PaperArtsy Blog Challenge #7 entry.

Good Afternoon everyone,

Last night when I was supposed to be getting on with giving my craftroom a clear out pending installation of Virgin Media next week.......if it happens after today's issues but that's another story..... instead I got to playing (prevaricating I think that should say, lol)! 

Over on the PaperArtsy Blog the current Challenge #7 is on the topic of resists ably introduced by the lovely Darcy HERE.  There has already been some fab inspiration from guest designers with much more to come over the next week and a half so plenty of time left to enter the challenge if you want.  I created a tag with three differenty resist techniques.

I used PaperArtsy Hot Picks stamps, a lovely rub on which I've had in my stash for several years, Distress Stains and Distress and Archival Inks. 

 First of all I applied the rub on and then dobbed Distress Stains on my craft mat and spritzed with water before dabbing the tag into it.  I dried it with my heat tool then dribbled some Golden Tar Gel at the top of the tag.  I've had mine for years and never used it before.  Unfortunately I think it's going a bit thick  so had a bit of trouble with dribbling, lol!  When it was set I followed this with stamping some script using Archival Ink and coloured the tulip with pencils.

I stamped the leaf image using Distress Inks over the Tar Gel and then randomly stamped one of my very favourite and oft used Hot Pick stamps which is a cluster of teeny little dots, using Versamark Ink and clear embossed.  I then laid down the same Distress Stains on my mat, spritzed and dobbed the tag into it again before drying with my heat tool..  Finally I added Treasure Gold to the pretty, rusty metal butterfly before gluing it to the tag and adding the ribbon and paperclip embelishment.

See you again soon and have a good weekend.  Hope all the PATwits have a great time at Ally Pally!

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

PaperArtsy Challenge #6 - Fabric Sculpting Entry

Hi Everying

I hope you're all having a lovely Sunday.  We have (my kind of) perfect weather here today with lovely sunshine, a little breeze and very comfy temperature!

Over on the PaperArtsy blog for the past two weeks the guest designers have been putting various fabric stiffeners through their paces and have shown us some amazing artwork from wall art to dolls as well as my own offering of the doily vase which you can see here if you missed it.  The very interesting introductory post by our lovely talented Darcy is HERE.

After making my guest designer piece I really wanted to make a piece of wall art the basics of which I've had in my head for quite a while and amazingly I managed to finish it this afternoon just in time to beat the deadline for the challenge.  I was so enjoying the whole process from start to finish of making this piece that I forgot to take many progress pics but this post is still a bit photo heavy so apologies in advance, lol!.

I started with an 8" x 8" wooden deep sided piece of wall art I bought as part of a triptych ages ago.  I bought them with the intention of altering them as they were very cheap and very boring, lol!  

I gave it coats of gesso followed by dabbing several neutral shades of Fresco Finish acrylic paints with wet wipes, a clean one for each colour.  I then did some stamping with Archival Inks as well as some Frescos using stamps from various Hot Picks sets plus a couple of PaperArtsy Minis.  I stencilled a couple of leaf fronds from Lin Brown (for PaperArtsy) stencils using Mud Splat Fresco then bumping the stencil slightly and using Chalk Fresco.  I stamped the pretty flower from HP1009 and coloured the flowers with pencils.

I then covered the top two thirds and also a little vase with cling film.  I positioned the vase then soaked a piece of old cotton Tshirting in Bronze Powertex and arranged it in folds and ripples over the bottom third and over the vase taking the fabric round to the back of the wall art.

Once the fabric had cured overnight (I helped it along with my hairdryer ;D) I then started adding little sand balls to the folds.  I found the easiest way to do this to get them where I wanted was to pour a drop of Powertex into a plastic dish (I used a plum tray that I keep as a palette), drop the balls in and then pick them out one by one with tweezers to place on my art piece.  I find the Bronze Powertex is much runnier than the Ivory and next time I'm coating the sand balls I will leave it to thicken a bit before taking them out as at first it wasn't sticking.

 

This shows the stamping on the sides.

 

A closer look at the main stamping and stencilling after taking the protective cling film off.

 

I added shades of bronze and blue of various mica paints and pastes including Treasure Gold  to highlight the textures.

A final look at the piece with some pretty gentians and a grape hyacinth from my garden in the little vase.

I had a ball making this piece and am really happy with how it turned out.  It is very rare that I actually finish with something that is close to what I had in my head, lol!

Okey dokey, I'm off to do the link up with less than an hour to spare!!!  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and see you again soon.

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

Birthday card for a friend.

He Everyone,

One of the lovely people I've got to know through crafting and good old t'internet had a birthday last week.  I'm hoping she has received her card by now although it would have been a little late.....the Bank Holiday threw me completely, lol!  Anyway, fingers crossed as I'm going to share it today.

In the recent new releases from PaperArtsy designers, Lin Brown had some more gorgeous stamp sets for us .  I love them all but so far have one of the flower sets, the gorgeous lily and one set of quotes.  For my card I used just the lily and thE quote from the same set ELB27!  It's so elegant and perfect for stamping out multiple times then colouring with pencils, cutting out and decoupaging as I did here.  My base card came pre-cut as a tri fold giving a large aperture on the front so I just inked the edges then used double sided tape to stick the front to the piece folded behind.  I arranged the lilies and adhered them then stamped the quote and used co-ordinating dies to cut it out and layer onto suitable card before sticking it in the middle of the aperature.

If you click on the photos you can see the dimension on the 2nd and 3rd and the last one was taken in really bright sunshine (hence the shadows) so that hopefully you can see the sparkle of black stickles I added to the stamen.

Thanks for stopping by and see you again soon.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

PaperArtsy and Powertex....what a mix!

Evening everyone,

Tonight I'm sharing a guest designer project over on the PaperArtsy Blog using PaperArtsy products along side Powertex... what a fab partnership that is!  Here's a sneaky peek and I hope you can hop over to the blog to see the whole thing.  I had such fun with this stuff!

Hugs
Lesley  Xx