Stars - Sweet Stampin'

Good morning all,

Well, it's been a fun week, with not one, but two days spent in the hospital with my son. I'll be glad when he's finished this growth spurt and stops being so clumsy!

On a more fun note, the new theme at Sweet Stampin' is Stars, which has prompted me to make my first Christmas card of the year! Go me!

I used a LOTV image and sentiment, and paired them with Docraft papers and Sizzix star dies.

And don't forget there's a DT call at the moment too, so if you fancy being a Sweetie, please do apply!

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Sammy-x

Yet another tag!

Hi all,

Well, a great start to the week so far... Spent most of yesterday waiting around in the hospital with my son after he'd managed to fracture his toe. He's fine, and pretty much walking normally now they bandaged him up, but it took a loooooong time to get seen and even longer to get an x-ray. Poor lad was bored out of his mind. He'd taken a book in, and read the whole thing long before we got to go home. (mum was bored too, but mum knows from experience you never spend less than 5 hours waiting in hospital. Ever! lol)


Yes, I seem to be ever so slightly addicted to making tags at the moment, and this one was inspired by a dream I had (!) featuring the layout with the pieces of coloured core'dinations card, and one of my favourite Artistic Outpost stamp sets.

The photo has come out a little darker than I intended. Apologies!

The star on the top panel was an earring I rescued from getting thrown away at work, and the key came off a necklace.

I shall now go and play along with the Artistic Outpost challenge.

Have a great day!

Sammy-x

Summer of Creative Chemistry, week 3

Hi all,

It's already week three of the Summer of Creative Chemistry. Wow, where is the time going?

I took the opportunity to play with my Perfect Pearls, as I didn't have them the first time I did CC, so skipped that class. This is a great opportunity to play catch-up.

This is the tag I made using the Perfect Distress technique:

Sorry, it's all blues again, which I don't seem to be able to photograph, lol.

I adore this technique though, and the way the letters come out gilded. Here's a close-up to show the effect better:

How cool is that!?


And for those of you that like making tags, there's a brand new challenge blog going live today, where you can enter your tags every Thursday. It's called Go Tag Thursday, and I'm off to go play right now!

That's it from me for today, hope you're all well and not affected too badly by the weather right now!

Have an awesomesauce evening,

Sammy-x

Three or more layers - Sweet Stampin'

Gooooooood morning blogland!

Still recovering here from an amazing AC/DC gig on Thursday. while I'm glad Brian Johnson is coming back to the band, I am amazed to say that Axl Rose is doing a fantastic job filling in while Brian is getting his hearing sorted. Who'd have thought!?
Great night, and especially brilliant for my thirteen-year-old, as it was his first gig, and he's a huge fan. He's still beaming from ear to ear!

Unfortunately the fact that I'm still recovering didn't get me out of having to work Friday, or this morning either. Boo!

So onwards to this week's theme at Sweet Stampin', which is Three or more layers.

This is my contribution, featuring some of those scrummy Chatsworth papers I mentioned the other day...

The sentiment is of course LOTV.

That's it from me for now... Must dash.

Have a fantabulous day!

Sammy-x

Evening all,

Week 2 of the refresher of Creative Chemistry 101.




I chose to play with marbling Distress Stains to create a background. I ended up having to do this three times, as the inks were just soaking into the tag, rather than marbling on top. third time I lightly misted the tag with water first, which seemed to make a huge difference.

Again, I'm having issues getting the blue hues to photograph... I'm thinking I need a photography course (and a camera that isn't over a decade old! lol)

Kept it very simple, but plan to pop it on a card for hubby. Our anniversary is still a few months off, but there's nothing like being ahead!

Sweet dreams everyone, I won't be around tomorrow, as I have a full day at work, then we're off to see AC/DC. Woohoo!

Have a great one!

Sammy-x

Our House

Hi all, post #2 of the eve!

I'd gotten myself a lovely parcel of crafty goodness the other day (I was only ordering some more ATC sleeves and somehow stuff fell into the basket... You know how it is.), and amongst them was a gorgeous paper collection (Chatsworth) by PaperArtsy. Suitably in love, I figured I'd go check out the blog, and there came across their current challenge, themed Our House.

There were some utterly gorgeous examples of house-themed art, but I knew realistically the ones that impressed me the most were just somewhat out of my artistic range! (seriously, go check out the post and look at the second example, the one made of wood. Incredible!)

But then I saw a journal page by Kate Crane, which featured the kind of kooky houses I'd often admired but was always a little nervous to try. So, suitably inspired, I had a go.

I do have an art journal, but until today only had two pages finished in it, and I'd certainly not blogged the others, so this is a first for me!

The background was made with Gesso, covered in Dylusions, and then several layers of Stencilled Distress inks. I drew (yes, I actually drew! Miracles do happen...) the houses on some pages of an old book, and coloured them with Distress Inks.

I love how I managed to get a very layered, textured look, and the page is still almost completely flat! Not counting the houses.

The only thing I'm not happy about is the "home sweet home". I really, really hate my handwriting, and I didn't have any even remotely suitable stamps. Something else to add tto the shopping list! ;-)

Right, that's it from me for tonight. Sweet dreams my dears.

Sammy-x

Tiny pocket album

Hi all, yep, me again!

It's been rather a mad week for me crafting-wise. Mr. Mojo is definitely back in full swing, and I have another two projects to share this evening!

First of all, I decided to have another play along at Unstampabelles, where they wanted us to make something with pockets.

So I dug around in my stationary drawer, and found some old small wage envelopes, and used them to make a small envelope pocket album.

Believe it or not, but the colours are supposed to be gold and blue. Just can't seem to get blue to photograph properly right now...

There's small tags tucked into the pockets, made from old collectable cards like the ones on the pages.

I even managed to add the twist, which was to use a crown (little charm on the cover)

Right, that's post number one, be right back!

Sammy-x

Butterfly duo and a sketch

Hi all,

Second post today! I guess it's safe to say Mr. mojo has finally made an appearance...

It does help to have inspiration though. How often do you find you're browsing Blogger and find yourself inspired, not by a challenge, but by one of the DT inspiration? This is what happened to me this morning when I came across the Make mine a double challenge at the Becka B challenge blog. One of the DT - Ilonka - made a card with two butterflies in a frame, which made me want to get the dies out to play immediately!

I'd also just spotted the gorgeous sketch by Becky for the challenge over at Live & love crafts, so I combined the two and came up with this:

The frame is from Fernli Designs, and I painted it with Picket Fence and Spun Sugar distress paints, then embossed it with shabby pink Frantage. The paper is a gorgeous unbranded pack I picked up at the Harrogate craft fair in October. I'm hoping to find more, as there were only one of each sheet. If anyone recognises them, please do holler!

Right, that's definitely it from me today. I think, lol.

Have a great one!

Sammy-x

12 Tags of 2016 - June

Hi all,

Ok, so the best laid plans and all that... As I said at the beginning of the year, I fully intended to blog all my 12 Tags this year, and Lo... First tag since March! Oh well, better late than never, no?

The June tag is a fab one, but it wasn't until I started looking though my dies that I realised there was a rather huge gap in my die collection. I didn't have much that could be considered masculine! Now I could have just grabbed a butterfly and gone with it of course, but I really wanted to stick to the masculine theme.
Luckily I had some potion bottle dies in my stash, so I decided to play with them.

I wanted to have a vintage grungy kind of look, and I think I achieved it. I do however, wish I'd chosen blue or green as the accent colour in the plaid, but I didn't think of it until the tag was done!

And just to prove I've not skipped any, here's April and May's tags too!

April

 May

Right, off to play along with the 12 tags of 2016!

Have an awesomesauce day!

Sammy-x

Shabby mini album - Crafters' Palette

Good morning boys and girls,

I know, 4 posts in 3 days! I'm on a roll!

I just thought I'd let you know that  there's a new post up on the Crafters' Palette blog, featuring a shabby mini album cover I made for my mum's upcoming birthday.

There's more info on the blog, so feel free to go take a peek.

I'd like to play along with the following challenges:
Things to alter - June challenge, anything goes
ABC challenge - I is for important (I hope my mum's 60th birthday counts!)


In the meantime, have a fantabulous day!

Sammy-x

Summer of creative chemistry - day 1

Hi, me again!

You may or may not have heard, but Tim Holtz is about to release a third instalment of creative chemistry classes, and in the run-up to that, those of us that have already completed creative chemistry 101 and 102, are encouraged to re-familiarise ourselves with the techniques before 103 goes live.
Today we're focussing on the first couple of distress ink techniques, and I decided to play with one of my favourite techniques to date, the blended spritz & flick.



The idea is to use 4 or more colours of ink. I used 7 on mine! Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon, Peacock feathers, Faded Jeans, Cracked Pistachio, Iced Spruce, and Ground Espresso.
Can you guess what kind of theme I'm going for? ;-)

This is the background:

And this is the tag fully decorated:

And finally, matted on a black card base to make a father's day card for my dad (who used to be in the navy, hence the sea theme):

The colours haven't photographed as well as I'd like, maybe I should have waited for daylight, lol.

Anyway, that's me. Can't wait to get stuck in with the rest!

Sweet dreams.

Sammy-x

June challenge - Rhedd's Creative Spirit

And helloooooo again!

Back for my second altered art post this morning, this time for Rhedd's Creative Spirit, where we have another Anything altered art goes challenge starting today.

I was looking through my box of wooden shapes, and was inspired to have a play with a canvas

I started by choosing all my pieces and embellishments, and giving them all a couple of coats of Gesso. I added some brick wall stencilling around the trellis, and gave it some depth with a Ground Espresso distress marker.
I coloured the canvas with Lindy's stamp gang sprays and a little glimmer mist, and the flowers and other embellishments with alcohol ink. I just dripped it straight from the bottle onto the flowers. It uses up a lot of ink that way, but it gives a lovely deep shade that way.

Coating everything in gesso first  is a great technique, as it means you can use up all those odds and sods in colours you never liked much! It also means you have less of a hard time trying to find enough embellishments in the right colours for your project!

And there it is. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out actually!

I hope you'll come and play along with us this month.

Have an awesomesauce day!

Sammy-x

June challenge - Altered Eclectics

Hi all,

First post of two this morning, as it's the first of the month (already!) which means time for a new challenge over at Altered Eclectics.

I decided to have a little play with an MDF "Home" sign, some stencils and texture paste, and my Dylusions sprays. I felt I'd not been playing with colour enough recently, and always keep falling back to the same ones, so I wanted something with a little more variety.

Et voila:

I also included some Dutch Doobadoo butterflies, which I coloured with Distress paint.

How's that for a burst of colour?

I hope you'll go take a peek at the gorgeous work done by the rest of the team, and maybe you'll be inspired to play along!

Right, I'll be right back with my next post!

Sammy-x