Shine Bright and Create: May 2024

Wednesday, 29 May 2024

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.

Thursday, 23 May 2024

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

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

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

Creative Fingers - AG

Ellibelle's Corner - AG

Tuesday, 7 May 2024

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.

Wednesday, 1 May 2024

Bookmark/Tags WOYWW #778

I've been finishing off some tag/bookmarks this week and I do like a bookmark.

I also wanted to use these cool digi images from Polkadoodles and thought that they would look great on some bookmarks.

It's also What's on your Workdesk Wednesday - which I linked up with last week,

a day when you link up to Julia Dunnits Stamping Ground and see what others have been up to. There are details on her blog, should you wish to link up too.

So this was how my table started off for WOYWW. I'd printed off and coloured my digi images with my Promarker alcohol pens. Normally my colouring only stretches to the size of an ATC card, but I am gradually stepping further out of my comfort zone.

For my bookmark bases I used some leftover backgrounds that I had previously made using distress oxide inks. One of them was quite pale so I added some background stamping too.

I added some Pretty Gets Gritty explosion powder to the second layer of one of my tags for a purple and gold shimmer and they were both edged with a little metallique wax.

This one will go in the birthday card for my friend's daughter. I really liked these images from Polkadoodles when I saw them. They are both from their Ickyink Art Collection.

I haven't decided on a home for this one yet, she may be used in my craft journal.

I managed to get a picture of this feathered beauty in my garden too. The Jay doesn't normally hang about, but had noticed that I'd left some peanuts out for the squirrels on the log. Well it ate those and then decided to have a good look around whilst there.