Sweet Stampin' - Paper Piecing

Yay! It's the weekend again, and an extra long one here in the UK. Hubby has trundled off to Scotland for the goldpanning championships and I'm trying to catch up on some sadly neglected housework. Okay, and catch up on some sleep too!
It's also time for our next challenge at Sweet Stampin' and this week we want to see paper piecing on your creations.
I used Tim Holtz Crazy Birds for my card and stamped him and his hat from the accessories set on sheets from a 6x6 paper pad that I think came free with a magazine years ago. I fussy cut the images as my dies were trapped behind several large boxes of trophies and phials containing gold for the championships.

I trimmed down one of the sheets of paper to 4 3/4" square and then stamped the bird again so I had his feet etc on show. I then filled him in with the paper pieces. I stamped the sentiment (which describes me perfectly) from the Taylored Expression's Pitch Black set on the paper in black archival. My positioning of the bird and sentiment was slightly off, but I decided to live with it. To finish I drew in some ground for him to stand on and a border with a black fineliner. I then glued the panel into place on a 6x6 card blank. Simples!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend xxx

The Flower Challenge Reminder - Use Acetate or Vellum

It's halfway through the month and so time for a reminder that over at The Flower Challenge we want to see acetate or vellum on your creations.

As I used acetate for my card last time, I decided to use vellum this time. I used Brilliance ink in Moonlight White to stamp my image from one of the stamps from Rare Earth's "Inspired by the Orient" A4 stamp set. The brilliance ink dries on the vellum after a while, without needing to be heat set. If, like me, you feel the need to poke the ink to see if it's dry, it's advisable to stamp some extra bits to poke rather than mess up your main image. Don't ask why I'm telling you that!

Once dry, I coloured in the image with my polychromos pencils. I debated whether to use the coloured side or the softer reverse side on my card, but eventually decided to use the coloured side. I die cut a piece of apricot card using one of the Tattered Lace Pearl Square dies and glued it onto a 6x6 card blank. I then die cut the vellum using the next size down die. To secure the vellum I applied a bit of glue from a create and craft tape runner behind the coloured flowers. I also put a tiny bit of Cosmic Shimmer acrylic glue to my finger and spread it out so it was hardly there and applied a little to the back of the border corners of the vellum to secure those too. 

I then decided that I wanted to add a sentiment, yep, at the last minute when everything else was finished. Definitely flying by the seat of my pants! I stamped the With Love from a Uniko set, Flower Power 3 in the same white Brilliance ink and patiently left it to dry whilst my luck held!

Jo Firth-Young Workshops

Yep, I'm back in blogland! I even managed to survive a week in work! I can't believe how drained these chest infections and exacerbation of asthma have made me. I also managed to get oral thrush after three courses of antibiotics in 6 weeks. The only upside was that it wasn't itchy like it can be in *ahem* other places! Still painful though and the gel to treat it tastes pretty grim. I'm feeling much better though and starting to catch up with all those jobs that have been neglected.

Despite feeling rubbish, I still managed to make it to a weekend of workshops held by Rowan Tree Crafts. Fortunately, they were only about 20 minutes away from my parents and so I was very well looked after for the weekend, even if I was in bed before 8 each night!

The two all day workshops were run by Jo-Firth Young who designs the JOFY stamps for PaperArtsy. She's a great tutor and a lovely lady to boot, as is Sharon, who owns the craft shop. The sessions were held in the community room at the local retained fire station. Sadly (for us, but happily for the local community) there were no fires whilst we were there and so we didn't see any firemen.

On the Saturday, we made this lovely A4 canvas board using Jo's stamps and stencils. I've only got one photo of it as Mum claimed it when I took it back home to them that evening!

On the Sunday, we made the two A5 "box canvasses". They are actually made of canvas textured thick card and you fold them up to form the box canvas. Very clever, and they made stamping round the sides much easier as you could do it flat before you assembled them.

Despite not feeling great, I really enjoyed myself and would definitely recommend them to anyone.

The Flower Challenge - Use Vellum or Acetate

Okay, who made it May already? On the positive side here in the UK we get not one, but two bank holidays this month and one of them is on Monday. Yippee! Double yippee, it's also time for our next challenge over at The Flower Challenge and this time we want to see acetate or vellum on your creations.

I used the PaperArtsy JOFY 62 stamp set that I bought when I did two fantastic workshops with Jo Firth-Young a couple of weeks ago. I used the same technique to colour the stamps that she taught at the workshop too, making colour puddles of purple and blue chalk paint and stamping onto them in black archival. I coloured in some of the bits on the stamps with black and white pens before cutting out the flowers. 

I took a strip of acetate that had been the backing for a Claritystamp stamp (as all my other acetate had gone walkabout) and dropped on blue and purple alcohol inks along with Ranger Silver mixative. I then used my finger or tilted the acetate to move the ink to create a pattern I was happy with and then let it dry (I discovered that my acetate wasn't heat proof when I tried to speed up the drying process!).

I trimmed out a piece of a 7x5 card base and then cut the acetate to fill the gap. I used red liner tape to secure the acetate and to glue a strip of the card base back into place. I used a black permanent marker to draw in a border to replicate the pattern on some of the flowers and continued it across the acetate section. 

I stamped the sentiment from a Clearly Besotted stamp set that was lurking in the table in black ink using my MISTI (as I hadn't thought to stamp it before I stuck the acetate on!). I shaped the flowers slightly with my fingers and added them to the card with a little red liner tape behind their centres. To finish, I added some sparkly bits to the centre of the flowers. Trust me, it looks better in real life, than my dodgy photo!

My lovely teamies and our fantastic guest designer have lots of inspiration for you, so maybe if it rains on Monday, you might want to craft an entry, and we'll be back with more inspiration in the middle of the month. 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. I'm hoping to get a little crafting done once I've had a good lie in tomorrow. It was my first week back at work this week and whilst I'm feeling much much better my breathing still isn't back to normal, so a good rest is on the cards. Love to you all x