Sweet Treats

A jar of Honey and some pumpkins make up my autumnal treats for this card. This all started with me playing with a dotty embossing folder and some paint and I ended up with a piece that reminded me of honeycomb so with that in mind I decided I wanted to make something for Jenny’s challenge at Frilly and Funkie – ‘Eat, Drink and be Merry’.

The background is one of my gelli prints with some stamping over the top, and I started with this, the honeycomb, some corrugated card and the stamped Stampers Anonymous bee.

It took me a while to gather all the elements together until I was happy with the design. The pumpkins are a sizzix die which I had forgotten I had and uncovered in a drawer, I cut three pumpkins using some leftover inked card and to add to the themed pieces I dripped tea over them.

The jar is a memory box die, inked, spritzed and flicked with water, heat dried and covered with clear embossing powder. The label is an internet download.

You can see the shine of the EP here and how the layers have built up.

All the other pieces I used are ‘scraps’ that came together to add texture, height and dimension to the piece.

I am also just going to squeeze this into the Artistic Stamper's challenge - Autumn, I think the pumpkins and colours fit the bill here. Our Creative Corner want forgotten things and the pumpkin die was a recent find (just in time for autumn and halloween). Lunagirl have an Autumn theme too and I will join in their challenge as well and Vintage Stamping Challenges have 'Anything in your Garden' as a theme. 

I haven’t been able to get so much crafting and commenting done this week as this poor fellow has been so miserable and needed more attention than usual.

Cimmie cut his paw last Saturday and had to have it stitched and is having to wear this collar until at least Monday when we hope the stitches can come out and he can go outside again. I am sure he is longing wistfully for that to happen.

You can see he is not happy. He gave us a real scare on Monday when he escaped and we had to follow him around the neighbourhood trying to get him back in again.

And he refuses to have anything to do with me at times. Roll on Monday.

I hope you are having a good weekend.

Have fun.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Happy Halloween tag

Well the sun shone today and we had a beautiful warm afternoon, just like yesterday but the rain has set in this evening, I'm glad I'm tucked up warm indoors.

I loved making this tag because it includes some simple stamping and then embellishing, two of the things I really like doing.

This uses mostly Artistic Outpost  Gothic 1 plate stamps for the main images apart from the crow which is from the Tim Holtz mini halloween set.

This spooky lady has been given an orange gem for her eye, she looks very medieval (not evil) in a way. Ken says she looks more like Queen Borg (Star Trek), as I don’t watch it, I can’t comment on that. I love the frame around her, I seem to have a thing about frames at the moment.

The top of the tag has some twirly wire (cut from the flowers at the bottom – waste not, want not as they say) and also one of Tim’s wishbones with Onyxite treasure gold over it. Ken kindly drilled a hole in it so I could hang it (a trick learned from Tim on the workshop day in August).

Finished at the bottom with flowers, metal leaves, green feathers and some green twine.

I do like making things for halloween, I don’t know why because I don’t really decorate the house or anything.

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
On any other night.
Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms.
In masks and gown we haunt the street
And knock on doors for trick or treat.
Tonight we are the king and queen,
For oh tonight it's Halloween!

Author unknown

I am entering this into the Artistic Outpost referral theme for September where the theme is anything goes.

I hope it’s not too scary. Enjoy.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Eclectic Elements–Wooden You for UPA

My article for Unruly PaperArts this month is about using wood in your projects and I chose the title ‘Altered Wood'. It is my last article as I am intending to spend more time on my own projects but I am so pleased it is not closing and will continue as a featured blogozine.

If you are anything like me you will have a box of things that you have collected with the intention of altering at some point. For me some of these have been collected at boot fairs, charity shops, left over containers or things I have specifically bought (like shadow boxes), but for this project I chose to use two of the boxes that the small wooden embellishments come in and I knew I wanted to make them into a configurations type box, hinged together.

Here are some of the photos from the article which you can read over at UPA today.

I would love it if you have the time to pop over to UPA to read the full article and step by step and perhaps leave me a comment over the there as it’s my last article for them. I’d like to wish Nicie and Zoe the best of luck in taking over, without them the blogozine would have had to close.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and for sharing in my artistic endeavours.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Crazy Stamping with Finnabair

We didn't get time to finish the last pages at the Finnabair workshop, we just didn't make it, but I  knew I had to get them done to finish all the projects and record all the ideas that Anna gave us. So this is the last set of pages she showed us how to make and such a great and effective idea. Anna’s compositions are always so well balanced, she arranges her visual elements in such a way that is pleasing to the viewer, giving structure to the layout and takes our eyes around the project so that we notice details and brings us back to the focal point again. To me composition is probably the thing I spend most time on when designing my own layouts and art. It takes me forever.

Here is my version of the crazy stamping technique and if you want to see more about how to do it then check out Anna's Creative Jumpstart video HERE.

This is middle granddaughter having fun when we went up to the Victoria and Albert museum last year, doing one of the children’s workshops.

I loved doing the crazy stamping, cool technique.

And I just used some washi tape and little flowers to introduce colour, of course it had to be pink which is Ella’s favourite.

Thanks for stopping by to see my Finnabair inspired pieces, I am on my own now lol. But I learnt a lot from the workshops and mostly about freeing myself up to be more instant and expressive when I am working. I hope it will speed me up some.

I might see some of you at Ally Pally as I think I will pop up tomorrow morning which will leave Sunday free to get a project finished that needs to be done for the end of the month.

Have a great weekend and hopefully time for some creative moments.

hugs {brenda} x0x

ICAD swap and Layers at CVC

Remember I received two gorgeous ICADS (or Skinnys as we used to call them) as part of Astrid’s swap, well today I am showing you the two I made with envelopes to go with them as my DT contributions to the Country View Crafts’ Challenge which is Layers.

I love making collage pieces and super-inspired by Finnabair I set to work.

ICAD 1

A masked background, a TH stamped steampunk image and embellishments for the Skinny.

Then some collage papers with wooden and metal embellishments for the front of the envelope which was made with a strip of 12 cm wide paper from a 12 x 12 TH paper stash.

My favourite glue to have beside me is Evo-Stik wood adhesive and it adhered these heavy embellishments together perfectly.

Some of these were bits I had rusted, others were painted and brushed with Onyxite treasure gold.

I also added some tea, Finnabair style.

On the back I made another collage and added a simple closure.

ICAD 2

A distress paint and stamped background, again with embellishments and die-cuts adhered collage style.

This envelope was more simple in style but I wanted this acetate clock face to be the focus.

I adhered it to a painted wooden cog to give it more height and dimension.

The insides of the envelopes are the patterned side of fab Tim Holtz papers.

More papers collaged and another simple brad enclosure.

Well I hope you like all my layers on these projects and most of them are made from papers from my bits box – a great way to use up leftovers. The two recipients of these have now received them so I an show them knowing they are in safe hands again.

Let’s see what layered projects you are making this month. Don’t forget they can be layers of paints and inks or layers of paper, card and embellishments. Hop on over to Country View Challenges where the winner will receive a £20 voucher to spend in the on-line shop.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Challenges to have fun with -
Craft Room - use some wood - The first ICAD envelope has two wooden cogs, painted to look as though they are rusted metal.
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Stamp on anything but plain paper. - Mine is Tim Holtz paper stash covered with gesso before stamping over it.

Workshop–Crafty Individuals stamps and Giveaway winner

I taught another CI workshop last Thursday and had a great time with a lovely group of ladies. We made a card and tag with an autumnal theme, but before I move on  just to let you know I am announcing the winner of my ICAD envelope at the end of this post.

It has really felt like autumn today, chilly, grey and the leaves are starting to turn too, so sad.
 So for this tag and card we used distress inks for the background choosing colours like dried marigold, scattered straw, mustard seed and added a bit of vintage photo and peeled paint.

We stamped the image once on the tag, twice on the card and another four times on cream card so that we could decoupage some extra flowers and seed heads colouring them with the same distress inks.

We stamped with bubble wrap and white acrylic paint and using a white posca pen we added some highlights .....

..... and used whispers pens to add a little more colour on the stamps in the background..

Then we doodled round the edges to frame the compositions.

Look at what some of my group made.

They loved their makes and Lorraine had never used distress inks before, she did a brilliant job as did all the others. Isn't it amazing that we all used the same supplies but got such different outcomes?
Thanks ladies for a fabulous morning.

Onto my giveaway which can be found here.

The winner is ...........

COCO

Hey Coco this will be wending it's way to you as soon as I receive your address. Please send it to me by email - which can be found on the sidebar.

Thanks to everyone who leaves me such lovely messages and to those of you who took the time to enter this little giveaway, you really are the nicest people.

Hope you are having a good week and have some creative time planned in somewhere.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Tim’s tags of 2012–July revisited.

It’s almost that time of the year again and so I am getting in early with my first Halloween make for 2013.

This is tag 6 in my quest to revisit Tim’s tags of 2012 which originally started off to get Mr Mojo back, but after all the wonderful workshop experiences I have had recently I feel truly inspired again so I will continue to finish them all just for fun. But more inspiration to come from Tim, I have just signed up for Creative Chemistry 2 and looking forward to seeing what he and his guests make for us.

You can find Tim's July tag HERE where he gives all the details of how he made his one and of course it was a completely different theme. I followed his instructions for the process and techniques but changed the colours and images.

Supplies -

Alcohol inks – sunset orange, wild plum, gold

Distress stain – picket fence

Stamps – mini halloween, mini halloween 2

Looking forward to see more halloween makes over the coming weeks. I know some of you are well into it already.

I had a great day with Jo Firth Young yesterday and am looking forward to today's session too.

I hope you are having a great weekend. I can't believe  the beautiful blue sky and sunshine we have started with today, we are forecast gales and lots of rain which I guess will come in later :((

"Explore, discover and Create"

hugs {brenda} x0x