With Love

I made this card for my daughter - a little play with my stash and a true experiment for another crafter!

The squares were created with mini gelli plates and Clarity stencils and a piece of lace. using blue and purple inks.

I then stamped along the joins with some of Leonie Pujol's stamps.   Also using more of her stamps for three of the squares and the branch in the fourth.   The girl on a swing was from Clarity Stamps.

The square of card was then mounted on pearlised silver card, and the words stamped, along the left-hand side using the Clarity alphabet stamps.  

My daughter loves owls, and the little wooden owl in the middle is a little wooden button that has been painted with Spectrum Noir sparkle pens, as have the little wooden button hearts on the right.

The flower on the bottom corner was a couple of die-cuts I had in my stash from Leonie Pujol's does, again coloured with sparkle pens.

I hope she likes it - well she does like the gelli plates and stencils as she asked for them for Christmas, and I know she has a lot of the little wooden laser cut buttons in her craft stash!

Butterfly card

It was back to Craft Artist for this little card.    I used one of the layouts from Michelle Jackson-Mogford's Lilies and Light, removing some of the items and adding some other elements from the kit to create a birthday card.

Simple Birthday Card

Perhaps simple isn't quite the right description!   A stencil was laid on white card and brushed through with two shades of blue.   (I forget where the stencil came from)

The letters were then lined up on acrylic blocks, working out the spacing, inked and stamped.  (Clarity Alphabet for the stamps - I do like the quirkiness of this alphabet.)

As the image was square, rather than create a square card to accept the design, the edges of the card had ribbon applied, and then mounted on a pale pearlised cream card.

As I said simple in design, but took a while to execute!

Two more Money Boxes

Well I have finished the other two money boxes for the youngest grandchildren.  OK not my best painting effort, but hopefully they won't notice, and they actually look better in real life.   Photos seem to show up all the imperfections.

I tried to get the "cottage" look, painting the roof to look like a thatched roof,

It doesn't show up on the photos, but the windows and roof had a little sparkle pen added to them.

back view (with the initials of the girls on the doors)

More monochrome

I had forgotten about this little drawer box, so my granddaughter is getting that too.

Painted with black gesso, and then the flowers etc painted on with Pebeo decocremé in paint fusion style.  Box, drawer and the little knob finished with Pebeo silver marker pen.   Finally varnished with Allround Medium lacquer glue.

More on a Monochrome theme

So continuing on from the black and white/silver theme of the box for my granddaughter's bedroom yesterday.  I started on some other items for her.   This is a money box.

I painted the roof with white gesso and the main part of the house with grey matt Pebeo   Then using masking fluid and a ruling pen I created the "brickwork", and using a paintbrush and the masking fluid I created doors and windows.

The roof was then painted with black acrylic and the house with white acrylic, when dry the masking fluid was removed.   I outlined the door and window with white Pebeo marker and painted some swirl roses around the door,  The moneybox was then varnished with spray and shine.

Another view.

Oops forgot - I also dampened the paint on the door and sprinkled some ultra thick embossing crystals on it, and melted with with my heat gun, and while they were still in a molten state I drew the end of a paintbrush through them to create a "plank" effect on the door,

.............

I then decided to paint a little pencil/pen holder for her.   Painted with black Gesso and then decorated with white and black "Paint Fusion" Folk Art rose.   Again finished off with spray and shine.

 I have one more little item to paint in the monochrome theme, which I will share tomorrow, and then I shall be tackling two more moneyboxes in a slightly more "girly" colours.

Monochrome Box in Folk Art Style

Work in progress

I bought some pretty boxes some time ago in B & M, originally intending to paint them as Christmas presents.  However, I never got around to tackling them,

My No 2 Granddaughter wanted some bits to personalise her room at her Dad's house, and I offered to paint one of the boxes for her.    She wanted black and white/silver.   She hasn't seen this yet, so I hope she likes it.

I painted the box with black gesso, and originally I had intended painting little roses around the hearts, but when I practised what I had intended it didn't quite work out as I wanted, so I ended up drawing little hearts using a silver Pebeo marker.   I then ran the marker along the grooves in the box.

Finally, I then decided to do some more outlining on the edges and around the inside of the heart shapes.  It was then given a coat of varnish using Spray and Shine.

The finished box

Watercolour Robin

 Having attempted a little landscape, I thought I would try something a bit more adventurous!   When clearing up the Christmas cards, I saved the fronts of a few that had lovely Robins on.

So here is my attempt at copying one of the images, using my Brushos.  Not perfect by any means, but at least you can see it is a Robin.

The Christmas card image on left and my attempt on right.

The traced outline with masking fluid added

I followed the "cheats" I had learned from watching Alison C Board on Hochanda.  Using Tracedown paper I traced the outline of the bird.   I then applied masking fluid around the image and on parts of the bird.  Then using various techniques with the Brushos I painted the Robin, and prayed for a reasonable result!

Needle Felted Key Ring

Not a lot I can say about this.  Just a large key ring that I have done some needle felting on,

Painting with Brushos

Having received some Brushos for Christmas, and then watched the demos on Hochanda by Alison C Board, I decided between two of the shows to attempt one of the techniques she showed - painting trees.

Well here it is my first attempt at a water colour painting.   I own up that I cannot draw for toffee so am quietly pleased with this.  OK I can see where I can improve but for a first I have to say it's not too bad!

The trees were created using masking tape torn down the middle, and I the applied some masking fluid across the trunks and created the hills and the moon and a few stars with the fluid to.

I then painted the trees with grey and brown brushos, and using the brown and the edge of a piece of card I created the branches.

I then painted the sky (although I probably should have done this before I removed the masking tape and painted the branches!

I highlighted my hills with a little grey and when dry I removed all the masking fluid, finally using the edge of a piece of card to create the fence.

I shall be trying a lot more techniques that I learned with the Brushos - so watch this space!

Painted Wooden Village

You may remember I painted some little tree scenes from The Works before Christmas, well whilst in ton after Christmas I discovered some little houses and a church, which I hadn't seen before.  They were in the sale - well it would have been rude not to buy them!

I painted them with Brushos and distress inks.   Snow was created with Puffy paint and some unicorn sparkles added.

The two houses

All lit up

All lit up in the dark

My son rather took a fancy to them - so if there is no room in my house next Christmas - you know where you will find them!

More Paint Pots

Firstly - Happy New Year to all my followers, albeit a bit belated.   I thought I had better catch up with some postings.

You will recall I made my youngest granddaughters a paint pot with Powertex for part of their crafty Christmas presents.  Well the consensus was that they need one each!  So now they do - and as my son said they will also have somewhere to store the brushes too!

and playing about with some super thick slap-it-on and some unicorn sparkles and a couple of Pebeo pens, I experiemented with painting one of my paint pots - lol!  Yup Nanny makes do!   But I will make myself a posh one at some point!