Egg hunt

Good Morning to you all.

Today is all about getting hair cut and doing some planning and hopefully a bit of crafting but tomorrow will be even better...train journey to NEC with Brenda! YAY! I haven't been on a train since I was about 16 and I have never been to the NEC so it's a real adventure for me tomorrow! So excited!

So today I want to share one of my favourites from the samples I made for the last Claritystamp Show on March 1st.

I used the eggs from the Chicks and Eggs set and the flowers from the Bird row set. I also used the journalling set, leaf set 1 and the leafy swirl stamp.

I started off stamping the eggs in the centre of a piece of theuva card and masked them off. I added leaves around them and masked these off too. I stamped the leafy swirl to give my arrangement shape then created the background using distress inks. I did this in the same way as I did The Nature card I had done for the Blog challenge a while back. There is a tutorial on the background here. 

Once I had done this I added some green splats using distress stains and then removed the masks. I coloured the leaves using the solid leaf shape and green distress ink and the eggs using promarkers.

I put this to one side and then on another piece of theuva card I stamped out loads of the flowers and used the solid shape to colour them in pink, purple and yellow Then I clear embossed these and cut them out. 

I arranged them around the eggs and stuck them down with cosmic shimmer glue. I matted onto cream then brown then onto a mottled card blank. 

And here is the finished card 

Hope you have a good weekend and if you are going to the NEC tomorrow I hope you'll say hello if you see me!

Happy Crafting

Gentian

Good Morning.

Its a bit frosty here today and looking at the sky it may be a grey day or it could turn out not bad! But no matter as I am at work in a bit so won't see much of the day!

I want to share a little card with you that I made for the last claritystamp show. If you haven't got this stamp and you are going to the NEC this week I would STRONGLY advise you to get it! It's a gorgeous image and so easy to make a quick card from

I stamped the image onto watercolour card for this one using archival ink then I used watercolour paints to add colour. 

Once dry I matted and layered it onto a card blank and that was it! 

You could have used any medium to colour this but remember to change your ink pad according to which  you decide to use.

Here is the finished card. 

Have a good day whatever you are doing

Happy Crafting xx

Birdies by the water

Good morning. I thought I would blog you the birdies card I did for the last Claritystamp Show on Sunday 1st March.

I used the gelli plate for this one to do the reflection of the birds and to do the background.

I marked the long middle line on the back of my card as a guide and then stamped in versafine the birds onto the gelli plate. I then pulled the print.

I stamped the birds directly above the image then masked both of them off.

I inked the gelli plate up with green and blue adirondack ink and on one half of the gelli plate I dabbed it with crinkled paper to hopefully get a watery effect. I then pulled a print and my line marker had worked well!

I removed the masks and coloured the birds using the spectrum noir pencils making sure that the birds in the reflection were paler than the ones above. I also added a bit of green shading around the birds legs and some in the reflection.

 I trimmed the card slightly so it just fitted the birds in length. I stamped the word in place then mounted it onto  black card then a card blank. 

Here it is!

Have a good day whatever you are doing.

Happy Crafting

Making a Rainbow!

Good evening to you all

After a very stressful day and a weekend I want to forget about I thought I would spend a bit of time indulging myself and writing my blog! And what better thing to do but blog about the Fairy book I made for the last Claritystamp show on Sunday 1st March.

I love this set of stamps and as soon as I saw them I knew they would be perfect for making a Child's story book. I got this idea from a project that I do with my year 9 classes where they have to look at children's books and then write a short story of their own and turn it into a book. I suggest to the class that they think of something that they want to teach the children through a story so that's where I started. 

There are two sets of the Wee Fairies: Set 3 and Set 4

I counted the fairies to see how many there were and then thought I could use them to teach children about the colours of the Rainbow. I can recall being taught the way remember the colours is by the saying phrase Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain but I wanted something more Child friendly. So I started to think of a story. I wrote this is rhyming couplets as this is often how children's books are written.

Here is the Story

Rose the Fairy loved everything Red,

Ola wanted Orange, even her bed!

Yasmin needed bright Yellow to be seen,

But Gordon wanted it all to be Green.

Bobby made the whole world turn blue,

It had to be Indigo for Iris through and through.

And not forgetting Vivian, last but not least,

She needed Violet ...Oh what a feast!

They all loved their colours but wanted to show,

That when they all get together, We see a beautiful Rainbow.

I then thought about how I was going to create a book.

I while ago I bought a miniature board book which had 4 pages held together with rings. Perfect! I painted the art boards with gesso to seal them and cut pieces of theuva card to fit the pages. I would stamp and colour these then stick onto the board pages when finished.

I created the front cover first and drew the rainbow and coloured it with promarkers. I added the title which I had made on the PC and a bit of sparkle using the stars and embossing powder

The next page I planned to get two colours on so drew a feint line diagonally. One side red and the other orange. I masked off each half and made a little scene in each using the fairies and the other stamps. I drew some bits that I didn't have stamps for like the bed. I printed out the words and stuck these on. Once completed I added sparkle then stuck it to the board book being careful it was the right way round.  I then found buttons the same colour as each page to add interest and a bit of embellishment.

I then went to do the 2nd page, this time yellow and green.

This is how they look together.

The next page was blue and Indigo

with Violet being on its own. I used the toadstool stamp to make the scene and fill the full page. I think this is my favourite page of all of them.

Here they are together

I then had to create the final part when they all come together and make the Rainbow. I put the two pieces of card together on my work space and used distress stains to make the splats. Word of advice...move things well away when you do this!

I then stamped all the fairies in black archival ink to make the double page.

The back of the book I drew the rainbow again and used the final fairy that had not appeared in the story. And I added my personalised bespoke stamp I use on the back of all my samples.

The whole thing was put together and that was my Fairy Book complete! I was a lot of work but I really enjoyed doing it.

I hope you enjoyed finding out about this project. It would be lovely to hear what you think of it!

Happy Crafting