CHF Challenge - One Sheet Wonder

This is the last week of the Summer Challenges on the Cornish Heritage Farm site.

It has been great fun joining in, and really stretched me.

The other entries have been amazing, I am totally out of my league, but I am (almost) always up for a challenge.

I didn't have a clue what a 'One sheet wonder' was! In case you don't know either - you have to make you own background sheet using stamps and then cut it up and use all the bits. -Well all of them that are usable - not little tiny odd shaped scraps of course.

I managed to use all mine up, and here are the things I made, using the Lace Background stamp from Cornish Heritage Farm.

They had to be featured in one photo - for their gallery - but you can see my entries individually below in other posts.



Oh dear - this photo doesn't do them justice - I did try but just couldn't arrange them all together so that you could see each one - this is the best I could do!

L-R

A little jigsaw puzzle photo album featuring 10 exquisite photos of vintage boys and girls, and used up all the little bits of stamped card - the inner pages I stamped on the reverse too.

In the middle is an altered book which is a jewellery box. I painted the outer covers black, and added the lace stamped card to the covers, a rub on which says, "Stay is a charming word in a friends vocabulary". The butterfly is stamped on, and the angel is a rub on. I used silver 'leaf' around the edges which has the colours of the rainbow in it when it catches the light. The spine of the 'book' is covered with a cream ribbon which I stamped with the lace stamp too.

On the right is a note book I made with my BIA. Again using a piece of the 'one sheet wonder' card, mounted on a piece of mountboard. The vintage photo is a lovely deep sepia colour - darker that it looks in the photo (it's facing the sunshine) and is more the colour of the photo album.

Jigsaw Puzzle Photo Album

I have made this little jigsaw puzzle photo album using the lace background stamp from Cornish Heritage Farm




This is only a sneak preview as I am entering it into a swap and don't want to totally spoil the surprise.





In all there are ten vintage prints


Of utterly divine little boys and girls


I don't really want to part with it - but I must!

My first go at. the UK Stampers Challenge

Over on the UK Stampers Blog the challenge this week is to make a tag - with the letter G for graffiti.

I took one look at a Tim Holtz stamp, and thought I would be a little devil and do the unthinkable


I 'graffiti-ed' it!

True to his techniques, I scrunched up a cardboard tag, smoothed it out and coloured it with Adirondack inks - and the 'untouched' wording of the stamp sums up Graffiti exactly!

Summertime

I really, really, really fell in love with Jo Capper Sandon's Summertime work of art. I even bought the book that her image came from, stamps and other things whilst I was visiting Crafty Individuals site.

I tried to make a beach hut without success so decided to try something else.

I have had this old picture frame which I bought from a charity shop for £1 for ages. I nearly threw it out when I had my clear out a few weeks ago. It was rough wood.

So I painted it with Gesso, a couple of coats. Then when dry I painted it with PVA glue (cos I don't have any crackle paints and I wanted it to look really weathered and battered.) Then I painted on top of the glue with blue acrylic paint whilst it was still wet and left it overnight to dry.

Then roughed it up a bit with sandpaper.

Today I did the 'inside'. Ran some paper through the embossing machine, then coloured it with chalk ink.

Inked sheet of paper and used my mermaid stamp. Now comes the difficult bit (apart from the fact that I will have to take the frame apart again as the picture looks slightly more to the left in the photo - but it might be just the angle I took it at. It probably is cos it looked fine at the time)

Now this is where I need your help or suggestions. What do I do next? What is it that you clever people do to turn an OK but of work to something better.

Because I just don't have the imagination to add something to give it a bit of pazzazz!

Anything I put on the frame tends to take the eye away from the stamped image. So I have just been putting things on and taking them off - not stuck anything on yet.

I do have some 'leaf' which is pewter with watery colours - like those you see in a puddle after a rain storm - might try odd bits here and there along the grain.

(I will give this as a present, so the recipient can put in a photo taken by the seaside by the way)

I need all the inspiration I can get.............

Gozzie, a rare Rosecomb bantam hen of mine - and getting rather old - decided to watch me crafting perched outside on the window ledge and squashed right up against the pane so's she didn't fall off.


I do need all the help I can get, but it can be a bit off-putting, getting the beady eye treatment!

So I went outside and lifted her off - I couldn't concentrate!

Something different

I was up at dawn this morning - 4am - so half the day seemed to be over by 9am LOL so I trotted off in the rain to the end of my garden to play in my studio.

TAg - using Tim Holtz stamps from Happy Daze

Cornish Heritage Farm - Summer Challenge

Another of the pieces I have made with the stamped 12x12 card using the Lace background stamp for the Cornish Heritage Summer Challenge

I still have more of the stamped card to use up - so will have to get my thinking cap on!