March

February

Calendar Challenge - October

A quick entry for this month's challenge on the Craft Barn blog. The theme is orange and pumpkins (or fruit) and as I only have one stamp with pumpkins on there was no big decision to be made. The stamp is by Heartfelt Creations and I used sepia archival ink and coloursoft pencils. I used an ink duster and brushed corduroy DI to give a soft finish to the background.
I was very sad to receive news today that the Craft Barn bricks and mortar shop will close later this month and move to online sales only. I have often feasted my eyes (and lightened my wallet) at this and the former Lingfield store. I shall miss it.

Calendar Challenge - March

This month's calendar challenge on the Craft Barn blog is yellow and rabbits. The only rabbit stamp I have is my well-used Alice Palace crowned bunnies stamp by Crafty Individuals. I stamped them on some patterned paper and gave them orange glittered crowns (for a change). The background was made by smooshing yellow 'neon' paint from Lidl with my finger and while wet dabbing some scrunched up paper over it. When dry, I dug out my ancient Fiskars brayer and a floral roller. That's about it really.

2012 Calendar Folder

As my new January calendar went up on the wall by my desk today and the old calendar came down, I decided to make a quick folder to store my 2012 pages. This is the front cover. I used a beautiful Katzelkraft ledger stamp and some patterned papers from the My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus set. The 'hinge' is cut with the TH ornamental die and I've also used some Studio G stamps. Inks used were Archival sepia and broken china DI. The spotted band is held in place with velcro.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge 2013

Here is the final pic of the completed Craft Barn calendar. January is ready to be put up on the wall tomorrow and I shall probably bind 2012's pages together as a keepsake. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment. I hope you all have a very happy new year.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 12

Here's the last page of the Craft Barn Calendar Challenge. This month's requirement is embossing. I heat embossed the Crafty Individuals image and coloured it in with Coloursoft pencils and Sansodor. The pears are coloured with egyptian gold Twinkling H2O which has a lovely sheen. The BG is embossed with madison CB embossing folder, swiped with Versamark and dusted with gold Perfect Pearls. I added a red ribbon to tie in with the bow on the tree (ouch sorry no pun intended).
Has anyone else had any problems getting the 15% discount code? I have only asked once (for week 11) hoping to take advantage of the free postage to get some of the new Alice Palace stamps and some other stuff but I haven't received anything and have now missed out on getting anything before Christmas.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 10

Trees are the theme for week 10 on the Craft Barn blog. Now I know that October is usually more autumnal and this page is decidedly wintry but I wanted to use this gorgeous stencil rather than a stamp and I'd already done November so I decided it's going to be a blustery and cool October in 2013 and the trees have already shed their leaves. Having just returned from a much colder place where they have already had settling snow I think I was just in a wintry frame of mind. I've used 4 different shades of glitter although you can only see 3 clearly in the pic. I love the contrast between the glitter, the black and the blue cardstock.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 9

The challenge for week 9 on the Craft Barn blog is teal, rust & white. I used teal & rust pastels to make a BG and white embossed a Katzelkraft dress form image. I added some Katzelkraft and B-line design flourishes in Brilliance starlite black, Stazon rusty brown and Archival teal.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 11

November's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is circles. Thankfully I got an idea for this quite quickly although Isabelle has threatened a bigger challenge for the grand finale next week. I used a CB embossing folder rellie's raves for the BG. The patterned paper is from DCVW Retro Prints and the circles were cut with a framelits die. The poppy die is by Memory Box (poppies for Remembrance Day). The only stamping on this is on the BG to the poppies which is a Hero Arts dot pattern stamped with brushed corduroy, spiced marmalade and tea dye DI.

Calendar Challenge Catch Up

I've been away for several weeks and have returned to a backlog of challenges and Christmas stuff. I don't know if I will manage to catch up with everything but I'm going to give it a try. I wish I could say I feel refreshed after the break but although we had fun it was pretty hectic and there is lots of non-crafty catching up to do as well. I'm going to tackle the previous challenges as the inspiration hits me (let's hope it does) so they won't be in order but here goes.
The Craft Barn Calendar Challenge for week 8 is children/ cute. I can't remember where I got this 12x12 patterned paper from but it seemed suitable for the theme.I stamped the Suzi Blu/Unity stamp party girl and cut her out giving her a blouse of the patterned BG paper. The BG was edged with a flower stamp with pumice stone DI and I added a Katzelkraft swirly musical stave stamp. The flowers are a Memory Box die cut from the BG paper and white card with a speckled stamp added with Brilliance starlite black. Some black crystal gems finished the page.

Calendar Challenge Week 7

This week's prompt for the Craft Barn Calendar Challenge is candles. Not an easy thing to incorporate but luckily I have a suitable stamp by Katzelkraft.  I dabbed Stazon in mustard, pumpkin, blazing red and cactus green randomly over the page for the BG. The main image is embossed in gold and I added gold corners to the page. The swirl is by Penny Black stamped in Pumpkin.

Calendar Challenge Week 6

This week's prompt on the Craft Barn blog was to use felt. I'm a bit time-pressured at the moment and needed to get this done without resorting to going out to buy some felt. I had 2 colours of felt at home - white which I use to make applicators for alcohol ink and a rather hideous sugar mouse pink which I bought years ago to make a costume for DS2 in his school play. He was a lamb and the pink was for the inner part of the ears (when I tell you that my little lamb just turned 18 you'll have an idea of how old this felt is!). I know that the Bigz dies cut through felt so I decided to use the TH tattered florals die. Once cut I tried to tone down the pink with archival plum ink and added a little colour to the white. I also decided to use a black base card to counteract the sickly, sugar pink. I embossed a trellis pattern with my scoreboard and added some punched retro flowers and gems. You should be able to see the embossing more clearly by clicking on the pic below . So, unusually for me, no stamping on this page and just a little hint of ink.

Calendar Challenge Week 5 (revised)

I was not happy with my original page for the Craft Barn challenge so I decided to change things around a bit. I kept most of the original elements but added some smaller flowers and moved the tape flower.

Calendar Challenge Week 4

This week's challenge on the Craft Barn blog is to doodle on our calendar page. I have coveted this diamond mosaic Stampers Anonymous stamp for a long time. When Tim Holtz announced it was being re-released as an unmounted stamp in a classics set I had to buy it. Using my stamp positioner I stamped it several times over some pearlescent lime green card with Versafine olympia green. I doodled over some parts of the pattern with a red pen and edged the page with Versafine spanish moss. The red zig-zags were cut with a Die-namics chevron stripes die.

Calendar Challenge Week 3

March's page for the Craft Barn Calendar Challenge has to have some green, yellow and white. This week the DT on the Craft Barn blog have been highlighting the use of oil pastels. I bought some of these a while ago so was interested to see how the DT had used them. I was particularily keen to try using them with Sansodor as Jane has done here. My base card is  pearlescent Bazzill in a creamy yellow colour embossed with a Cuttlebug paisley folder. I coloured the Hero Arts tulip stamp with Whisper markers in green yellow & orange and spritzed with water. I stamped off the first image onto scrap paper, sprayed again and used the second image. I then spritzed a gold shimmer spray over the image which is giving a slightly blotchy appearance to the tulips. The mat behind the image and the strip behind the calendar is made of 3 different green oil pastels scribbled diagonally and then rubbed with Sansodor. This year I am planning on binding my calendar with my Bind-It-All so I am leaving a 2cm  allowance at the top.

Calendar Challenge Week 2

Bright colours are required on this week's Craft Barn Calendar Challenge. February is usually a grey and dismal month so I'm sure some brightness will be just perfect for a February calendar page. I wanted to give a nod to Valentines Day but I didn't want that as my main theme (I'm getting too old for all that stuff!). This Crafty Individuals stamp fitted my requirements with a few hearts in the background. The page background uses the Stazon technique (basically rubbing a few Stazon colours randomly on the page). I used mustard, azure and blazing red over a Cornish Heritage Farms stamp. I highlighted some parts with a white pen - I have a Sakura white pen, an Inkessentials white pen and a Uni Posca white marker pen but I never seem to get the results I want from them. The Uni Posca is the best but I need to get a thinner version so that I can add detail more accurately. I left the image and month tab plain white because I wanted a contrast to the bright colours and it also helps pick up the white in the BG. So that's it for today  - a welcome touch of brightness on this wet and miserable day.

The Return of the Calendar Challenge

The Craft Barn Calendar Challenge 2013 has started. This is the challenge that prompted me to start my blog last year and the calendar has been very useful hanging as it does on the wall by my desk. This week's prompt was vellum. I was very taken with the vellum snowflakes by one of the DT on the Craft Barn blog a few weeks ago. I bought a new set of Marianne snowflake dies in Holland over the summer and have been wanting to use them so this was the perfect opportunity.
I made a BG with stormy sky, broken china, faded jeans and tumbled glass DI on a craft sheet, spritzed with water and some gold spray and smooshed the card through it. I randomly stamped some small snowflakes with broken china DI. I die cut the vellum snowflakes with Marianne and Cuttlebug dies. I liked the negatives left by the dies so decided to use one as a mask and sponged stormy sky DI through it. I cut the numbers from Sizzix mango tango and then decided to colour them in gold Krylon to pick up on the gold shimmer in the BG (it's good to start the year with a little gold!). I added broken china DI to the calendar (downloaded from the net) and added a few gems.
Edited to add: I've just been back to the original DT vellum blog post to add a link and I've discovered that Jane has also used a mask and DIs on her calendar tag. All I remembered about the post were the vellum snowflakes but obviously I subconsciously took in more from her post than just the snowflakes. I'm sorry if it looks like I've copied Jane's tag but that was not my intention.

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge - the full Monty!

I did have plans to bind all my pages but it's not going to happen this week so I'm posting a pic of the full set of 12 pages. Looking at them as a set I'm thinking about what they say about me. Hmm well they're very colourful, fairly random in the sense that there doesn't seem to be a particular style although it shows I don't really do cute. I have enjoyed doing them all - the easy & the not so easy months. They never became a chore. I hope I've done the challenge justice - what do you think?

Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 12

The final calendar page. The prompt was red, green, pine trees & sparkle. I stamped the Katzelkraft horloge stamp with Versamark and brushed gold Perfect Pearls over for the background. I thought it was appropriate as we are all fixated on watching the clock at midnight on the 31st December. I coloured in a pine tree stamp from All Night Media with Whispers marker pens, spritzed with water and stamped on a piece of white card. I spritzed again for a second impression and repeated. I cut letters with an X-cut alphabet from gold glitter paper and some pine trees from holographic green paper. I know there's no glitter as such on this page but there is a lot of sparkle and shimmer. I'd like to thank everyone involved in organising this challenge. I've enjoyed it tremendously and have thankfully managed to complete each week on time. It's just as well it's finishing now though because I don't think I can put off making our Christmas cards any longer! When I started I wasn't too sure how I would put the calendar together but by luck I managed to pick up a secondhand Bind-it-all at a good price so I'm going to have a go with that.