Frayed Poinsettia

I’ve been following Jennifer McGuire’s brilliant Thinking Inking series on Two Peas in a Bucket and the challenge this week is to stamp or ink on different surfaces. I picked three fabrics for my different surfaces.


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Holly Flourish, Music Background, Scattered Leaves & Three Holiday Trees.

Firstly I used a cream upholstery sample for the background. I white embossed it with the Holly Flourish and applied some antique linen distressed ink. For the poinsettia I used two pieces of fabric – a scrap of patterned fabric for the bottom layer and a piece of plain red fabric stamped with the Music Background for the top layer. I stamped one of the leaves out of the Scattered Leaves set onto a cream fabric.



To make the flower and leaf I put two pieces of fabric together and machine stitched around the pattern using a very small zigzag stitch. Then I snipped as close as possible to the stitching without actually cutting into it. I wanted a fuzzy look on the flower\leaf so I just frayed the edges a bit with my nail. The dotty ribbon made me think of snowballs so I added that, some lace, gold beads, twine and a red gem to finish.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Distressed Ornaments

This month’s challenge at Hero Arts is to create gift tags or handmade gifts, or to create a card\project incorporating inking techniques.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Decorative Ornament & Three Christmas Trees.

Since I’m in Christmas card making mode at the moment I decided to pull out my Decorative Ornament stamp which I’ll probably use on lots of my Christmas cards this year. I inked up the stamp with broken china\worn lipstick distress inks and, using a technique that I had seen in one of Jennifer McGuire’s videos, spritzed the stamp with water before stamping.



I love seeing what the image turns out like when it's fully dry. The images never seem to turn out exactly the same but I like the effect.


Stamps (Hero Arts) – Decorative Ornament & Three Christmas Trees.

I stamped the sentiments with the same distress inks and used pink yarn and some white yarn coloured with broken china distress ink. The backgrounds are embossed with the Cuttlebug snowflake folder and I added some gems. To finish I just added some machine stitching.

Red Tinsel Ornaments

The Fabulous Flourish stamp is fast becoming a favourite of mine and I’m sure I’ll be using it on cards for lots of different occasions. This time I decided to use it on the background of this Christmas card which I’m submitting into the Hero Arts Holiday Cardmaking Challenge and My Partner in Crafting Crime Challenge #13 (Shine on you Crazy Diamond).


Stamps (Hero Arts) - Fabulous Flourish, Decorative Ornament & Three Christmas Trees.

I white embossed the flourish and sentiment on some kraft card. The ornaments are embossed with red tinsel embossing powder which has tiny flecks of glitter in it - lovely sparkle in real life but hard to capture in a photograph. I suspended the ornaments from the flourish with some yummy twine that Sue had sent me – thanks again Sue, I love using it on my cards! To finish I just added a few gems.



It's been a long week so I'm glad Friday is finally here! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!