The big 50!

So, in a few days time my little sister celebrates her 50th Birthday, and I'd like to share the project I made for her, and it's matching card.

I've never really done anything 3-d in my crafting before and have never attempted anything that might even vaguely be classed as a mixed media project, so to say I was winging it wouldn't be too far from the mark. Here is the big 50 - what do you think? Hope she'll like it, and it might even make up part of the table decorations!

I started with a big cardboard 5 and 0 from Tesco's childrens crafting section (they had a BOGOF offer, which was lucky for me!), then painted them all over with two or three coats of gesso and stuck them together. I really need to be better at remembering all the details and having my camera to hand when I'm doing a project, but what can I say - I'm just not that organised!

I then used the Clarity Stamp Birdhouse set to stamp the fence, birdhouse, flowers, birds and animals onto white tissue paper, using black archival ink. When everything was dry, I then added a little texture to parts of the project using grungepaste through a honeycomb stencil. Then I had to wait for that to dry too....

About a week later, I started to adhere the stamped tissue paper to the white background, using Indigo Blue's Slap it On adhesive, making sure that the stamped designs went over the edges, and matched front and back for continuity.

Once that was all dry, I covered the images again with another coat of Slap it On to protect the stamping and to prevent the tissue from lifting at the edges. Then I waited again....I added Stickles glitter glue to the fence posts, to the flowers on the trailing boughs and the hollyhocks, and waited again for that to dry. Then I added a bit of distress ink to the honeycomb grungepaste areas, and a bit of dimensional paint to the hollyhocks, and then glued a few sequin flowers to the front for a bit more bling. Finally I used a little creamy lace and sewed some lace flowers as I felt there were a couple of bare areas that needed something extra.





I made a matching card using the same stamp kit, a black and old paper ink pad, and added my sister's name and age, just in case the Big 50 wasn't enough of a reminder!

I really enjoyed making this, even though I had sticky and inky fingers for the best part of a month, and I'd definitely do another mixed media project in the future - might even crack open those lovely pristine Clarity Canvasses that I've had up on the shelf for almost 6 months!!!

I'm entering this project into the Clarity Challenge for August, which is a Bingo Challenge - I've used the diagonal line Flowers, Stamp and Glitter, and also the middle horizontal line, Stencil, Stamp and GrungePaste - not quite a Full House, but definitely more than my usual less is more approach.

I love to read everyone's comments, so please let me know what you think - apologies if it takes some time to get back to you, but I've got a party to go to down in London!! Happy Birthday Jackie XXX

Susan

Anything Goes - Corset Montage

Hello Again

Well July and August are really busy months for me, so apologies for the lack of blogging! Sadly the project I've been working on for my sister's 50th birthday isn't finished yet to enter into this month's Clarity Challenge, but maybe it will fit the brief for one of the months to come. Luckily for me, it isn't Jackie's birthday until the end of August, so I have some more time to get it done and for it to be dry enough to be packed into my suitcase!!!

As a result, here's a little card I did which is part of my "using stuff up" theme for 2015. We all have hundreds of little scraps of coloured and patterned papers left over from previous projects, that we just can't bear to part with, don't we? At least I hope everyone else has them too, and it isn't just peculiar to me!

Years ago I attended a workshop where I learnt about paper piecing, and truly it's not something I've done that often, but it's a great way of using up those little bits of lovely paper, so I've been doing it a lot in my projects this year, and the boxes and files of papers and scraps are gradually reducing.

Here I've used some of the very first Clarity stamps that I ever bought, the lady's corset and corset montage stamp, together with the Feminine script stamp, and some die cut flowers, punched leaves and a few gems for a bit of bling. It's lovely to get out your old stamps and enjoy them all over again, isn't it?

I really like the effect of the scripts stamped onto a patterned background, but as the patterns on the papers are quite busy, I stuck with three main colours in my palette, bright pink, green and white, with stamping done in black archival ink.

I used the same polka dot paper to stamp the corset, for the largest matting layer, and for one layer of the die cut flowers. The corset was then cut out, and stuck onto the corset montage as a contrast layer. The corset montage was matted onto plain sage green card, and offcuts were used to punch out the leaves. A plain pink scrap of paper was also used to die cut the second layer of flowers.

In retrospect, I wish I'd had enough plain pink paper to do another matt around the spotty paper, but hey ho - I was using up leftovers, and there wasn't enough to do that ... maybe next time!

Thanks for visiting, and any comments you have would be really welcome.  Susan x

Boys, Boys, Boys

I find it so easy to make cards for ladies and girls, but the boys in our lives can be more of a challenge. Maybe that's because, as a female, I know what I would like to receive so I have a bit of a head start!

I've really loved all the new silhouette stamps that Clarity Stamp have been producing recently, and they combine so well with lots of different bespoke backgrounds, so I had a little play around with a few different stamp sets, Jo's Bubbles stencil, and the letterbox kit to create a card for my great-nephew's upcoming 3rd birthday.

To create the background I used a range of blue distress and adirondack ink pads, and brushed through the stencil using those wonderful Clarity stencil brushes to create a soft airbrushed effect. Then I stamped Rocco's name using black archival ink and the letterbox kit, and added some blue colour to the boxes using second generation distress ink.

I added the Boy with the Birds stamp, and two of the characters from the Wee Folk 2 set to create some movement in the card, and extended the rope swing using a black pen to match the black archival ink used for the stamping. Finally I added Rocco's age in one of the bubbles, and added the little black bird on top of the number as an extra feature as I felt it provided a better balance and stayed with the bird theme.

Hope Rocco likes his card as I really enjoyed creating it. Thanks for taking the time to look and if you'd like to leave a comment I'd be thrilled to read them, Susan x

My scrappy cushion

Hello there. Well it's June, but still chilly and windy and intermittently rainy up here in the Highlands, so no lovely warm evening walks for me today!!! Instead I thought I'd share a little project I did recently as part of my New Year's resolution for 2015 - Using Stuff Up.

My great niece will be 6 this year, and for her 1st or 2nd birthday I made her a lovely chevron crochet jacket, but there were lots of leftover bits of yarn. You will all understand, I'm a crafter, so I couldn't throw them away, so they were packed into boxes and put into storage for a while, then they moved with us 3 years ago from London to Inverness!!!

Then they sat in a cupboard for a year, then moved to a drawer in the chest in the hallway...then I saw a fabulous stripy crochet cushion cover design, and their time had come....

So now they grace the chair cushion in my hallway - OK, so the colours don't go so well with the floor tiles, but that's not really the point is it? I really love the effect of the random stripes, and so next time I have lots of scrap bits of yarn leftover from a project I know what I'll be doing with them - hopefully the scraps will be pale blue and terracotta and cream!

Thanks for stopping by, and let me know what you think of the scrappy cushion, Susan x

Time to try my Brusho Paints!

The Clarity Challenge theme for May 2015 is clocks, and I was struggling a bit to come up with any ideas really this month. In the end, I went with the KISS rule - Keep It Simple, Stupid!

I've been quite inspired by the fabulous backgrounds that I've seen people create using watercolour paper and Brushos, so I thought I'd just have a go, and maybe try the letterpress technique using one of my Clarity Stencils.

What do you think?

I pierced a hole in the top of the Brusho pots, and used it like a pepper pot as I'd read this was the best way to control the amount you dispense. I did 3 or 4 shakes of Emerald Green, and a couple of shakes of purple, then spritzed with water a few times and left it to airdry.

Then I inked up the Clarity clockwork stencil with Black Archival ink, and wiped away the edges to give a rough circle outline. I letterpressed this through an embossing machine onto the watercolour paper, so the final result actually has quite a textured embossed image.Finally I wrote some "timely" phrases around the edge of the circle, trimmed down the watercolour paper, and matted onto some emerald and black card to finish it off.

I thought about adding some flowers and leaves for embellishment, but in the end decided against that - remember the KISS rule - hoping that less is more.... Susan x