"Miss You" Card

Poor Alan - I've had to tell him to stay away from this blog until I tell him it's safe again. This is why: I've sent him a little card to let him know how much I miss him when we can't be together, and I don't want him to see the pics until he's actually got the card.

This is the card:


The stamp is a gorgeous one that I bought a few years ago, but haven't used yet. It's one of a set of four that I bought from DewDrop Craftz, and I think they're just beautiful. The image is stamped on gloss card that I've inked up using several alcohol inks - Stream, Lettuce and Denim, I think. I still think I'm a bit heavy-handed with the alcohol inks but hey, practice makes perfect (maybe, one day....!)


I started off by positioning the matted and layered image and sentiment on a plain white card, but it looked too bare. Aha! I thought, time for another do-it-yourself background. So out came the free stamps I got with my Craft Stamper subscription and, using two colours of Versamagic (just because I had colours that went with the rest of the card) I stamped up the whole of the card base. It just lifted it enough, I think.


What do you think? I really hope he likes it. I also really hope the post gets it to England quickly, because Alan will be back here next Thursday! Ah well, if he doesn't see it before he comes over, it'll be waiting for him when he goes home again. The sentiment is the same, I really do miss him and wish with all my heart we didn't have to be apart so much.

Back soon. Hugs,

Becki
xx

Watch The Birdie!

Here is the picture I've been working on for the past few mornings. I hope you like it! (The photo is a bit of an odd colour, the light was very strange this morning, and I can't work out how to colour-correct on Mum's photo-software. The sheets of paper I used as a backdrop for the photo are white copy paper, not the odd orangey-pink they look here.)


Originally I hadn't had any thought of making a picture; I was just experimenting with making flowers using the Eazi-Scor board. I like embossing these onto patterned paper, then adding a bit of detail with a fine black pen. I love the way they look like nothing when you first start, then suddenly, with a bit of scribble and just curling the petals with your fingers, you have really pretty flowers. Once I'd made a few of these I thought about experimenting with making flowers in different ways, and realised that one of the free stamps I got with my Craft Stamper subscription was a flower that would go really well with the Eazi-Scor board ones. These were stapmed on the same paper, but then coloured using watercolour pencils to give them a bit of depth, before curling the petals again.

The starting point for the picture itself was the flower borders down each side. This was another of my free stamps - when I first stamped it I was just playing round with my watercolour pencils, then it dawned on me that it might work well for framing an image and the whole thing sort of went from there.

The gorgeous little bird was the free Craft Stamper cover stamp a few months ago, designed by the very talented Hels. I stamped him and originally just added the gemstones to the plain stamped image. It really didn't work - just looked too FLAT. So I thought aha! The ideal time to try paper-piecing, which is something I've always meant to have a go at but never quite got round to. His body and wing are cut out from different scraps of coloured paper, and then stuck to the original image. Much better! By this time I was getting carried away, so I gold-leafed his crown (I love gold-leafing!!) and gave him a bit of sparkle by sticking some really pretty self-adhesive gems on. A really useful tip I've found when adding sticky-backed gems is to put a tiny drop of glue where you want them to go, then you can "nudge" them a bit if they don't quite go down in the right place.

Even after all this loving attention, the little birdie looked a bit lost. He needed something to stand on, I thought. I added an area of colourwash beneath his little claws. Aargh!!!! Horrid!!!!! I thought I'd ruined the whole thing, and was so fed up with myself that I went and moped for a while over a cup of tea. Once I'd chilled a bit, I decided to see if I could rescue my project. Back to the same set of stamps. I thought the paisley stamp (the same one I used in the background papers) might work as a hill for the bird to stand on, so I stamped, coloured and paper-pieced it and then drew his little feet back on where I'd covered them up. It probably sounds really silly, but I was thrilled to bits once I'd done this - I love the effect and was so chuffed that I'd had the courage to persist rather than just giving up when I thought I'd spoiled it all.

I thought that gluing the flowers across the top gave the feeling that the bird was standing in a tall forest of flowers, and decided to give them a bit of added sparkle with some more gems and a couple of buttons. Took me ages to decide on where exactly to glue them - does anyone else position items and then stand back and squint at them from all angles to see if they "work"? Or is it just me being odd? Maybe I don't want anyone to answer that!

This was the point at which I decided to make the papers that I showed you yesterday. I just couldn't find anything that really worked as a backing. Anyway, I'm pleased I did, 'cause here is the final result, once matted and layered up:


I'm so pleased with it! This is the first picture I've made just for me to keep, rather than being part of a card, or a gift, or anything "useful" like that. I've got it standing on my bedside table, on a little easel frame I bought from Ikea. So different from what I usually do, but I've LOVED experimenting!

Oh - while I think about it - the tip I mentioned about using wet glue with adhesive gems works for sticky foam pads too. They're so-and-so's for sticking down in the wrong place and then refusing to budge, but a thin coat of glue on them before sticking the whole piece down means that you can move it around a bit. Hope this helps, it's only a really simple tip but I've found I've used it again and again.

Back again soon. Hugs till then,

Becki
xx

Playing With Patterns

Hee hee - what fun I had this morning!! I've started getting up much earlier, before either Mum or Dad are around, so I can spend some time crafting in peace, and I've decided that I'm going to concentrate on playing, rather than necessarily always aiming to produce something specific. It seems to be working as an approach, and I'm feeling a lot more creative than I have done in ages - got to be good!

For the last couple of days I've been playing round with making flowers, both using stamps and also taking the flower on the Eazi-Scor board as a starting point. I've ended up making a picture that I'm really pleased with, but it's not quite finished yet, so no photos of that just at this point. But (there is a point to all this) I was struggling to find something to use as a background paper to layer the picture onto, so this morning I decided to make my own - something I haven't done an awful lot of.

I'm lucky enough to have boxes and boxes of paper and card that Alan and I bought from The Paper Mill Shop, intending to use them with our Cricut Expression. Rootling around in all these boxes produced two lovely pieces of lightweight card, the colours of which complement perfectly the picture I've been working on. Here they are:

Now, to jazz them up a bit....

I decided to use a simple watermark technique on the purple card, just using Perfect Medium. I love the way this darkens the colour of whatever you use it on, so you end up with a really subtle effect. It works with any colour - perfect if you haven't got ink that goes with the paper you're using! The stamps came free with my subscription to Craft Stamper magazine; I think they're Papermania ones. Here is how the purple card finished up:

Looking at it now, I this I might go back to it and add a few more, smaller images in the gaps that now seem so glaringly obvious. I started with the larger stamp, but I don't think I spaced it well enough, so there were some spaces left that the smaller stamp didn't fit into. Since doing this sheet, I realised there was another, smaller, stamp in the set that worked with these images, so I'm going to fill in the gaps a little. You live and learn - which I suppose is the whole idea of just "playing" around with techniques..

With the green card I thought I would go a step further and emboss the images. This was a larger piece of card, too, so I felt able to use a larger stamp to start off with - a gorgeous paisley (I LOVE paisley images!). This was the first step, stamped and with the embossing powder sprinkled on, but not yet heated:

I really wish there was a way of preserving this look. I love the way clear embossing powder looks before it's heated: really textural and soft. Sort of like flock, I suppose, although just to be awkward I don't like flocking. If anyone knows of a way to re-create the look of un-heated embossing powder without it all rubbing off, I'd love to know!

This shows the next step, with a few more stamped images added, and some heat-embossed. At this stage I had almost forgotten to put the embossing powder on, thank goodness Perfect Medium takes so long to dry, I thought I'd have to start all over again. Basically, you need to stamp a few, then put the embossing powder on, even if you don't heat until you have done quite a few more. It's far easier doing it in stages. I actually ended up sprinkling powder over each image as soon as I'd stamped it - far less stressful than running the risk of forgetting again! At this stage the card is getting a bit crinkled, but this is easily sorted out by weighting the page down once it's complete.

This is the end result. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. It's still perhaps not quite as evenly patterned as it could be, but I think for effectively a first attempt it's worked well. At the moment I've got the page sitting under a heavy box of paper to flatten it out. I've had a peep and it's looking perfect, but I'll leave it there until I have chance to use it.

So there you go. If you've stuck with this to the end you deserve a medal, but thanks for staying with me. I hope my little exploration has given you a nudge to try making your own patterned papers if you've not done it before. I get the feeling it will be addictive!

Hugs,

Becki

xx

Brayered Tree Card

Hello everyone! I've been having a ball playing round with my brayer and one of the multi-coloured Big and Juicy inkpads. I love seeing what some folks can do with a brayer and would give my right arm to be as good as, say, Barbara Gray, but I'm nowhere near that standard yet. Here is what I came up with this morning, to send to some very good friends of mine along with a letter I wrote to them on Sunday:

I love this tree stamp and use it often, but the swirly stamps (although I love them too) have always scared me a bit. I have a real struggle inside myself, in that I want to be arty and adventurous, but as soon as I settle down to craft, I find I become all conservative and tend to stick with what I feel safe with - symmetry, for example.

(It's like desperately wanting to abseil, or to ice skate, but then being afraid to step off the cliff, or to let go of the railing round the edge. I suppose it's that I was brought up knowing my strengths were academic, but I always had this feeling that I couldn't do "art" to save my life. My art teacher was a painter, so to me "art" was drawing and painting and the like, rather than anything else creative. Because anything I tried to paint ended up being such a sorry reflection of what I visualised in my head I always felt like such a failure! That's why I love stampng so much, because you don't have to be able to draw in order to produce things that look like they should.)

I am trying to broaden my horizons bit by bit and decided I would try using the swirls on the base card, rather than leaving it clean and empty, which is what I would more usually do. Inking up the large swirl stamp with the same multi-coloured inkpad that I'd used to do the brayering ties the whole piece together, and I'm pleased with the result - and with the fact that I was brave enough to decorate the insert too, instead of just stamping the greeting.

I used the "Create" stamp, because I'm sending the card to Judy, the lovely lady who runs the tearooms down the road from where I used to live - I miss our crafting sessions and I know she's feeling a bit low on inspiration at the moment, so I hoped this might help. It's also a kind of reminder to me to keep going; I really miss being able to craft regularly with Alan. I might make a picture version of this (as opposed to a card) for me to keep, and put it somewhere I'll see it every day.

What do you think? I'd love to have your comments..

Back soon,

Becki

xx

A "Tower"-ing ATC!

Hello everyone! I thought I'd show you a photo of the ATC I made this morning to send to my friend Laura, along with the letter I wrote her at the weekend. We've decided that each time we write, we'll send a little bit of art or craftwork, to keep each other motivated, and to feel a little as if we're crafting together even though we're now in different countries.

The finish was somewhat of a happy accident. I had intended to just emboss the stamped images of the Eiffel Tower, the compass and the "Travel" logo. However, when I added the embossing powder I realised I hadn't left enough time for the Distress Ink to dry properly, so part of the background wording stamp, as well as some of the distressing round the edge, took hold of the powder as well. I nearly brushed it off but then I thought, "Well, I wonder...." and left it. I'm really pleased I did, as I think that it works much better than my original plan, and kind of ties the whole piece together. Two morals to this story: always be prepared to run with your mistakes; and NEVER underestimate the drying time of Distress Inks (use a heat gun if it absolutely MUST be dry)!

(For those of you who are interested, the main stamps used are from the Travel set from PartiCraft, whilst the background wording is actually a PaperArtsy stamp that was sent to me free with a recent order. The ATC is white card, coloured with Cut'n'Dry Foam using Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmelade Distress Inks, then overstamped and edge-distressed with Old Paper Distress Inks.)

I hope Laura likes it... hope you like it too!

Back soon,

Becki
xx

Woohoo - Free Delivery!!!!!

STOP PRESS ***** STOP PRESS ***** STOP PRESS

BIIIIIIIG changes over at the PartiCraft site - you can still order all your fab crafting products online and at amazing prices, but now you can also enjoy FREE DELIVERY! (Don't forget to put Alan's and my name in the box on the order form, to say that you found the site through us.)

So, just in case you needed any excuse to go shopping....... (hee hee!)...... now it's even cheaper!

While I'm here, I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some pics of some of the fantastic pieces of art that Alan made at the recent PartiCraft training day. I keep trying to get him to blog but he's a bit shy, so I'll just have to post them for him. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the day, being rather inconveniently out of the country. Humph! Looks like they had loads of fun.....

Aren't these fab???!!!!!

So proud of my husband!!

Back soon.

Becki

xx

New Blog Up and Running!

Yaay - I did it! My new blog is up and running (if a bit basic at present!). You can find it here, and it would be lovely to see you there. The new blog will cover more than our PartiCrafting escapades, it's about what I'm getting up to now that I'm living in France.

I will still be posting on this blog though, so keep checking back for more entries.

See you soon,

Becki
xx