Indigoblu Acrylic Pouring

You may have seen that Kay from Indigoblu is on Hochanda at the moment as their One Day Special with acrylic pouring. We spent the second day of the retreat playing with this and so I thought I'd share my makes with you. The top photo is an 8x8 canvas board, it's really hard to get a good photo of it to show up the silver, but trust me it looks better in real life!

Kay mentioned on the shows that they dry differently and so I thought I'd show you a photo taken just after the pours and one taken when they were dry. Admittedly, some of the pieces my be the wrong way round in the second picture, but I'm sure you can work it out. The top right panel was done on a black gesso painted base and the rest on white. These were all done using the transparent paints and no metallics.

Now, you may have noticed that the bottom right panel looks very different once dry. That's because we put all our trays on shelves to dry out of the way. I was stood talking to someone by the shelves and turned round quickly. The back of my long hair must have flicked out and caught the panel! Fortunately, it was only that one panel which was mine that it caught! Cue Kay and two other ladies with wet wipes trying to wipe acrylic paint off my back and out of my hair. They got most of it out, but I spent 20 minutes that evening pulling the rest out once dry. It looked like I had a bad case of green dandruff on my top by the end.

The final piece I did was on an A5 canvas board and I mixed the paint in my cup with black rather than white gesso, I really wish I could capture the metallic sheen in the photos.

Sweet Stampin' - Babies

Yep, Saturday again and so it's time for our next challenge over at Sweet Stampin' and this week we want to see "Babies".

I made a super quick and simple card this week using the Lili of the valley sentiment stamped in versafine black on a 6x6 card base. I stamped the babies from a Clearly Bessotted set in memento on alcohol pen friendly card and coloured them in with my trusty copics before fussy cutting them out and arranging them on the card. To finish off I drew in a border. Simples! 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I'm looking forward to settling on the sofa with hubby to watch Despicable Me 3, but might squeeze in a bit of crafting too.

As ever I can't wait to see what you make with this theme, just remember to include some stamping to be eligible for our top three. Have a great weekend x

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Gosh, I've not joined in with WOYWW for ages, where is the time going? In case you're not familiar with it, we all congregate over at the very lovely Julia's blog to share what we are currently making. It  doesn't matter what type of craft we're doing, but we then get to hop around and see what everyone else is up to and share the love.
I've got to confess that I've not been doing much card making at the moment as I've been enjoying hand sewing again using some Bucilla kits.  I'm currently making an advent calendar and you can see above the top part of the calendar that I'm currently working on.

I made some Halloween themed items recently, I made a Bucilia Halloween decoration set which is currently residing on my twig tree.

I also made a haunted house wall hanging, the black dots on it are where you are supposed to add a sequin and then hang one of the little icons at the bottom of the photo from them. I learnt on the Nordic house hanging that this is a nightmare to do and so am just going to sew them in place instead, I'll probably get around to doing that next October!

The Flower Challenge #14 - CAS

November already and so it's time for our new challenge over at The Flower Challenge and this week we want to see your clean and simple projects. We had a fabulous response to our birthday celebrations so make sure you check if you were a winner.

I used the Rare Earth Sweet Pea stamp set for my card. It's designed to give a watercolour effect and has several layers to stamp. I simply coloured the stamps with my distress markers, spritzed them with water and then stamped them on some watercolour card. There were a couple of empty areas in the flowers and so I scribbled my distress marker on my acrylic block and picked it up with a wet paintbrush to infill the gaps. I stamped the name of the flower in black memento. To finish, I trimmed it down to fit on a 6x4 card blank and added a pink mat. Simples! 

I can't wait to see your CAS entries, just remember to use a floral image as the focus of your card.

Happy Halloween

I don't celebrate Halloween, but took part in a Halloween card swap this year. I used a tattered lace die to make the pop up box out of blue card from Lidl. I used largest of the Marianne owl dies and more Lidl card to make my witchy owl. I die cut his hat from the accessories for Tim Holtz Crazy Birds die and added purple glitter glue to it. Using black archival ink I stamped that bat from the Hunkydory For the love of stamps Halloween set on the box, using my fingertip as the acrylic block as its a tiny stamp. I die cut several of the impression obsession branch and snipped it in places before adding them to the supports in the box. I'd bought an unbranded set of ghost dies from eBay and so I cut these in white card and added them on acetate popping out of the box. I also added them to the sides of the box. Apologies for the dodgy photos but I was in a rush to get the card in the post. In fact I was in a rush making the card and fortunately it turned out to be a quick make! In my haste though, I forgot that it was supposed to be a secret swap and signed the back of the box... 

Sweet Stampin' - Bears

The clocks go back tonight, so I get an extra hour in bed. Yippee!  Alternatively, I could get up early and use the extra hour to craft. Nope, you're right. Not a chance in heck of that happening!
Back to today and we have a new challenge over at Sweet Stampin' and we want to see BEARS this week. I had to be careful how I worded that or we could get some really interesting entries!

I made a super simple card this week using the Waffle Flower, Bear and Bird Stamp set. I used my MISTI to stamp my composition in black archival ink and coloured it in with my zigs. I then added a few highlights with a white pen. To assemble the card I simply added a mat of grey card on a 5x7 card base. Simples! 

I'm looking forward to seeing your creations, just remember to include some stamping to be eligible for our top three. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and if you're in the UK don't forget to put the clocks back tonight x

Indigoblu Retreat - Day One

I spent the weekend in Retford at the Indigoblu Secret Retreat. I had a brilliantl time, lots of hugs, laughter and crafting. Kay is lovely and gives amazing hugs and she was helped out by Lou (who demos ecoline on Hochanda) who is mad as a hatter! Alex who is a presenter on Hochanda was also on the retreat, complete with a candy skull apron. What you see on screen is exactly what you see in real life, she's great, but we won't mention how she spilt an entire bottle of paint in her lap...

You can see the project we made on the first day above. We used a stencil to ensure that we all had a reasonably shaped face with all the features in the right place and then Kay took us through the painting step by step.

Of course I had to do a little shopping whilst I was there, especially when they were generous enough to give us a 20% discount. They allowed us to rummage through the unpackaged stencils to find the ones we wanted and Alfie gave a demonstration of how they make the stamps whilst making some that were out of stock for people. Hubby very kindly gave me birthday money early and so I spent the lot!

I bought a load of paints (the top eight are the ones we used to paint the face (not including the hair and background) and some slap it on which we mixed with the paints to extend their working time and make more of a glaze.

Of course I had to buy some stencils, including the one I used on my project.

I was very good and didn't buy many stamps as I have waaaay to many. Occasionally when they make the stamps part of the rubber doesn't come out perfect and so they trimmed off those parts and allowed us to buy the undamaged parts at bargain prices.

Finally, I bought some of their yummy luscious pigments which you can mix with various mediums to make paints and glazes and colour texture paste etc. I also bought some fabric slap it on as I have some Pink Ink printed designs that I plan to use the pigments on.