I've had a right good kick

Hello there

As some of you may know (if you read my last post), I'm taking part in a project which intends to give crafters a creative jumpstart this month. I'm also in the middle of doing this year's calendar still. Today, the two events combined, along with a third event. The third event was a shopping trip to Crabapplecrafts, which is a local craft shop, where I spent some Christmas money. One of the things I bought was an IndigoBlu stamp set, as it includes the saying about dancing as if no one is watching, which I love.

The technique is presented in the second video on the site; Heidi Swapp does this one. In a nutshell, Heidi shows us an idea to use her Color Magic mists (I don't have any, so made up my own with SU reinker, alcohol and water). It simply involves misting over a stencil which has been covered with a mask and then stamping over the mask. I really like the effect Heidi created.

I'm also happy with my result because I enjoyed playing around with my new toy and technique and also chatting on the computer with some crafty friends about a catch up date we've organised for tomorrow night.

It's been a good day, as it has definitely helped to give me a kickstart with creating things in 2013.

Take care out there

p.s
I case you're wondering; the calendar section goes on a separate sheet of card below this photo page but I'm pretty certain that none of you want to see a family planner calendar page :-)

p.s.s
This post is a day late being published, courtesy of Blogger on the ipad as well as their app not being effective for inserting photos. Grumble, grumble, moan, moan but the upside is that my crafty friends get together isn't tomorrow night, it's tonight!! Yay!!

Stamping

Hello there

I own some stamps. I have been to stamping classes using Stampin' Up products; I have enjoyed them. I love watching people like Barbara Gray, Melanie Heaton and many others, create gorgeous pieces with their stamping projects. I have not 'got into' it much though due to the expense mostly but also due to lack of talent. There are so many products you need to buy for stamping; stamps, inks (so many brands and types), papers (so many brands and types) and pens (yet again, so many brands and types). There's so much out there in the marketplace that it becomes a bit mind boggling to know which will suit me best and which of them I can afford. You have to be good at shading and remembering paper/ink/pen blends which work without smudging your work all over the page. Aarrrgghhhhh! It all seems too stressful and expensive and I just get overwhelmed by it all, so up to now I've stayed away.

I hear you. Yes I know I have used stamps before but I haven't coloured them with pens in the past; I've avoided it like the plague. I haven't tried braying before either and I still haven't! :-)

The very first laying down of colour with one of my
new Spectrum Noir. I love how no stripes are visible.
The edges are lighter because I made them like that.

May Flaum has the right attitude to it though. I follow her blog daily and I was on her BigPictureClass earlier this year. She has a real 'gung-ho' attitude to scrapping and she has confidence in herself to die for. For those of you who either don't know about May or you don't know what I mean by the term 'gung-ho' then a) go watch her videos and read her site - you'll love it b) gung-ho means 'get in there', 'go for it', 'be brave', 'just play'. May isn't scared to share her 'failures'. Sometimes she layers ink over paint, over stamping and it can look amazing but other times it just looks like a brown blobby mess but she'll adapt that at another date to work for her. She doesn't let it stop her creative flow. She makes an almighty mess and comes out with wonderful stuff.

That's the secret.

Let go.

May goes on and on and on about not worrying about whether you're using the 'right' thing to re-create her projects (which is great); although she does also list the contents/links under each posting which is great, if you live in U.S.A!  I don't live there, so I often have to improvise with what I have but that's what it's meant to be. It's meant to be my interpretation; my skills; my time available; my money available; my recipient's needs (if it's a card) etc. I'm not May. I love creativity not copying.

So recently I got the chance to buy some Spectrum Noir pens at a good price, so I took the plunge. On Saturday I just grabbed some cardstock, stamped a Stampavie (Helz Cuppleditch's Ruffle puppy plaque) stamp with black archival ink and set to colouring the image with a little help from a Leann Chivers video on youtube. Sure enough, I didn't have all the pens Leann used or the right type of stamp really but I carried on. I just coloured. I quickly realised that the cardstock wasn't great, as it's not smooth coated. I also saw that the ink was being smudged by the pens. So what?! I was playing. I was learning. I was growing in confidence.

Take care out there

So many things!

Hello there

Despite the fact that it's December 30th when I'm writing this post, I still haven't started my calendar. Every year I make a family planner. Unfortunately the formatted table that I use for the planner section is on my old computer which I currently don't have a monitor for as I threw that out as it was a big old bulky one and I need the space on my desk for more fun stuff. This means that I need a cable to connect that old computer to my laptop and that hasn't happened yet- tomorrow is obviously the deadline. I need to amend this years to fit with 2012's dates of course, so that takes a little while. I often have to do just January and February to start with as I don't have a clue what pictures/photos I'm going to put on each month. For 2012 though I have 12 8x8 scrapbook pages, which I did as part of a free Big Picture Classes class i.e Word of the day, I did this year and thoroughly enjoyed. One page though will need sorting out as normally I do the pictures on an A4 landscape page, and this one page measures 23.5cm in height! Fun and games.

My daughter and I went to Burwardsley, Tattenhall, Cheshire to the Candle Making Factory and thoroughly enjoyed not only looking at brilliant candles and associated things but also made our own double twist candles and decorated the candle holders. It was a pig miserable day weather wise again with pouring rain and wind, so it was great to get out and about doing something nice together.

Last night I was extra chuffed as I basically made four thank you cards in one night!! That's virtually unheard of for me as it usually takes me that long at least for one card. I got my inspiration from the Cardmaking & Papercraft magazine I get (thanks to my baby sister). They had a free set of stamps and some papers inside, so off I went card making. The mojo was definitely with me, and it was great fun. Machine stitching on card still feels rather weird but I like that when it's just strange doing something unusual. I used some Caran D'ache pencils I have already to colour the stamped images in, as this is the first time I've coloured in stamps, believe it or not. I don't have any fancy pens, yet! I always loved colouring in when I was young and it's so refreshing to do it again as an adult. I found the pencils quite forgiving too and easy to adjust pressure to get the effect I wanted or to merge together. The only thing I had to do tonight was finish embossing some little butterflies for the last card and make the envelopes, which didn't take long at all. I'm not going to get this post made public until next week as two of the recipients may read my blog and I just don't think it's 'on' to publicly display them before the recipient has had them. These are them:

White embossing powder rocks!

The stamp used for this is a stampendous one called ruffled butterfly



 Take care out there and I hope that 2012 is kind to you and your families