Shabby Chic meets Grunge

Happy Easter Monday.

I seem to have 2 loves at the moment in the design and style elements of my work, both the Tim Holtz style of grunge and distressing AND the lighter shabby chic with vintage feel. I found a blog some time ago that I keep going back to, it is like a magnet and attracts me to go and see more of the designers work. It is called Iralamija and is well worth your time in visiting it. Bety uses gorgeous colours with vintage images and lacy designs; ribbons, buttons, bows and glitter are all included. This week she has a really cute image incorporated into a fab little card that is irresistable, so (with her permission), I set about making a card of my own using the layout she had created.

The challenge at Stamp Something is Pink Somethings so I chose scraps of paper that fitted in with the theme and which also linked to the Digital Tuesday challenge of using scraps. I chose the image from a set from Debbi Moore, it's a fun picture, and with grand-daughters I can see them dressing up and being like this. I also decided to use my brand new TH alterations scrollwork edge and ink distressed it with tattered rose, aged mahogany and frayed burlap. I ink distressed a small scrap of pink card, rough edged it using the TH distressing tool and addedd cosmic shimmer aqua twinkle as the mount for the image. Then outcame my sewing machine, this is the first time I have used it with papers. The tension wasn't quite right, but it's come out ok. I used a couple of paper petals and ink distressed the bottom one with the tattered rose and found a button, some ribbon and seam binding for the embellishment. The phrase is a rub-on.

I really quite like the effect and thanks to Bety for her inspiration, I just love your delicate work.

Here are the new additions to my stash - there are a few more still to come. But it's exciting to play with new things isn't it?  I have two weeks without any school visits so I will have more time to use them and see what I can create.

Enjoy the rest of the day.

LOL Bxx

Challenge List

Stamp Something - Pink Somethings

Our Creative Corner - Break out the Buttons

Creative Card Crew - Vintage / Aged

Papertake Weekly Challenge - Open challenge

Simon says Stamp - It's so distressing

Crafty Creations - Anything goes

For Fun Challenges - Anything goes

The Creative Cottage challenge 4 - Pretty Pink
Pollycraft - Anything goes
Quixotic challenges - Case It

Pics from yesterday's Easter Egg Hunt for Becca, Ella and Maddison.

Sister book

I hope you have been having a lovely Easter Sunday and that the Easter bunny has visited.

Some of you know that I have a sister who lives about 60 miles away from me and was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis many years ago. As time has gone on it has progressively got worse to the point that Chrissie's joints are very swollen and painful. This has affected her mobility and the use of her hands. She is a crafter and a designer but finds it very difficult to do very much now. You can imagine how I felt when she presented me with this lovely book this week. I had to show it to you.

As you can see it is a book that she has made and put together herself. I love it.

The pages unfold and depict how skillfully she has put it together with limited use of her hands, but her creative mind shines through.

Chris loves using frames in her work and you can see how she incorporates them into this style. Distressing is not something she has been used to, but saying that she still knows how to use it to good effect.

I shall treasure this book and I shall use it for inspiration, there are several things in it that I haven't thought of using or doing.

Thankyou Chrissie, I am touched by the sentiments and I shall always look at it with love and pride.

LOL Bxxx

Maddison's new hat

I just had to post this. The girls came round the other day and Maddison was wearing a new hat which Becca had made her at school. It's so cute. Here is the tired bunny with her hat on.

I think Becca did a great job, she is in year 8 at school and made this for her sister in design and technology lessons. Well done Becca.
I hope everyone is looking forward to choccie Easter eggs tomorrow.
LOL Bxxx

The letter 'B' - (bumblebeesandbutterflieswithbrenda)

Hi Everyone

It's a brighter Saturday, although the clouds seem to be looming in. Mum is also brighter today, she has been very slow and lethargic since coming out of hospital but she seemed much happier and was organising herself when I went to see her earlier. I hope the progress continues.

This week's theme at Theme Thursday Challenge is 'Your Favourite Letter' and of course this caught my eye immediately and I chose the letter B, what else could I choose???

I had great fun creating it and a saying I found helped me to have more confidence in putting it together quickly, rather than spending hours 'thinking' and changing my mind.
"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them".   Pablo Picasso

As you know I cannot see the end product in my head and although I have an idea of where I am going, I always end up stopping along the way and going back over bits and changing them. But I guess that is the process of creation for me and the way my brain puts things together.

So, the letter 'B' - B for Brenda, B for Brown, B for bumblebees, B for butterflies and more .......

I had a card with a pre-printed border down one side and used Dusky Concord DI round the edges to pull it together. I have several bee stamps and used two of them here, I also stamped the honeycomb, the postmark, the handwriting and the square heritage design. I added a bee and butterfly, both printed from the computer. Across the centre I stuck torn, brown paper with ink distressed edges and some ribbon and added the ornate letter B in the top left, taken from my stash. I also printed the sentiment by William Shakespeare which starts with the letter B and ink distressed it to fit in with the rest of the card. I added a wax seal with my initial, of course the letter B.
Hey presto, completed in less than a day and I really quite like the finished effects.

Challenge List

Theme Thursday - Your favourite letter of the alphabet
Tuesday Taggers - It's a bug's life
Creative Card Crew - Vintage / Aged
Papertake Weekly - Open challenge
Simon Says Stamp - It's so distressing
Crafty Creations - Anything goes
For Fun Challenges - Anything goes
Sassy Cheryl's challenge 5 - Distressing
Allsorts Challenge - No design papers
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle - Wings

Picture Inspiration

Happy Good Friday.
It's the Easter weekend, but it is wet and miserable here, what about you? I am hoping to get out in the garden at some point, we will have to see.

Today I am posting two creations to fit the Paper Sundaes challenge of a picture inspiration. It caught my attention straight away. I wanted to use the image in a piece of art rather than interpret the colours or shapes, however to do this I knew I needed to experiment with materials I have never used properly and when I did try with them I wasn't very successful. So out came the alcohol inks (AI). I had bought some new stamps last week - British Wild Flowers from Creative Expressions and it includes a dandelion stamp. So I set about dabbing away with the AIs on glossy cardstock, but after 5 or 6 attempts I was not happy with the results. There was just one I felt I could stamp over.  Here it is. The central stamp is the new one, I also used some others including some grasses.

My next experiment started by using a brayer and a big and juicy stamp pad with a sunset range of colours. I then used the AIs over the top to create more depth. This time I stamped the grasses and some small flower heads using a snow cap pigment ink and dusted cosmic shimmers over them. I stamped the main design using archival ink.       You can see there is a difference in the 2 examples. I edged both with cosmic shimmer aqua twinkles, used similar colours in the DI ink pads and distressed white card which I then used the distressing tool on and edged further with star dust stickles. The butterflies I printed off from a collection I am accumulating and covered them with rock candy distress stickles.

Well, the girls are down in Seaton and apparently the sun has come out and they are going for a walk on the beach. What a lovely thing to be doing. I have some things to post made by my sister Chrissie and by my granddaughter Becca that I will put up over the weekend.

Thankyou for stopping by and for all the lovely comments that have been left on my other posts. Enjoy your weekend. LOL Bxxxx

This is the photo from Paper Sundaes that started me off.

Happy Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Chris, I hope you have a good day. This post is just for you. I hope you got your cards in the post, the one I sent you was made in early January when I started on this venture of getting back into creating works of art. But as you will see it was an early example that helped me back on the path of inspiration and design. As my skills have been improving and as my style has been changing and as I have been experimenting with different things, I wanted to make you a new card to show how my craft is varying and how I am modifying my ideas. I have to say finding the world of blogging has helped me too, but the biggest influence has been you. So this is it. I will bring it up to you when I come and visit.

I started with a colour picture from a book of Victorian illustrations and used it as the backing. I wanted to use grungepaper (another new material for me) and used some dies to get the flower shapes.

 I glued some paper from an old copy of Dickens "A tale of two cities" for one of the shapes and used DIs and glimmers on them, putting them together with a vintage brad. For the birthday wishes sentiment I used the frontage of the book and a rub on, I then printed and heat embossed some swirls round the edges which started to melt the rub-on giving it an older look. I didn't have a 'sister' embellishment to fit the bill so I printed this one off on the PC (using Word), used a scalloped punch and, as before, printed and heat embossed some swirls round the edge, again giving it a more vintage feel. The butterfly is one in a collection I have on the PC that I print off when needed and I cut it out, glimmered it and added some sparkle using the glitter pens. Apart from the other little embellishments, I cut out the word inspire on the Cricut, inked the edges and added to dots for the letter 'i' from the grungepaper and bookprint. I wanted this on it to show how much you have inspired me over the years in many ways and particularly with the art and design.  Your creativity is unending, it really is an inspiration to everyone.

Have a wonderful day, lots of love and hugs from both Ken and I and I hope to see you soon.

Brenda xxxx

PS I don't know if this will fit any challenge sites, it wasn't made with that in mind. I will have a look, but haven't seen anything recently.

Well in my search I have discovered -

Practical Scrappers - Rub-ons

Your next stamp challenges - Distressing

My Grafico challenge - Paper piecing

Fab 'n' funky - It's all in the technique  - my favourite at the moment is adding sparkle

Cute card Thursday - Dimensions

Lots to do - Vintage

If the shoe fits - Going green
Creative Card Crew - Vintage/Aged

Easter boxes

Hi
Well this is what I achieved last night. I should have gone to bed early, but you know what it's like when you get into something and you don't want to stop. That was me, just wouldn't give in until I had finished what I was doing.

I had great fun cutting out a template and making three almost identical boxes for the girls' Easter Egg hunt on Sunday. The template was the free download from 'Just us Girls' that I mentioned yesterday and it so easy to use. Lauren Meader from 'My Time Made Easy LLC' is sponsoring this week's challenge and there are some beautiful DT creations to see.  I'd had a trial run making the box and of course made a mistake, but then I always told my kids you learn from your mistakes as well as your successes, and I did. I set about gathering the papers (many of them from my scrap box) for the three differnt colour schemes and decided they would all be the same design, but the colours would make them different. Becca is nearly 13 so I wanted hers to be rather funky. Ella is four in the summer and she goes to ballet, she is a pink girl. Maddison is 20 months and seems to be a bit less girly but still loves to dress up and to dance.

So colours chosen (mostly pink and green but some yellow as well) I got out the Nesties scalloped circle and cut out two for the front of each box. I cut out the letters of their name on the Cricut and then covered each one with Versamark and sticky stuff putting glitter on them whilst they were still hot to get the glittery effects. All the girls love a bit of bling!! I made the butterflies with my  MS butterfly punch and used glitter card. To make the flowers I cut out 31/2 inch circles on the Cricut and cut into them to make a spiral. I went round the outside edge making cuts about half way into the paper and then rolled them, using sticky dots at the end to keep them together. I then peeled the 'petals' back and used a Sakura glitter pen to give them some sparkle too. Next I cut lots of different sized tiny eggs to stick on the flap, using the Doodlecharms cartridge on the Cricut, and cut slightly larger ones to decorate the back. I also cut three rabbits for the back. The rabbits have been edged with brushed corduroy DI and the features added wth glitter pens. I think the girls will love them to put their small choccies in on Sunday - lets hope it's a fine day for them.

Well my cold seems to be drying out a little so I hope it won't be too long before it's gone. Keep well yourselves and thanks for stopping by.

LOL Bxxxx

Challenge List

Just us Girls - Template challenge

The Creative Cottage Challenge 3 - Sparkle

Fussy and Fancy Friday challenge 7 - Easter

Paperplay Challenges - Easter

Colour Create - Easter

CRAFT challenge 43 - Easter

Simon Says Stamp - Shimmer and Easter

Everybody-art-challenge 83 - Easter

Lexi's Creations challenge 10 - Easter theme

The Cuttlebug Spot - Pink and green

The Pink Elephant challenge 60 - Pastels

The Shabby Tea Room challenge 3 - Let's get scrappy

Bookmark

Hi I hope you are having a super Sunday. We lost an hour but won't it be lovely to have the lighter evenings back. I am sooooo looking forward to the warmer weather and being able to sit out in the garden again.
My cold has taken a real hold so I am dosing myself up with Day Nurse at the moment, I hate to think what it would be like without it. Mum's poorly and got a temperature, Maddie has a streamimg cold too and Maddison has had a tummy bug and now a horrible cold. I don't know what is happening to us all!!!
I didn't get my camera out yesterday to take some pics of the Camelias as it rained most of the day, so hopefully one day in the week when the sun shines (yes hopefully I know).
A Spoonful of Sugar have a bookmark challenge and this is a project that I had started a little while ago and spent yesterday finishing it off. Nothing too fancy, but quite pretty. I have also been working on another card for my sister's birthday but won't post it until tuesday so I can wish her many happy returns.

This is a little card with a pocket in the front to hold the bookmark. The second photo shows it standing on it's own, the sentiment says "Keep true to the dreams of your youth" and is one of a collection I seem to have had for ages.

What next I ask myself? I need to go and look for some inspiration for my next project. There's a great little free box template on the Just Us Girls challenge blog and it prints and goes together real easy. I might have a go at decorating one each for the girls for Easter. I have bought some really cute little baskets and some plastic eggs to hold some goodies to hide in the garden so they can go on an egg hunt next weekend. Well there's a plan.
Enjoy the rest of your sunday. Take care, LOL Bxxxx

Spring card for Easter

Good morning.
Oooh I can almost smell the spring coming. The mornings are brighter and from my craft room window I can see my back garden and the cherry tree that was planted a couple of years ago is budding and will soon be out in gorgeous pink blossom. Can't wait to get a photo when it bursts into life. My Camelias are flowering and I will go out and get some pics of those today. At last a real promise of the warmer weather to come.

I am full of cold at the moment so I spent alot of yesterday 'playing'. On one of my school visits this week I stopped in the little town of Goring and found a beautiful little interiors shop, I wished I had my camera as there was so much inspiration in there. However I found some sweet little metal bunnies which I couldn't resist for Easter cards. So with that in mind I set about 'challenging' myself to use pastel colours and incorporate one of these cute rabbits with some flowers and butterflies to represent Spring and Easter. I had my granddaughters in mind so wanted it to be 'cute' but at the same time it needed a distressed look.

I cut out the mount for the rabbit using the nestabilities labels 4 and run it through the BigShot with a cuttlebug embossing folder, I used Tattered Rose and Cosmic Twinkles around the edge. I found the pink and blue/yellow papers in a paper block and grabbed a doyley 'cos I though it could give me that sort of vintage but shabby look. I edged the doyley with Broken China and also edged it with a Sakura glitter pen. Having cut the backing and mounting papers I distressed the edge of the pink with the TH distressing tool and went roung the edges with star dust Stickles and the check paper I decorated with baby blue pearlidoodles. These do tend to come out a bit thick sometimes and I need to find a way to make the dots smaller. The flowers were made by putting together petals from some of my purchased collections, including one made of chipboard and covered in fabric, I added the stamen centres using a punch and finished them with some glitter gems. The heart was cut on the Cricut and embossed with sticky stuff and glitter added to give it a real sparkly effect. The tag was also cut on the Cricut and I printed the word Spring out in the three colours I have used, I edged the tag with Adirondack Lights Snow Cap and edged the words with broken china and the glitter pen. The butterflies were stamped and punched using a MS punch. Buttons, bows and gems have been added to give it a girly feel.

Et voila.  My Easter card for the girls.

I know Easter and Spring are a theme on several challenge sites so I am entering this card in the following challenges.
Fussy and Fancy Friday - Challenge 7 Easter
Paperplay Challenges - Week 12 Easter
Colour Create - Challenge 41 Your choice of pastels
CRAFT challenge - 43 Easter
Cute card thursday - Challenge 105 Dimensions (my second entry)
Simon Says Stamp - Easter or Spring with some glimmer
Gingersnap Creations - 48 Growth
Creative Card Crew - 46 Going Dotty
Incy Wincy Designs - 35 Easter or Spring
Crafty Cardmakers - 17 Spring into Spring!
The Everybody Art Challenge - 83 Easter 
Pollycraft Monday Challenge - 36 Sparkly Things (my second entry)
Crafty Angels - 27 Paper Piecing
The Cuttlebug Spot - Wings
Totally Gorjuss - 23 Hearts
Lexi's Creations - 10 Easter
The Corrosive Challenge Blog - 56 Paper Piecing

Gothic Arch

Hello Everyone

Happy Friday to you all, I hope it's a good day, the weekend is not far away and lets hope we have some sunshine.

This week I really felt like experimenting with more vintage styles and found the Gothic Arches challenge with a very sweet photo of two young girls. It is from a collection at flickr.com.

I loved the pastel colours and thought I could incorporate it into an arch and use a new technique for me called Dabber Resist which I found in the new Tim Holtz book.  I also wanted to give a feel of Spring with the warmer weather (well a little bit on some days) and the lighter nights.
I started by using a sandal acrylic paint dabber on a foam scroll stamp I have in my collection. I applied the paint to the stamp, pressed it onto the arch and heat dried it. I then inked over the whole card with Peeled Paint, Aged Mahogany and Scattered Straw distress inks. I then used a babywipe to rub the ink off of the scroll design to allow the sandal colour to show through. Brilliant - it worked! I printed out the image and cut it out, I also found the leaf arch on one of my cricut cartridges and cut that out. The printed foliage at the top of the arch (and has been stamped over the leaf arch) is a TH stamp from the Shabby French collection as is the butterflies which I embossed in gold. I also used the scroll stamp from the same set with the Shattered Straw and rubbed heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls over it. These have not really shown up in the photograph. Last week I saved a collection of butterflies I found on the internet and I have printed these out, cut them and added sparkle and vintage distress stickles. Before I put it all together I sprayed the card with water and heat dried it. The other embellishments are bits and pieces from my stash. When I had completed it, I mounted it on coloured manuscript paper and cut that out in the same shape.

I have enjoyed learning new skills and I just love trying out something new.

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment. Full effort is full victory". Mahatma Ghandi

Thanks for dropping by.

LOL Bxxx

Challenge List

Gothic Arches - This old photo

Mixed media monday - Vintage children

Crafty Angels - Paper Piecing

Your next stamp challenges - Distressing

Wednesday Stamper - Spring

Cute card thursday - Dimensions

One stop craft challenge - Let it shine

Allsorts challenge blog - Spring is in the air

Crazy for challenges - A Spring card

Secret Crafter - Spring has sprung