I know it has been a while 🙂 and I will share my Lifebook work inbetween sharing my Stretch your Dies online card class cards 🙂
The first card uses fun foam, A Die Versions Heart Words Die (Hugs), Quickutz Heart something boarder die and a Sakura Clear Stardust Pen, Rather chuffed with how it turned out 🙂
I was so excited when I saw this Months tag Tim Holtz is really bringing some colour and fun into the tag this month with what is a huge symbol in my life Butterflies. And better yet I actually had all the right product to do my own take on this months tag.
I am super happy with how it turned out, the only thing being that the pic does not show up the Alcohol Ink background technique,
When I saw the original tag I knew I had to have a play, making fluttering butterflies has been a staple of my crafting since I first began my tentative steps into the wonderful world of papercrafting. In fact I was heartbroken last year when my favorite butterfly punch (I own very few punches as I really do not use them much but this one I used a lot) died it was only $2 and I got a good 8 years out of it so not to bad at all anyway The New Butterfly frenzy die makes me very happy as it is much easier to use than a punch and gives loads of shapes and sizes.
So here is my Tag, I decided I wanted to use my New French Flight Framelits and Stamp Set and so below is my take on this Months tag 🙂
I got a text message the other day, the kind every crafter dreads, you know the one just wondering if you could whip up a card for someone who is leaving.
Making my card stash null and void as there needed to be a lot of space to write in.
So here is what I came up with based on what was close to hand and in about 30mins
I automatically thought of the Tim Holtz Bird and Cage die as it looks good and is a quick way to take up a fair amount of room.
So I cut it out of some thin chipboard (recycled packaging). Inked the cage black and then embossed it with silver and used a technique we had learned in Creative Chemistry 102 to make it look a bit more tarnished and old (though I did not get to do it as much as I wanted to to get the look really happening)
I then inked the bird and it’s wing with some distress ink and set them aside, as you can see I was in such a hurry I did not even change my blending foam and some of the black got mottled into the other colour.
I grabbed one of my new hero arts background stamps inked it in one of my fav distress colours Peacock Feathers and spritzed the whole rubber stamp with water.
I stamped it (crookedly, but I will get to that in a moment)
and then blotted off the excess with a tissue.
I took I think it was worn paper or antique linen distress ink with my blending tool and covered the whole background with it as I felt the white was a bit to bright it also aged the Peacock feathers a little as well.
It took me a few minutes to figure out how I was going to get around the crooked background that did not quite cover the whole card, when my eyes caught sight of my tape container. So out came some Washi Style Tape and I used it around 3 of the edges to cover the crookedness and the blank space.
Glued on the bird added on the prima flowers and pearls and viola a card in under 30mins 🙂 I think some days I just get very lucky as a crafter as most of the stuff was pretty close to hand.
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.
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 🙂
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:
Last year I mentioned a friend of mine was getting Married and I was helping out a little (I will at some point post all the various 20 something placecard and other designs I came up with) but first as it is Valentines Day it seems appropriate to share her place cards with you all.
Her colours were Lilac, white and a smidge of black. I got great feedback on the work I did and she was really happy with them which was the important part.
I also packaged them into a hand made box with the same stamp I used on the placecards stamped onto the top of the box and added in some of my special wishing dust mini paper bags so here they are
PS You may remember the stamp as one I won last year from Jelly Bean Scrappers 🙂
Heavenly Craft Musings 