Poppy Stencil part three.....

Good morning all,

Wow.....

I have had such a busy week being away at the NEC Hobbycrafts Show with Imagination Crafts and only got back late yesterday, so I am feeling somewhat exhausted at the moment!
Thank you so much to everyone who visited the stand and supported us, we had such a busy show and thank you also for all your lovely comments to Sue and I for our shows on Hochanda, it means so much to us.....

But onwards and upwards as they say..... Kirsten and I are busy preparing for my class next week and also there are more Hochanda shows coming up, so I am preparing for those too.

We have also been very busy putting LOTS of new items on the website and you can find them here in the WHAT'S NEW section.......

I have not had any time to play lately so I thought that I would show you some more samples that I made for the last class using my poppy stencil. Sorry but it is a quick post today as I have so much to do....

These next two cards were made in a similar way as my last two posts here....... 

I cut away the main image that I created with the Poppy Stencil and 3D'd it on to another background that I created using a couple of stencils and Distress Ink. 

Here is a list below of the products that I used to make this card:

Imagination Crafts Honeycomb Stencil
Imagination Crafts Falling Leaves
My Imagination Crafts Poppy Stencil
Poppy Red Stencil Paint
Lime Green Stencil Paint
Sage Sparkle Medium
Light Copper Sparkle Medium
Distress Ink Bundled Sage

For this next card, I created the main image using my Poppy Stencil in the same way and then added a background with the hexagons stencil and Distress ink and then die cut a circle away and added a matting circle layer of black in between. I also created two extra flower heads to decoupage on top......

Here is a list below of the products that I used to make this card:

Imagination Crafts Hexagons Stencil
My Imagination Crafts Poppy Stencil
Poppy Red Stencil Paint
Lime Green Stencil Paint
Sage Sparkle Medium
Light Copper Sparkle Medium
Distress Ink Barn Door and Bundled Sage

It is short and sweet today my lovelies but I hope you like the makes and I will be back soon.....

Remember you can always pop over to our Pinterest pages for more inspiration here:

https://www.pinterest.com/lisabdesigns/

Bye for now......

Big hugs Lisa B xx

  

  

   

Using Brushos and Gilding Flake to Illustrate a Beautiful Mind

Good morning all! How are we all? Not very good weather down here, wet and windy and the perfect excuse for hiding I'd say...
As we are reviewing techniques and products we have used through the year, I thought it would be the perfect excuse to use a stamp set I have owned for a while, but was not sure what to make with it. Do you have crafty items like that? You know, the ones you see, you buy because you LOVE them, but then can't think who to send cards to using them?? Guilty: several times over.

First step, 7X7 card blank base and 15x15cm piece of watercolour card. The watercolour card is the best to use for the techniques I used in this case, not only because of the fab texture, but also because it is 'forgiving' and allows you to play and 'alter' the colour you place onto it.

My next step was to select 3 colours of Brushos and apply small amounts directly from the pot onto the paper (less is more). Using a spray bottle with water, I then lightly sprayed onto the card, waited a few seconds and sprayed again if I wanted more 'spread'. Where the colours were intense, I used a muslin and dabbed away to leave a more subtle effect (purely personal choice here, but the watercolour card allows you to do this, if you try with anything else you will get a pulpy mess...)
Once dry, (you can speed up with a heat gun) I then took one of the stamps (chemical symbols) from the IndigoBlu Beautiful Mind stamp set and stamped across the whole topper, using the 2nd generation of ink from a Jet Black Staz-On pad. The effect is subtle, but I like it when you look at a card, then when you look again you see things you didn't realise were there at first...

 

 

Now, slightly different technique with the Brushos - this time putting a little of each of the colours I had used into a small palette and adding some water so that I could use them as a paint.

 

I stamped the head and the sentiments, again from the Indigo Blu Beautiful Mind stamp set, onto watercolour card, cut them out and painted them with the Brushos.

 

Going back to my main topper background, I used one of the stamps from the Indigo Blu Itsy Bitsy Backgrounds set (sooo useful this set!). I applied Versamark onto the stamp and stamped twice onto my topper at an angle. I then covered the area with Wow Bonding Powder and heated with a heat gun. Once this was 'tacky' I then covered the area with Indigo Blu Gilding Flakes and rubbed over. At this point I agree it looks a little 'alternative' (stay with me..!) but then, so are the stamps, aren't they?

 

Once I had mounted my elements onto some black card to make them pop, I also applied to my base with 3D glue gel (rounding the head especially). A final touch was needed, so I stamped a flower from Lisa B.'s Floral Pimpernel College onto watercolour card and coloured the same way as before, finishing with a pearl.

 

Not sure who I would send this one to; I would not want to offend anyone, but my goodness it does apply to me and I often have 'big problems'!

 

Really looking forward to seeing you all next week; it does seem an age since last class and it's great to have crafty chats together with other like-minded folk

 

Thank you for indulging me and reading,

lots of love,

 

Martina

xx

 

 



Lisa's Clematis Elements and Starlights

Hello crafters, welcome to my first blog for 2016.  So this month we are going over some of our favourite techniques of 2015.  One of my absolute favourites are Starlights, they are so shimmery and make any project stand out.

I took a plain white 7" x 7" card and stamped it with Lisa's Clematis Elements stamp set, using Black Onyx Versafine and Wow Clear Embossing Powder.

 

I then took an A5 size peice of White Super Smooth Card and painted half with Dark Orchid Starlights, that I'd watered down very slightly and painted the other half with Menthol Starlights again slightly watered down, this really brings out the gilding flakes.  This was set aside to dry for a little while, it really doesn't take long.

In the mean time I took the Imagination Crafts Honeycomb Stencil and placed it over the stamped image on the white card and took a Smoothie loaded with some Dusky Concord Distress Ink (Sorry currently out of stock) and patted it through the stencil randomly.  I then wiped off the excess to reveal the black embossing again.

 

I then stamped and embossed the image again once onto the Menthol and the two flower elements twice each onto the Dark Orchid, sorry I forgot to take a photo here.  I then cut out just the leaves on the Menthol side and flat matted them onto the original image.  Then cut out the four flower heads from the Dark Orchid, shaping them slightly before layering them onto the image. 

Finished t off with some gems for the centre of the flowers and a Woodware Happy Birthday sentiment.

Hope you've enjoyed the little tutorial, and see you again next Friday for another of my favourite techniques.

Love Jan -x-

 

 

 

 

Stylised Poppies from Lisa B. and Imagination Crafts

 

 

Good morning crafty beings! We are focusing on looking back over techniques and products we explored in 2015 for this month, so I decided to play with some of Lisa's Floral Collage Stamps. I really like the designs as they feature both the 'negative' and 'positive' images of the flowers, giving you extra techniques to play with...

 

I used a 7x7 card blank, opened it out and stamped the large stylised poppy stamp from the 'Poppy Elements' Imagination Crafts set on both sides of the card front (masking off the back of the card to protect it.) The images were stamped using Onyx Black Versafine ink and then embossed with Wow Clear Detail powder.

 

 

Next, to make a central topper element, I took a piece of Super Smooth White Card and cut to 9x12cm. I stamped the same poppy element and embossed as before. Then, choosing three colours of Versacolor Ink Pad, I used the complete 'filled in' stamp for each element and stamped over the top of the original outline. I deliberately stamped off to one side slightly, so as to add to the 'sketchy' effect the stamps afford. You can stamp it perfectly if you like: it is up to you! I also used the little 'bubble' stamps you get within the set to stamp randomly around the flower using my same three chosen colours.

 

Next step was to try and bring the card and the colours all together. I decided to continue the coloured 'bubble' stamp effect out onto the main card stock. I left the flowers plain though, so as to differentiate the main panel. I wanted to use a liner script stamp along the top, (this was a Clarity one) so I made a pencil mark at the lowest point I could go to (to make sure I did not obscure any of it with my main topper element). I then stamped the script using the same Versacolor Ink Pad colours and embossed (I stamped the far right and far left first and then centred the middle one for ease of placement!). At the last minute I realised my topper looked a bit odd not being 'grounded' at the base, so I stamped the bottom section of the poppy stamp again (doh!)

 

Final result, with the added topper, some matting and layering and I think it came together quite nicely in the end. Quite simple I suppose, but sometimes it's nice to try something different!

 

These stamps are handy to have in your stash; there are a few different ones in the Floral Collage Collection and they all allow you to have fun with inks and stamping effects... Look back to our posts from last February for some more ideas!

 

See you next week,

Thank you for reading!

 

Martina

xx