Black Tulips.............PaperArtsy Challenge with inspiration from Jo Myhill.

Good Morning and Happy Mother's Day to Mums who are dropping by today........

.................and a special Happy Mother's Day to my own Mum (who I'm cooking dinner for today poor thing, lol), to my beautiful daughter Jenna who is doing a fab job as Mum to Izzy and Charlie and last but by no means least to my lovely DIL, Yvonne who is the best Stepmum ever I could wish on my granddaughter Alexa.

Now on to my creation for the PaperArtsy Blog Challenge for this week.  There were three designers who inspired me this week, Brenda Brown's fab tag, Deborah Wainwright's gorgeous Spring wreath and Jo Myhill's lovely tulips in a rusted planter.  Sadly, I only had time for one (because I fell asleep after tea last night ;D) and I chose the fun project by Jo Myhill because it involved rusting powder!  I bought some of this powder from PaperArtsy many moons ago and have never had the courage to try it so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  As usual I won't give the method details as Jo does that better than me over on the PA Blog and you can see her post HERE but there are quite a few pics.

I used a ring pull can for my planter & here it's just waiting for the rusting, oooer!

I got rather messy and very stinky with vinegar and the rusting powder and was rather disappointed with my results after about an hour of messing.

However, I tootled off for the supermarket shop and when I came back it had rusted rather nicely ;D! I wish it had run down the can more though like Jo's did but not bad for a first.

Now for a few pics of the tulips!

I took this closeup indoors to try and show the hints of Treasure Gold colours, Onyxite and Royal Amethyst.

And here's the whole thing.  Quite effective I think!

Off to do my link up to the PA Blog challenge now and then crack on with dinner preparations.  I hope you all have a lovely Sunday however you are spending it today.

Thanks for visiting and until next time .............

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

How long did it take??????

Hi Everyone,

It's a gorgeous sunny morning here in north Notts but still with a nippy wind......... much better than all that blooming rain and hail we had at the weekend though so something to smile about!

I got no crafting time at all last week for various reasons, one of them being a certain little lady's 6th Birthday!

This was the Pink Pizza Party she asked for hence Daddy's hat and braces! She asked her friends to wear pink (even I had to rake through my wardrobe and find an old pink top :-( ) or purple was allowed at a push ;D.  She definitely doesn't take after her Mamma ....... Barbie Pink is my least favourite colour, lol!

The day after Alexa's birthday is her Daddy's so we had a lovely get together at the weekend.  It was extra special because Jenna (sister) managed to rearrange her weekend and turned up as a surprise and also one of Jamie's best friends from his Uni days made the trip for the weekend and they haven't managed a get together for over 3 years. His partner, Yvonne's family also made the trip from Chester to add to the pleasure.  Yvonne put in such a lot of work both for Alexa's birthday and Jamie's so bless you Yvonne from me, Mwah!

And now back to the crafting........

The reason for my post title is that nearly 4 years ago I had a fab weekend at a retreat organised by Glenda Waterworth of Chocolate Baroque (formerly Elusive Images).  My friends and I had a smashing time and there were some really good workshops but, me being me......slow, I only managed to complete one project which was a lovely vintage style necklace/pendant (a Lynn Robinson class) which I gave to Jenna.  When I had a craftroom clearout a few weeks ago I found the unfinished projects (along with a few others) and last night I finally got to complete one of them, Whoohoo!!!!!

One of the mirrors from 'you know where' painted, inked, crackled and stamped to within an inch of it's life, lol! (er, excuse the reflection of my arm ;D)

I think the paints we used were Golden products and I do remember the patches of crackle which you can barely find as it's so fine was Ranger's Distress Crackle Paint.

All the stamps were from the fabulous Chocolate Baroque catalogue.  At that time they were under the Elusive Images banner but I'm pretty sure they are all available under the CB name now.  As the workshop came to an end the only thing I hadn't done was decide what embellishment, if any, I needed to complete the mirror and it's taken me nearly four years to get there, Ha! Ha!

In the intervening years I have picked up so many more techniques and one I've long wanted to have a go at is the fabulous Hels Sheridan's UTEE flowers using my Melt Pot so last night this is what I made.  The rose in the centre of the flower is one from the very first batch of paper roses I had a go at many moons ago.  The flower behind it is cut with the Sizzix Gulian Spirale die and I have to admit I'm really not too keen on this die.  It's the usual excellent quality Sizzix product but I find it very hard to shape.  I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has any tips for using it.

The leaves are a fab size and another Sizzix die called Arbor.

I got a lovely sense of satisfaction finally completing this project and it was interesting to note how another four years experience has changed what I would do with it now.  The main thing would be much less stamping!  Talk about overkill, lol!  The stamps are all beautiful individually but too much together in this way.

I really enjoyed making the a la Hels Sheridan flower and my OH was very impressed.  I even used another of my first paper roses and a couple of leaves left from my Green Lady project to make a brooch.

 Sorry for the loooooong post and thank you if you managed to stick with it to the end, lol!

I hope to get more time to play again this week so see you again soon.  Till then ............

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

The Green Lady - PaperArtsy Blog Challenge with inspiration from Julie Ann Lee.

Happy Sunny Sunday Everyone!

............... or I hope it's as sunny for you lovely kind visitors as it is here this morning, so sunny it made taking photos of my entry for this week's PaperArtsy Blog Challenge impossible to take without some shadows especially at 8:00 am with the sun just peeking over the garage, lol!  Never mind, I'll put up with ;D!

Anyway, this week over on the fabulous PaperArtsy Blog it was my Twitter friend (hope to meet her at Ally Pally next month :D), Julie Ann's turn to be main guest designer once again and as always her project over the 3 days was full of fun and imagination not to mention wonderful inspiration.  A visit to her own blog is always fascinating not only for her lovely designs but I love the stories she often weaves into her posts.  Her 3 mini canvasses (HERE) this time were based around The Green Man and I have to say I love the garden ornaments you often see in garden centres of this character.  Now, I didn't have any of the ceramic masks to use for the face (really wanted to use a face and not a substitute flower or something) nor anything that looked like a suitable male face so I decided to use a stamp from a set of faces which I've had for years.  I have no idea whose the set of stamps is and I think probably they are nolonger available but one of them suited my purpose and became THE GREEN LADY!

As I said, there's lots of shadow!

Here's my canvas (somewhat larger than those Julie Ann used) and my pieces of Fresco treated card. I later added quite a bit of watered down Honey Dew to tone it down a bit but the effect I wanted was dappled sunlight through a thick canopy of trees. 

A few pics were taken very late at night so the colour is a bit lost here.  I didn't have a suitable stamp for the background so I decided to apply Fresco paint through a woodgrain mask and then heat embossed with clear EP.

The stamping  was done with Archival ink and clear embossed.

On the top edge of the canvas I applied Fresco through my new Lin Brown stencil (from PaperArtsy) and clear embossed as before.

I didn't have the lovely leaf stamps from PaperArtsy (must rectify that one) that Julie Ann used so I used some others from my stash, stamped onto my card and cut them all out, shaped them and clear embossed about half.  As it was the early hours of this morning by this time I didn't have time to get them cold enough to crack but I still liked the contrast between shiny and matt surfaces.

To save time I didn't do the shrink plastic flowers either (although I do love Shrink) but die cut flowers from some sprayed background card I had in my stash ......... just look at that fab shimmer ............. and a butterfly.  I also cut a second layer for the flowers from some gorgeous burnished metal mesh I bought when out for lunch with my buddy, Jo, last week and layered them with a brad before adding them to the side. I also added a few tendrils of rusty wire.

I hope you like my female alternative to Julie Ann's wonderful Green Man.  I had such a lot of fun with this once I got going.

Well I'd better get my skates on as we have visitors calling in later and first I have to do a supermarket shop (groan!!!).  I hope you all have a lovely Sunday followed by a pleasant week.  Until next time ............

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

PaperArtsy Blog Challenge - Joanne Wardle inspiration.

Hi Everyone,

I've managed to make an entry for the PaperArtsy Blog Challenge again this week......at the last minute as  usual, lol!  At least I have a good excuse this time though as I've been having a clear out of stash I've sort of outgrown.  It makes me cringe with guilt looking at the pile of stuff I'm finally turfing out of my craft cupboards but I know I will never use it so out it's going, some to the charity shop and lots to my little grandson's childminder where I'm sure it will give lots of pleasure although it does seem sacrilege to cut up all that pearlescent card........enough card blanks to stock a shop, lol!  It's taken me several days  to go through everything and I think my next job should be doing the same with my wardrobes and clearing out the stuff I've 'outgrown' in there too.  I'm just kidding myself if I think I'll ever fit in quite a lot quite a lot of that again, lol!

Anyway, on to my challenge make.  One of the designers this week was Joanne Wardle and I always find her deceptively simple looking cards impressive and not so simple to actually create.  This week's example, which you can find HERE, was no exception and I had to improvise a bit because I didn't have the relevant PaperArtsy stamps or indeed anything like some of them.

In fact, the only suitable PaperArtsy stamps I had was a different Lin Brown flower from ELB01 and I decided to use a different word stamp from the same set, HPXT03, that Joanne used.

For the slightly splattered circles in the background I used a circular foam blender to apply the paint circles and then spritzed with water to make them 'fuzz' round the edges.  I don't have the PA splatter stamp either but found a wood backed one (no name on it) that has survived my stamp cull (I've found new homes for a lot of my wood backed stamps).  The stitch effect line is from a clear set I've had for years and the rings were made with a bottle top.  What I did have though is the fabulous set of pretty JoFY Fresco Finish paints. I think I need to get another set of these limited edition paints while the going is good because I can't stop using them, lol!

That's it from me for today. Here's wishing you all a sunny Sunday with a pleasant week to follow,  See you again soon.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx