Simon Says Stamp - Anything goes

Hope you are having a good weekend.

Take care as always and thanks for stopping by today.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

My new Blog Button

Today Cindy at Whimsical Musings has posted a free on-line seminar about how to improve your ratings on your blog and how to get more followers. Now whilst I am not trying to get a 10/10 blog, I do like to network to meet new people and to see the wonderful creativity there is out in blogland. So I decided to create a blog button to put in my sidebar with some html code that others can display if they want to.

This is my button -

Do pop over to Cindy's tutorial, it is very short but very informative and was great for helping me to understand how more of blogger links work - thanks so much Cindy for sharing this with us all.

Now I am off to create the html code and post this on my sidebar. If you have a button on your blog, do let me know and I can pop over and grab it.

Have a great Friday.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

For the Steampunk Man

I worked at home yesterday morning so I got up extra early to see what my blogging friends have been making lately and to catch up on some challenges. I have combined some of them to make this tag which fits the themes at -
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Men only
Make My Monday - Steampunk anything but a card.
Sunday Stamper - Simply irresistible
PanPastel challenges - Anything Goes

I have used the PanPastels to create the background using versamark with stamps as a resist. Some stamping, spraying and embellishing finish it off. I love these pastels that create this dry mixing of colours. I used Turquoise Shade, Raw Umber, Bright Yellow - green tint and Yellow Ochre.

This is one of my moulds covered in copper inka gold and black soot DI with white and silver ink pads wiped over the numbers and cogs. I added washers and a watch part to it.

A Scrolls Work stamp coloured with PanPastels and inked round the edges. Added to a spring and wire and pinned to the top.

My pen nibs were acquired from ebay and watch pieces from a carboot.

Thanks for stopping by today. I am now off to work.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Shared Moments

Yay I have managed to get a piece made for the Gingersnap Creations challenge this week. The pressure of work has prevented me doing much else other than DT work and also I am prepping for the classes I am giving soon, but I have managed to squeeze this in for this week. This is a wooden page for a journal.

The image is from The Graphics Fairy. I have used all scraps from my box to add the collage pieces.  Underneath the background has numerous layers - music paper, paint and ink, pastels, versamark with masks and more pastels, various stamps and satin glaze.  The flowers have been made using a marianne die and for the butterflies I used a crealies die.

This is the piece that I came home and experimented with after buying the Pan Pastels from Lin on Sunday.  The colours are vibrant and translucent and give a completely different feel to the DIs I always use.  I want to experiment more with textures and other resist techniques. (I just need some more time at the moment!!!!)

I have discovered that there is a brand new challenge blog starting for this product - PanPastel UK Challenge, so I am going to enter it into their first challenge - Anything Goes. The four colours  used were Magenta, Turquoise Shade, Raw Umber and Yellow Ochre. I love the mixes they give.

Other challenges to have fun with -

Crafty Ribbons - Anything Goes

Pals Paper Arts - Lace

PolkaDoodles - Distress it

My Craft Spot - Ribbon

Creative Stamp Friends - Anything but a card

Well we are supposed to be getting a heat wave this week in the UK - how strange our seasons are at the moment because we are then predicted snow in October -  really can't believe that!!!

Have a great week everyone.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox