Tim Holtz's Tattered Floral Challenge!

Today I'm sharing my entry for the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Challenge! I've actually only ever entered one other challenge before (by my lovely crafty friend Fab) can you believe that?! but as soon as I saw this one, an idea came to me and I just had to do it! So here is my altered vintage wooden spool...

I don't often craft with flowers, I'm not really a 'flowery' type of girl, lol, but I'd had in my head, a picture of metal flowers, I tried cutting them from aluminum but I couldn't mould them as much as I wanted to so I had the idea of covering grunge paper with one of the Ranger foil sheets before die cutting with the Tim Holtz / Sizzix Tattered Floral Die, and that worked a treat! Once cut, they looked exactly as I'd pictured all along (and how often does that happen?? lol) Here are a few more close ups...

I wanted the metal finish to be more aged and not too bright and shiny so once I'd made the flowers up, I dabbed a tiny bit of the new Distress paint in black soot onto my craft sheet, misted it with water and then used my finger to dab it onto the petals before drying with a heat gun. I then finished them off with a dab of crackle accents to make them even more vintagey (yes, it's a word! lol) and the tiniest hint of Rock Candy stickles. Here's a close up...

The vintage fabric label is from Rico, I scrunched it and aged it with Distress stains in antique linen and tea dye, then done the same to a ticket. I added a layer of crackle accents to the ticket and then cracked even more after by re-scrunching (also a word... ;o) )

I joined the label and the ticket together with a little paperclip and added one of the tiny game spinners and a vintage glass button, tied through with some cream button twine

I didn't do an awful lot to the vintage spool (available in my shop) just added a touch of tea dye distress stain to the edges and the coated in rock candy stickles before drying off with a heat gun. I added a length of twill ribbon around the centre, plugged the centre with a scrap of the grunge paper that was left over to create a little step for the doll (also from Tim Holtz) - I love broken and disembodied dolls (weird, right?) so had to include this one! I filled the gap with Beacon Adhesives 3 in 1 glue and held him in there for a few minutes until it dried around him, then added blobs of Beacon 3in1 around the cotton reel and to the bottoms of the flowers to secure them in place around him on top of the cotton reel.

I finished it with a hint of rock candy stickles on the dolls hair...

Thanks for bearing with me through that epic post! I hope you liked my creation.

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

p.s. scroll back for the DT call details and new Create & Craft TV show dates! :o) x 

Watercolour Rose Card with Derwent Inktense

Todays card is not my normal style, but B wanted a Birthday card for his Aunt so I made one that I knew she would like, and I really enjoyed making something I maybe wouldn't have normally...

 

The stamp is an old one by PSX, I've had it for around 10 years but I still love it :o) I stamped it with Staz on Ink onto watercolour paper and coloured the image with Derwent Inktense pencils before distressing the edges and inking the background with Tim Holtz Distress inks in Tea Dye and Walnut stain. I then masked off the image with another one I had stamped on scrap paper and lightly flicked with water before blotting to create the aged effect. Here is a close up...

Today I have been working on some design revisions and some new illustration work in between phone calls and emails! This evening I have some more illustration to do and some writing. I'm really hoping to get back into my studio in the next day or so, its far too long since I crafted and I have the urge to scrapbook!

Thanks for dropping by today!
Sarah x

a Gorjuss 3D card...

Today I'm sharing a card I made over the weekend (I got time in my studio, yay!)...

and a couple of close ups... (just click to make them bigger and see all the details)

I made the box frame from Kraft card, cutting an aperture in the middle. The cloudy background I made using watercolour paper and distress ink with a homemade template. The fence is cut from leftover kraft cardstock using my cricut and then run through my Cuttlebug with a woodgrain embossing folder, I then stained it with tea dye and walnut stain distress ink, adding gold screws with a metallic pen.

I stamped Gorjuss girl stamp onto bleedproof card and coloured with Promarkers before layering with 3D foam for a dimensional look, I then added glitter to the butterflies and dragonfly and some glossy accents to the toadstools and finishing touches like her coat buttons.

I've never made one of these before but I love the effect, I think there may be one or two more coming soon!

This morning I finished up my magazine submissions and sent them over before a quick lunch, a phone meeting with a new client (more about that soon!) and then back to work on my illustrations for the Bologna Book Fair - today is my last day to finish them up - eeeeek!

Thanks for dropping by today.

Sarah x

Sparkles & Shopping

Firstly, I want to share a card I made last night, my first attempt at an 8 x 8 card, not sure why but this size intimidates me a bit, I'm never quite sure how to fill the space (I'm fine with A5 and even A4 though, odd!) but with some new stamps to try out and my crafty mojo having returned (who knows for how long!) I thought I'd give it a try...

The stamps are from Lavinia Stamps, I added extra details and colour with distress inks and then worked over the top with my Kuretake Wink of Stella pens, I'm not really a glittery girl but I love the subtle shimmer of these pens! I had to take this pics in just the right light to try and capture the detail... (you can see better if you click on the pics to enlarge them)

   

The new stamps were part of my weekend haul! I took a trip to the Big Stamp & Scrapbooking show at Ally Pally on Saturday where I also met up with Emma and Kim, this was my first time to just visit as I usually demo at the show, so nice to just enjoy it (and shop of course!) and shop I did, oooops! (it's only twice a year though, lol)

Funnily enough I bought hardly any paper (my usual weakness!) but lots of stamps, although I do need to expand my collection and Clare from my design team has me hooked on lots of new brands, I was particularly excited to get this bag...

I'm loving LOTV stamps! Lots of colouring in ahead for me! :o) and of course a few more Lavinia Stamps for my collection which I used in the card above and some gorgeous little bits from Artistic Stamper to use in future projects - they do the most adorable little things for your printer trays and vintage style projects, I got dominos, keys, chipboard angel wings and lots of other little trinkets, just fab!

Now I'm back to work on deadlines for my new craft ranges (of course!) with my pre-Christmas releases all wrapped up I'm now working on the designs for my big launch at the trade show early next year (sounds ages away, in fact I have about 6-8 weeks to design a gazilion ranges and add-on products!!!) and I have a few illustration pieces to finish up for the Frankfurt Book Fair which is just around the corner as well as my usual mag projects and bits and pieces and some other exciting projects I can't share just yet - this is literally the most exciting time ever, but I'm so busy, the other night I actually didn't go to bed at all, I just didn't have time to sleep! LOL (I did get in trouble from B who woke up for his early shift and found me still awake from the previous day though - oooops!)

Sarah x

New Goodies!

Well, Blogger is back up thank goodness! I've missed blogging the last few days, my head is too full, LOL.

Last week I received some lovely new goodies in the post, I was so excited that I went straight up to my studio and started making things!! So here are a couple of projects...

This card was made with Girls Paperie Papers and an October Afternoon sticker, and lots of distressing! 

This one is a Daisy Bucket stamp, coloured with my Promarkers and layered onto Kuretake paper. The grass is hand-cut from plain card.

Sunday I was working on lots of projects to show you over the coming week, yesterday I made 25 cards!! Thats a personal record I think!

Sarah x

Crime Scene Mini Book

So, I mentioned that I was working on a really fun mini book, now it's all done and ready to be filled with pictures and journaling so I thought I'd share! I recently got these fabby Crime Scene stamps from a Facebook friend:

and I've been DYING to use them! I had a tag / envelope book which I thought would be really fun to turn into a crime scene style 'Case Folder' like you see in those old detective films and programmes



So here is my step by step walkthrough...

The front  cover - I painted the chipboard with acrylic paints and embossed the stamping on the front

As you open it a mini Bulldog clip holds a chipboard file folder, inside is a mini manila card for observations held together with a Tim Holtz mini paperclip

 

The come the Mini Envelopes, each has been inked with Distress Inks using a blending tool...

 

 

 

The little card on the front of this one is an October Afternoon 'Wild Card' which I distressed

This one has a mini 'polaroid' attached to the front...

 This one ties with string at the back...

and contains a tag which has a mini bottle attached to it - I coloured this green with my Promarkers to make it look like it contains something icky!

This one also opens....

 

 

To reveal a tag with a 'blood stained' piece of evidence!

All of the envelopes have their own little tags which I will add my photo's and journaling to - now I just need to decide who my subject will be and their 'crime' I'm guessing Fuzzybutt will be the obvious choice - there is certainly enough photo's of her mischief to choose from!!

Thanks for looking!

Sarah x

p.s. if you are looking for your freebie download it's in the post below, and the Blog Candy is still open here!

Layouts & Timmy Tags

Going through some of my Scrapbook pages this week (in a vain attempt to tidy up, ha!) I noticed that I don't have a single one of me and B (my other half) can you believe that?? and after we got engaged last year and everything - sooooo much I could have scrapped about!! Anyway, to quickly right that wrong I made a quick layout of us - ahhhh bless, arent we sweet, LOL

I have also ordered some more prints of our lovely mini break in York last year and of course of my gorge engagement ring, so plenty more luvey dovey scrapping to come - yay!

I've also been experimenting with some rubber stamping this week with my lovely new distress inks and some of my old favourites - Im still in love with my Adirondack inks even though I've had them forever! The colours are just lovely - especially Stream - I'm obssessed with it. Taking inspiration from Tim Holtz and as I'm very impatient I decided to do some "Timmy Tags" gives me a chance to play around and experiment without messing up any of my lovely stash. I used some of my Tim Holtz stamps and a new set from Prima that go so well with them (available from Scrapshed soon!) I'll be getting a couple of the other sets next week now, I was well impressed and I really wasn't expecting to be as they were so cheap!

My faves were this one:

Note the use of 'Stream' for the music notes (one of the Prima stamps I mentioned) and this one is my absolute fave:

Only because I got to use the scary eye gouged from a dolly - mwahahahahaha! Doing this also made me reflect how my style changes from day to day - one day making cutesy stuff using lines like October Afternoon and My Little Shoebox (2 of my faves) and the next day grunging (yes, it is a word!) it up with Tim Holtz stuff, bits of old metal, melting dolls faces and gouging their eyes out etc..... I'm either versatile or quite mad - I'll let you be the judge!

Right, thats all for now, got to go and whip up a card for B as its his Birthday tomorrow!

x