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

A special thank you

Recently I made a small garden caddy and dear Astrid left a lovely comment and said about how she had some ideas brewing to use the design, she made some fabulous creations which you can see Here and Here with a couple of the caddy die-cuts I sent her. Also recently she altered a wooden planter to make this incredible piece that I adore. For some reason in the past couple of years I seem to have an affinity with chickens - don't know why!! - and this gorgeous cockerel really caught my eye.

So having asked Astrid where he came from, look what arrived in the post for me.

A wonderful collection of napkins, which is what Astrid used for her box. You can see there is such a variety which will be useful for so many projects, including that wonderful rustic chicken.

I also received a very special bit of Astrid's art, this gorgeous tag. 

I feel so lucky to have such wonderful blogging friends who support you when you are dealing with problems, who share their fun and creativity and their supplies lol.

Thank you Astrid for your generosity and your kindness.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Blog address

A couple of people have got a message through to me to say that they cannot get access to my blog. I recently changed my url to www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com  but my blog is still hosted at Blogger. If you are experiencing any difficulties it might be useful to clear your cache or change the address in your blog reader (if that's possible??). If this doesn't work try accessing it from the Country View Challenge blog where Chris has a link under my DT project.  http://countryviewchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/challenge-4-june.html
Thanks for reading.
hugs {brenda} x0x

Tag It at PanPastel UK and Reverse Masking

Its been an extremely busy weekend post wise with two yesterday and again two today, I would love you to take a look at the previous ones if you have time. My vintage cabinet card album and tutorial, shabby chic configuration style box and tag card.

So Welcome to my second post today which is for PanPastel UK and the theme for the challenge this week is ‘Tag It’. I have made two tags and a tutorial for you (I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s one) which demonstrates one way of using PanPastels to create a reverse image when using a mask.

My tags started off brilliantly for this theme, but half way through I was thwarted at every turn. Let me explain.

I made 2 tags to show how you can create the positive and negative images using a mask with PanPastels (See video tutorial below for the explanation to get to this point.) Because I had used pans through the dotty mask I needed to seal it so I could continue working on it. The only problem was I had also stamped with black archival ink and look what happened.

The ink bled. The tin doesn’t tell me what is in it (it is soooo old) but there must be some acetone or similar to do this. So the question was do I start again or do I try to retrieve the situation. Always a problem solver I set about making changes to the tags by first giving a light wash of gesso. But this wasn’t strong enough so I coated the text areas with white acrylic paint. The writing still showed through so I then decided to add picket fence crackle paint, Guess what?

Yep all the crackle flaked and fell off. Still not to be outdone, I gave those areas three coats of acrylic paint (learnt this in Andy’s class) and covered it again with the crackle paint.

Ah that’s better, most of it stayed on this time. So I set about adding the elements to finish them off and actually I am quite pleased with the outcomes. Not what I had expected, but then I never finish with what was in my head originally lol.

Here is the tutorial if you would like to try the reverse masking technique I have devised. Have fun.

I believe you learn from your mistakes as well as your successes, so I hope you have learnt something from my experiments. I certainly did.

Supplies -
PanPastels, Gesso and masks from Your Creativity Store who are our regular sponsor
Sizzix vintage mini telephone and typewriter dies.
Ideaology and tissue tape.
Tim Holtz crackle paint
Fixative

Well it's been a busy week getting four posts ready for this weekend but I hope you have enjoyed some of them. Thanks for taking the time to join me. I will be off in about an hour to the Craft Barn again and Lucy (True Colours) is coming with me. It was lovely to meet up with Julia (Julia's Stuff) and Alison (CraftyTrog) on Friday and I hopefully will see them again today. I also had a lady called Glennis introduce herself to me who is one of my followers who has come all the way over from New Zealand, that was an amazing experience, I might see her again today too. And then there was the lovely Gio all the way from Italy. She is demoing so I will definitely stop by her table.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Tag Time for FSC

It's Sunday and another new challenge at FSC today and this time we are asking you to use a tag on your project.

I have made a little tag book and am so loving the rub-ons technique that Tim showed us on his blog last month, I have used that again for this project. I have used all Artistic Outpost stamps and will enter this into their June Referral Program.

Supplies -

Distress Stains - wild honey, pumice stone, antique linen, crushed olive, tarnished brass, rusty hinge

Distress inks - iced spruce, dried marigold, walnut stain,

Remnant Rubs - Tim Holtz - words, numbers, elements

Stamps - Artistic Outpost - Route 66, Diesel Punk

As the rub-ons resist the ink and leave some white on the card I have again used my white pen to highlight some areas on the stamped images to lift them and to balance the white areas on each page.

I didn't think this needed many embellishments, I think the stamps speak for themselves.

Hope you are having a lovely weekend. Doing anything nice? I shall be at the Craft Barn today for their Extravaganza weekend going to catch up with some friends. I will let you know who I saw when I get back.

hugs {brenda} x0x