For the love of reading

Hello everyone and happy Saturday to you all. A very warm welcome specially to new followers, thanks so much for joining me here.
Today I am showing three bookmarks I made with the help of wonderful images from Nicecrane Designs

After crafting and messing about with paper and paints, reading is probably my most favourite past time, and at anyone time I will always have a number of books on the go, so I'm always looking for more bookmarks.
I made some not that long ago here, but someone bought them, so I was delighted when Ignacio, Nicecranes wonderful designer created some new book marks. You can find them HERE.
The way they are designed you could just print them straight onto card, cut them out and be done with it, because they are all beautifully digitally matted already, but me being me, I wanted to play with them a bit more.

For each of them I created a couple of mats, one of plain card painted with two colours of acrylic paint with a layer of crackle glaze in between (hard to see on the photos) and one of matching card stock. I then mounted them onto craft card, which had been stamped, embossed and inked first. The embellishment on the one above was a Spellbinder die cut from thin metal send to me as a RAK by my wonderful blog friend Cathy. The piece I used for this was bright green, - I painted it with Antique Linen Distress Paint and then went over it with Juniper and Stonewashed Alcohol Inks. The central bit is a decorative brad, also dabbed a bit with the inks plus some Baroque Art gilders paste.

Number two was created in a very similar way, only this time I used a brass filigree bit at the top rubbed over with some of the Gilders Paste. The little heart at the bottom was wood, treated with Copper Mixative and Pitch Black Alcohol Inks.

And finally, Number three, very similar to number one, just different colours:

There is still a 4th image in the pack, as of course the wonderful images Nicecrane used came originally from the famous Four Seasons paintings by Alphonse Mucha, but I reckoned three bookmarks was enough for the time being.

Anyway hope you liked them, and thank you so much for visiting.

Have a great weekend!!

Friday Freebie Invitation to Dine

Welcome everyone to this week's freebie. Time seems to fly, and Fridays are here so quickly.... So here is this week's freebie created once more with the help of some lovely  ephemera from the Graphics Fairy which I have turned into stamps. I also used some  vintage images found here and there on the internet. As I have altered them, I hope there are no copyright issues....Hope you like them and see you next week.

 And here are both papers as jpegs.

Well, I hope you like this week's offering, I think next week is going to be post cards as I have not done many of them lately.

Have a creative weekend and remember, you can use these in whatever way you please as long as you don't sell them as digital images.

Gift Bag fun

Hello everyone and welcome. It's lovely to have you joining me here today!

I am showing you a couple of gift bags I created with the help of some tags and brown paper bags.
Here is the first one, using one of Nicecrane Design's wonderful images as the main vocal point. The one I am using is from the Talking Clock Pack of stunning ATC sized images.

As you can see, I cut out the image with a Spellbinders die and then inked around the edges. I then played around with some other dies and papers from my stash. The postcard is a Graphics 45 French Country collection stamp and the little flowers are Prima.

After finishing the first bag, I had so much fun that I decided to do another one. I have so many bits of paper and this seemed a fun way of using them. So here is version number two, mainly using the Kaisercraft Sweet Nothings collection.

The background was inked with Distress Inks, Victorian Velvet, Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood. I was trying to get a Shabby Chic look. The top was cut with the Tim Holtz Tattered Doily die and inked with the same three colours. The sweet little button is from the Funkie Junkie Boutique layered on top of a Prima wooden button.

The rest is basically all layered papers. I had great fun making the little banner though it was quite fiddly, but great to use up all these tiny scraps.

I always like having a few of these bags on hand, they come in handy and almost make a little gift in themselves and they are great fun to make.

Thank you so much for visiting and I hope you will have a creative day full of joy and fun. I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes by the wonderful Bernard Shaw:

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

Tag a Day project #12

Hello everyone and welcome. I hope you are all having a good week!
Alright, so here we are, tag number 12....

This whole project has been a great process for me, and has been hugely helped by all your wonderful comments and support! Many of you kept saying that you didn't think I had lost my mojo, the thing is, I really did.... right now it comes and goes, but I think that's normal. You see I think the thing with mojo is, it's all about how you feel, and not about the outcome of your projects...

Anyway, part of this project was experimenting with colour and texture, in some of the tags it was more about texture, in this one it was more about colour.

The main stamp is the Blazing Poppies by Indigoblu. I first saw this stamp used on the blog of the wonderful Paula Whittaker, and was so inspired that it went straight to the top of my wishlist. She has made several other projects with it since, - check them out, they are amazing!!

Anyway, here is my play with it. The background was inked with Wild Honey, Bundled Sage and Crushed Olives Distress Inks. I used the Crafters Workshop Chicken Wire and Chicken Wire reversed stencil, because they remind me of honey combs. The bees stamps are from Tim Holtz and the little butterfly at the top is from a Just Rite set.  The emellishment at the top that was bright silver to start with was treated with numerous EPs and paints until it had a suitable rusty look, and the sentiment was computer generated.

Here are some close ups still:

 I stamped the flowers and leaves twice and fussy cut them to add more dimension. I also used some Adirondak ink in Coffee with a water brush to add a bit of shadow and make the flowers pop a bit more.

Well, there you have it. Again, thank you so much for all your support during this project. I still have a new cover to do, but think I will give this project a bit of a break for just now.

Here finally you can see a picture of all 12 tags together:

Thank you so much for visiting and have a great week!

Tag a Day project #11 and winner of Distress Paints giveaway

Hello everyone and welcome to followers and visitors old and new!! Two posts in one today.

First up Tag 11:

Those of you that have been here before know that this is the penultimate tag in this project. Just for a change, I'll give you a quick step by step so you can see a bit of how I got here (and my extremely well worn and dirty craft sheet lol)

I adhered some tissue paper and other scraps (lace, tissue tape, swirl die cuts, hessian, cheese cloth) to my size 10 tag using gel medium.

Next I added flowers and various metal embellishments (again using a ton of gel medium), and when it was dry (leaving it over night) covered it all with a thick layer of Gesso.

I then used several different sprays in soft pinky colours (some Tattered Angels and some home made with perfect pearls and Tattered Rose re-inker mixed with water in a mini mister) and sprayed it all over the tag, but slightly more concentrated over my embellishment clusters.

Next I added a little bit of Dylusions in Melted Chocolate and Black Marble carefully and toned it down with some White Linen. And finally I used a paint brush and some Tattered Angels Coffee, to darken around the embellishment and make them pop a bit more.

Here are some close ups:

 The final step was to add some chit chat stickers and shade around a bit with some charcoal pencil and some background stamping with a Prima stamp. I also added a few highlights with Treasure Gold White Fire.

Now to the winner of the Distress Paints Give Away: (details here)

Wendy L

Please be in touch Wendy with your address so I can send you your paints!

I am entering my tag to the following challenges:

Eclectic Paperie where the theme is Gel Medium

and the incredibly popular new Our Creative Corner where the theme is Anything Goes

Right, that's it for today, thank you for visiting and have a wonderful creative day!!

Go on, have a laugh....

Hello everyone, happy Saturday and thank you so much for dropping by here again!

If you have been here before you will know that for the last couple of weeks I have been working on my so called Tag a Day project: 12 tags in all. Well, I am almost done, two more to go, but today I wanted to show you the cover I have been working on, you see, I needed just a bit of a change from the tags, and so I thought I would do the cover.... well here it is:

I decided to create the cover around some of the wonderful papers I have been hoarding, - all of these are from Prima. There were several reasons for this: I felt like playing with papers for a change, but also because I wanted to participate in both the Prima PPP challenge this month as well as in the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge where the theme is "Small Papers" this week.

Ok, so what about the title of this post?? Well you see, I found that when I had done the covers and put them together with the tags created so far, - I could only fit about 6 of them in as they were far too bulky and even the biggest binding ring I have was not large enough to hold them all! So it looks as if I am going to have to use this cover for another project and I will have to think of a totally different binding system to hold my 12 tags when they are done.... Anyway, I'll keep you posted, meanwhile, here are some close up pictures of the front cover, all created with Prima goodies apart from the ribbon and the little bit of lace.

Well, there you have it, still two further tags to go, thank you for all of your lovely comments and I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Friday Freebie Vintage Paris

Hello and welcome to this week's freebie, another Paris themed one, though a bit on the dark side perhaps...
This time there are some 4 x 4" papers and some pennants which you could make into a banner.

Like so often, many of the images are courtesy of the Graphics Fairy, - what would we all do without her? Even some very well reputed paper companies use her images in their paper collections, I think we all owe her a huge vote of thanks!!

Thank you for visiting and if you make something with my images, I always love to hear about it, so just email me, oh and thank you to those of you who do!!