Decorated Book Box

I'm honoured to be a guest DT again at Creative Artiste Mixed media Challenge for this month. The theme is always anything goes with mixed media and today I'm sharing another A5 book box that I have decorated for a birthday gift, one of my favourite things that I enjoy doing. 

I used one of Gecko Galz beautiful images from their blog for the front of my box and gave the box a coat of white gesso before using one of Stamperia's stencils with texture paste to create the design for my box.

I also added texture paste down the edge of the box and created the faux book pages. When dry, the edge of the box was painted in a buff acrylic paint.

I chose to paint the outside of the box with this blue pearl paint from Pebeo which is a more turquoise shade, I thought would compliment the image on my box really well.  When dry, I added a touch of gold wax over the stencilled areas of the box.

I then added a few metal embellishments with a little gel medium and didn't think it needed any more on this particular project.  The inside of the box has also been painted with gold metallic paint.

Gecko Galz also have loads of inspiration on their blog along with challenges to enter and free images to download to craft with.  Pop over to their page follow and subscribe to their monthly newsletter.

I enjoy decorating these types of boxes, they come in very handy and make nice gifts too.

Don't forget to drop by Creative Artiste's blog challenge there are some amazing projects and fabulous inspiration on their blog and links to their DT for you  to follow.

Perhaps think about adding your project and sharing your love of craft, just follow the link below.

Have a great day,  whatever you have planned for yourself and fab weekend to come too!

Happy Crafting

Challenges:

Creative Fingers - AG

Creative Inspiration - AG

Stencil Fun -shades of blue

Allys Angels - AG

Crafts Galore - AG

Creatalicious - AG

Through the Purple Haze - AG

Love to Craft - AG

Love to Scrap AG

Fairy Themed ATCs Woyww #784

Sharing a set of Fairy themed ATC cards made for a craft group monthly swap using the Gecko Galz Pixie Dream land digital download Kit.

I wanted to make use of as many of these beautiful fairy images that I could as they work perfectly for projects like this.

I'm linking up again this week with What's on your workdesk Wednesday (woyww#784) which is now being hosted by Sarah Brennan (Sarah's Craft shed) follow the link if you are interested to see what like minded folk have been up to and here is a link to the original Stamping Ground about WOYW

A bit more to show you this time, what was on my desk whilst making this project. Apart from knowing what images I wanted to use and cutting them out, the rest was a case of pulling random items out of draws and boxes that I liked the look of and seeing whether I intended to use any of it.

I only wanted to highlight the images and decorate around the edges. I added a touch of luna gold fusion ink to all their  wings and hunters gold around the edges of the card, which gave the card a lovely metallic green glow. I added a little silky satin wool to finish. 

I sometimes manage to pick the wool up in charity shops. I'm fortunate to find random balls of beautiful wool or thread like this, probably left over from a project which is a great lucky find to craft with!

With this card, I added some henna mica flakes in between the seed beads, glossy accents and some fine rainbow thread.

On my final card I used the sparkly black twilight thread and added a little hunters gold through parts of the tread. I've also added one of the larger iridescent floral beads with the smaller ones.

My ATC cards needed a little folder which I made from a piece of card.  I had some leafy paper from my crafty stash that covered it nicely and added a sentiment across the front of the image before printing .

I popped the little embellishment that I had previously made inside the folder with my cards, as I thought that it fit the theme perfectly.

The butterfly was from the  Butterfly Wings Digital Collage Set.

I enjoy making ATC cards and these have been fun to make too. There are loads of inspiration on Gecko Galz blog along with links to their DT for you to follow. Have a look at their challenges and all the wonderful free inspiration available for you to download along with details on where to buy their kits too.

Have a great day,  whatever you have planned for yourself.

Ninjago Birthday card WOYWW #783

 Sharing a Ninjago themed birthday card made for a special young man. 

It's my usual What's on your workdesk Wednesday (woyww#783) which is now being hosted by Sarah Brennan (Sarah's Craft shed) follow the link if you are interested to see what like minded folk have been up to and here is a link to the original Stamping Ground about WOYWW

Not much to show on my desk this week, but this was the inspiration for the card that I have made. A decorated  Ninja stone that sits in my garden by the bench with a few others.

I came across a themed birthday invitation on Pinterest  and thought that it would make a cool birthday card.  I found a free set of the printable eyes, also on Pinterest to use for my card, and added a little glossy accents to the centres for some dimension.

I used an A4 textured sheet of red card to create my card base and just printed off an image with the Lego Ninjago shuriken and golden sword in it  for my embellishments, as I wanted the likeness to be as close as possible. 

Once cut out I stuck these onto cardboard and my shuriken was heat embossed with clear embossing powder and my sword was edged with gold gilding wax.

Inside, I have added a yellow panel of cardstock to match the eyes, to complete my card and my sentiment will be written on the back where I have also added a panel for that.

Along the edges of the black bands I also added some black peel offs that I found in my stash for a bit more definition.

This one was quite fun to make and didn't take long either.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Have a great rest of your week,  whatever you have planned for yourself.

Happy Crafting

Challenges:

A perfect Time to Craft -AG

Classic Designs - Masculine

Daisy Chains - birthday

Love to Scrap - AG

Allys Angels - AG

Through the Purple Haze - AG

Double Trouble - Masculine

Crafts Galore - AG

Felted Soap Woyww #782

I thought that I would share something a little different this week that I had a go at making.

After watching Ali Reeve from Stamps Away / Bizzare-ology, demoing on the craft channel how to make felted soap, I thought that I would have a go using some of my wool.

For What's on your workdesk Wednesday (woyww#782) which is now being hosted by Sarah Brennan (Sarah's Craft shed) follow the link if you are interested to see what like minded folk have been up to and here is a link to the original Stamping Ground about WOYWW

Not a riveting  picture of my workdesk! A washing up bowl, a bar mild cream soap, green felting wool and a piece of net curtain.

I started with a small amount of warm water in my bowl. 

2 x a length of felting wool to wrap around the soap. I dampened the soap so that it stuck to the felt as I wrapped it around and then added a little more water when i added the second layer of wool in the opposite direction, wrapping it firmly.

I placed the soap with its wrapped wool in a piece of net curtain, (you could do this with a pair of tights) and twisted it around so I had something to hold onto whilst I rubbed the soap - now in its own little bag with a little more warm water to agitate the wool to matte it together - wet felting.

This took about 5 minutes. I had decided to do another as I had got everything out and I wanted to use different wool to see if there was any difference in the process for me, as not all wool is the same.

For the soap on the left I used a soft fluffy roving wool which seemed to take longer to bind together for this project. I think I made the grey bands a little thick, so I needle felted them into the pink layer a little more. 

Of course I decided not to just leave it there.

I needle felted some little flowers on top of the pink felted soap and as I had a spare piece of green wool, I needle felted a sunflower onto the loose wool and then carefully needle felted it onto my soap.

I did wear disposable gloves when I made these, as I intend to gift one of these. The idea of these soaps is that they are a natural exfoliant and as the soap dissolves, the wool will shrink with it.

A handy gift for a crafter, gardener or just to clean your and exfoliate your hands.

I think I will make a few more of these at some point using just different colours. These were fun to make.

So how has your week been so far?

What have you got planned for the day? Whatever it is, I hope it is a good one for you.

Birthday Card - 'Festival Dolly' Stamp

Sharing a birthday card today made with one of the  Festival Dolly stamps from Dolly Dimples.

I do love this set of stamps and although colouring has never been one of my strengths, I couldn't resist buying this set and stepping out of my comfort zone, especially after seeing the inspiration from samples of these stamps.

I used my Promarker pens and added an inky background with distress ink. I probably will buy a few more colours and endeavour to push myself a bit more instead of sticking to colouring the size of an ATC card!

I did really enjoy making this card and it has lots of cool little stamps in this set too that can be used as border and background builders too.

It's another one of those really well designed stamp sets that are so enjoyable to use.

Have a great day,  whatever you have planned for yourself.

Happy Crafting

 Challenges

Allsorts - ATG

A Place to Start - for a lady

Paper Fun Day - AG opt Flowers

Addicted to Stamps - Birthdays

Elllebelles Crafty Wednesday - AG

Unicorn -Girls

We Love to Create - AG  (Winner)

Crafts Galore -AG  (DT Favourite )

Love to Craft -AG

Love to Scrap - AG

613 Avenue Create - AG/Kids

Let's Craft and Create - AG 

Allys Angels -AG

Ella - Birthday Card WOYWW #880

I have been making a card for an upcoming family birthday and wanted to use the Ella stamp from BellArt.

This is what has been on my desk.  I've been doing a bit of stamping and find it easy with these kinds of stamps. I'm joining up again with  What's on your desk Wednesday - WOYWW, follow the link if you are interested to see what like minded folk have been up to.

I have the Ella stamp from BellArt and I really like this one, it's not just a beautiful stamp but a good sized open one that can be coloured with your distress inks, which is exactly what I have done.

I also have some flowers from the stamp set that I have stamped, coloured and cut out whilst watching the TV. I normally like cutting my flowers out whilst watching something. I used my favourite shaped decoupage scissors that I find are easy to cut with.  I'm a slow crafter now, so I take my time with everything.

Bella Tapp has created 3 stamps as part of this collection and I will be using the others

in future projects.  She has also created a colouring guide on her website and explains how and what she uses to colour her beautiful stamped images.

I found this really helpful and have also watched her demo her stamps with Debbi Moore Designs.  It gave me more confidence with my stamping and colouring.

I have used Antique Linen and Tea Dye distress ink for the skin tone and a mix of Tea Dye and a little Vintage Photo distress ink for the hair, with a little Worn Lipstick distress ink for the cheeks.

These flowers are so pretty and I love my flowers, they also stamp perfectly too.

I wanted these to be lightweight so I thought I'd see how they would look stamped onto my 120gsm white Navigator paper (for colour documents - in the yellow wrapper). This is my go-to paper for printing as it's smooth and gives good results. I mainly also use it for my digital printing and that makes it a great all rounder.

I used Memento ink to stamp my flowers and alcohol pens lightly, to colour them in. I dried them gently with a heat gun before adding another layer of colour and even added a shimmer of iridescent glitter with a clear overlay pen. The paper copes quite well with the ink as long as you don't flood it. I am mindful that it is only 120gsm.

I've mounted my stamped image onto a 6 x6 inch white card blank with a coral layer and added a stamped sentiment.

News from my garden -  Our Robins have fledged to the back of the garden and into the bushes where we now believe there are some young dunnocks too. So quite cosy in there. Hoping to spot them about once they take flight.

What have you got planned for the day? Whatever it is, I hope it is a good one for you.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps - Birthdays

A Place to Start - For a Lady   (Top Sprout)

Unicorn - For the Girls

Get Creative - Ladies Only

Sisterhood of Crafters - All About The Ladies

Pammies Inky Pinkies -ATG

Stamps&Fun - Stamps

AAABirthday -CAS

A Perfect Time To Craft

Allys Angels - AAG

Crafts Galore - AG

Creatalicious - AG

Love to Craft - AG

Love to Scrap - AG

Creative Fingers - AG

Ellibelle's Corner - AG

WOYWW #779 Craft Journal Covers

 It's Wednesday and I'm taking part in another What's on your desk Wednesday - WOYWW #779. Please checkout Julia Dunnit's Stamping Ground's page  if you are interested.

I have been crafting for myself this week and I have been meaning to use these beautiful papers to re-cover my craft journal.

I had previously stripped back my A5 mdf journal covers, ready to start again. I gave them a coating of white gesso and printed the digital images in the size that I needed for my boards on 160gsm smooth white cardstock.

These beautiful images were created by Shasteya Bellarose & June Hill, who run a creative group on Facebook called Gud Karma Creative Studios. They have some fabulous created content that has been made available for free, to print off for personal use only.

I added a few coats of matte medium to seal the images and to also create a base to add my mediums to the covers.

This is my favourite image out of the ones that I decided to use, so it had to be the cover. I love these kind of images and I just added some stencilling through my script stencil and one of my worded stamps from Visible Image.

I've also highlighted areas of the image using my clear glaze and stardust glitter pens, adding a little dimension with some seed beads.

Around the edge of the journal cover, I added some sand texture paste  and then some Pretty Metallic paint in mint chip.

At the top of the folder I added a faux metal embellishment that I had made earlier using gold metal magic and stamped - strength.

On the reverse I chose this great saxophone image. I added a little background stamping and some more highlights with my pens, along with some sand texture paste along the saxophone which has been highlighted with rose gold metallic wax.

I had these little holographic pink flower sequins in my craft stash that I thought would work well and add more texture too.

This oriental image was another favourite of mine, so I put it on the back and I have a choice of two beautiful images on either side of my folder. 

I added some stencilling and another worded stamp from Visible Image, along with my sparkle pens and seed beads for dimension.

I edged the cover with gold metallic wax.

On the back of my second journal cover I used this really pretty music paper and added some second generation background stamping with a grey ink pad and a metallic one.

I also added some ephemera from my crafty stash, left over from some ATC's that I had been making a while ago.

My journal covers have had a facelift and that's another job off my list.

And in the other favourite place I love to spend my time, I am patiently awaiting our robins to fledge over the next few days. The parents have been very busy feeding and we have been so lucky that the box is in regular use.

This is the view out of my back door. I have an old table under the bike port where I do my potting - next to a little greenhouse,  It's really handy when it's wet and windy as I'm sheltered from the elements a little and I often have a little friend who is curious to know what I am doing.

I managed to quickly get a sneaky picture (it was pot luck really) whilst the parents were out getting food,  You can just about see one of the baby robins. Fingers crossed for them.

What have you got planned for the day? Whatever it is, I hope it is a good one for you.