My first Commissioned work done and dusted!

Hello everyone! I was thrilled (& a tad nervous) to have been asked by a work colleague to create some wall art for a baby's room. My colleague was so impressed by the photos that I showed her of my previous creation, that she just "had" to have one to give to her friend's new baby but with the baby's name and date of birth included. The frame I used for this was larger and perfect to use for 3D & it also included the glass - so I'm sorry about the reflection that occurred when I took these photos.

And a closie (a very cool date of birth don't you think?!)

This frame was a little easier in that it was gender-specific, however I've always been uncomfortable with creating "boy" themes. Wrapping the letters with embroidery cotton is sooooo time-consuming, so I may have to re-think that for any future orders, even though I love the texture it adds. I also love the little wooden buttons and wood veneer transport embellies, all of which are from Craft Queen. I stamped & fussy-cut the little animals and added the "googly" eyes. It such a good way for me to go through all my little trinkets and find the perfect addition - note the little silver heart hanging from the ribbon.

So this project did the rounds of all the staff at work by my very happy customer, and a happy customer means a very happy papercrafter :D   Thanks for dropping by xx

The Art Journey continues...

So the last few days I've been plugging away at another art journal page. I have some lovely paper serviettes/napkins in my Art Journal stash so I pulled them apart and cut around the lovely pictures and blended them into the Gelato background with serviette glue.

I've also had the quote for quite a while waiting to use it in this journal. I printed it on canvas for added texture. I used a stencil and texture paste to add the love hearts. I then went around everything with some Faber-Castell Big Brush pens and blended with my fingers and added some stamping as well.

At the last minute I decided to add some brightly coloured buttons to the tree.  I'm enjoying this artistic process and the freedom of it more than I thought I would :D  Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Scrap Africa Mid-month Challenge...

There is a new challenge over at SCRAP AFRICA and what a fun challenge it is! It's all about Retro!

 Don't you just love this Inspo Board?!

I used the Board to design a Retro card using the lovely Kaisercraft "Tea Break" collection papers, a doily from D-lish Scraps and the little retro plastic flowers and ric rac are from Craft Queen.

I hope you can join in on this challenge. If you are stuck for ideas call into the Scrap Africa Blog (link is above) and have a look at the fantastic designs from the Team. Until next time have a great week :)

A little bit of creativeness...

So this weekend I wanted to try my hand at decorating the front cover to my new Art Journal. It is so therapeutic getting my hands inky & messy - I loved every minute of it :)

I started with a 20cm x 25cm piece of chipboard that already had a subtle chevron pattern in it. I then covered it in Gesso & selected my colour scheme & design. I found some chippy letters and covered them in Structure paste. I also used Structure paste to stencil a cog design onto the background.

I chose lots of metal trinkets, buttons & flowers etc. from my stash (a great way to use up old embellies) & arranged them until I was happy with the placement & hot glued them all into place. I then Gessoed over the top of it all, fiddled with the colour combo, added some stamping & pearls for the flower centres.

I can't remember the last time I had so much fun creating something from scratch. I just sprayed & stamped the back cover to match, so now my Art Journal is ready to go. Here is the end result:

I am now doing a "make-over" of a couple of canvases that I have in our family room & I'm looking forward to making few more smaller canvases with mixed media.  Thanks for looking :)

Kraft Plus Mood Board

Hello again and thanks for dropping by. Another month has rolled around which always makes me excited about the new challenge at Kraft+.  Here is this month's challenge:

There are some lovely colours in this challenge and I have used them as my inspiration. I decided to go with some fun photos of the gang at a Twenty 20 cricket match in the recent Summer. They do love their cricket :)

"Summer Tradition"

I've used some chippy circles from Blue Fern Studios and the Sketchy Corner chippy is from ScrapFX.  Thanks again for calling in and don't forget to leave some blog love :D

Colour Run Fun...

I'm back today to share with you some PL/pocket pages that I did over the weekend. I used the fantastic Flutterby Designs Everyday Etc "Happy" photo cards, tabs and Flair for these pages. They matched perfectly with all their bright colours.

There is still a couple of pages to do on this. The overlays are from Teresa Collins' "quoted" collection and there are a few other bits and bobs from different companies, but on the whole the Flutterby Designs products were more than enough for this project.

Thanks for looking! :)

Trying my hand at Gold...

I hope you've all had a great weekend. May has brought a few small changes to my life and hopefully now I'll have a bit more time to hang out with a very dear friend of mine. She has just had a "big" birthday and I was lucky enough to be able to help her celebrate this weekend. Firstly I made her a special card for her big day and I decided that I needed to experiment with some gold foil cardstock. It was certainly a labour of love and she absolutely loved it.

I had so much fun designing this card. I usually only put this much effort into my cards for the special people who I know will appreciate it. I've used my friend's favourite colour of aqua/teal as an accent. I'm loving the new Kaisercraft dies (background and "remember this moment"). The lovely skeleton leaves are a Prima die and the little oval frame is also from Prima, which I embedded with gold beads and added the number 50 in gold glitter. The pearls are from a Xmas bon bon from a few years ago. I dabbed around a bit of Aqua 3D paint and some Viva Inca Gold for highlights.

I think I can see myself combining a bit of gold more often in my projects in the near future :) Thanks for dropping by!

ARTastic May Challenge

May has arrived and so has a brand new challenge from ARTastic.  Jane really had me stumped with this piece of artwork!  After mulling it over for a while I decided that the over-riding inspiration from this piece were the colours in the stars.  This art work is by Sara Beetson titled "The return of the young Prince". The criteria for this challenge is to use STARS.

I was itching to use my Gelatos so I clear embossed a quote onto the cardstock then went all over it with the Gelatos and lots of water. The emboss resist technique worked a treat as you can see the quote through all the colour. I then added some splotches and stamping. I really stepped out of my comfort zone on this very messy page, but it was so much fun and I think it was called for given the theme :)

I really wanted the photo & colours to do all the talking on this page so I kept the embellishment to a minimum. I hand-made these little brightly coloured flowers and the Flair and Tab are from Flutterby Designs. Some of the other elements are from Simple Stories and I used a punch for the stars.

                                     

You can really let yourself get carried away for this challenge and I hope I've given you some inspiration to have a go. Remember that you have a whole month to do this. Thanks for dropping by :)

Scrap Africa Sketch Challenge #50

Well hello again fellow crafters!  Finally my "magical May" has rolled around and hopefully I can now get back into some sort of routine with my creating. This new sketch over at SCRAP AFRICA is a real beauty!

I was so excited when I saw this sketch. I love doing feminine pages and I've had this Scrapmatts frame for so long, just waiting for the right project. As it is quite a large frame it took a bit of altering. I used some crackle medium on it to give it a bit of a weathered look (a tad hard to see here in this pic). This photo was taken in London when my girl and I were about to leave for the "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" at the Dorchester. Afterwards we went on to see "Mamma Mia" the stage production. We spent a good part of the afternoon at a local hairdresser being pampered by Romanians/Russians or the like who barely spoke English. They were the slowest hairdressers I've ever experienced! So this is us with our stylish hair and our Glad Rags on, waiting for our little black London taxi to whisk us away :)

The background paper is from the Prima Marketing Inc Romance Novel collection. The title is also by Scrapmatts.

This "You are Loved" flair is from D-lish Scraps.

I really love the little "Big Ben" embellie that my friend Helen Wallace sent me. Thank you Helen, it is perfect for this page!  I encased it inside an altered metal piece to make it stand out. All the flowers are from Prima and the pretty lace is from Stampin' Up!  I can't remember where the lace butterfly is from sorry - it's been in my stash forever.

Please call on over to the Scrap Africa blog and have a go at the new sketch. Until next time... TFL xx