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Inspired by France Papillon, Days One and Three

Happy Saturday everyone, hope you’re having a great weekend.  I’ve had a busy day & shall be spending the rest of the evening on the sofa, but first I’d like to show you my piece for this week’s challenge on the PaperArtsy blog.  France Papillon’s projects this week were fantastic, with lots of layers & textures.

I combined the techniques from days one & three by cutting a piece of PaperArtsy’s grey board in half & making a sort of shrine thingy.  It wasn’t my intention, but I ended up copying what France did, almost completely, hope she’ll forgive me.

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Here’s the front cover.  I can’t believe I actually sewed – by hand! -  on one of my projects.  I’ve had a length of poly cotton in my stash for almost a year & kept meaning to use it.  No excuses this time.  I cut the hinges out of grunge paper using a PaperArtsy die, added PA Grunge Paste & painted them with French Roast, Little Black Dress & Claret fresco paints, finishing with treasure gold.

 

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This was after I stamped onto two sheets of Kraft Glassine with a stamp from PA set HP1107.

 

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This is the inside.  I’d had a discussion on Twitter with France & Nicky about what to use to create texture.  France used gauze with great effect & I didn’t have any.  I found a piece of thick plastic on my desk, I can’t remember where it came from, but I thought I’d give it a go.

 

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This is it with the grunge paste on & below you can see the texture it created.

 

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The grunge paste didn’t adhere very well to the plastic, so I added a layer of Satin Glaze on top & left it to dry overnight.  It’s better, but I have a feeling this particular project won’t last forever.

(If you’d like to know more about Grunge Paste, Leandra has posted links to a series of videos on the PA blog today).

 

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The word stamps are Chocolate Baroque’s Artistic Expressions & Artistic Affirmations sets.  The heart is the Tall Heart PaperArtsy die.

 

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France added more grunge paste through a stencil directly onto her journal pages, but I put mine onto a scrap of white card & roughly tore pieces before gluing them on.  And no, I could not resist adding more treasure gold.

That’s it for  now.  I am very grateful for all the kind comments I’ve received on my projects recently, thank you again.  Until next time,

Love & light.

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Tim’s May Tag

Hello blog visitors, hope you’ve had a great Thursday.  Many thanks for the kind comments on my PaperArtsy key chains last night.

When I saw Tim’s tag at the beginning of the month, I didn’t think I’d be able to recreate it, as I didn’t have any rub ons, but a search through my stash revealed some by Kaisercraft, black & white & colour ones.

Here’s Tim’s gorgeous tag.  I love the Mona Lisa stamp, must get it at some point.

 

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Here’s my tag – the second attempt.  The black & white rub ons were a failure, they remained attached to their backing sheet, no matter how much I rubbed, so the first tag went in the bin.

TH 12 Tags 2013 May

I think these coloured ones are ok, they fit quite nicely with the few distress stains I have.  The face is a La Blanche stamp & I added some stamping, using some of my TH stamps.  I added some Treasure Gold & Snowflake fresco paint to the philosophy tag.

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Thanks for looking.  Until next time,

Love & light.

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PaperArtsy Key Chains

Hello, happy Wednesday.  This week on the PaperArtsy blog, the uber-talented France Papillon is the guest designer & on Monday she showed us a gorgeous tag & two fab key chains, along with a how-to video.  You can see them all in this post.

I’m hoping to get some time to make something else inspired by her other posts this week, but for today here are my key chains.  I was so pleased that I had some of PaperArtsy’s wooden spools & Tim Holtz’ swivel clasps. I painted the spools with Stone, Chocolate Pudding & Mocha Mousse fresco paints & used two of my small stamps by Tim Holtz for the quotes.

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That’s it for now, thanks for visiting.  Until next time,

Love & light.

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Chocolate Baroque April Quintiles

Happy Sunday to everyone, hope you’re all having a splendid weekend.

I’d completely forgotten I hadn’t shown you these last month, probably because I made them at the beginning of March, as I knew I wouldn’t get time to make them in April.

The theme was April Fool & as with all my quintiles for the CB swap, I kept them very simple.  It’s like a challenge for myself, given that I tend to throw everything but the kitchen sink on my projects.

When Margaret gave us the list of themes for the year, I was completely thrown by ‘April Fool’ & had no clue what to do, until I actually woke upon one morning with this quote in my head.  I have no clue where it came from, can’t find it on the internet, so I can only conclude that it was my ‘Scrambled Eggs’* moment & I am, in fact, a genius. HA!!

CB Quintile 1 April 13

The background is distress inks blended over the embossing, heat set with white EP.  The moths  (coloured with distress inks) & the flowers (coloured with water colour pencils) are from the Steampunk Butterfly set.

CB Quintile 2 April 13

That’s it, thanks for looking.  Until next time,

Love & light.

*Fans of The Beatles will know what I mean…..

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Breathe The Love

Hello!  Happy Saturday, hope the weather is better for you than it is here.  I had thought about doing some gardening, but the rain means that crafting wins.

Due to all the stuff that happened from February onwards, it’s been ages since I took part in the PaperArtsy challenge.  This week I was determined to change that.  Sue Carrington was this week’s guest designer on the PaperArtsy blog & her projects are beautiful, full of layers & textures.  I loved her use of greens & as it’s a colour I hardly ever use, except as an accent, I thought I’d give it a go.

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I used one of the large, chunky, hanging boards from PaperArtsy as my substrate. They’re a nice size, very light, but also very sturdy.  I layered Nougat & Sage frescos on the board after the Grunge Paste had dried, then used Pesto & Blood Orange, as Sue had done in this post, mixing the Blood Orange with water & letting it drip down the board.  I now think I should have been braver & used more Pesto.  I loved how Sue had used the brick wall stencil & Grunge Paste in this post, so I copied it, but I covered too much of the board, so decided to limit my stamping to the mini splatter stamp, (Mini 72) & a tiny swirl from Swirls & Curls 1.  I finished by adding Spanish Topaz & Aquamarine around the edges of the board & on some of the higher areas of the grunge paste.

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My initial thought was to use flowers as Sue had done, but on Twitter last week there had been lots of talk about Tim Holtz’ pediment die, (which is on my wish list, of course) & when I saw this project by Sam I really wanted to make one of my own.  Not having the die I wondered what I could use as a substitute.  Answer; a Spellbinders Labels Four die, cut in half.

I cut the label from grunge paper, put the PA grunge paste through my CWS mini cubist stencil & then painted with assorted Frescos, (French Roast, Brown Shed, Little Black Dress, Claret) and added Treasure Gold, (Spanish Topaz & Brass).

I stamped the Lynn Perella image with black Archival ink & heat set with clear embossing powder, then painted it with Frescos.

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The heart & the sentiment are from the Love & Kisses 1 set.  I stamped them onto metal card that I’d covered with gold alcohol ink.  Then I used a metal tool to add a border & added Frescos & TG to give an aged effect.

So that’s my entry into the PA challenge this week.  Thank you to Sue for the inspiration & I hope Sam forgives me for using her idea.

Thanks for looking, have a great weekend.

Love & light.

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Let The Sun Shine In

Good evening & happy Monday, hope everyone has had a great weekend.  Before I show you tonight’s project, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone for the kind comments on my recent posts & also a warm welcome to my new followers.  I appreciate you all.

This project is my take on an excellent tutorial by Lin Brown, of Yours Artfully fame.  Along with Leandra of PaperArtsy, she is a genius when it comes to working with Fresco paints & when she posted this tutorial on April 14, I knew I had to try it.  (It’s only taken me three weeks, not long at all for me).

YoursArtfully Tutorial

I used Nougat & Chocolate Pudding for my base layer after applying the wondrous Grunge Paste through two Dina Wakley stencils, (Mini Sunray & Mini Vine), for The Crafters’ Workshop onto a sheet of PaperArtsy grey board – fabulous stuff.  Lin used Stone & Squid Ink, which are two of the new Fresco colours & look gorgeous, I want them badly.

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Lots of stencilling with Snowflake.

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After I’d stamped & applied foil ‘schizzle’*, (#PATWITS terminology) & Treasure Gold, (Brass, Spanish Topaz, Aquamarine), I spent an age wondering how to finish the piece.  I cut a few flowers from the TH Tattered Floral die to try, but they didn’t work at all.

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Then I remembered the metal flowers my mum had given me a few years ago.  I like them a lot.

I applied assorted frescos & TG to the Idea-ology ornate plate & Wild Honey DI to the journal ticket, then added Crackle Accents.

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Here’s the finished piece again.  I’m fairly happy with it.  Again, I have to say that Lin’s tutorial was excellent.  Thank you Lin!

YoursArtfully Tutorial

Thanks for visiting my blog, until next time,

Love & light

*Foil transfer sheets

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#3UP for PaperArtsy

Evening all, happy Tuesday.

The title of this post will be understood immediately by the #PATWITS on Twitter, but for the rest of you here’s a little backstory.

Last week on Twitter, Leandra started adding the hashtag #3UP to her tweets & the only clue she would give us was to see if we got a direct message.  Well, I got one – which was a huge surprise.  The message was if she sent me three items, would I use them to make something for the PaperArtsy blog?  Would I????  Of course!!

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These are the three items she sent me & after much deliberation, I decided to make a mini album.  Here’s the front cover…..

PA Mini Album cover

I used PaperArtsy’s new Grunge Paste through a stencil.  The Grunge Paste is FABULOUS.  If you want texture on your projects, you NEED GP.  It’s slightly chalky, not at all runny & dries really quickly.

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Then I started blending some Fresco paints on top – Mermaid, Sage, Claret & Inky Pool.  When I was happy with how it looked, I added Brass & Spanish Topaz on the raised areas.

I painted the largest of the buttons with Claret & rubbed a little brass TG on top, stuck another button on top & glued seed beads to that with Cosmic Shimmer clear glue.

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I made the embellishments by stamping the images from the Lynn Perella 005 set onto shrink plastic & painting on the reverse with more Frescos when the plastic had cooled down.

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The inside covers were originally completely different.  I made a mistake right at the very end & couldn’t get them back to how they were, so ended up with something else entirely.  That’s one of the properties I really like about Fresco paints, you can add numerous layers without damaging the substrate.  It doesn’t show in the photo, but there is still some of the original Crackle Glaze effect showing through the stencils.  The little birds are an Impress die & I stamped the sun, from LPC005 onto a scrap of white card with Versamark & heat set with copper embossing powder.

PA Mini Album inside

The pages are torn squares of watercolour paper & I’ve just decorated this first one so far.  I covered it with Grunge Paste, let it dry for a few minutes, then stamped into into with another PA stamp – Swirls and Curls 2.  When the page was dry I painted over the top with Mermaid, Sage & Beach Hut, stamped the flowers, house & quote onto tissue paper, which I attached & sealed with Satin Glaze.

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Here’s the back cover.  This is PA metal card put through an embossing folder.  I painted it as for the front, sanded the raised areas & rubbed TG on top.  The metal numbers were painted with Beach Hut, French Roast & Little Black Dress & highlighted with TG.

PA Mini Album back cover

Here’s the finished album again.  I think it’s ok, even though there are things I would do differently & the inside is not what I intended.

PA Mini Album cover

A huge thank you to Leandra & Gillian for the opportunity & for their utter fabulousness.

Love & light.