Bucket and Pillow of Shells

It’s been ages since I posted, but now I’m back from holidays and feeling on track again after a bad cold. I wanted to cover two themes in Hero Arts’ July challenge (summertime and parties), the Fanatical About Botanical Challenge in the Moxie Fab World and the Simon Says Stamp and Show Anything Goes Challenge.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Antique Engravings, Magical Background & Messages

For my kids the ideal summer would include a trip to the beach every day, so when I think of summer, I think of making sandcastles, gathering shells and traisping through the rough grass in the sand dunes. So with this in mind I made these treat containers, which might be suitable for a summer party, and included bits and pieces that I associate with the beach. Then I filled them with chocolate shells - one of my favourites!



For the sand bucket, I covered a coffee cup with sand patterned paper. The handle was made with florists wire and pearls from a cheap necklace. I applied tumbled glass distress ink to white card and using the same ink stamped it with the Magical Background. I added a strip of this, some May Arts ribbon, raffia and a stamped shell to the bucket.



For the pillow box I applied tumbled glass distress ink to white card, stamped with the magical background using the same ink and die cut a window when the pillow shape was cut out. To finish I just added the shell and raffia.

Now I'm off to have some shells and a cuppa!

Happy Birthday Mark!

This is a card I made for my son Mark who celebrates his birthday today. Happy Birthday, Mark! Since Mark’s birthday is on the 4th of July, I decided to go with a red\white\blue colour combination and some stars and stripes.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Large Canvas Stripes, Friendly Flags and Clouds Background

To start with I applied barn door distress ink to the stripes stamp and spritzed lightly with water before stamping. The clouds background was stamped in the same way using tumbled glass distress ink. For the blue flags, I applied broken china and faded jeans distress inks to white card and embossed the flags in white. I used a scrap of the stamped canvas stripes for the birthday flag.

Happy 4th of July to all you who celebrate it too:)

Aagh!

Now that we’re enjoying warm summer evenings, it’s lovely being out in the garden quite late. I love having candles outside so decided to stamp a vase to hold a large candle.


Stamp (Hero Arts) – Antique Engravings

Of course when I was doing this I didn’t take into account having to photograph it! I had so many problems with reflections, trying to capture the sparkle of glitter and also because the butterflies are stamped all the way around the vase, in the photos it looks like some of the images overlap – aagh! The photos aren’t great but I gave up on getting good ones!



Using white StazOn, I stamped three different sized butterflies from the Antique Engraving set on the vase. We have ivy on parts of the garden walls so there is always a plentiful supply to make ivy rings. So I white embossed a number of butterflies on vellum, added diamond stickles, gems and attached them to the ivy ring.

Batik Summer Butterflies

This month part of the Hero Arts challenge is summertime, so I decided to go with summery colours and butterflies for this card.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Butterfly Wallpaper, Antique Engravings & Messages

I love the gorgeous Butterfly Wallpaper stamp that Linda kindly sent me – thanks again, Linda! I wanted to try the batik technique I had seen Tami Hartley and Lisa Spangler use on their gorgeous cards here and here. Firstly I embossed the image in white on white card and then applied tumbled glass, broken china and faded jeans distress inks. Then I covered the embossed image with a piece of vellum (usually a piece of copy paper is used) and ironed it. By ironing the image, the embossing is transferred onto the vellum and the original piece of card has a batik look.



Using the vellum was just a little experiment - I had my fingers crossed it wouldn’t melt or get stuck to the embossed image! Well it worked and now I have a piece of vellum with the butterflies image on it which I’ll be able to use on another project. The big butterfly was coloured with a ProMarker and I just added some pearls and black thread to finish. The sentiment was stamped with tumbled glass distress ink.