Play day today - experimenting with ink

I purposely stamped the birds and the quotation in grey as I wanted the tree to be the prominent feature.

I was trying to capture the heat at the end of the day in Africa - I wish I had bought that TH plate of rubber stamps which had the elephant on it!

Playing with clear stamps

Well these are the stamps I was talking about in my previous post. Clear stamps, which I didn't really mean to buy - and then wondered why I did.

I have been practicing colouring with inks, layering with inks, and generally just playing around.



I got better as the afternoon wore on! These are little tags which will go out with swaps etc. I might not have the holes in exactly the right places - but I need more practice.





These are more colourful in real life - not sure why they look a bit wishy washy




I liked the colours I managed on this one - and it is on very textured thick card - think I might have messed it up with the dark medallion flowers on the bottom - but again, I was trying out all these different stamps.




The colours on this one are much nicer in real life and they blend from dark to pale.




The sentiment stamp is the only rubber one I used and is from CHF and the bird is a free one which came with my magazine. This is the first time I have used it - and I rather like it - but horror of horrors - it tore in half when I gently peeled it off the acrylic block. None of the others did - and they were all clear and just stuck themselves to the block as this did. It is such a shame as I really like this little bird once I had seen it stamped. I have never had that happen before !



I had fun inking this one - over white red lined paper. The lovely butterfly image came for a Crafty Individuals book - its really nice.



Last one of the day - again this is richer and deeper colours in real life.

Didn't I get a lot done!

Off to put my bantams away as it looks like rain - and to tidy up my studio. I do like everything put back in its place so that I can start a new day with a clear-ish table.

Night Owl

I am not usually a 'night owl' but couldn't resist this one.

You know how it is - you go to an online site to buy one thing in particular, then when you get to checkout it says - if you spend x more you get free postage. So I end up getting little 'x's and then wonder what I am going to make with them



So today I am looking through my drawer of 'extra' stamps - which took me over the free postage threshold and trying to ease my guilty conscience by using them.

I love the latest grungy looking Tim Holtz sentiments stamps, so used one of those, with the owl, and created a night scene by using a CB embossing plate, colouring it, then flattening it - to create the shadowy leaves, then embossing it again to create the raised leaves.

It's just a bit of fun - not a work of art. After all the 'serious' stuff of joining in the Cornish Heritage Farm challenges which I did enjoy - I have decided a bit of messing about and experimenting time is called for.

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)