A symbol of the Orient

The base is the postage stamp TH die cut in black card.  The main image was stamped in versamark,  heat embossed in black powder and coloured with London bus fresco paint as were the pediments.  Sticky embossing powder was applied to them and black foil stuck on, that would be schizzle foil.

The 3 smaller images were stamped, cut out and the top and bottom, mounted onto red card.

This is another photo of it taken in daylight with the sun out showing the more true colours!!

Oriental Paradise

Again more playing with the same sort of things, namely my new LP oriental stamp plate #23 and my TH dies to make up the frame.  This frame has 4 layers, 5 if you count the two end pieces.  

I played with baltic blue, guacamole and south pacific fresco paint for the main frame, haystack, pumpkin soup and Baltic blue for the end pieces and zesty zing, London bus and snowflake for the LP image, again stamping it onto crackly tissue paper.

This is a close up of the image and I love how the snowflake just makes the whole thing pop.

And this is a close up of the Baltic blue stamping on one of the end pieces.

Stampotique have a theme this week of trimmed images.  You have to use at least 3 and they can be the same or different.  Now I know my trimmed images (the 4 Asian symbols) aren't that exciting, but I did stamp them and cut them out by hand, so I am hoping they will qualify as trimmed images!!!

Oriental Tradition

Been playing with my new LP stamps, my new TH frames and dies and of course the crackly tissue paper.  Kept this one quite simple colour wise just using black, red and white. I chose these colours as to me, they are the colours I personally associate with oriental. But I do like how it came out.

Heart and Swirls

They have had a change of tact over on the PaperArtsy blog for the end of this week.  Seleb designers are showcasing their stuff and last night was the turn of Lin Brown.  I loved the concept of what Lin did, but as you know, I'm not keen on flowers!!!  I followed the first few steps which you can find here.

I continued with Lins steps and used stone and elephant fresco paints over the corrugated, grunge paste and wiped back where the music script was placed. 

I used snowflake thought a stencil, but my stencil wasn't delicate!!

I used London bus and claret fresco paints over the top as they are both transparent.

I then painted the stencil swirls with florentine liquid leaf and added eggplant to the edges to give it more depth.

Finally added the vintag heart in the top corner, stamped the letters onto white card with seedless preserve distress ink, tore them out and inked the edges.

Out of a Hat Creations have a swirls and hearts theme this week, so I am entering!!

Framed Lady

I used one of the pieces of wood I picked up at the local timber yard a few days ago to make this. The frame is made from chipboard and embossed in a script.  Painted in baltic blue fresco paint and hi-lighted with pewter treasure gold.  I painted snowflake directly onto the wood, applied the LP main image with matte medium.  The image was stamped onto crackly tissue paper and painted from behind with fresco paints.  Once it had all dried I painted the background in beach hut fresco paint.  The scroll type things are rub ons. The top one actually brought a lot of the paint off when I rubbed it on, but I simply went back in with beach hut and because it's translucent, it covered the white but let the rub on show through. 

Are You Feeling Comfy?

This was Fraz earlier today, think he's rather chilled out and comfy!!

He loves draping himself right near the edge of the bed!!

Then later on he ventured out into the garden and found his stick.

His beard looks scruffy as he finished of my strawberry milkshake - lol.

Out the Blue

The background was coloured with baltic blue fresco paint, a layer of crackle glaze added and covered with vanilla.  A layer of limelight added and some more baltic blue splodged around the edges.

The main LP image was stamped onto crackly tissue paper and painted from the back and adhered to the background with golden matte medium.

The Tando Creative chipboard cog with wings was given a layer of grunge paste and #44 PA mini was stamped into it. Once dried it was coloured with brown shed and tinted with aquamarine treasure gold. The smaller cog was painted with haystack, pumpkin and brown shed and a smidge of the TG.

Pewter treasure gold was added to the edges.  The background was stamped in white ink with the #44 mini script stamp.  The TH pediments were coloured with haystack, pumpkin soup and brown shed.  Again using the #44 mini stamped in versamark, sticky embossing powder added and heated and bluey/green (schizzle) foil applied.

You can just about make out the crackle effect on the left, as I covered most of it up!!

Hope you like it Carol xxx

Challenges I would like to enter - 

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Colour

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything goes

Pierrot

Now you really need to use your imagination for this one as over at Out of a Hat Creations this week they have theme of circus. Having looked through all my stamps, this PA mini was the only one I had that resembled anything like.  It's actually a pierrot couple.  So this was the closest I could come to a clown, but not sure if they are actually found in a circus!!!

Chrissie if it's not suitable and you want me to unlink it, just let me know!!!!

Serenity

Still playing catch up with Linda's last week of DT over at the PaperArtsy blog.  To find out what's going on check out here technique here.  I used grunge paste and images from ink and the dog plates for the background of the tag.

I used eggplant and claret to colour the tag.  I then sanded it back to reveal some of the white and give me a smooth surface to work on.

For the top and bottom I used a blend of haystack, smoked paprika, pumpkin soup and brown shed fresco paints on the T!m Holtz pediment dies.

I used schizzle foil (now that could be completely wrong, but it's from PA), by stamping the ink and the dog image in versamark, covering with Ranger sticky embossing powder, heating, and whilst still hot and sticky, pressing the foil into the images. I used white foil.

I then had to choose an image, so from my new LP #22 plate I chose the one above and the one below.  I stamped one in black stazon and one in versamark and covered them both with black embossing powder.

I did the same with this image too.

I coloured the chosen image with distress ink markers and a water brush.  It sort of blended into the background, so I mounted it on a scrunched piece of black tissue paper tinted with pewter treasure gold.  The charms have been coloured with vintaj patina (the green set), buffed up and again rubbed with pewter TG.

I then had a change of tact and decided to use a hanging chunky board to mount the tag on instead of going the way Linda went with hers.  I gave it a base coat of guacamole and then blended in limelight and zesty zing.  I stamped the crackle image in black stazon.

I twisted some green sari ribbon around the string hanger.

And this is the completed piece.

Close up of the embossed image coloured with distress ink markers.

Close up of the top with the schizzle foil.

And the treasure gold on the the black tissue paper.

It's so much better when the sun is shining because the colours actually look how they do in real life!!

Green Wings

Over at the PaperArtsy blog Linda is showcasing her very last DT piece for them.  Now she's made a journal page, and as you know I don't do journal pages, but last weekend I did buy an A4 book of heavyweight paper.  No it's okay, I didn't start to work in the book, instead I took the middle pages out and cut in half, so I was working on an A4 size piece.  Following Lindas technique here, this is stage one and if I'm honest, looks a complete mess, I nearly binned it!!!

Still following the techniques Linda used, I added paint through stencils etc.  I decided to find all the images I could from the ink and the dog plates that had something relating to wings and randomly stamped in black stazon.  I still wasn't that impressed but decided to keep calm and carry on - lol.

And then I took my white pen out and that totally transformed the page, well I think so anyway!!

A close up of the numbers stencil with Baltic blue fresco paint.

And one of my favourite images from the ink and the dogs wings #2 plate.

More of the number stencil.

Another fab image from the ink and the dog wings #3 plate.

And the fab funky chicken again from the wings #2 plate.

The colours are actually much brighter IRL, but it was dark by the time I'd finished!!

Thank you Linda for all the inspiration.

Asian Shrine

Over at the PaperArtsy Blog the fabulous Linda Cain is back sharing her inspiration once again.  For her third technique she has used a shrine from the fab Retro Cafe Art, but I didn't have one of these, so I made my own from the rectangles and mini pocket watch movers and shapers dies and the pediments TH Sizzix die.  Together with my fresco paints and grunge paste I also had to use an image from my brand new LP #22 stamp plate, picked up at the weekend from Ally Pally.

To get the depth I used loads and loads of 3d foam!!

And just to prove that it does stand up!! I used treasure gold on the pediments, top and bottom, also used ink and the dog and urban snapshot stamp plates.

A Fabulous Weekend

Well can you guess where I've been this weekend???

Yes, the largest paper craft show in the UK.

The inside is absolutely gorgeous and to be honest, it really wasn't that busy, or was it the hall was soooo big, you didn't notice the people???

This is the hall you go into when you first walk in, everything is so spacious.

So who did we meet then, or perhaps it's easier to say who we didn't - lol.

Here we have Helen on the left and Emma, who I went with, on the right.  This was actually my very first photo of the day!!!

By the way, this post is very, very picture heavy, you might want to go grab a drink!!

Hazel on the left, Alison on the right.

Left to right, Emma, Lily, Nicky & Jo.

Gabrielle, Emma, Lily, Nicky (Rachel in the background in red) & Jo.

Emma, Helen, Darcy, Michelle and Helen.

Emma, Helen, Gillian (blurred as she was trying to turn away from the camera!!) and Nicky.

Have you noticed a trend with these photos, yes, they are all around the PaperArtsy stand!!!

Lin demo-ing the fabulous grunge paste.

Leandra taking five with her lovely daughter, Millie.

Some of the fantastic samples around the PaperArtsy stand.

Carol and Penny.

Emma, Helen and Lin having a spot of lunch back in the first hall.

At then end of the show a few of us go together and took over the pub.

Helen, Hazel, Alison and Nicky.

Gillian, Emma and Leandra.

Leandra, Millie, Lin and Karen - The A Team.

Pen, me and Carol.  Photo courtesy of Alison - thank you!!

This is everyone in the party including Mr PaperArtsy who was very brave, the only bloke!!  (Front left in case you'd not noticed!!)

Not surprisingly, we were the last 6 to leave the pub, Alison and Hazel went back to Kings X and Emma and I went out to eat with Gillian in her new head gear and Nicky.

Thanks everyone for such a wonderful day, it really was great to meet you all.

Oh by the way, this is what I bought!!

So on Sunday we set off to:

Cass Art in Islington, and Emma was most impressed that I actually managed to get us there!!!

But as it was such a gorgeous day, we decided to do brunch outside first!!!

And this is what I got!!  Not much really, but was nice to go in and see.  It wasn't anywhere near as big as I thought it was going to be though.

And finally a big thank you to Lily for giving me her spare bottle of the Dylusions spray ink and remembering to bring it!!

I had a fabulous weekend and thoroughly recommend the experience to anyone who is thinking about it - thanks again to everyone who I met and came into contact with and it was especially nice to finally meet Alison and Nicky as they were my very first cyber friends - cheers guys!!

***If I have anyone's name wrong, apologies and please let me know so I can change it or if you don't want your photo up, please let me know too and I'll take it off the post***