Bedazzling Black and White

I was really pleased to see the Gothic Arch challenge blog up and running again cos I'd just gotten into making them when it went on hiatus. That said, I've not found time to take part in the first few challenges since it started up again but this week I have finally managed to do so. The theme for the current challenge is Bedazzled:

Lovely sunny photo for once - hasn't the weather been *gorgeous* today?! :)

I did a lot of decoration on this using Pearl Pens, in silver and pearl, and Enamel Accents, in black, and added a couple of diamante gems for a bit of "bedazzle". :)

I'm also entering this arch into this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show, where the theme is Handmade Backgrounds. Of course, given that I'm doing Tim's Creative Chemistry 101 course atm, I had about a gazillion ideas for making backgrounds but I really wanted to use this Lynne Perella stamp from Paper Artsy (a recent acquisition) and I just felt like it needed to be in black and white. And I'd also recently picked up a Black Soot Distress Inkpad so I decided to have a play with that and made a monochrome back background using Tim's "spritz and flick" technique. I'll be honest... the resulting effect wasn't quite what I expected... the wicking effect is not as visible/obvious on plain black but it makes quite a nice, subtle effect and I do like it.

I hope to find time to do more of the gothic art challenges. :)

"Spring" Gothic Arch

The latest theme over at the Gothic Arch Challenge Blog is "Spring".... here's my interpretation:

I wanted to play with the new Dylusions ink sprays that I bought at GNPE and my mind immediately leapt to yummy, bright, fresh colours - yellows and greens and oranges. I played with the inks and stencils and stamping to make the background and then stamped the images and painted them with the Dylusions inks.

You can check out the other entries for the "Spring" challenge here.

Gothic Arches

So I've been seeing Gothic Arches around for a while and thinking about having a go... and one of the latest challenges over at the Gothic Arches Challenge Blog was the final straw in tempting me... cos the theme was butterflies! :)

So here's my first ever go at making a Gothic Arch:

I cut the basic arch from chipboard and I knew straight away what papers I was going to use for this theme... the yummy Mariposa stack from DCWV. It's one of those sets of beautiful papers (all glittered and foiled and yummy) that I've had sitting in my craft room for ages and been almost too scared to use cos they're so delicious! I covered the chipboard arch with one of the gorgeous butterfly-theme papers and cut out two smaller glittered butterflies from the same paper. I stamped a butterfly design in sepia Versafine onto more of the patterned paper, cut it out and added a little gold metallic pen to the wings. I folded the wings up for a little dimension and attached it at the top of the arch. I stamped the wording "Social Butterfly" in the bottom right corner and embossed with pirate gold embossing powder and added the small glittered butterflies. Finally I inked the edges with Inka Gold paint and added some gems in a little swirl.

You can check out the rest of the butterfly-themed Gothic Arches here.