Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all, and I hope it's a brighter, kinder one too.

It's been a while since my last post, and since I've crafted too, so I'm starting off with a blog challenge.

I spotted this beautiful image on the Gecko Galz Monthly card challenge this month, which inspired me to use it.  My initial intention was to use it on one of my boxes, as I have one that is the perfect size, but since this is a card challenge and I'm a slow crafter, the box will follow. 

I die cut my flowers from some fancy wallpaper that I acquired from one of those well known hardware stores. I love the texture of wallpaper for making flowers, and I've added some vintage dyed pearls in the centre of my blooms.

I've also layered my image onto gold embossed miri card and added a printed sheet from one of my Tattered Lace download collections.

Finally, adding a hint of shimmer to my image with a clear glitter pen. I like the Spectum Noir pens as they don't flood the brush with glitter.

One of the bonuses of digital downloads is that they mix & match with whatever you have in your craft collection, and you can also resize them to condense that design.

I've missed not having a printer, and I can tell you that I'm happy with my new Canon Mega Tank Inkjet so far, which has replaced my Epson EcoTank.  It's certainly an improvement on the old one.

I enjoy participating in these challenges, and think that I just need to be a bit more organised in my crafting head. I appreciate all the creative, inspirational content that these blogs and challenges continually provide, so I will endeavour to support them more.

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

Happy Crafting

Challenges

GeckoGalz - Monthly card challenge  - Winner

C.R.A.F.T - ATG

Creative inspirations - ATG

CD SundayPlus - ATG - Top 3

Crafts Galore - ATG

Love to Craft - ATG

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  DT Favourite

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.

Gothic Fairy Arch

I've finished my Gothic fairy arch and have a few pictures to share with you and I'm also going to add it to one of the monthly challenges at Gecko Galz.

To begin with I die cut my arch from card to make a substrate and then  gave it a coat of gesso. 

I used the Pretty Gothic Window A5 die from Pretty Gets Gritty. They do some really cool dies that are great for making your substrates for projects.

With a small pallet knife, I scrapped  some sand texture paste across my arch. Then  I mixed a little acrylic paint and kept dabbing until my arch started looking a bit aged and rusty, drying in between the layers.

I then dry brushed with some grey acrylic paint - well gesso mixed with some black acrylic to dull it down a little. 

Next it got a spritz of frozen  toffee pretty pearl spray and then I edged the arch with rose gold wax. I was quite happy with how it turned out and told myself that i could leave it alone now!

I went on a search for some rice paper as I wanted the background of the arch to be transparent and found a leftover piece from one of my cardmaking projects that I had printed off.

I had also made a batch of cogs up a while ago. They were die cut from soup carton packaging and then I'd added some sand mixed into my acrylic paint. They were finally edged in copper wax.

The pearl spray has highlighted the texture in the arch a lot more and I then started to add some texture to the edges of my fairy image too, using a little coloured sand texture paste and seed beads.

I chose an image from the Gecko Galz Pixie Dream land Kit for the focal point of my gothic arch. These are really lovely images and I was spoilt for choice.  I also added a few butterflies from their Butterfly Wings Digital Collage Set too.

My paper flowers have also been edged with a little metallic gold paint and the tiny translucent flowers have  micro beads in their centres. I also thought that the wording was very apt for my project.

This was a fun little project to make.

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

Challenges

Creative Artiste - AMM        Top 3  04/2024

Let's Craft & Create - Add a butterfly

Ally's Angels - AG

Crafts Galore -AG

Classic Designs - AG

Creative Fingers - AG

Ellibelles Corner - I spy with my little eye - something with wings

We Love to Create - AMM

Crafty Galz Corner - AG

Unicorn - use dies

A Place to start - add one or more flowers

Path of Positivity - AG - Use your wings   Top Pick  04/2024

Retro Postcards

I've been meaning to get around to making these little postcards for a little while now and I really like these sassy retro digi images from Gecko Galz that I thought would look great made up into postcards.

I used some of the Say What Digital Collage Set digi images by Gecko Galz and layered them up with some of the backing papers from the Retro Home Front Digital Craft Kit.

I found a small pack of postcards in my craft stash whilst having a sort out a while ago and decided to use them for some stamping projects but I also scanned the back of one so that I could use them for my postcards on this project.

I have added 'make more postcards' to my list. They are a simple little project  - 'happy mail'  - that you can pop in the post at the price of a 2nd class stamp.

These images really made me smile as I was die cutting them, they are just perfect for journals, tags and cards too.

Gecko Galz offer 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. They also have lots more on their Etsy page.

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

Happy Crafting

Challenges:

Crafts Galore Encore - ATG

CD Sunday Plus - AG  (Top 3)

Lets Craft & Create - Polka Dots

Classic Designs - ATG

Creative Fingers - AG

Digi Choose Day - AG  (Winner)

We love to Create - AG