My inky travels along life's rocky road

Thursday 23 April 2015

Stitched Birthday Card


I was inspired by this idea on Miriam Prantner's blog and decided to try out the technique with my new Paper Smooches stitched dies. I think I need a bit of practice in placing the die but I like the effect. I added colour with chalks which I haven't used for ages. The sentiment is from Winnie & Walter's the Big, the Bold and the Happy.

Wednesday 22 April 2015

A Pretty Card


I was in the mood to play and make something clean and pretty and this is the result. Mainly dies and punches and one of my new sentiment stamps (this one is by Winnie & Walter called the Big, the Bold and the Happy). I used a couple of label nesties and a Joy Craft flower die. All the flowers are cut/punched from some scrap card I made for this project. Rather than matt and layer onto the front of the card I decided to cut an aperture and place the central image inside the card.
You can see the effect better here:

Sunday 19 April 2015

Katzelkraft Challenge - April


This month's challenge on the Katzelkraft blog is to use a stencil on your project. I stamped the dress form from KTZ123 and covered it with a mask. I used a button stencil with dusty concord and peeled paint DIs and then added the text from the same set. I removed the mask and added some colour to the dress form. I added some trailing flowers from KTZ 132.

New Stuff!


Way back in December last year, I was lucky enough to be picked as a winner on Jennifer McGuire's blog. My prize was a $100 gift card to spend at Simon Says Stamp. It was a wonderful surprise and a great gift that arrived just before Christmas. Ever since then I have been looking at the website trying to decide what to buy. The choice has been overwhelming and several times I have been frustrated by the fact that items I want have been out of stock. When they came back into stock something else on my wish list went out of stock and so it continued until finally a few weeks ago I decided that I would have to place an order regardless of what was in or out of stock. The fixed shipping charge was a hefty $24.99 so I had $75 to spend. I bought some sentiment stamps and some dies which I'm sure you'll see in the coming months.
This is a card for a teenage friend using the sending and wishing die and sentiments stamp set from Simon Says Stamp. The background is made with emerald green, terracotta, yellow & moss green Brushos. I spritzed some watercolour paper and then sprinkled on the Brushos and spritzed some more. This was the result:


As it was very wet I rubbed a spare piece of card over the top to pick up some of the excess. The result was the background you see on the card at the top. The colours are so different that I still can't quite believe that both pieces came from the same paints.
I stamped the wishing sentiment onto the background in black and added the wishing die cut slightly offset over the top. It gives a shadow effect and adds some depth to the sentiment. The piece was mounted onto dark grey pearlescent card and then onto a pale grey card blank.
I'm sure the original piece will also find its way onto a card or page very soon!

Tuesday 7 April 2015

UK Stampers Postcard Swap - April


There is something I find quite surreal about this, this being the postcard for April's swap on UK Stampers. The theme is eggs and a trawl through my stamps revealed no egg stamps at all. I finally remembered I had a small oval punch so I used that as the basis for this postcard. I punched 3 out in a duck egg blue and gave each one some speckles. My background was meant to be yellow, orange, red and blue but an enormous blob of red got squirted out and swamped the other colours to produce the background you see. I needed a nest for my eggs so hand cut one out and added some texture stamps (yes I know it looks like a bowl but work with me on this). The curly frond/branch/thingy is a Katzelkraft stamp and I added a bird cut from book pages. Now I realise that it would be quite a feat for this little bird to push out 3 of those eggs but just imagine that she is watching over the birds from a distance and therefore looks much smaller than she actually is. The eyes are by Hampton Arts and the crackle stamp by Kaisercraft.

Sunday 5 April 2015

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge - April


This month's calendar page asks for the colour blue and umbrellas. Here is my entry using a stamp from Non Sequitur's kimonos and cranes set. For the background I mixed white & ultramarine Brushos with water to make a wash which I painted over some cloud shaped masks. When dry I stamped the Studio G border in Versafine crimson red. The main image was stamped separately, coloured with coloursoft pencils and cut out. I stamped an extra umbrella which I mounted on foam pads. A small piece of fabric tape was used to ground the image (although she still appears to have some clouds below her LOL, perhaps she's an oriental Mary Poppins!).
I will try and visit you all if I can but this month may be difficult.

Thursday 2 April 2015

UK Stampers ATC Swap - April


Continuing our song themes for the ATC swaps on UK Stampers, this month we have Solitaire, the old Neil Sedaka song. A tricky one to depict but Tim Holtz's umbrella man sprang to mind for some reason and I decided to add lyrics from the song. I made a background withvarious sprays and a circular stencil and added a tiny bit of moss green Brusho. All the stamps are from the same Tim Holtz clear stamp set except a Kaisercraft grid-type stamp which I used behind the text.

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