Butterflies and cogs

Today's project has been created over many different stages!   I'll try my best to remember them all!  It started life as a white sheet of card which I stamped the butterfly stamp from Crafty Individuals using Flitterglu and then added flakes.   It then remained in my craft box for ages (when I flitterglu I tend to do a few to make the most of the glue!).  When I rediscovered my butterflies I thought I would play around with contrasting with a dark ink - so out come the favourite Distress Inks and I started to apply colours...  browns, a bit of yellow, a touch of mahogany - all warm tones to compliment the gold.  I then stamped the script and postmark background using a Creative Expressions stamp and Distress Ink.  I then got artists block... just couldn't decide what to do to finish the piece off... so once again it sat in my craft box for a couple of weeks.

I was given a lovely Tim Holtz stamp which I wanted to play with and when rummaging in my backgrounds box, I found this and thought it would be perfect.  A little detail was needed on the right hand side, so I picked out my cogs border mask and run it through as an embossed detail with my Cuttlebug.  A little Gilding wax to highlight the detail gave me a good base. 

I stamped my words onto a separate card and drew boxes round each word.  I added a little distress ink - mainly yellow tones so it took away the starkness of the white card and then cut out each word and mounted it onto my card.

It took a while.. but got there in the end!  So if you get stumped with a project - don't bin it... put it in your stash and come back to it.. sometimes you rediscover it when you have a new stamp or topper in your collection - or sometimes another day just brings a fresh idea!

happy crafting

Jane

PS... and finally... we may not have won..this time!.....  but I'm displaying our runners up badge with pride!

www.aldridgecrafts.co.uk

Phew.... just in time!

Ooh a bit late with my blogging today.. but it has been a bit of a busy day!  I had good intentions of writing my blog post this afternoon... but then four boxes of gorgeous beads, findings and charms arrived that I had been waiting for about 3 weeks from China... so blogging went out of the window to be replaced with me and Sarah oohing and aaahing over all the new lovely goodies!

Then of course I had my workshop this evening - which was colouring techniques - two hours packed with us all trying lots of different colouring mediums - mica powders as paints, mica paints, watercolour pencils, Promarkers, drawing inks - great fun!  That's the ideal thing with a workshop - they give you a chance to have a play and try out products to help you decide which ones are the best for you to buy to suit your own style of crafting!

Anyway.. back to today's project.  This is just lovely - it looks even better in real-life - so if you are local do pop into the shop to have a look!

The topper is a Woodware peel-off sticker that I have coloured with Promarkers and then die cut with a circle die.  I then die cut a slightly larger circle and coloured with the same promarker I had used for the flower.  I tried various backgrounds with this topper, some die cut swirls, backing papers... but they didn't look quite right.  I then wondered whether my Indigoblu Tree-mendous stamp would work well... yes - and how about with gilding flakes... oh yes - even better!..  So I then had that dilemma every crafter had.  I had a square of white card with beautifully gilded trees on it.. now to be brave and add some ink or not...?  will it ruin it?  will it make it even better?  I decided in the end it just had to have some colour, so I hesitantly applied some Seedless Preserves Distress Ink and Wow!.. did that make the gilding flakes pop!

So here it is...  my finished card looks fab!  I think I will be having a few more sessions playing with the gilding flakes again soon!

happy crafting

Jane

www.aldridgecrafts.co.uk

Shop for Indigoblu stamps and gilding flakes
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What to do with those die cut letters....

I have a bit of a thing about lettering and fonts.  I think it goes back to my calligraphy days.  I studied calligraphy for four years whilst I was at school as I was lucky enough that my art teacher was the most amazingly talented calligrapher.  So when I got my hands on the Classic alphabet Upper case dies from Memory Box... I just had to have a play. 

I used my journal book as a base and started by spritzing the page with water and placing the 'that special touch' cogs mask on the right hand side.  I then spritzed with Cosmic Shimmer Bronze Blush mister and allow to dry.  I then took a sheet from my dictionary and stuck a few pieces on.  I then placed my cogs stencil back in place and added some more colour using gathered twigs distress ink so some of the cogs design was also over the dictionary wording.  I then cut out the die out of white card and used the waste piece as a stencil.  I used a combination of spritzing the ink through the stencil and also using it with my cut n dry foam with the distress ink to have a few random letters in the background.  I used all my white letters to create a random tumbling letters pattern... being careful not to spell out any unfortunate words!!  I cut out the words 'create' and 'art' from the lower case alphabet.  I kept the 'create' in white and stuck at the bottom of the page.  The 'art' wording i used Indigoblu's flitterglu and then applied gilding flakes before sticking to the top.

This piece is a perfect example that you can create art out of anything!  Just a few letters and some spritzer sprays and look what appears.  It's great fun - I definitely recommend giving it a try!

happy crafting
Jane

Gilding Flakes and Butterflies

I've had such a lovely couple of creative days.  It's so nice when you have both the inspiration and the time to create!  I had a lovely morning with the ladies of Fressingfield creating the tags that were on my blog yesterday - and we all had great fun!  It's always so fulfilling when you see people who tell you that 'I'm not artistic' and 'I'm not really very creative' then follow your guidance and be brave and create a beautiful piece of artwork.

So I came home full of inspiration and continued to create lots of pieces today... but I'm going to be mean and make you wait to see them!  I'll be blogging every 2-3 days putting up my new projects over the next few weeks - so check back regularly for the next batch of pictures!

Today's project is what I've created for our Indigoblu and Gilding Flakes workshop at Attleborough this Thursday evening 6-8pm.  We still have some places available - if you would like to come and learn how to make this card - then give us a call on 01953 454976 or email me at aldridgecrafts@googlemail.com.

The stamp used is 'Love is' by Indigoblue.  The flakes used are 'Morris Dance' and the butterfly die is the 'lacewings butterfly' from Crafty Individuals.  I've created the scallop mask using the sissiz Bigz super scallop crescent die and I've used a mix of Distress inks to create the inked background.

I like the contrast of using a love heart stamp with a grungy brown background - but by using the metal flakes, the heart still jumps out on the design.

Happy crafting
Jane