Stamp Addicts DT Cards - Christmas Again...

 Here I am again, Christmasing... never done this before this year, so it still feels odd. It's an odd day today, too, as it is 4 years since Pete died... it still hurts!! Anyway... back to Crimble - Pete loved it btw... This snowman is great. He has a cute face. I used the Sizzix snowflakes folder with sanded coredinations card, for the background.

 I love this cottage set. I used the dots background and clear ep, then smooched the shiny card through the blue inks on my mat... I also used one of the cloud/background stamps as snow (don't know what they will call it yet!!) I cut a circle round the sentiment then made a slit at the top so I could slide the paper ribbon through, made with an EK Success punch.

 This is all about the background... printed the large "twas the night before Christmas" stamp in embossing ink and clear ep, smooched through with the blue inks, then overprinted with the snowflake. I have actually used sparkly ep on this one!!! Dyed some seem binding here for the ribbon...

 I did not want them all to be blue, so deliberately tried to do different colours. This scheme is red/green and creamy. The paper is from a printed stack, so I stamped the tree straight on to it. The pears are painted with Viva Inca gold and the partridge is cut out and 3D in the branches.

 Ohhhh!!! I REALLY went to town on this background... I went all grungy and had great fun... I used a piece of grunge paper, painted with green acrylic paint and dried, then smeared some vasceline before painting with trad tan from Claudine Helmuth. The paint peeled off of course, to reveal some of the green from below. I smeared some gesso, then printed the "twas" stamp into the texture. Viva Inca gold and vintage photo helps to show the texture too... The trees were printed seperately, then decoupaged. The ribbon is seem binding, dyed with vintage photo.... ooo yummyness!!

This card was deliberately kept monochrome, using black archival and black soot distress ink... this little house is fab.. I masked the trees to make it seem as if the cottage is hidden in the forest...

I have had some more problems with mum again this week, so I have only just posted these to the girls at Stamp Addicts, for their show on Tuesday 9th August, so I hope they get there in time!!! I hope they like them too... I have tried to do some different techniques this time...

Thanks for looking and commenting
Love and light
Frankie
xx

WOYWW #113 - Metal Working

Hi everybody and welcome to desk hopper day, which comes round with greater and greater velocity each week - or perhaps I slept in too long and lost all those days since last Wednesday!!!...anyway, pop here if you don't know what I mean, to see the ineffable Julia...

Last week, I showed you a new toy - my blow torch... well this week's desk will show me using it!!! and voila !! the flowers wot I made!! tee hee...

 I made these beautiful copper roses for my TIO tag this week. You can see the whole project here now. The theme is Nature's Bounty, and I made these as part of that ...

 I used the TH tattered florals die, the flower here at the bottom in particular. I cut three for each rose. For the tag, they were all the same colour.

 I did not have enough of the paler one for the extras I made, so I used a darker one I bought from LB Crafts, earlir this year...

 I got this great idea from my idol Laura Denison of Following the Paper Trail... she is a wonderful papercrafter and scrapper, with fabulous ideas... she has made many You Tube and UStream videos, and all are inspirational and well worth a visit...

 I cut the indentations a bit deeper with my Tonic scissors to allow more movement ...

 Then I rolled down each petal round a paint brush end, then folded each along its length... this would later need some manipulation!!

 All three pieces are the same... you don't cut out sections when making the roses from metal, because they are able to be manipulated easily...

 So, take one flower and turn up 3 alternate petals and shape them round and together, to form the very centre of the rose. Then turn up the remainder...

 This is the centre of the rose, or it could be a bud if you need one...

 Repeat the process with the second piece, and shape it around the centre bud...

 The three flowers together will make the full rose as you see above... I think they are really beautiful just like that, but Laura has something else up her sleeve...

 Here I have taken the rose apart and placed the pieces on my gridle...

 And here comes the really fun bit - I used my new blow torch to alter the colour of my petals... woo, it was fabulous. I have never used one before, and the rainbow effect was brilliant...

So there it is, beautifully coloured and metallc, just waiting to be displayed on a project... If you want to see Laura's demo, here is her You Tube video... well worth watching... She makes the point that you can use alcohol inks if you don't have a blow torch, but what a lot of fun I would have missed if I had done that!!!!

Thanks for looking and commenting... I really appreciate all your lovely thoughts

Love and light

Frankie

xx

TIO and Simon Says Stamp and Show a Tag

Another week has flown round... and it's time for another entry to Simon Says Stamp and Show, and TIO... the theme are a tag an nature's bounty respectively. So the tag bit was easy peasy, and I decided to go with fruits, seeds, flowers, fungi, pearls, crystals and copper... hence these lovely flowers - more of them later...

This central portion is an Artimeo stamp and I left it uncoloured, except for a wash of old paper distress ink and the coloured flowers down the side...

This is the whole thing, front on, showing all the bounty, including those flowers!!

and here they are... if you would like to see exactly how I created them, please pop to the WOYWW post above this one... I used a blow torch and had great fun making them. The idea came from my heroine Laura Denison of Following the Paper Trail.  They are created from sheet copper, and they look even better in real life...

I used an Elusive Images sheet of fungi, honesty and conkers etc to layer up my tag... this ...mushroom in the corner is a real fave of mine

I added some dyed seam tape as a bow, and hung crystals and pearls from it... all nature's bounty too. This tag is a larger one than the size 8, to give enough room for all the layering I wanted to do.

I really enjoyed all aspects of this tag and hope you enjoyed looking at it...

Love and light

Frankie

xx