Lotstodo Challenge - Inchies

For this weeks Lotstodo challenge I set the theme of inchies, then wondered what I was going to do?!#/%? Anyway I decided to stamp 6 x 1" squares of black card with swirls and versamark ink. I then embossed them using different colours and stuck them to a cube. This is the finished result. Haven't quite decided what to do with it yet!!!

Cards

Been playing with my purchases from the Dome, embossing folders, green leaf card with a gold shimmer and my new set of nesties!!!! Just made a couple of cards.

Gothic Arch Challenge - Black and Orange

This weeks Gothic Arch theme was black and orange to fit in with Halloween, although you didn't have to use a Halloween theme. So I decided to try out my new thistle stamp that I got from the Dome yesterday. Background is a mixture of distressed spiced marmalade and the orange out the primary colours of the colorbox chalk set. All the stamping was done with black soot distressed ink. I used Tim's new rock candy crackle paste over each of the thistles, I only gave them a thin coat though. If you enlarge the picture you can just about see it!!!

More Birthday Gifts

More lovely gifts - thank you

The Dome

Had a fab day yesterday at the Dome. As you can see I managed to fit a little bit of shopping in. All essentials you do understand!!!!

Door Hanger - Lotstodo Challenge

A couple of weeks ago I had a crafty evening round at Maz's. Kate also dropped in for a coffee and catch up. Maz gave us a project to do, decorate a door hanger. So, I made mine for Kate and Kate is altering hers for me. I have to say, I am a tad worried as Kate is very heavily into PINK!!!!! Anyway, that's another story!! Her craft room has been christened 'the beach hut', hence the sign for her door. Giving it to her at the Dome today, hope she likes it.

Thanks

These are some of the lovely handmade cards I received today - thanks

These are some of the lovely handmade gifts I received - thanks

These are some of the non handmade gifts but will come in very handy for eating or playing with!!!

Lotstodo Challenge - A card

This weeks Lotstodo challenge was simply to make a card. It's my niece's 15th brithday soon and she has just started to play netball in our league - yes they let them in young these days!!! The players are decoupaged.

Atc Swirls and Flourishes Swap

I am hosting an atc swap on UKStampers forum, this month the theme is swirls and or flourishes. I stamped the images with versamark ink and then added differing colours of embossing powder to each one. The images are rub-ons kindly given to me by Maz. I rubbed them onto white card and then mounted them onto the atc and added a word and on the left one a flower and a brad

Board Book Swap

Hilda over on Lotstodo is hosting a board book swap and as I didn't have one, she kindly sent me one. The theme was open although a few topics were suggested. This is what I've done with it.

Front Cover

Inside pages

More inside pages

On this page I used one of the pre-cut shapes in the book

Last double set

Back cover

This is the book made up

Front and back made up

Can you guess what theme I chose? I tried really, really hard not to make it grungy!!!!

Photo Frame

My mate Maz made this fab photo frame. It really is gorgeous and all in my favourite colours - thanks Maz

Lotstodo Challenge - Brights

When I last visited Hilda she gave me loads of fab things to alter, one of them was this mirror from Ikea. I covered a couple of sheets of canvas with bright acrylic paints, once dry I cut them up into various sizes and made a collage around the mirror. I painted the sides in sunshine yellow acrylic dabbers. It actually looks much better IRL with the mirror piece showing instead of the stamped image, but it's the only way I could photograph it without my reflection!!!!

Black & White Atc's

Andrea on Lotstodo is hosting a black and white atc swap.

Suspended Utee

Finally got round to playing with my melt pot today. A few weeks ago I picked up a tin of very mini cookie cutter shapes and I've been dying to try them out. Well here they are. I've cut two of the same shape and suspended them on wire and cotton twill in aperture frames, so no matter if you look at them from the front or the back, they are the same, as I've decorated both sides of the frames. They actually look better in real life as they have been photographed on a flat surface instead of hung up. Anyway, you get the general idea.

Domino & Bottle Cap Swap

Andrea over on Lotstodo is hosting a bottle cap and domino swap. I hammered my bottle tops flat, punched out various papers and images, added words and / or embellishments and attached them to the bottle caps, linked 3 together using jump rings and a piece of chain and added a charm, or in the case of the one on the left, the bottom of a zip!!!!

These are the larger foam dominos. I lightly coloured them with distressed alcohol inks and then stamped the various images using black stazon. I added marmalade distress stickles on the crown of the first one, a utee star on the middle one and a black clay heart coloured with silver dabbers on the Mona one.

I decorated the edges with window lead after I'd run them through the cuttlebug and applied some black acrylic dabber paint.

Canvas Swap

Andrea over on Lotstodo is hosting a canvas swap. Here is mine. For some reason it's ended up being blue again!!! Hilda sent me some sewing pattern papers so I added a bit of that too. I covered everything in beeswax and then stamped in the top right and bottom left corners over the beeswax using stazon ink.

Lotstodo Challenge - Cities or Places

Remember my altered book that I started ages ago, well I've finally finished it. The hardest part was thinking of theme, once that was sorted it was plain sailing.

Ellen kindly sent me some plastic slide mounts so I covered 12 of them with sticky silver aliminium tape, printed out a suitable image which was personal to me about that particular place and then using a strip of metal and a set of alphabet letters, I hammered the name of the place into the metal. I covered it in copper acrylic dabber paint and sanded it down when dry.

For the insides I did double spreads of various places, such as London, Paris, Rome and on the back pages I cut a section out and added various images from around the world.

The back cover I covered with crumpled tissue paper and then used black acrylic dabber paint to colour it. I stuck silver gaffa tape around all of the edges, front, back and spine and added the words, travel, places and cities in grunge board using my Cricut machine. I painted these silver, sanded them back and added gold rub n buff. The travel on the front cover was done in the same way except I outlined the letters in black too.

And a bit more!!!

Same image but now black and white

and sepia

and sepia and halftone

and brush strokes - cool eh!!!

Been Playing

I've been thinking for a while that I really should get some more help and advise on how to use the photoshop program installed my pc, so today I've downloaded some tutorials and had a play. The original is the middle one of the post below.

I'm quite impressed as I've managed to balance the colours, add brightness and contrast, crop, add text and add a frame. Not sure if this classes as digi-art yet but it was fun, quick and very easy once you know how!!!!

Tomorrow I am hoping to try cutting an image out and using it on a different background, although this might be a bit too ambitious!!!!

Another trip to the Woods

It was a lot wetter in the woods today than it was on Monday, his feet are just turning black!!


Now they are really black!!


But then he decided to go squirrel hunting

He dried off a bit with a run on the green