Keepsake Embossing Boards

My blog today is about Keepsake embossing Boards .......You must try the Glitter Girls Keepsake boards,its opened a whole new dimension in cardmaking for me,and I love playing around making new designs with them.

This one above is my latest board called Tall Stories,the butterflies are done with my cuttlebug machine, layered up,then with accent beads through the middle,i just love butterflies,they mean "love" so someone told me.so makes sense to put on cards to send to people you love.
The rose background paper on this card was printed off from one of my many CD's proberly a Joanna Sheene one,i really admire this lady a true artist,and lovely personality.

So not much to tell you about how i made this,so quick and easy,its just thinking up the ideas,which is the fun part of any cardmaking and Artwork.Also i,m lucky enough to have horded all this craft stuff,collected over the years,i just need a bigger flat haha.Its just so addictive and getting to the stage where i must not walk into a craft shop,or Ebay ! lol

When i think about crafting,its not really about what craft stuff you have,although it helps to have all this fancy latest state of the art machines etc........you can create or recycle bits with some imagination,which i have done in the past............ i,m just addicted to trying everything out that comes onto the market !Being retired helps it all keeps me occupied,so i do count myself lucky in that way.

Hope you enjoyed looking,that makes it all worth while.

Altered Art

Altered Book

I love to alter books,i suppose you can call it recycling,as i pick them up in charity shops.

The picture is one i have just started,it was a childs board book,quite small and not many pages.

The inside pages i stick together to make them thicker,then use a number of techniques throughout the book,including,Gesso,torn pages,pockets,tags,braids,lace buttons etc,whatever the theme dictates to me.

I just love it as i can use up all my bits and piece's and recycle more of my stash lol.

This picture is of the cover,i found the emblem in a Maltese craft store,which is made of chipboard,and thought ahhhhh i can use that !

So to start i stuck it on with a good strong glue,then decided to do a Acrylic landscape all over the cover, back and front,acrylics dry quick,which helps,so i can get on and do the inside pages now !

Checkout

http://artygirlzchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-going-arty-girlz-recycling-challenge.html

An Inky day !

Stampbord

Today i,m covered in ink !I decided to make some backgrounds and try out Stampbord,the only way to do it was use inks,I only heard about Stampbord this year,and bought some ATC size a few months back,it takes ink well and you can scrape out highlights,or if you muck it up sand it down and start again which is good !

The top background is just a try out,but the colours are so vibrant using inks I decided to bring them out even more using Dimensional Magic.But before doing that i stamped an oriental fan onto the dried ink's.

The other backgrounds above are using mica powder (Perfect Pearls) sprayed with my homemade ink and some gold,the pic does not do it justice,in real life its very sparkly and shimmers.

Same thing with the blue one only i dabbed a paper towel on top to give a pattern

Give it a try! if you dont mind getting messy haha.

Shrink Plastic

Shrink Plastic on ATC

Blogging today about shrink plastic,loveeeeeee it !

It can be a bit tricky,especially large pieces,i wont go into explaining how to do it as the instructions are on the packet,i use a hotgun rather than heating up the oven for this.

On this ATC i decided to show how much smaller it shrinks to the original rubber stamp,as you see the large image is background the shrink'd piece forground.using the same stamp.

You dont have to use rubber stamps with this,so many possibilities with your own artwork.

You can colour/paint the image before shrinking,but i chose black and white for my theme.

Its an amazing technique to try.......enjoy !

Oriental

Oriental

My one passion is anything oriental,i hear it is quite popular at the moment,so thought i would do todays blog about the above card,which is a bit more complex than the norm.

For some reason Oriental Art is depicted by certain colours,i dont know why,but it certainly works !

Those colours being,black red and golds......

But i have tried using different colours with this card to see if it works.

I started off with black card stock as my base,then stamped my oriental lady onto beige paper with black ink pad,then tore the edges which i bordered with gold Krylon pen.

Next i cut a circle and stamped the same image into it on black card,this image i coloured in with paints,then used Dimensional Magic to make a hard glass like surface,this bought the colours out beautifully !

Last embellishing with a gold dragonfly charm.

Hope you enjoy the effect i was quite pleased with this,not so rich as reds and golds though.