One of my favourite people

Hello there

My baby is 15 today, although I'm writing this on October 12th whilst she's out at a friend's house; I've scheduled this post for October 15th. We had a fab trip to Harry Potter World at the beginning of October and she's getting a big present, so she's going to have yet another good birthday hopefully.






Unusually enough, I don't normally make her a card but I have this year. 

I've used the Juliet stamp by Indigo Blu for the first time, despite having owned the stamp for a very long time. I looked online for inspiration but found only three examples of cards using that stamp, which is surprising. I love the flowing hair behind her and the birds and swirls; very liberating and pretty. I used a tag project as the inspiration but mine looks nothing like that. 

I first inked the tag by putting three distress inks on the craft mat and spritzed them with water and ran the tag through them - very technical; that's me! I did the same for the second layer but only using the wild honey and worn lipstick. The base layer, I only used the broken china. I then used the swirly stamp from the Indigo Blu 'music hall' stamp in matching colours on the edges of each of those two layers and used the musical score stamp, from that set, on the main tag. I stamped Juliet with SU's tempting turqoise. 

The flower is a washi tape one, which I really like. It has musical score on it, so very fitting for this card.The lace is a SU lace which I dyed with some spray ink. The sentiment was created some leftover musical score practise stamping I did. I had to do a couple of tags before I got to this one, which I was happy with.

The flower meant that I had to make a box, as it is quite raised - oh goody!
 I mean that, as they're easy to make with my Ultimate Pro.

 Decorating the side of the box with the musical score and the lid with more of those swirls was fun too. The sentiment comes from the musical score Indigo blu kit again.

I did the insert the same way. 

I really enjoyed this experience. 

Let's hope my baby likes it too.

Take care out there

Being cheeky, works

Hello there

I am rather pleased with this card.

I've been cheeky, as I used a stamped image I got when I was on the Indigo Blu retreat in March. I did use some green on the leaves too but it's not that visible in this photo. I just wanted to add the slightest bit of colour to the image, to help maintain it's elegant pose. We were also given the pages from a copy of the Pride and Prejudice book at the retreat, as the image is of Elizabeth Bennett. I've yet to show you one of the projects we did with this book paper at the retreat, as I'm not happy with it yet; I still need to work on it to get it how I want it.

I cut the flower out of vellum using the Flower Shoppe cartridge- it's the scallop flower on page 13 of the booklet. The swirls in the background were created with a stamp I made from the lace 2 element on page 42 of the Ornamental Iron 2 cartridge. I used some leftover cuts I had of that element from a post I did last month - I put them behind the flower, as I've seen Sue Wilson do so many times and finally I get round to trying it out myself. 


Inside the card, I had a bit of a play and used vellum as the insert and stamped the swirl on it and the sentiment. What I quickly learnt is that vellum absorbs the ink and makes it swell out. I've got away with it on the swirls but the sentiment became illegible, so I had to stamp it again on the card and stick it over the old imprint. I'm not sure it's completely worked and be warned if you try it - be patient! Give it time to dry.

The box envelope was easy to create with my Ultimate Pro but the fun bit was stamping with white Stazon on acetate. I hadn't done this before. Ranger's Archival ink didn't seem to work i.e it didn't dry; which is odd as it did when I made the box for my Mother's Day present box  this year. I made the mistake though of asking Chris, who has a chemistry background, about what to use to clean my stamp with afterwards - therein followed a long speel about the various types of solvent inks and how they react and blah blah blah but he did help me realise that IPA was worth a shot and it worked!! I used the swirl stamp (which was created with Cricut cuttables) on an acrylic block and it cleaned them brilliantly without disintegrating them. One happy dance later and the box was complete.

Take care out there

Wouldn't it be cool if I really could have a swirl pattern
painted into the lawn with that stuff they use on
footall pitches :-)

Dance

Hello there

 I've had the Music Hall set of stamps by Indigo Blu for a while and I bought them with the purpose of making my daughter a canvas using the sentiment stamp. I also bought the canvas ages ago. It was only on Thursday night that I finally set to making a sketch of what I wanted basically to go on there. That night, I also made a Stampendous butterfly with blended inks onto photo paper. That was it - I had my colours decided and an element.

Last night I set to starting on it. I just sprayed some blue ink and that was it; I was off. My fingers and lovely new nails were also blue but that's by the by; I really do need to wear gloves or get some strong hand cleaning stuff for when I'm spraying or just not buy that particular brand again, as it's lethal. My lovely nails now look as if there's dirt sitting in them - grose! 

The skirt idea came from pinterest - Junelle Jacobsen did that one. I stamped some pattern paper with the musical score stamp from the set to make the 'material'. I also embossed with that stamp, behind the girl and the doily.
The large notes were cut from the Lyrical letters Cricut cartridge,
as ever, I used the negative as a stencil as well as
the positive to be glued on.

I loved making the pattern go from the edge around to the front

I decided to keep the frame around my girl as it helps her stand out more -
I inked the edges though to blur that edge a bit

I got help from another pinterest post of Andreal Designs of she art dancing. I couldn't find any other she art dancing, so that helped me with the legs, feet and arms and fan.The flower on the belt is fussy cut from a paper pad, as is the fan. 

The original finished version still wasn't looking right in my opinion, so since taking that photo,I've added some thin black lines which follow the outline on the right hand side and they get shorter and shorter. I thought this would help with the idea of motion on my girl.

I had primed the canvas first before starting but I had trouble sealing the finished background. I tried Claudine Hellmuth's glossy medium but it started to make the paint/ink blue. If you have any suggestions as to what I could use, please do let me know. For now, I'm just going to leave it.

I had great fun with this, trying to add loads of layers and details and messing about with paint colours, just as the inspiration took me (so much for doing a sketch!) and my daughter really likes it, which makes it all worth while, so I'm off to put it on her wall. 

Take care out there