Saturday 25 April 2009

Lotstodo Week 17 Challenge - It's All in a Name


From this piece of balsa wood


To this piece of balsa wood


To this piece!!!!


This weeks lotstodo challenge theme is 'It's all in a name'. A while ago Hilda sent me a piece of balsa wood. Having never used this before and having it a while, I decided I needed to give it a try. Firstly I traced the letters onto the block of wood and slowly started chipping away at them. This took a good couple of hours, not having the correct tools and stuff but my craft knife and stanley knife came in handy. I lightly sanded it down and used a cut down emery board to get into the small gaps. I then decided that the letters needed more definition, so I created a groove in the wood to enhance them.
Then I got my new wood burning tool and decided to outline each letter with it. I now think it looks fab, even if I do say so myself!!

Sunday 19 April 2009

Utee & Rock Salt


I finally got round to using rock salt with my utee and this is the result. The utee is grey and I swiped some black acrylic paint over it with a piece of cut n dry to enhance the pattern. If you look closely you can see where the rock salt was

Bees Wax Canvas


Made this canvas using a napkin and bees wax. Added a couple of buttons and a piece of ribbon. Crackle painted a slither down the left hand side and added the words coffee and cream using safmat

Wood Burning



Been burning more balsa wood this weekend!! Again I stamped the image and burnt it out. I made the patterns around the edges with the tear drop tip that comes with it

Altered Door Hanger Challenge


Sue picked up 3 of these door hangers from Sainsbury's for a bargain price of 99p each. She challenged myself and Polly to alter it


This is what I did with mine.

I cut the wire at the top, took the beads and the bird off. Then I sanded the heart down and gave it a coat of gesso but you could still see the letters pertruding through, so instead I cut a piece of canvas and stuck it on. I then cut a heart from a page of text out of a book and stuck that directly on top. I then stuck sellotape in various places and pulled parts of the printed page off revealing the canvas underneath. I then mixed yellow and red acrylic paint and painted over the whole thing. When dry I gave the piece a coat of mod podge and transferred the image to the heart. When dry I smeared vaseline over the image and in a few other areas to act as a resit. I then covered the whole piece with white acrylic paint, when dry I wiped it over with kitchen roll and where the vaseline had been applied, the paint just wiped off revealing the underneath. I added the round letters D R E A M, a piece of wire, a skeleton leaf, a flower, a rusty nail and a metal word - dream and 2 brads. I put a row of spiced marmalade distressed stickle blobs around the top right of the heart and I coloured the 3 original beads with copper paint and fed wire through them. I painted the bird and used distressed stickles to hi-light the wings and eye. I used a different piece of wire to hang the bird from as I tried to change the colour of the original white piece but to no avail!!!
It actually looks better in the flesh, I couldn't get the light right when taking the photos and I tried at all different times!!!!

Saturday 18 April 2009

Lotstodo Week 16 Challenge - Black & White


This weeks theme on lotstodo is black and white. I'm back to the old faithful corrigated cardboard again!!! I ripped bits off again to create texture. I covered the whole piece with snowcap acrylic dabber paint. I stamped some background stamps with black stazon. Added a piece of wire mesh to the top right hand corner and purposely stuck it above the top. Threaded a thin piece of silky black ribbon through the white lace and attached to the left hand side and used black and white rickrack on the right hand side. Tied black hemp through the white buttons and white string through the black buttons and attached. I printed the main image in black and white. The wings are grungeboard painted with black acrylic dabber paint. I then used my embossing pen to create the marks around the edges and insides of the wings. Using white opaque embossing powder, I heat embossed them. I used a piece of white lace on her dress and added the black gem stones. I added a black metal brad with the word love and a black photo anchor and a white brad to the bottom right

Monday 13 April 2009

RAK from Hilda


Hilda kindly made me this stampbord book which I recieved yesterday on my visit

My Take on Encaustic Art


Whilst at Hilda's yesterday we were having a play with her encaustic art kit. Now I haven't got anything as fancy as that, but what I do have is a mini travel iron and a box of wax crayons. So this is what I made with my kit!!! Not bad for a first try I didn't think.

Mask on a Stand


This mask was made earlier using playdoh as a mould, I've just jazzed it up with a bit of colour using adirondack dimensional pearls. The base of this was made from utee and a star shaped cookie cutter, whilst still hot I pressed a wooden chop stick into it. I then painted the chop stick black and attached the mask to it.

Sunday 12 April 2009

I Spy!!!



This is where Hilda talks to us all from!!!

My Fab Day Out


This is inside Hilda's fab craft house. There's loads of work space and everything has its place. It's so tidy and organised, we could easily find everything we needed.


I took my melt pot and my new gadget and we had a day playing. It was great fun - thanks Hilda


We did get a bit messy at times though!!!!

Wood Burning


George had kindly cut us some atc size pieces of wood so we had a play with my new gadget. I was just messing again and did some real basic stuff as it was quite hard to burn the wood due to the grain, but Hilda did a fantastic piece, see it here. She stamped the wood and traced round the edge with great effect and then aged it with a varnish. We also discovered how to use gold leafing too!!!! I stamped the easel image and took the easy option as all the lines were straight!!! The left side block is just freehand, but we did also have a go at soldering jump rings and charms onto a piece of lead. I also decorated the heart with dots. We did all this and managed not to burn ourselves or set anything alight, I think we need a medal!!!!

Playdoh Moulds


Took Hilda a can of Playdoh to make moulds with. After we'd raided her brooch box we made a mould. This time though we used clear embossing ink all over the mould in the hope of it acting as a resist. The detail on this cameo was stunning.


This was also a lovely brooch but the detail didn't transfer as well, but we gave it a go anyway.


I used a few drops of orange to dye for in my utee and these are the results after a lot of scrubbing as the resist on the playdoh didn't work. Hilda added a few coates of perfect pearls to hide what we couldn't get off!!!! Still, I think we laughed more than ever, apart from when I melted my paint brush and it all fell apart, now that was funny, but that's another story!!!!

Saturday 11 April 2009

Lotstodo Week 15 Challenge - Numbers


I recently made this card for my 13 year old nephew who is mad on Man United!!! I masked off the white areas and used firebrick red distressed ink to create the stripes. Added a few football embellishments, a couple of Man United stickers, the word nephew and the numbers 1 and 3

Friday 10 April 2009

Canvas



This canvas has a bit of everything!!!! I tore the main image from a book, covered the canvas with mod podge, stuck the image on and gave it a coat of mod podge too. I used walnut distressed ink and juniper acrylic dabbers to create the background colours. I stamped the tickets and the word journey in black stazon. I tore a ticket in half and used that along with a black clock face and a grunge board letter j with gold wire wrapped around it to embellish. I cut and stuck various words relating to the image. I used a TH fragment to enhance the word luggage. I used my new craft tool to melt some green wax crayon and iron it onto the canvas. I covered the main image with a coat of bees wax. To finish I added 6 rusty nails along the top!!!!

Moulds with Playdoh



I created moulds with playdoh to make all of the above pieces. Some of the doh does get stuck onto the utee once it's hardened and I found that it took the gloss off leaving a matte effect!!! The playdoh itself is also hard to get off. I coloured them with perfect pearls.

Burning Wood



I bought a dual tool recently from Black & Decker, a craft / soldering iron which comes with 7 different ends. Today I decided to have a play with it. I tried burning into this piece of balsa wood with a few of them just to see what effects I got. Quite impressed with how easy it was to use, but it takes ages as you have to switch it off and wait for the end to cool down before you can change it for another one. Next time I think I will either draw or stamp an image, but it was a good exercise just to get a feel for it.

Sunday 5 April 2009

Lauren Finally Met Fraz



Andrea, Pete and Lauren are having a break at Thorpe Park, which happens to be about 6 miles down the road from us, so we went to meet up with them and Lauren finally got to meet Fraz after 2 years!!!!

Black & White Atc's


I am hosting an atc swap on UKStampers forum with a black and white theme

Saturday 4 April 2009

RAK from Nicky



My mate Nicky (Aka Minxy) sent me this fantastic RAK - Cheers mate

Lotstodo Week 14 Art - Inchies and Arches


I was messing around with some bits and bobs (inspired by Stampers' Sampler magazine) and arrived at this!!! I wanted to use some different colours, and if you look very closely you'll see some pink, yes, pink!! Although it is very limited, as in my stash there isn't much!!! I managed to find 3 whole squares and a half of one!!

Anyway, this weeks theme on lotstodo is 'art' so I though this piece fitted in really well.

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