Take time!

The Paperartsy Time challenge made me go through my stamps searching for time-related stamps. I chose three stamps, and started wondering what to do with them... Deciding to go for the layout on the Stampingback July challenge inspiration picture: the ground at the bottom, something flying in the top right corner, collage in the top left corner and the focal point coming from the left. I am also posting for the Craft Barn weekly challenge (circle and flowers).

I started by colouring a silk card with light blue Colorit powder (resembles Brusho) and stamping my main images, masking the sentiment stamp to keep it in the foreground. The flying watch is from VivaLasVegaStamps, the sentiment from Stampinback and the collage from Paperartsy.

I realized that the sentiment stamp was the least solid of the three and would probably not stand out enough even if I bleached out the blue as I had planned... So I took a piece of scrap card and stamped it again, diecutting it with a stiched circle die. I stamped some plants on the bottom of the card and mounted everything on a white card base. While adhering I concentrated so much on the sentiment text being straight that I managed to missplace my diecut a bit (it should have covered the original stamped image easily, since it is a bit larger... but there is a small line showing) As a finishing touch I took some blue inks and stamped the collage image on the envelope.

De-stashing

Arranging my craft stash has led to a serious bought of de-stash. It's horrible to be reminded of stuff you've once found reason to buy, that is no longer of interest to me. Among other things I have quite a pile of 3D-decoupage sheets... Haven't really used them since I fell for stamping and mixed media, but I decided that there would certainly be something in that pile for the Craft Barn weekly challenge prompting circles and flowers.

Didn't find any wreaths, but I found two sheets with these roses mounted on a circle background. I decided to make small cards with a Psalm quote. I can give these to a relative who is very active in her community, I think she'll like them and the chance to give them forward. While I was at it, I put together the other images on the sheets too, so I made six cards altogether.

Not really my cup of tea, but a couple of sheets finished of -and I realized that since these were precut, I could save the backing sheets and use them as stencils before throwing them away :)

For a long time

The VivaLasVegaStamps July moodboard has a tan-pink colour scheme and asks (among other things) for ladies, stripes, vintage and bold. I am also posting for the Paperartsy challenge (time).

This spread is in an altered book I've been working on since May. I am collecting favourite and fun quotes, adding some stamping, doodling and colour -trying to make the pages look nice, but keeping to one layer so the book doesn't get any thicker than it originally was. The sentiment has been written with a Micron pen, the stamp is from VivaLasVegaStamps, the clock stencil from TCW and everything was coloured with Derwent coloursoft pencils and a white Sharpie. I remember being bothered by the text of the book when I worked on the first couple of pages, but then I started to see the text as lines that help to space the letters for the quote -it works surprisingly well. I had been wondering what to do on the background of this spread. When I saw this post on the Paperartsy blog, I decided to try out a clock stencil, but with coloured pencils. Didn't work very well, but gave me a base I could continue doodling on, and the result is what I was looking for.

just the text and stamp

coffee coloured pencil through a stencil...
didn't really work very well, the stencil was so intricate.

enforced the stenciled images with free hand,
added white sharpie and shading to the letters

got carried away with the colouring so that I forgot
to take inbetween pictures... 

It's amazing what a difference the shading does to a page like this. I've added depth and more black to the shades three times, and still feel it wouldn't be spoiled by a bit more!

Woyww #320 -moving around

It's Wednesday again, and that means it's time to hop around crafty desks around the world. Check out Julia's blog to have everything explained and hop forward to other places. Here is my desk... and it's a different desk from what I've been working on the past year!

On top of my art journal,is a torn envelope... I just received a sheet of Ryn stamps, and the mail has managed to crunch it between some moving parts, and one of the images on the sheet is destroyed. A real pain... all I can do is return the whole sheet and buy a new one. The socks are still under way, but not too much left, the plants will hopefully start looking better, if I remember to give them water every now and then now, that I look at them every day. The pink princess is my daughters make. I just finished a spread in my altered book, and I'll be posting that after getting this written. The old mac is waiting for me to store the photos from inside of it, after that I'll move it elsewhere... as for what happened to get me here:

Last Thursday my husband drove to a nearby town for a day of with the girls... and I stayed at home with the boys (we have two of both). I decided this was the moment I had been waiting for and moved my craft space into the bedroom and the tv+ other stuff into the living room. We worked all day! Luckily a 12 year old is surprisingly strong, and both boys were eager to put together my ikea drawer unit and I was able to dig the old dining taple from the garage where it was half way under a pile of wood. DH would never have allowed all this if he had been at home, we would have had to plan and arrange things for at least a week or two... or perhaps until next year! So here are some pictures taken standing in the doorway between the living room and bedroom.

View into the living room:

BEFORE 

(my crafty storage and mess= what I've usually been showing here)

AFTER 

(his neat "office", the tv and comic boxes happen to be out of sight)

View into the bedroom:

BEFORE

(his "office", tv, piles of VHS and DVD, boxes of comics, my clothes on the floor...)

AFTER 

(my crafty mess and storage... still clothes on the floor)

I can see I need to do a bit of ironing! I'm going to buy one more of those white towers from Ikea, there's space for it on the far right. I hope to get rid of all my little cardboard boxes and piles, hopefully before schools begin... There's only one major problem left after these arrangements: the dark brown work desk is now in a broader spot in the hallway in front of some book shelves, I've got to find a place for it somewhere :)

Anything and everything

The Stampotique Designers Challenge asks for twinchies, so I dug out some frames suitable for framing 2x2 inch images. I'm not posting for that yet, since I didn't make a set of twinchies, just one... I decided to go for the Crafty Individuals July challenge (Face value) and make a portrait of an Alice Palace doggy.

The dog was coloured with Distress markers and spritzed with water before stamping. Sometimes it happens that a new technique seems to pop up on several places at the same time. For me it happened to be triple embossing, which I ran into so many times last week, that I had to check it on youtube and try it out on the frame. I cut the "anything and everything" stamp to pieces, seperating the text, speach bubble, dog and food. I placed the pieces (along with a couple of other Alice Palace stamps) on top of the frame and picked them up with my TacknPeel block so I could stamp them in the soft embossing all at once.

The embossing was messy business, I had to wipe up several times... and much deeper than I expected, love the chunky look of this! I can say it looked really cool before the stamping too, just a thick gold.... I mounted everything on an inky red background and a gold card base from my destash pile. Certainly to be tried again!

Tulips

I received these Art Journey tulip stamps last week, and now I at last had time to play with them! I am posting for the Art Journey July challenge (at least 50% white).

I did some watercolour stamping with Distress markers and a spritz of water. The yellow tulip was stamped first and masked before stamping the pink one. The card base is watercolour paper, I've never used these before, and became a bit worried as the paper became a bit wavy from the wet image, but luckily it straightened out by itself as it dried.

Broaden your horizons

One more take on the Craft Barn weekly challenge (background text).  I am also posting for the Fashionable Stamping challenge (All about the men).

This is a spread in my altered quote book, the stamp is from VivalasVegaStamps and I've added some doodling with Micron pens, accents of white Sharpie and coloured with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.