It's Nearly Halloween - Spooky

Gesso'd background, sprayed with blue and pink media sprays.

Decided it looked a bit Halloweeny so added the die cuts, stamped and cut out the pumpkin.

Close up of the background texture created with the gesso.

And the pumpkin, coloured with ripe persimmon distress ink.

That's Crafty have a theme of spooky this week.

PanPastels UK have a theme of Halloween colours.

Media Misters Tag Play

I played again with my media mister sprays. Top left is the remnants of the stencil used bottom right, mixed with orange gelatos. Top right simply sprayed with pink and blue. Bottom left and middle were firstly coated in gesso and sprayed in orange and blue. Over I orange I put seedless preserve distress ink and then splatted with water. I added pink spray to the blue tag.

This tag was simply sprayed with the blue, then the pink.

I used my new steampunk stamps on the tag and added tissue tape, gears and various idea-ology pieces to decorate.

 

Close up of the movers and shapers die cut winder.

And a close up of the stamped hat with all the decoration.

Decorating Paper Bags!

It's my sisters birthday on Wednesday so I decided to decorate a plain white paper bag with a bit of stamping.

Then I took some of the smaller ones and tried a few Christmas stamps to see if I could sell them on my table at the fair in a few weeks time. I might have a play again later and try some of the larger bags too.

Cards and Tags

It's my sisters birthday next week, so had to make her a card. Used one of the backgrounds I made in the previous post, stamped my new lost coast bird and the raindrops by Ryn and hey presto, finished. I used my Stampotique alphabet to write sister but messed it up so had to improvise with my new set of EV stamps!!

And in a couple of weeks it's my nieces birthday too. I made this background when Emma came to play, it's stamping with brushos which was great fun. Just cut it down and mounted it onto black then onto the red card.

And the bird and the raindrops on the tag backgrounds I did earlier too with the new media misters.

Media Mister Play

Well I got 3 of the new DecoArt Media Misters from That's Crafty with the voucher Lin kindly sent me for my birthday. I went for orange, primary cyan and primary magenta, or pink to you lot!!!

Now I have to tell you that me and sprays just do not get on, but I thought I'd give them a go and as you can see from my first attempt, I've not got any better with them - lol.

Second attempt, still rubbish - lol. I seem to get either too much or too little in the one place!!

And of course I had loads of product where I'd missed the paper, so I swiped it all up with this one!!

So then I decided to spray directly onto the craft mat, added water and then the playing began, much more comfortable with this.

And I got a second one from it too.

And I added more water and this is the third but it's a bit more washed out.

Did more or less the same with this tag. Love how the orange and blue mixed to make a green too.

This tag was totally pink to start with then I picked up the blue and orange after it had dried.

Brusho and Gel Medium

After watching Tracey demo the Brushos at the show and explain to us what the thickener was for I decided to see if it would work with Golden gels. Top one is soft gel mixed with orange and it was a bit thin and sloppy, but it still gave good results when dry.

This one is Golden regular gel medium mixed with turquoise brusho and scraped through a stencil. This was much firmer that the above and has dried with more depth, ie the surface is much more raised than the top one.

Birthday Thanks and a Lovely Surprise

Just so you know, this post is very picture heavy, very!! Firstly I had help unwrapping my presents and opening my cards this morning.

And then he really got stuck in!!

First batch of cards from my lovely friends Hazel, Lesley, Lin, Hazel H and Emma.

And the next batch are from some more lovely friends, Helen, Chrissie, Burn, Debs, Chris and Lin.

And the next fabulous batch are from my lovely friends, Kirsten, Alison, Chris and Linda.

And finally this lovely lot arrived today, Neet sent me the green Stampotique card, and Jo the one underneath with the LP image and the lovely Julie Ann made me a gorgeous charm gift and look at the tissue she wrapped it in (right) and the fabulous envie.

And this is a gorgeous hanging from Linda which she gave to me on Sunday at the Donny show, it's fabulous, front and back.

This is a close up of the fabulous charm from Julie Ann, look at those shrink plastic pieces, gorgeous.

And on Sunday at the show, the lovely Lin and Chris presented me with this fab envie top right and inside was this PA voucher, they asked me to spend it at the show, so I got the set of EV stamps left, thank you so much for this lovely present.

I also treated myself to this set of stamps by Ryn Designs with some birthday money.

And then these two plates were from my fabulous mate, Emma. They are a Choc Baroque steampunk set which I had my eyes on at Port Sunny.

And the lovely Lin and Helen also sent me email vouchers which arrived in my in-box this morning, but I've not had time to look for anything today as I had another fabulous surprise.

Emma came over to see me, so I grabbed a quickie pickie once Fraz had calmed down after saying his hellos, and she was finally able to sit and have a drink.

But my intention for today was just to craft and nothing else, primarily playing with the brushos. Emma was up for this as well and here are a couple of things she made. The red reminded us of poppies.

And we did quite well for not making too much mess, well to start with anyway!!!

Then Emma moved on to play with lots of other things, Pan Pastels, Silks, Primary Elements whilst I managed to throw the contents of a box all over the place!!!

This is brushos on a small canvas using a pipette and the TH distress marker spritzer. I dried each colour before adding the next.

And then after cutting out all the 3 plates of stamps above and Emma stamping each one to make sure I'd cut enough rubber off, I added a couple of images to the canvas.

Then I tried a stencil technique that I saw Tracey from Oyster stamps demo at the show on Sunday.

This is the stencil which Emma brought with her, but left at my house!!  It's another Ryn one.

I just loved how this one came out, it's just one colour of blue brusho and then spritzed.

And a tag with a pipette and the TH spritzer tool to blow it around. Then stamped a couple of the Choc Baroque steampunk images and coloured them in with brushos and a water brush.

This is another technique observed on Sunday by Tracey. You may recognise the background image as one of the EV stamps, yes I used brushos to stamp with, then stamped the LP image in black and bleached it out to remove all the colour from it. You wouldn't believe what a difference the bleach made!!

And for my last tag I simply stamped one of the Ryn sets of raindrops, very effective indeed.

This is Emmas bleached out brusho one using one of the new Choc B steampunk set.

And brushos using the TH spritzer tool to get some air to move the brusho about with Lavinia stamps.

And she was testing out more of the Choc B Steampunk images.

The red poppies again.

This tag background was done with silks and primary elements. Looks really good IRL.

And the brushos through the stencil.

I have no idea why, but it won't let me turn this and show it the right way up!!!

Again I have no idea why it's turned around, but nothing I can do. This is Emmas pan pastel make.

And if you've managed to stay with me this long, thank you and well done and a huge thank you to all who have sent birthday wishes via Twitter, FaceBook, by email and by post. I've had a truly lovely day made special by all of you.

***Edited***

This is what I bought with my vouchers from Lin and Helen and a bit of birthday money.