Oriental Themed Necklace

I stayed up really late finishing the second of the 'stamped cup of tea tree' cards for my friend's birthday celebration today.  I will show you that in a bit but I thought I'd show you what I also made for my friend [this morning before I saw her at lunchtime! :-O ]

This Tim Holtz Fragment necklace:

The script is a rubber stamp of some (ancient?) oriental lettering, which was part of a Crafty Individuals stamp set I got when I subscribed to 'Craft Stamper' magazine. 

I stamped it with Black Stazon onto red mirror board and when dry glued a Tim Holtz Fragment on top of it with Glossy Accents.  After that was dry I cut around the outline of the shape and added the chain.  

This was the other card I made using my fab new tree stamp:

The card opens where the flowered paper is scalloped.

I coloured the all white flower ribbon with a brown Sharpie to match the flowers on the patterned paper.. 

...and coloured a pale yellow flower embellishment with a blue promarker. 

Its a handy money saving tip that, rather than buying your embellishments in lots of different colours, colour them yourself with your existing stock of pens, paints and alcohol inks.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Quirky Distressed Birthday Card

I got a fab new stamp yesterday and couldn't wait to use it on a couple of birthday cards I need to make (for tomorrow, eek!).  I thought I'd do them in two different styles, one with an old fashioned, distressed  look and the other one using more up to date, modern papers.  That was the plan and so far I have just done the distressed card:

The background stamps were deliberately done in an incomplete distressed style.

This is the main image though, it is such a fun stamp, very quirky:

Sentiment says 'Meet under the tree for a nice cup of tea'

The stamp is a Crafty Individuals stamp from Aldridge Crafts.

The fake stitching is a rub on, the papers (distressed with sandpaper) were freebies from card magazines and the image and the Happy Birthday sentiment were attached with 3d dots.  The placement design was from an old CPS sketch.  

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:

LITTLE RED WAGON - St Patty's Day - Green 

EASY CRAFT PROJECTS #33 - Green

CRAFT US CRAZY - Nature

Good news for me yesterday! I won a couple of tickets to the Hobbycraft show at the NEC in a couple of weeks.  Yay!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Bunting Love

Last night's activity was to fill in another page of my version of the 'Smash' book.  I love text and I love bunting so I combined the two on one of my pages.

Here:

I used watercolour crayons for the 'sky effect':

For the coloured bunting I put coloured paper behind the triangles I'd cut out for the other bunting:

What I like about doing this book is that I'm getting to fill it with the things that I personally like. I'm going to end up with a book full of all kinds of things that excite me and that will give me such pleasure to keep looking at.  Maybe you could have a go at doing your own version?  What are the kind of things you would be putting in yours?

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Calligraphic Grafitti

Tonight whilst blog hopping, I decided to take some computer paper out of my printer and doodle.

Here is the result:

You might be able to spot 'Alisa Burke' and her new book 'Sew Wild' in there!  I randomly wrote my trail of thought as I was picking out coloured pens from my desk drawer.  I feel I could easily get back into doing calligraphy again, 'cos I loved it!

Earlier on the day I stumbled across a link with step by step instructions to produce this:

It was from another favourite site of mine, Balzer Designs.  Here is the link to the video.

When I made mine (above) I was sitting at the computer again, so I just used my pens rather than my paints that were all the way upstairs in my craft room in the attic!  I hadn't got my glasses on either so couldn't work out who the quote was by, so I have left it off for now.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Have a great weekend,

qwiksave

Sealife Bathroom Plaque

I am having no end of computer problems at the moment. My laptop has given up the ghost completely and needs to go to the repair shop and this computer that I am using at the moment is playing up something rotten.  Not only is it refusing to play any of my recorded videos but now it's even refusing to accept my camera cable! 

To show you what I did last night, I had to use the scanner:

This (above) is the 'artistically altered' (Picnik) version of this:

Originally this was a dull copper coloured plaque (bought from a junk shop ages ago), and last night I decided to give it some colour. First I tried using alcohol inks but to my surprise they wiped away!  So I got out the acrylic paints instead. The fishes, sea horse and the rings & seaweed are all in 3d relief. They were originally beaten out of the metal with some texture tools.  I rubbed gold relief paint on them and then a dry brush of  black paint was used to bring out the details.

Apologies for the quality of the images, the scanner doesn't like 3d elements!

I'm in two minds whether to colour the fishes and seahorses more, as in not keeping them all gold.  I shall live with it for a while and then decide what to do...

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Fun Pages!

Following on from yesterday's post about my version of the 'Smash' Book, I decided to root through my drawers (ooer!) of images to find some interesting bits & pieces that I could stick into the pages of my book.  With an emphasis on 'Fun', I found quite a few cartoons, together with some of my old drawings which I simply had to have to make my first double page spread:

Do you like the cartoons?:

and

(by the artists who have signed these).

These two 'Smash' pages are very 'me' - you might not know this, but when I was little, all I wanted to be when 'I grew up' (not happened yet!) was a cartoonist! Not just an artist, I was going to be a cartoonist!  I spent many a happy hour creating my own characters and stories.   Which is why even today I still have quite a large collection of old comics, comic annuals and not to mention, every single book of 'Calvin & Hobbs' cartoons that Bill Watterson ever wrote.

I did forget one thing when I made these pages though.  You may remember in yesterday's post I said my version of the 'Smash' book was also going to be MESSY!  Just look how neat those pictures have been stuck in!:
 

(OOps! But I can still do messy when I want ;-P )
* * *

For the pages I've done so far I have used this glue...

with its non-permanent option so I can move things around. Believe me, this is very useful! ;-)

 Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

A Doodle Inspirational Journal

There is quite a bit of excitement in Blogland about a 'stick-everything-in-it' book due to come out soon from EK Success/K & Company called a 'SMASH'.  It was promoted at this Winter's Los Angeles CHA show and there is a video about it on youtube here.  Meanwhile, I have made a start at making my own simplified version. 

These are my first two introductory pages:

Created using just my Versafine Stamp Pad, some stamps (Bo Bunny & American Crafts) and my Sharpie pen (plus the odd fingerprint & yogurt pot that I also used for stamping!)

The whole book isn't all going to be Black & White or like this, I just did these two pages in this style so that I would lose that scary 'white page syndrome'and set the book's theme to be 'FUN,''MESSY' and 'RANDOM'. I think I'm going to enjoy filling in this book! 

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

HRH The Queen comes to Town

Those that follow my tweets may have seen these pictures already, but there was great excitement in our town today when the Queen & the Duke of Edinburgh arrived to officially open our new Justice Centre/Police Station/Magistrates Court.  As you can see by the top picture, during her crowd walkabout HRH was just inches away from me, how exciting!   Just look at that blue sky on the bottom picture!  Believe me it is very deceptive because it was absolutely freezing out there today.  I was very impressed with the Police though, they were doing a grand job entertaining the school children (answering their nosey questions about his baton & uniform) whilst we were all stood waiting.

* * * * *

I also managed to do a small craft today.  A couple of shrink plastic keyring trinkets:

I'm thinking that I might add a stamp or two using Stazon to finish them off.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

March Calendar Complete!

Indulge me a little won't you?  I have lots of pictures of the journaling calendar I have made as part of the Kathryn Wheel project to show you:

This is the finished item:

But you can't see all the fabulous colour from one little piccy, it needs lots!

Like this early one:

Which shows you what is underneath all those circles, silver foil and tissue paper, stuck on with a pva and water mix.  At this point there was some pink, but that had to go!

Detail (the creases were deliberate, for texture!):

This is a detail of the dates circles.  Created using old book pages punched out and covered in gesso.  The outside circle was a stamp coloured with pens.  The numbers were peel-offs in different sizes for interest:

And this is the Month circle detail:

Depending on the light, the calendar can look quite different:

But I love the luminous quality it gets.

And there you have it.  The finished item that I gave the taster for the other day:

Don't forget to check out other people's fab calendar creations for this year long challenge here.  There are so many different styles of interpretation.

* * * * *

Other news and my eyes still aren't right so I've been to the hospital to see the Eye Specialist today.  The good news is that the eyes themselves are fine.  It is just some sort of skin irritation/allergy around the eyes that is the problem.  I've just got to keep up with swallowing all the millions of pills and applying the creams I've been given.

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave

Can you tell what it is yet?

(Don't forget the Rolf Harris accent!)

It is (can't you tell? lol) my Kathryn Project March Calendar!  Course it is! 

It is also of course, a work in progress. The glue here is so wet you may feel that you could start sticking things to your computer screen (er, don't do that!)  Tomorrow this page will look very different when hopefully I will show you a finished calendar how much further I have got with it.  I do need to get it finished pretty sharpish because after all we are in March now.  Eek! Where did February go?  Blink and you missed it!  Slow down 2011, chill...... 

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

qwiksave