Not All Who Wander

A last minute post for the VivaLasVegaStamps February challenge. Lucky there's an extra day this year, otherwise I wouldn't have made it :) Check the lovely inspiration board here.

I worked in an altered book for quotes. The quote had been written ages ago, and the lovely portrait from Mary Vogel Lozniac seemed a good match. After stamping her, I used a white gel pen to block out the writing of the book and Micron pens to doodle patterns in the letters. I added some colour with colour pencils in shades of purple.

F is for Falanouc

The Craft Barn alpha/dictionary challenge is asking for f. I don't really have any craft time right now, but I had to put this together, since the challenge runs all year, I wouldn't want to miss a single one :) I am also posting for the Country View challenge (make your own background), the Craft Barn weekly challenge (heart, not red), the Our Creative Corner challenge (sewing/stitches) and the Paperartsy challenge (wax, I used gelatos). Quite a tour for this little mammal from Madagaskar! Here's the front:

And the description on the back of the card. Want to know more about this, but can't read Finnish? Check here :) I seriously suspect my wildlife encyclopedia to be outdated. The name in English is falanouc, and the name in Finnish is actually "falanukki" which is practically the same. Perhaps the book has a typo here, because the consonants have been swapped around? I (once again) wrote the real name on the side of the card. The heart has been placed next to a part of the text that says falanoucs form lifelong partnerships with their mates. Cute!

I made the background with Fresco Finish paints on canvas paper. Paints, a stencil, some Gelatos (heat set) and stamping with a small leaf using Stazon. (The falanouc rummages around in foilage searching for worms, insects, frogs and other treats :) On the other side I used a background stamp to add the same green shades. It looks lovely, but is mostly covered by the text. all the used stamps (letter f, leaf and background are from Rubber Dance).

To add more texture and some "ground" to the front, I made my own "chunky" embossing: I spread embossing ink on an acrylic block, added embossing powder and rubbed it of with a brush. sorry about the colours in the photos, it's the same white paper in all of them! The embossing was heated from underneath, should have done it before adhering everything in place! 

Here's the card once more, since there were so many pictures in between, and below are the links to the previous alpha cards. 

b (bananaquit)
f (falanouc)
q (quelea)

Join Our Combined Blog Hop!

Hello Crafters! We're excited to welcome you to the very first joint blog hop with EyeConnect Crafts and Rubber Dance Stamps!

Erin Sparler of EyeConnect Crafts (USA) and Bibi Lindahl of Rubber Dance Stamps (Norway) met online in the fall of 2015. They quickly hit it off and discovered that they had a LOT in common, or as Erin so eloquently put it: There is no word for old friends who have just met!

The Design Teams have been generously supplied with chipboards from EyeConnect Crafts and rubber stamps from Rubber Dance Stamps and we are all thrilled to show you the results with this joint Blog Hop. 

What's in it for you? Glad you asked! One lucky winner will receive a Gift Certificate worth $25 from BOTH EyeConnect Crafts AND Rubber Dance to spend on their websites! Another lucky winner will receive a surprise gift from BOTH Erin and Bibi, with $25 worth of products from their two companies! 

What do you have to do? Not much! 1) Visit all the blog posts in the hop and leave a comment. 2) Become a follower of the EyeConnect Crafts and Rubber Dance Stamps blogs. That's it! And who knows... maybe YOU will tie new bonds of friendships across the globe, too! :-)

You have until Valentine's Day, Sunday the 14th at midnight EST (New York time), which is 6 am Monday 15th for those of you on Central European Time (Amsterdam, Berlin, Oslo), and 5 am if you live in the UK. You can find a time converter here. Winners will be announced 18th February.
Enjoy the hop and good luck!

Here's my project for this blog hop with featuring Rubber Dance Art Stamps and Eyeconnect Crafts MDF chippies.

I made a very simple card, because I feel it really brings out the details of the attached pieces :) The heart is from I Heart Art. Stamped with rose red Stazon onto transluscent shrink pastic. I stamped the music stamp over it with black Stazon and after fussy cutting I went around the edges with a red Promarker. After shrinking the heart I covered it with Glossy Accents. The text is from Affirmations and has been heat embossed straight on the card blank.

The wings have been triple embossed and stamped into. Here are some step by step pictures... I started with a pair of scalloped totem wings.  The wings had a small hole for connecting them to other chippies. Since I didn't need it, I dabbed in some texture paste. If I should change something, I'd have painted a layer of white on the wings first. That way the embossing powder would have given an even finish earlier. Once the coverage was good (perhaps three layers of embossing), I added one more layer of embossing ink and powder and inked the music stamp with Versamark. I kept the stamp at hand while I heated the powder and stamped into the hot embossing.

Here you can see what happened... The area was too large to keep fully molten, so the impression on the right side is not as good as I would have wished. To hide it I added Versamark and Sparkling Snow embossing powder on both outer edges and heated it. This flattened out the left edge and made them similar enough. Next time I'll just do one wing at a time :)

Here is the hop list, enjoy your tour!

1. Erin, owner of EyeConnect Crafts

2. Susan

3. Lilian
4. Anita
5. Irit
5. Steph
6. Majo
7. Kim
8. Kristiina (you are here:)
9. Gail
10. Susanne
11. Bibi, owner of Rubber Dance Stamps

Challenge!

You may have noticed that the blog hop projects all use the colors from this month’s Rubber Dance Challenge, Kraft, White and Red. Play along for another chance to win Rubber Dance Stamps, this is the post you need to read (link opens in a new tab).

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I hope you will leave a comment and join in the chance to win some cool rubber and chippies!

Uskallapas vaan...

Paskiksessa pyydetään tällä kertaa värejä: vaaleanpunaisen sävyjä sekä vihreää. Päädyin sotkemaan suoraan korttipohjaan...

Ensin telalla vaaleanpunaisia akryylimaaleja, sitten sydämet (leimattu akryylimaaleilla) ja vihreitä maaliroiskeita. Päälle vähän leimailua ja kutistemuovista tehty koriste. Leimailu jatkuu vähän myös kortin kääntöpuolelle. Kaikki leimat (sydämet, ompeluteemaiset, perhonen ja teksti) ovat Norjalaiselta Rubber Dancelta, jolle teen DT hommia. Jos haluat käydä siellä ostoksilla, saat 15% alennusta koodilla kristiina2016. Joku on sitä jo uskaltautunut kokeilemaankin :)

Q is for quelea

I'm ready to admit, that I have to cheat a bit with the Craft Barn alpha/dictionary challenge... the letter q happens to be one that practically doesn't exhibit itself in the Finnish language. It is in our alphabet though, I have no idea why! Anyway, the wildlife encyclopedia I'm using for this has a register with latin names and I had the choice between two birds. Introducing the Red Billed Quelea. Would you believe this (never before heard of) bird is estimated to be the largest in population of all birds?

The q and background stamp are from Rubber Dance, the stencil (used to bleach out ink behind the bird) from Designs by Ryn. I am also linking to the Rubber Dance February challenge that asks for the colours kraft, white and red... Had to postpone blogging this until the shift of the month, because I knew of the challenge and the colours of the bird were so perfect!

The back of the card has again the text describing the bird. Since you probably still haven't learned much Finnish, this is a link to the wikipedia article :) The name my encyclopedia uses (verinokka) means "bloodbeak" which I find quite appalling. Perhaps it's also outdated, because when I googled for the English name all the Finnish articles called this the "millionweaver" (miljoonakutoja) which sounds much nicer. I wrote it on the side of the card.

Paskikseen luonnoksen mukaan...

Paskiksessa luonnostellaan, ja ehdin pitkästä aikaa mukaan. Värittelin toissailtana Stamping Bellan leimakuvia, ja kun en osannut päättää kumpi on kivempi, kortteja tuli kaksi :)

Ongelmana lähinnä se, että leimakuvat olivat niin isoja, että tarvittiin valtaisat ympyrät niiden leikkaamiseen... ja toisaalta käyttämäni Letraset tussilehtiön paperi on aika ohutta ja piti liimata toiselle paperille ettei kuulla läpi. Siinä sitten tuli vähän ruttua ja suttua... Onko Cansonin vastaava naisen naamalla varustettu lehtiö paksumpaa? Koiraan lisäsin lopulta leimasettiin kuuluvan pienen tekstinpätkän, kun tahra kävi hämäämään. Päivänvalo vaan oli jo mennyt, joten ei tullut yhtä hyvä kuva kuin ilman.