Loves me... loves me not...

... loves me!!
(also - do not adjust your sets - this is a minimal colour sepia toned sort of blog post!)

I made these three flowers while experimenting with the stamp (flower from JOFY13) - stamping and layering up the images to see how they looked... and then they needed to be put somewhere so that I didn't lose them or to save them from being squashed etc etc etc.... and what better place than a tag!

They look so different when stamped onto vintage letter paper....a little bit shabby and distressed.

Another 'what-happens-if...' sort of tag:

I love it!  But its not quite as I'd intended - the flower heads (JOFY14) were coloured with Walnut Stain Distress Ink - which as most of you know is quite dark and quite brown...... but the ink wasn't strong enough to stay on the surface that had been painted with Fresco Finish paint and so it got sort of sucked into the paint leaving the stain that you can see - the leaves were coloured with a Distress Ink too (but sorry, I can't remember which) - so not quite as dark & sepia as I intended but I still like it a lot. :o)

I'll be back with more colourful posts later in the week.... 

say it with flowers...

... love these slightly wierd and wonderful flowers - and they're not quite 'right' - a bit like my Critters!

Paper Engineering, Part 2....

I recently started to follow Phiona Richards (@rarenotions) on Twitter (quick question - what did we do with our time before we tweeted? lol - don't bother answering...) who made/showed something that reminded me of an origami flower ball that an NCFE Student at SACC made a few years ago and it prompted me to make one (it was on a 'must try that when I get 5 minutes' list that was tucked away in the recesses of my brain), and here it is in all its origami-button-embellished loveliness.. really happy with how it looks - all 12 flowers, 60 petals of it!
Phew thats a lot of folding and sticking!

Loved making this - great project for making while you're sitting in front of the tv, folding & sticking, folding & sticking...

I really like the button centres....

This flower ball is made from 4in squares of paper, I'm currently working on one where petals are made from 2in squares - teeny tiny - I'll post a picture when its done. ;o)
On twitter, where I posted the pictures yesterday, people asked for instructions (waving at you Jean!)- the flower ball is not my design and I found the instructions on the web - there are lots of them out there - this is the one I used:
http://folio-love.com/diy-2/diy-paper-flower-tutorial/  This is the instructions for the flowers and then I guessed/played/looked at photos of how to stick all the flowers together to form a ball - which is quite easy to work out (or there may be another tutorial out there for that.

WOYWW...

.... hello! its been a while since I WOYWW'd - my desk isn't any tidier - at the moment it seems covered in ink & paint bottles - and there's nothing wrong with that is there! lol

To understand what WOYWW is all about go to http://www.stamping-ground.blogspot.com/  where all will be explained,

and if you like my blog/ramblings please click the follow button down on the left hand side, thanks!  :o)

Have a great day!

Tags.. Part 2

This tag, created again for demo'ing at the AC/TH event, is a bit of a sampler:
the tag has been partially embossed accented with Distress Inks & Lava Gold 'Goop' (love that stuff - so shiny!!) (& versatile) (and now comes in smaller pots - yay!)
painted & water splashed Distress Stains (top blue half)
Die cutting (the flourishes)
Tim Holtz tissue tape & Adage Ticket
and a distressed flower created with the spiral technique - I flatten/ distress these by hitting them with a small hammer... which is quite satisfying! lol

2 tags down, 2 tags to go... see you tomorrow.. same place same time.....

November!

A pinch & and a punch for the first day of the month! by that I mean a pinch of embossing powder and a Martha Stewart punch - of course - what else could it be?! {chuckle}

The pc is now mended - yay - though after the tower was fixed the screen died! ......

So, I like a tag, or several, they're great for using up scraps from the desk, or testing out new stamps and/or techniques - whatever the reason - I like tags!! (and now I've bought Tim H's big tag die I'm liking them all the more because I can cut them out of all manner lovely cardboards, acetate, paper etc etc etc - the list could go on!

This tag was created with a plain luggage tag & a piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - love the HotPicks PaperArtsy stamps : the flower head is from HotPicks 1005, long 'branches' 1008, & words are from HPXT04.  I liked how this turned out - especially as I am continuing to embrace yellow (if you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I'm really not keen on yellow but now I coming around to it)(when I find the photos I'll show you my recent ArtsyCrafts project - lemon&lime!! bring it on!)

You'll have to excuse the wierd angle of this photograph (in the folder its landscape oriented but on screen Blogger seems to think it would look better portrait! gggrrrr) aaaanyhooo - I wanted to include it to show two level of black image stamping - I stamped the long branches, dried them, and then stamped the flower heads & added embossing powders and heated.  I liked how it made the flower heads 'pop' as they are now 'shiny'. (you can just about see that in the photo - tilt your head to the right.....)

Edit:  I altered it in Photoshop - yay for me! lol - see you learn something new every day!!

This tag is again using a parcel tag & another piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - there's a lot of that on my desk at the moment! lol  These dimensional paper flowers are all over crafting projects at the moment - I think this is first/second one I've made and they're really easy to make - though to glue them in future I'm going to use hot glue.. Leaves are PaperArtsy dies, the loopy border strip is a Martha Stewart punch (punching atlas paper) and the wording is a Tim H stamp.. oh and there's a little Sizzix flourish die in there too.. & some distress ink, silver versacolor & a scrap of book text....

Take care