Calendar Challenge Week 12

Last week of the Calendar challenge at the Craft Barn! The theme is Red and green, pine tree and sparkle.

I was thinking icy white, gold and/or silver.. well I had to rethink and I was not inspired!

The main image has been stamped with a Katzelkraft stamp , embossed in black, then coloured with felt tip pens. I distressed the whole panel with inks and matted it on handmade paper.

There are 2 further stamps (both freebies from a recent magazine) that have been embossed with clear powder directly on the calendar and highlighted with red and green distress inks.

I then used some die cuts around the page, including the tree and snowflake which I glittered in gold, and the holly branch which I "iced" with a mixture of white embossing powder, white/transparent glitter and perfect pearls (I was getting desperate) as shown here:

See you soon for the finale in which I reveal my cover for the calendar...

Calendar Challenge Week 11

This week's challenge at the Craft Barn is "Pale yellow and grey/bare branches". In other words a foggy november day as we have had them this week!

The design came to me easily, as I didn't have a choice of stamps (should have bought that Impression Obsession stamp I have been hankering after) and had to use my go-to stamp fromCrafty Individuals. The realisation, however proved problematic!

The watercolour paper certainly helped creating a seamless grey-to-yellow sky and light-to-dark green field, BUT I could not get a good impression of the CI Individuals stamp with that much paper texture.
Note: Counter-intuitively, finer detail prints better than solid parts of the stamp!

Thanks for coming by,

Blog Candy at the Craft Barn

To celebrate their 600th follower the Craft Barn is offering a fabulous blog candy. You can find it here.

Good luck!

Calendar Challenge Week 10

The theme of the Craft Barn Challenge this week is "Autumn shades and leaves".  My original intention was to have a carpet of leaves with a main leaf more detailed in the foreground, but in the end I chose to leave the background white so that it did not outshine the main leaf's colours.

The main leave has been traced and watercoloured, the medium leaves were made with a stamp and the smaller ones are actually punched out from card (it doesn't show very well in the photo. As a nod to Tim Holtz, I applied some distress inks on some of the punched out leaves.

Hope you will like this page,

Crafty Individuals Winter Wonderland challenge

The Crafty Individuals Challenge for November is Winter Wonderland. No traditional Christmas red and green for this one as I am quite bored with this color scheme. I  chose white and blues and greens... The stamps used are from CI- 209, I love these trees stamps and thought that in white they just cried out Snow!

For the base of the card, I (dry) embossed some snowflakes which I highlighted with distress inks. For the main image, I stamped and embossed several trees on white card, then applied distress inks in blue and green. Around the trees, to give them definition, I placed dark colours with markers and a water brush.

Thanks for taking a look,

Calendar Challenge Week 9

The theme of the Craft Barn Challenge this week is "Old paper" and red lines with die-cuts optional. As I need to keep my pages fairly flat I have incorporated only one die cut as a frame for the girl image.

The background was made by stamping second and third generation of a script stamp in Versafine sepia ink directly on the page, the first generation having been stamped on a separate piece of a spiral paper pad. Using cut  & dry foam I then applied Antique Linen Distress ink over all of the stamped script and once dry drew the lines with red pen. Finally,  to complete the (vintage) "school girl desk" look, I splodged some black ink (yes on purpose!).

Thanks for coming by,

Calendar Challenge Week 8

The theme of the Craft Barn Challenge this week is Deep/Dark colours and Circles.

Since this week was all about Katzelkraft stamps (one of my favorite brand) this is what I chose for my main image.

The background was made by coloring circles inside and out with distress inks, then spraying with glimmer mist (this doesn't show well in the picture).

Hope you will like this page !

Calendar Challenge Week 7

The theme of the Craft Barn Challenge this week is Lilac/Purple and Embossing. Although the embossing part was optional, I decided to try it anyway... isn't the point of these challenges to strech our abilities ? There aren't many options to dry emboss an opaque, thick and large (A4) watercolour page. You cannot see through to emboss a brass stencil over a lightbox, you cannot use an embossing folder unless you have a large die-cut machine... what I do have is a set of Fiskars' embossing stencils and this proved to be adequate.

The stamps are from a Papermania Clear stamps set that I could not resist thanks to the wonderful designer's  illustration on the packet. Sadly, it is impossible to get the same perfect results with the stamps...  

Thanks for coming by,

Calendar Challenge Week 6

The theme of the Craft Barn Challenge this week is Turquoise and Lace.

I have decided on a simple design focusing on turquoise lace as my background. This was sprayed through a doily, then I collaged a stamped image in the foreground which I have lightly colored with distress inks.

Hope you will like it,

Winged things challenge

The Crafty Individuals Challenge for October is Winged things. I did not overthink this one as I wanted to use my latest CI-319 stamp. What with Halloween coming up and this broody stamp, I went for a traditional Halloween color scheme with high contrast.

Most remarkable about this make is the fact that none of the embellishments were shop-bought. The broom is a toothpick with a tassel die-cut, the cat has been stamped with a Craft Stamper freebie and flocked, the patterned paper is from a chocolate box and the title was made with alphabet stamps and die-cut. I used some acrylic interference paint to highlight the embossing on the "gloop" and around the cat.

Thanks for coming by,

Calendar Challenge Week 5

The theme of the Craft Barn challenge this week is "Pink and Birds".

Had I known this last week... I would not have used a bird stamp! So this week I had real trouble with inspiration, since birds aren't really my thing and I do not own cute birds stamps that would go with a pink color scheme!

For the main image I combined 2 tree stamps  and a bird then splattered some pink and turquoise watercolour over.I was aiming for a "cherry trees in blossom" impression.
For the bottom border, I have used part of the Crafty Individuals-266 stamp to create "stamps" (cut with pinking scissors) and over-stamped with several postmarks.

Thanks for coming by,

Calendar Challenge Week 4

This week's theme for the Craft Barn Calendar challenge is Yellow and masks.

 I had an initial idea of the mask I wanted to use, but alas, it did not fit in with the yellow colour scheme ! Instead, I opted for a contemporary colour scheme which had me employ numerous media (Promarkers, watercolour pencils, dye ink, crafting inks) in order to achieve the colouring without one colour bleeding in another.

The mask is the flourish, coloured with cut & dry foam. I am quite happpy with the result, on the basis that, and this is very unusual for me, the end result is what I had in mind when I set out ! Yes, even when heart in mouth I did the splatter of yellow in lieu of leaves and a free-hand branch for the bird it did not turn out a complete disaster as it could so easily have.