Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Quick triple treat!

Hi all (six of you)

Just a quick post of three more summer tags.

This is probably one of my favourite tags.
 I used the TH dress form die cut and painted it with silver distress stain.  I used some tulle and ribbon to make the skirt and the top is part of a butterfly cut from TH tissue wrap.  The wings are a TH grungeboard piece that I painted with bronze.  Once dry, I sanded the piece and inked the embossed swirls with Peacock Feathers.  The background is a combo of Picked Raspberry, Wild Honey and Mustard Seed distress ink.  Add some stamps to the background and voila!

Tag #2:

 For this one, I was playing around with a sunburst stencil and various inks.  I boxed the quote at the end because it was getting lost in the ink.  I also added the charm on the top just for the heck of it!

I love how tag #4 turned out, but in hindsight, I wish the blue on the birdie matched the blue flowers. I think it looks a little off now that I see the picture.  Oh well, c'est la vie!


Saturday, September 20, 2014

Some more summer tags on a rainy WInnipeg day.

Hi all,

This working full time stuff is hard!  I napped for 3 hours today and my week wasn't all that unusually busy!  I'm finding that going back to work after summer break is really cutting in my crafty time!  This week, I finished 3 tags (They were semi complete last week), made one layout for Sassy's album, made 2 identical cards, and started to construct the quiet book I am making for my niece for Xmas.  Writing that it sounds like a lot, but its really not.

Today I'm going to share three more tags from my self imposed summer challenge.

For tag #1, I was experimenting with colouring with distress markers directly on the stamp before stamping.  I like the effect that it made. I suggest using a larger stamp with solid areas as opposed to just an outline stamp.  And since I own my dorkiness, I will admit that the red and white label sticker on the right was to cover up and area that did not stamp well. :oP  I stole the idea from somewhere (sorry if it was you and I can not remember now) to fill the  background with various TH rub on words.



For this tag, there were two things I wanted to try.  The first was inking directly onto a stencil, then pressing it onto the tag…that would be the orange lattice.  On top of that I used a few different stencils in the traditional way.  The other thing I wanted to try was finding a use for the mason jar stamp I for at the Simon Says Stamp workshop I attended in Ohio.  It seems to go well with the flower stamp I also acquired so I put them together.  For the "water in the jar" affect, I stamped the jar onto acetate and then apply blue ink with a watercolour brush.  The blue ink didn't seem to want to dry, so I just put that side down on the tag and let it stick.  I also used some pop dots under the flowers to make them seem a little more 3D.

For this last tag, I wanted to play around with layering of both stamps and stencils…for example, making it look like the "admit one" stamp was stamped under the clock.  This is known as masking in the crafty world.  I think outlining the clock stamp with white as an after thought makes it look funny, but that;s the joy of making tags - who cares!  It's just an experiment in being creative!


If you are crafty, I highly recommend listening the the podcasts by The Scrap Gals. These two southern ladies are so ridiculously funny and inspiring.  I feel like I am just one of their besties sitting around having coffee with them.  I started following both of them on facebook and occasionally I feel like writing something on their wall about a project I'm working on, and then I remember that they don't know me at all!!  I doubt they would give a wicketywhack (Thanks Tracie for adding that word to my vocab) about what I am up to! LOL

Saturday, September 13, 2014

A procrastination post!

I am utterly, completely, 100%ly procrastinating from finishing an assignment for my Masters course I am taking this term.  Financial Mathematics - although it is quite interesting (no, really, it is!), I am just not feeling annuities right now.

I'm going to share the mini-album I made for my oldest niece's 5th birthday back in June.  Each year all of my nieces and nephew receive a mini-album chronicaling their last year with their birthday present .  I had wanted to make an explosion box for awhile, and for some unknown reason this paper called for it.

Here is the outside of the box:

I was worried about the paper curly-Qs getting squished in the mail, but they arrived in perfect condition!

On the inside in the middle, I put a vertical piece of cardboard with a photo on each side:

My niece is a real girly girl (she would wear dresses every single day given the choice), so I wanted to use flowers, glitter glue, etc.

Here is my favourite page: Her and her baby sister.  The bows were just too cute not to add.

Although the picture is not great, this is my favourite one.  It shows her cute side.  Those are raspberries on her fingers! :)

Here are some of the other pages:





If you have ever made an explosion box, I'd love to see pics!
~E

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Mail day!

Hello crafty world!

I *may* have received my order from Joann's today!!  Let me tell you my Canadian peeps, Joann's is definitely the best place to order crafty supplies from!  Wait for a sale on your favourite products - their sales are frequent.  Combined that with a 20% off your entire order coupon, and even with the shipping and duty, the prices are lower than anywhere local.  Their variety of products is HUGE, with many things we cannot get here.  (Teacher peeps - you can get 15% off every day if you sign up on their website.)

In my order was a few new distress inks and stains.  I had so much fun tonight creating my own colour charge for all the distress inks I own (don't judge me!):
 Aren't some of the names of the colours awesome??

I didn't have that much time tonight (hello real world of responsibilities!) but I needed to try out my new distress stains as they were calling to me from the mailbox.  I put together this quick tag but mixed peacock feathers & silver stain and then added a little spiced marmalade ink afterwards.  I LOVE the effect and will definitely need to play around more in the near future.


Sunday, September 7, 2014

Tags, tags, and more tags

Hello!
I'm here to share three more of the My Self Imposed Summer Tag Challenge.

I cannot for the life of my find the inspiration for this first one.  I know I didn't come up with it myself because I clearly remember trying to duplicate the blue background with the embossed stamping.  If the original was yours, please let me know!




The second tag was inspired by the lovely and very very talented France Papillon.  Her tag was made from a napkin that she glued as a background.  I loved the colour blocking, but obviously didn't have the napkin, so I attempted to recreate the same effect with distress markers.

Here is the napkin tag:


and here is mine:
It was really fun to use markers and water brushes to try to get the same shadowing and colour variations.

The third tag was inspired by one that I found on Pinterest, from this blog.  I liked the industrialness (I'm sure I just made up that word) of the design.

Stay tuned for more on my summer challenge tags!
~E

Monday, September 1, 2014

Tim's September Challenge!!

I did it!  I did it!  This is the first time ever that I have a) completed Tim's challenge in the current month and b) completed it on the first day of the month!!  It must be the very last day before heading back to school!

Click here to see Tim's Creation. Mine is below:

Some things I did different than Tim:
- I don't own alcohol inks (not good for someone with an allergy to alcohol) so I used distress inks instead.  Colours:  Spiced Marmalade, Salty Ocean, Seedless Preserves, Festive Berries, Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers, Mustard Seed, and Moved Lawn.

- I wanted one word to stand out at the bottom, so instead of using a rub-on, I used a word sticker and coloured it with my water brush and Picked Raspberry ink.  I also put one of the butterflies here.

- I realized after that I should have cut the butterflies from glossy cardstock, not watercolour paper.  I like how Tim's butterflies have a shiny look to them.  I spritzed the top of my tag with glimmer spray to make it shimmer.

- Instead of the Schoolhouse stencil, I used Harlequin.  First with Antique Linen, then I covered that layer with the stencil and used Iced Spruce in the negative space. You can best see this technique in the face stamp.

- I stuck with a manilla tag instead of Tim's fancy black one, so I inked the edges with Peacock Feathers.

Tag time!

Hello fond reader!

I am going to share 3 tags today.  They all use the same background technique, but because of the different colours and embellishments, they all look totally different in the end.

The technique is not very complex, it is simply applying different colours of distress ink to a tag using the Mini Blending Tool and then spritzing it with water to make the colours bleed into each other.

This was actually the very first tag I made for my Self-imposed summer tag challenge.  This one came completely from my own head.  No thievery involved!


For inks, I used salty ocean, peacock feathers, mustard seed, wild honey, and picked raspberry.
To finish the background, I stamped with a script stamp in copper, used a Memory Box polka dot stamps with wild honey ink, and the stain marks using the Hero Arts Not Perfect stamp set.  
I wanted the face stamp (from Tim's Daydream set) to look like it was sitting on top, so I stamped in on a clear name tag holding that was sitting on my table from a recent conference.  Once dried, I cut it out and stapled it on
Other embellies include: metal clock from Michaels, tag from my stash striped wash tape, Websters ribbon, and a TH quote stamp.

Tag #2 was a complete steal from Pinterest, which came from this this lovely lady's blog.
I had trouble getting the flowers as dense white as she had them.  In hindsight, I probably should have used white paint, but instead I used Close to my Heart white ink, stamped 3 times, drying the layers in between.  For the background, I used ink in Mustard Seed, Mowed Lawn, Spiced Marmalade, and Seedless Preserves.  I used the same polka for stencil.  Other items used were TH Grunge stamps, SimonSayStamps Scribbly Circles stamps, ribbon from my stash, and TH Remnant Rubs.

The third and last tag for today was kind of a steal.  I liked the four colour background on this tag, so I borrowed that.

Inks were Picked Raspberry, Salty Ocean, Spiced Marmalade, and Mustard Seed.  (I just realized that I use Mustard Seed a lot!).  I wanted the texturing to go from dark at the bottom to light on the top, so I started that the same old polka dot stencil stamped in Pumice Stone with clear embossing Powder on top.  Above the quote (Another TH Stamp), I used his honeycomb stamp with Scattered Straw Ink and gold detailed embossing power on top.  The very top is the TH Rays stencil with glitter embossing powder.  Why the elephant?  Why not!

Which tag do you like the best?