Half way!!!

Well I find it quite hard to believe I am half way through my holidays!!! 3 weeks has flown by! Well it does when you are enjoying yourself doesn't it!! I do seem to have been busy though!

This last week Colin and I had our 31st wedding anniversary and we celebrated by going out for a couple of days and by having a lovely meal on Wednesday evening at The Golden Pheasant at Plumley nr Knutsford!
Yesterday I was as the Clarity NW workshop run by Maria Simms...she is so lovley and so talented its untrue! We were using the clever corners and ended up with some fab projects which really highlight what adaptable stamps they are. As usual we all got a stamp to keep and also one of the new clarity stencils. I will be putting that to good use very soon.

Anyway with all the comings and goings this week I realised I have not blogged any of the cards that were shown last weekend on the clarity shows.

These ones are done with the Whilst Shepherds kit!

The first one is an 8 x 8 card. I started off witha piece of centura pearl card and using the reverse of it I sprayed it with the green and blue dylusions ink sprays. I put my card in a large plastic box to to the spraying...the first ever time I used them I got it everywhere. Thankfully I had a wipe clean table cloth on my table at the time....so now by using the box I contain the ink and it can easily be cleaned.
Once the ink had dried I added a little more colour and depth using distress inks and an ink duster and a make up sponge.
I stamped the star in versamark and silver heat embossed it.
The shepherds and sheep were stamped using black versafine ink and the small tree from the bleak mid Winter set. The words were off the music score stamped on their own without the music. The picture was then mounted on to silver then blue card, and then onto an 8 x 8 card blank. I coloured some card candy to match the blue to finish the card.

The next card was a really simple design. Using a DL card blank I masked off a section about an inch (2.5 cm)  wide. Make sure your masking tape is really low tack!  I then used the music stamp to stamp over this space in cranberry adirondack. You could change the colour here if you wish.
Using a make up sponge I dragged some colour from each edge being careful to leave the centre of the space lighter. Carefully remove the masking tape and you should have a crisp border. I then stamped the shepherds and sheep into position then found the sentiment at Christmas in the Remountable Christmas Decorations Clear Stamp Set which was the perfect size for the space I had.

Right I am off to get a bit crafty...Hope you are having a good weekend

Happy Crafting

Jane xx
 

Animal Magnetism!

Good Morning to you!
Didn't we have a well suited challenge last month!! As we all created our Seaside projects the country was bathed in glorious sunshine and scorching heat!!! What a shame it can't be like that now the school holidays are here. Typical!

The Projects for the challenge have been fantastic as ever and it is amazing to see how everyone can come up with such different ideas with stamps and even when they have had to improvise they have still kept to the theme!

So it is now a new month and therefore the start of a new challenge...and this month we are having the theme of .....ANIMALS.

There are some stunning projects over at Clarity Stamp Challenge Blog to bring you inspiration and all very different I hope you can take the time to pop over to look and hop to the different blogs of the DT to see their projects in more detail!

Here is the one I have done for this months challenge.

 

 

This started off as a plain papier mache box which I painted with gesso and then 2 coats of cream acrylic paint. I prefer cream to white as it gives a warmer look to the background but without distorting the colours used for the images. Then I left it to dry completely.

Whilst it was drying I got the next stage done which is to stamp the images onto mansize tissues. I chose the diamond horse. I like this image as it has a lovely tail. I used 8 different colours of versafine inks- smokey grey, onyx black, crimson red, satin red, toffee, vintage sepia, imperial purple and habenero. 

These were allowed to dry then cut out as close to the image as possible  this took a bit of doing but well worth doing carefully and properly. The tissue images need then to be separated to just the one ply. Only the top layer is required.

Once this had been done and the box was ready to decorate. To attach the tissue horses to the box I used Slap-it-on form Indigo blu. This acts as a glue and thenm as a glaze to the surface. You need a nice soft brush to apply a thin layer of slap it on then attach the image then gently brush over the surface with slap it on. I made sure that I mixed up the colours of the horses and covered the box and lid inside and out. You need to allow time to do this to dry in between parts and remember to wrap the images around corners and edges to give a seamless finish. You can see that you need to overlap the images and you get lovely depths of colours that way. Once completely covered it need to dry properly and then be coated all over again a couple of times with slap it on. This dries to a matt finish which again allows the colours to come through. I then used a water soluble matt varnish all over it to add another layer of protection.

 

 

I was going to leave it at that but to me it did not look finished. I then came up with the idea of having miniature horses dancing around the top so stamped the image onto shrink plastic in black stazon. These I attached to the lid with some strong clear gel glue. However I wasn't happy about how this now looked as you could see the glue. I needed something to hide it....BRAINWAVE....I need something that will look like grass so I got the flowersoft out and a bit cosmic shimmer glue and Voila!!!
 

 

I hope you have enjoyed looking at my project.
Please feel free to leave any comments and don't forget to pop over to the other Design Teams blogs
Then its over to you to have a go and remember there is a voucher for £50 to be won by someone to spend at the Claritystamp website.

Happy Crafting

Jane xx

A fun day with Maria and Annette!

Last Saturday was the first day of the hols and it coincided with Maria Simms holding a joint workshop with her and Annette Lee over at Preston

So a roadtrip was planned and 4 of us (Me, Jo, Brenda and Mark) headed off to join in the fun for the day!

We arrived in good time and set out our workspace so that we were all ready and waiting for the fun to begin.

There were two projects that we were doing... a clarity one with Maria and a paperartsy one with Annette.

We all had to choose which project we were using to create our DREAM board and which one we would take home to make into a card...or another board. We started with Annette so straight away we had lovely painty stuff to do!

We used the paperartsy paints to do the boards and....love them....need them!

We could choose the colour depending on the final project we would put on it. I went with the paperartsy on the board and I would make Marias project into a card! We had great fun decorating the boards with paint and stamping on them with paint and also using masks/stencils and embossing paste.
We aslo stamped flowers onto black card using paperartsy floral stamps and the paint...a really lovely effect!

Here is the finished project I did with Annette
 

 

The next part of the day was with Maria! This time we were creating a garden scene using the foxgloves stamps and a brayer to make the sky! We masked off a moon then using purple twilight adirondack ink we made a sky.
We then had to stamp and emboss the foxgloves then using th epaints colour them in. We needed to make some extra foxgloves as embellishments...it was funny to hear the noise level drop as we all started to colour in and a few tongues made an appearance!!!
We used a die to cut out some flowers from book pages and also a fence form brown cardstock!

Neither project was completely finished so on Sunday I set too and completed them.
Here is the project we did with Maria made into a card

I know we all had a brilliant day and I loved both projects. Thank you to Maria for organising it and to Annette for travelling all that way to come and play!!

Let me know what you think of the projects

Have a great weekend
Happy Crafting

Jane xx

A little bit more Clarity

Well I have now finished for the summer and am looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy some me time!

This will be the first summer that my OH Colin will be at home with me all the time, him now being a permanent man of leisure!! We will, I am sure, have some lovely days out!

As promised here are some more of the samples I did for the July clarity show.

They can be seen on the Clarity website. Any way here they are

 

This one was done using the holly sprigs and two colours of ink. I then used a berry red promarker to do the berries.
The edges of the card were brushed with an ink duster and distress ink before mounting on to a piece of gold and green card and onto a 6 x 6 card blank

This one I made the holly border then Stamped and embossed one of the ships  in the centre. I put a small moon mask and inked the edges with an ink duster then sponged the sea in place. I mounted this onto black then silver card. The 6 x 6 card blank was randomly stamped with the Happy Christmas stamp which is on offer this month!

 

For this one I had the brayer out!

I started off stamping the holly tree and making a mask for it. I then put a moon mask in the picture before brayering the sky first with juniper then with denim. The deck the halls was then stamped with the holly round it. Then 2 of the Clarity Characters wre stamped into place and a bit of a background sponged to look like snow!

 

The holly tree was then coloured using promarkers before the picture was matted on to an 8 x 8 card blank.

 



This one used the gelliplate to create the background with the holly sprigs stamped in the corner and the Joy to the world in the centre

The 8 x 8 card blank was brushed with pan pastels through the leafy swirl stencil.

 For my last one I wanted to get away from Christmas and made this wedding card. I stampe dand embossed the pear tree and the church in silver then masked them off to create the background of gentle hills and clouds. I then coloured them in with pale promarkers. The sentiment uses the letterbox kit, stamped and embossed in silver then cut out and attached using foam pads.


I hope you have enjoyed seeing my first lot of samples for Clarity

I am still thinking this is all a dream and am so proud to be a part of it.

Have a great Sunday everyone and let me know what you think of my cards by leaving a comment for me here.

Happy Crafting

Jane xx

 

A moment of Clarity Christmas Ships

Well as you now know I am on the Clarity DT and last weekend I had sent my first cards into Barbara as part of that DT...it still feels like a dream!

Anyway the sets sold out really quickly ...hardly surprising as the are all fabulous stamps...and a bit different for Christmas than the usual!

I had one card shown and this is it

Strangely this had been the first card I made and boy did it give me problems.
I had recieved my stamps and was all excited getting my first parcel to play with! I took the blue off immediately and stamped the stamps out to see what they looked like. I always do this as it often gives me inspiration for what to do with the stamp.

I had an idea that the music could in some way be the wave that was carrying the ships along!!

I won't tell you how many pieces of clarity card actually went in the bin. And how many times I nearly threw my brayer in there too! However it was not plain sailing!...sorry! It was almost as though I had never stamped and or used a brayer before in my life!!! 

Anyway after a few miserable attemps I walked away and had a cuppa then reurned to try again.

I tried at first to use the resist technique for the music stamp but the image was not sharp enough in the sea!!! So I started again and this time brayered the sea then stamped and heat embossed the music in white opaque embossing powder! Eventually I got something that I was happy with and then made the card from that!. Thank goodness for the letterbox kit!

I then was moving on to my next sketch idea and cutting some card to make that topper when the next idea came to me. It uses the I saw Three ships kit but also the holly sprigs from the Deck the Halls kit.

Quite a simple one this one and not using a brayer!

 

I hope you enjoyed reading about my first DT cards. Please let me know what you think.

 

More will follow

 

Enjoy your day

 

Happy Crafting

 

Jane xx

 

 

 

Clarity Weekend

Well what an exciting weekend! Its time for the Clarity Weekend again....But this one is a little bit more special than usual.
Barbara Gray has asked me to be a part of her design team and of course I said yes !!!
I feel so honoured and priviledged to be a part of such a fabulous Team working with such great products.

I was really touched by what Barbara said about me on the classroom show. I had to pinch myself to check I wasn't dreaming it....even though I have known for a little while it still feels like a dream!

Anyway I am so so proud to be able to say that I am now a member of the Clarity Stamp DT!

Here are the homework cards I sent in to her...I had done these before she asked me!

 

 

Any way I'm off...

 

Happy Crafting

 

Jane xx

Oh I do like to be beside the Seaside!

Happy New Month and Happy New Challenge to all of those fans of Clarity Stamps!

I can't believe we are in July already and over half the way through the year! It is really quite scary how fast this year is going.

It did seem a bit strange doing this card when outside it was cold and wet but hopefully the weather will take some inspiration from this months fabulous projects that can be seen over at the Clarity Stamp Challenge Blog

So on to this months Challenge....Oh I do Like to be beside the seaside! (anything holiday related!) Nice as it reminds me that I start my summer hols this month!!!

Anyway here is my card I made for the Challenge.

To make the topper I used a piece of the clarity card...you know....the shiny one.
I started off by stamping the boat and masking the hull off. I then decided where the lighthouse was going, stamped and masked that too! I then masked off the bottom of the card and made some clouds in the sky using stonewashed blue adirondack ink and an ink duster. I could have sworn I had bought a clouds mask for doing this but can I find it.....

I then masked off the sky so I could do the sea.
For this I used a brayer which I looaded up with denim ink, scrumpled a piece of copy paper up and rolled my brayer over it so that I picked up the texture then rolled it over the card one way then  back then left it at that! If you do it more you lose the texture which makes it look like water.
I masked off the sea again and then using a piece of torn copy paper I made some land by sponging ink under the lighthouse. I used the denim ink and lots of it so it was dark. I then removed the masks and did something similar in the bottom left hand corner. 

I then removed the masks from the boat and the lighthouse so that I could colour these with promarkers.

I also used a white micron pen to create the splashes up the boat and at the base of the land by the lighthouse, and to make white bits on the water to look like the white tops of waves. I mounted this topper onto a piece of sand coloured card









I then stamped the shell cluster and the seagull onto a piece of theuva card and coloured it with promarkers before cutting it out.



For my base card I used a piece of pearlescent card which I stamped the single shell randomly over. I added the topper then added the shell cluster and seagull over the right hand corner. And that was it!

I hope you enjoyed looking at my project. Pop over to the Clarity Stamp Challenge blog to see all the other fabulous projects! Then have a go yourself....after all you may get lucky and win and the prize is £50 of vouchers to spend at clarity....well worth trying for!  You can also see the winner and top 5 from last month too!

Happy Crafting

Jane xx