Denim Mini Album

For about a year or so now I have been totally enchanted by Donna Salazars work with reclaimed denim from her headbands and hand made flowers and embellishments.

Recently I found a 50c clothing section in one of my local op shops and scored 3 pairs of jeans. One was so lovely with embroidered pockets when I discovered they would fit a friend I told her they were hers until they fell appart then they were mine lol. It was a bit of a wrench to part with them because there is the most adorable little embroidered pocket on the front.

Anyway I have pulled appart and cut up one of the pairs and when I got my New Big Shot this week (thanks to an amazing and generous friend) I did some cutting out of the denim and played a bit with some embossing and Inking.

What I have learned is that Denim is a great canvas for ink, it embosses like a dream and is quite a versatile medium.

Steel rule dies are the best to cut through the fabric however as long as you do not mind having to do a little cutting, the thin metal dies work pretty well.

I used a combination of Quickutz and M Press Dies for this album as well as one of the reclaimed denim pockets:

I decorated the pocket to match the Album cover with an M-Press Heart that had been embossed with a Cuttlebug Script folder.

The album is cut from the Quickutz Santa’s Workshop Die Set, I used part of the elastic stretch section of the Jeans as a sort of Handle, all the pages are embossed with an M Press Butterflies embossing folder and then inked over.

and from the back:

The Inside Pages: have spaces added for small photos with more quickutz dies, and random stickers and rub ons from my stash.(not sure of the stickers but the rub ons are from Kaiser Sweet Nothings and bon jour)

I also cut out two pieces of denim for each page though honestly it was quite a sturdy denim and would have been fine as indavidual pages. I used OK to wash it glue to stick it all together, MM Crystal brads to hold it all together

and thats it one Denim Mini Album stored in a Denim Pocket. I may end up cutting out a word from Denim and adding it to the pocket just to tie it all together a little better.

So Long Old Friend

I find myself hit with a bout of Nostalgia this week. If you have been reading this blog you may well have heard some of my issues with my beloved cuttlebug as it has slowly been dying.

We had a good run my bug and I. You see it was an original cuttlebug. It got well used as one of my favored tools. As a budget crafter your die cutting machine is a great way to make your money stretch from making your own flowers to mini albums and everything in between. I also love using it to cut out alphas so that I don’t have to buy so many.

Anyway it now only cuts on one side, needs heavy shimming, and the cog/gear that turns the handle is down to just four teeth.

It is time to move on. But I felt I should at least post a tribute to my bug on my craft blog as I have created so much with it.

I am very lucky however to be able to move on. As a wonderful and very very generous friend sent me a brand new Sizzix Big Shot, no more ugly green for me its very pretty pink and black and even has rhinestones.

 

So it’s goodbye cuttlebug hello big shot 🙂

However as I said my cuttlebug served me well and I am so grateful that I have a replacement. No more fighting with my bug to try and cut things out.

RIP CUTTLEBUG

you will be missed.

A Little Locker

By now you are all well and truly aware I am not only a budget scrapper but a bargain hunter as well.

Nearly all my craft supplies have been gotten on Sale, or at a discounted rate.

I recycle everything I can think of.

I also look for things to play with (though have to stop myself sometimes as I have been trying to use up the OTP stuff I have, needless to say I am almost out of MDF albums and fun stuff to play with)

Anyway the OP shop (opportunity or second hand shop for non Aussies) near my Councilor is a treasure trove of interesting items.

I recently Discovered that they have a section out the back with old jeans for just 50c ( perfect for crafting with at that price and no sadness at killing erm I mean upcycling a pair of jeans)

I have also scored many a good 30-50c book, a whole container with about 60 slide covers again 50c, a bag of dominoes for 2oc

and this little Locker which once upon a time came with a Mary Kate or Ashley Olsen Doll for 50c. It still had the faux magazines and books inside it.

This is just phase one of this project I have an idea for it but it will take some $$$ to get the things I want and a little inventiveness on my part.

Now because I like to pin my posts and I am not clever enough with photo editing to put the pics all Into one I will start with what I have done to it then show you what it looked like to begin with etc. Almost backwards but not quite.

So here is what I have so far (remember this is just a smidge bigger than a barbie type doll):

and here is what the locker looked like originally

and here is is covered in Foil Tape (I got a rather large 2″ wide roll from ebay by searching foil tape worldwide it was about $4 and it is well worth the money as it goes very far.) I was tempted to leave it like this cause its kind of fun and funky all silver but I really do have an idea for where I want to take it.

and again how it looks now.

I embossed the foil tape by tearing it into strips the length of my Cuttlebug embossing folder. I embossed about 4 strips at a time as they are thin and it is much quicker this way. I also did the strips in different sections of the folder so I could mix up the looks.

I then took each strip and used alcohol inks in Lettuce, rust and another colour. Painted it with Black Ranger Paint dabber, left it to dry overnight and then lightly sanded off some of the black paint. I find the steel wool technique does not seem to work very well for me and flattens the embossing a bit to much for my liking.
The best part about the foil tape is that it is very forgiving and easy to add more where needed.

Febuary/March 365 Days Of Love Project Boxes

Hi All

I am sharing this on both this blog and my musings blog because well it really does fit both.

My project for this year started as 365 Love letters to strangers and has evolved into what I now call 365 days of Love. I did not want to give up on the project for lack of things to write about or to feel pressured to come up with stuff all the time so I have evolved the project to include random acts of art and craft and well to just be whatever I need it to be on the day as such.

So for feb and march I created a wee box of Love, with everything from a Little album, mini paper bag of bath salts to a handmade heart cushion hangy thing.

Anyway here is the finished box:

the box before it was wrapped with a good view of the Heart cushions that were hand cut out, hand sewn and hand stuffed actually the 23 of these took me a rather long time to complete and I am sure between them and the other things I made more than warrent 2 months project time.

the 2″ square boxes I made from scratch:

the 1″ Paper Bags made from one of My fav MFT Dies

The Love albums that I had to fight with my cuttlebug to cut out (both the letters and album are quickutz)

The boxes ready to be wrapped:

and all finished with a Tim Holtz butterfly die cut and a pretty mulberry rosebud

They also include a turkish delight easter egg as its easter, and some have a small turquoise heart bead in them.

It was a lot of work to get these done, when I thought oooh a box of love for valentines day I had no idea it would take me so long to get them done.

I have to say though that I am really happy they are now complete just have to print a little label for them to say what they are about and give them away 🙂

12 Tags of 2013 (or my take 12 mixed media journal pages)

I Hi everyone.

I know cutting it fine, but life has been a bit of a roller coaster of late to say the least.

I have spent the last two days working on my version of Tims March Tag.

I will post the pic then break it down for you all 🙂

my idea started with cutting some tissue paper into strips (I just folded it over a few times so it made really long strips), and then using some of the left over mist I had made for my bear (a mix of stream colour wash and mowed lawn re inker) and misted it, tossing it around as I went to get a semi even coating. I then misted over it again with a pearl mist that I made using perfect pearls ‘pearl’ and water.

I dried my ‘grass’ and then painted my journaling page with Stormy Sky and Mowed lawn distress stains.

Used some multi medium over the mowed lawn and started laying down my ‘grass’ strips.  I also added extra at the top I did little V shapes and at first pasted them with the V point facing up then did them facing down, did another layer of strips, and added in some scrunched up along the top to create a morefluffy grass like texture.

I got a new stamp this week an Imaginisce snag em stamp of a Chick and I could not resist using it on my page. So using inspiration from Dyan Reaverly I could not resist stamping the wee chick onto my page and also stamping them onto some plain white cardstock and painting them in Distress ink 🙂 I did however also grab my trusty prima craft knife and cut out the wing so that it looked like they could also flap away, I added a little glitter to the flowers on them with some glue gloss, and could not resist finishing one off with a smidge of Brown paper twine so it looked a little like it had a worm in its beak. I also added a little extra grass so it looked like my birdie was resting in the grass.

I then felt like getting a little bit more background texture so used a spotty piece of grungeboard that I have as a stencil and added some spots in Malted Milk paint dabber, then used Cool perri paint dabber to over Tattered Angels glimmer screen of a butterfly, and then also misted over it with Purple Twilight Colour wash. I did a simmilar thing on the other side with a flourish stencil, however I misted and then painted so it gave a more muted effect.

I added in my addage ticket. For me easter is a time of hope. Used some seasonal chit chat words in my grass.

Then used a grungeboard circle to create my sun. The Sun is  coloured with terracotta paint dabber and then I melted lemon fantasy film over the top to create my Sun.

Then It was time for my butterflies, I don’t own the bunny die. I do however own the silver tinsel twine however I chose not to use it. Not because I did not think the technique Tim showed us with the melting and the alcohol ink was not awesome but because it is an easter page and I really loved the idea of using easter egg foil instead. So I did. It appeals to me in a few ways its a free resource, its recycling and its always pretty colours and so shiny. I also inked around the edges of the Almanac Paper with some vintage photo and did the same for the butterflies I used later.

I cut my butterflies out of Almanac paper from Prima just to add a little of an old world look to match the Hope tag and because  I have to be honest and say I really love the complete mish mash of the Distress/old look mixed with the pastels and brighter flowers.

I then cut out some tattered florals flowers from white cardstock, Used distress stains over them, misted over them with my trusty home made pearl mist and dried them.

I then layered them and moulded them a little adding in a button to their centers that had some of the lime and white paper twine through the holes in the buttons.

I then added some rhinestones to the positive butterfly images and added them to the page

Lastly I doodled in with a white paint sharpie the stems and leaves of my flowers painted over a coat of distress stain dabbing it off to keep it light and then used a Zig writer to go around the edges so the would pop a little more.

And there you have it my journey to my Mixed Media page for March. I know its Autumn in Australia I just really love the pastels and easter colours.

Happy Creating everyone.

Tattered Florals Challenge

I was so excited to see when Tim Holtz announced his Tattered Floral Challenge. I got the Die off my Sister for Christmas last year.

I had so many ideas go through my mind, another one of my pretty hair accessories, a bouquet, something to wear, the possibilities were only limited by imagination and resources.

As the entries started to pour in. I wanted something truly unique, something no one else would do.

A 4″ tall tattered floral Bear!

Sooo the idea for a new flower bear was born. This one has the fabric hand coloured with Colour Washes (one stream mixed with mowed lawn distress re inker to make it a bit more green and stem/leaf like). The challenge was that I still can not find my mini bear joints and eyes no matter how much I search and search for them. So this bear is string jointed and the eyes are pearls covered in Stream Alcohol ink.

What I love about these bears is the fact that their bodies are like the stem of the flower with their little faces blossoming in the center of the flower.

To get the flower I stamped Tim’s Flutter ATC stamp over the fabric with Archivals Jet black. Then used some colour washes (stream, butterscotch, purple twilight and cranberry they sort of all melded together in the fabric I had) and added some fabric stiffner to the flower. I used one of the other flowers to create the leaves by misting with the leftover mix of stream colour wash and mowed lawn re-inker,

I also misted white pearl cotton with butterscotch to create the bears nose and mouth. The head is also misted in butterscotch.

I used Tim’s paper twine split in two to wrap around the bears legs to give a sort of viney roots look.
here are some more pics of The Tattered Floral Bear.

I love how quirky and funny this is. It was how I left the bear to dry overnight so the bottom leaves would stick and not fall off

and a couple in a wee flowerpot I have with a colour wash next to her to show you just how teeny she really is:

A very Special Engagement Card

My Sister and her Boyfriend got engaged recently. So being me I of course wanted to be the first to make them a card.

There was a great challenge at Jellybeans last month to create a card using layers and circles, something I am not very good at so it was quite a challenge for me even more so as my bug is dying and only cuts on one side so every circle had to be cut twice to actually work.

It is no secret that my sisters favorite colour is purple so I pulled out a couple of sheets of paper from the meddow lark paper pad. And started to play.

It took me a while to get it to all work together and I ended up using the leftovers to create the heart and circle on the front (the triple thick seems to have made the paper pinker than it actually is in the center)

I really love how the mulberry butterfly almost looks pressed in this.

and here it is my sisters engagement card (though the layers show up stronger in person as there is mounting tape between each one)

12 Journaling Pages Febuary (AKA my version of 12 tags of 2013)

I had so much fun creating my journaling pages for this month. I was a bit worried because I only have two of the Distress Markers at present though I did use my worn lipstick one which we will get to in a minute.

Click here for Tim’s Tag

I am so happy with how this months turned out here is the pic:

I know the technique for this month was about colouring with distress markers but as I said my stash is seriously lacking in them. So instead I created a background using ranger paint dabbers (both ranger and Jenni Bowlin ones I am absolutely addicted to her Malted Milk dabber such a great colour to play with)

I first took my lightest pink (shell pink) and rubbed it over both pages, dried it with my heat gun then went over it with Malted Milk the idea is to leave some blank spaces and spots where the white shows through the pink to be filled in by the malted milk and some where the pink shows through stronger. I then used a paint brush and dipped it into the lids of Raspberry, Chewing gum and snow cap and flicked it one by one over the pages (I dried between colours so they each popped more) and that is the background finished.

Next I used some thin chipboard from a cereal packed and Quickutz’s branch die (I altered this slightly by cutting off a branch and placing it elsewhere to give a more even flow to the branches). I painted it in malted milk, then dabbed over some expresso and a little sunshine yellow then cut it to fit my pages and stuck it down with glossy accents.

I then used sizzix and cuttlebug dies for the hearts and cut them out of white cs. They were coloured with worn lipstick distress stain, splattered with some tarnished brass stain and then edged in worn lipstick distress marker. (told you I got the marker in there somewhere) before being glued onto the branches. Then it was a matter of using some glue gloss (am totally addicted to it) and sprinkling with some Ranger Dry stickles to make the hearts sparkly. I lastly chose words from Tim’s Chit Chat stickers (in seasonal and everyday?) and used a little glossy to stick them in place.

I used one of His tags that I stained in picked raspberry distress stain and snow cap stain. Added in a cs cupid cut from another quickutz die.

Then used some tissue tape to form the bottom and some pretty circle embellishments and a button from Tattered Inspirations and viola another mixed media journal page is done 🙂

12 Mixed media journal pages of 2013

How exciting that it is a new year which presents 12 chances to play along with Mr Holtz’s 12 tags of 2013

I considered my options for this year, after doing the wee coasters last year I just wanted more room. One of the things I really want to get better at is mixed media art journaling and what better way to do this than to turn each tag for 2013 into a mixed media project, not only this but I was given a gorgeous art journal last year which is perfect so not only will I be using inspiration from Tim each month but also want to create my own page next to it as well the aim is a double page for each month with one incorporating techniques or elements of  Tim’s original tag.

What excited me about this months is I already owned a lot of the elements, in the case of the quote stamp mine is the smaller version, and the pointing finger is a wood mounted one I got from Tattered Inspirations (though I did get the stamp set with it in it for Christmas).

So let me show you my page then I will tell you how it was done.

it is funny looking back at the process I took because the colours I added really don’t all show through though there are a few small spots where a little teeny bit does.

I started off by cutting a piece of manilla from a folder. I then embossed it with the same clock texture fade that was used by Tim.

I then smeared over impasto (which dries an opaque whitish clear its great because if you mix paint with it it will dry the colour mixed in and stay true to that paint colour so great for stencilling with), over the whole thing so as to allow some of the embossing to show through but to blur other bits, I then adheared chipboard cogs and gears both the boarder ones and the normal ones cut from thin chipboard. I smooshed mine into the wet impasto, then I smeared them with more to get the same sort of blurred effect.

Left it overnight to dry and then covered it in two layers of snow cap paint dabber. If you have modelling paste you can skip this step.

Then I played with some colour washes mostly in stream, butterscotch, cranberry, and purple twilight (I know I know you don’t see them now)

then I dried it all with my heat gun and did that till i was happy, then I inked over that with bundled sage and a bunch of other colours. Then I added some vintage photo and walnut stain distress inks, played with a bit of the water swish and flick and such and then smeared multi medium matt over it all and the result was the mottled browns you now see.

Then I was stuck what did I want to do next so again I left it overnight and looked at it with fresh eyes.

I got a big pack of American Crafts Metallic Markers today from my Local spotlight. So I used the gold and went over some of the embossing, also used it to outline my cogs and to then to colour in my butterfly used the pink and green and of course it would not be one of my pages without a little bling.

Then I got out a couple of Tim’s texture stamps that I received for christmas and the black archival ink and stamped a little texture on there.

The rest was fairly simple I coloured the wooden finger with butterscotch colour wash, and  used a couple of thin layers of snow cap paint dabber that I smeared with my finger.

Tore some Kraft CS and inked the edges with vintage photo and walnut stain, stamped the quote and then repeated the same inking on some manila but also inked over the manila so that it was turned brown.

Stamped some crinkle ribbon with a hero arts clock background stamp, used wild honey stain to colour it. Added in some watch parts, and the hardest bit used thin strips of metal found insidesome of the watch parts with some magic tape that I cut thinly by sticking the metal bits down on the tap and trimming it added in my game spinner and mini cog.

And viola my first Mixed Media Page of 2013. It is nice to actually have so much of what was used for a change. Though I would always want to do my take or spin on what is done and not necessarily use every element or tweak it to what my stash contains. I am super excited to see where this journey leads me this year.

 

PS You may ask why not tags? I have nothing against tags at all. To be honest last year I did the coasters to be different and so I would have a lovely piece of wall art, this year I am doing a mixed media journal so I will again have a momento of this year of creativity plus I truly want to learn and stretch myself in mixed media this year. Plus yes I do like to be different and do something that not everyone else is doing 😉

A year of Coasters revealed

This year challenging myself to do 12 coasters instead of tags has been yes a challenge. Coasters are much smaller than the tags that are usually used. They are just 4″ squares.

It is with a fondness and some sadness though that I say goodbye to the 12 tags of 2012 and reveal the piece of wall art I created with my coasters.

I know that this year will see even more creativity and I already have my idea ready and waiting for the first tag of 2013 (where would we be without Mr Holtz’s monthly inspiration).

Yes I added a little to some of the tags, an image here, a little glitter there, nothing major bar the complete reboot of my Febuary (oops almost typed fabuary) coaster on which I did keep two of my original elements just gave them a better backdrop as it were.

So here it is the very Last installment of my 12 coasters of 2012 the finished Canvas (painted in antique linen crackle paint, with letters cut out of sizzix love letters strip alphabet die, stamped with coffe bean ink on hero arts Kraft cs and all stuck on with matt multi medium) It truly has been a year of creativity and I for one am very glad that with the exception of April I managed to get all my coasters uploaded and shared on time.

 

What do you think?