Sunday Stamper, Squares and Journals....

This weeks challenge over on Hels Blog is 'Squares' - I have just bought myself a sewing machine and I have a stock of fabric paper which I made a while ago, one of which has you've guessed it Squares on it....

I was being  a very good girl and tidying my desk before I started another project and I came across this months Craft Stamper, which has a project in it for making a Journal by Kate Crane, so my effort for this weeks challenge has been heavily inspired by this.

As you can see I have managed to get my machine working and have done quite alot of stitching on this the cover to my Journal. I wanted to stitch metal and was pleased to find out it's very easy! Lots of ideas have been whirring round my head with metal and fabric.

The front and back covers will be joined together with LARGE Book Rings, but I couldn't get them in the scanner. I'm hoping for fill it this year with lots of different pages. When I am feeling creative but don't know what to do I can make a page!

Don't take too much notice of the 'Do Not Look Inside' message, I may share a few pages with you as and when I do them.. but maybe not everything!

Thanks Hels for making me think again on a Sunday!

All Present, Delivered and Correct....

Well maybe not correct, but pressie has been delivered to Katherine T.

Another altered box, which was just a plain pine jewellery box to begin with.

Katherine gave me some model magic so I wanted to have a play with that, and it ended up on her birthday present.

I rolled it very thinly, stamped into it and folded it, tweaked it, painted it.

This sits on a layer of painted and heated Tyvek.

I made a mould of a Gargoyle fridge magnet and used the model magic in that... its a very details and in parts undercut mould, and it came out much better than the ones I have tried to make with oven baked polymer clays.

Inside there is a removable tray. There is a working clock inside one of the compartments, the face of the clock is embossed metal, which i just doodled on. The bottom of the other compartments are filled with UTEE, coloured with Mica powders.

The lower tray has been lined with metal from Tomato Puree tubes... I love the colour of these and usually flatten them in my Wizard, but have left them creased here and covered them with clear UTEE and a few micro beads.

I have just noticed that some of these photos were taken whist the outside was matt black.. I have since sprayed it with a green mica spray.  The sides are metal, wire, beads, embossing powder and some fab felt like stuff that you can heat and it melts... oh I am so sad getting excited about such stuff!

oh..... can you tell....

I have been playing today?

my poor hands.... they have never ever stood a chance, all my life I have mistreated them..

Florist... hands constantly wet and cold

Dental Nurse... hands constantly washed

Mother...hands constantly washed

Wannabee Artist.... hands covered in ink before washing

BUT I have enjoyed today being covered in paint and ink

Make it Scary Mum...

Well that is what Edward told me when I suggested making a canvas for his newly decorated bedroom, but we have placed it our of direct eye-shot as he falls asleep just in case of nightmares!  I was feeling a bit mojo'less this morning so went blog hopping and hopped over to Hels blog (ink on my fingers) - and as a result I have done my first ever blog challenge - Sunday Stamper - Halloween. I had made this piece of fabric paper (blogged below)  and it just cried out 'Gothic/ghosts/skull/Halloween.. or something! it just was never doing to be pretty. I like skeletons so I made another sheet of plain white fabric paper and cut a skull from it, coloured it a bit, machine stitched it onto the background after stamping some cobwebs using a previous unused embossing powder, called snowflake - white and glittery - I expect you are supposed to used it on Christmas cards! - anyway.... now what do I do with a piece of skull embellished FP?? ..... Put in on a canvas of course!!

.......and so we did. Edward and I are both very happy with the result. The canvas was sponged with some left over orange emulsion from his bedroom. 'Tims' cobweb masks in each corner and as Edward is going through a bit of a 'gargoyle' phase at the moment I used some new Gargoyle stamps mummy just had to buy, stamped onto cream coloured metal and 'puffed' out, filled from behind with lightweight polyfilla and then cut close to the edges, they look really effective I think. They are standing on two pillars of my new Ferro paints. Grungepaper bats and a few stamped skeletons.. Skeletons, bones and hands are Halloween bits and pieces from the £shop an odd bit of broken bamboo I found in the garden - beautifully weathered, and it all hangs from a chain found in the garage left over from a party..... (no not that sort of party!! - a 70's Birthday party where Matt and I dressed up as punks!)

Throughly enjoyed myself this afternoon!

This and Tat and a bit of the Other

Just a little something for ... well I guess some of you may recognise them (and the photo - I still think it is a lovely picture) It started out as one of those brown card blanks.. sure they have a proper name but I can't think what it is.
My favourite paints of the moment - Claudine Hellmuth Acrylics and after seeing a demo at Ally pally by Lin of LBcrafts, stamping into Viva Ferro paints, some stamping into Viva Ferro paints!
 Haven't had my shrink plastic or Friendly plastic out for a while, so added a bit of that, Some Tim ideology hardware (i must love these Guy's cos I don't use such precious stuff very often, I just like to look at it and save it for another day - I mean what would happen if the world ran out of Tim's sprockets and spinners??)

I was also very good and mounted all my new stamps on EZMount, so I had a play with some new stamps from Paperartsy. (arrggghhhh Just seen they have brought out yet more which I don't think were at AP - Lovely lovely but I must NOT spend anymore!!)

Added some gilding flakes I got from another favourite stall at AP Crafty Notions and a splodge or two of Tim's new Rock candy (thank you Jennie for remembering I was after it and bringing it to AP), oh forgot the spray of cosmic shimmers....
and there it is, another bit of tat for them - or in her words 'where on earth am i going to hang that?'

oh and just in case you thought you had got away with it... yep I have been making more fabric paper

Think I Am Getting Addicted!

Oooeerrr Missus this is fun! Complete serendipity! More linen on the line and I have very inky and painted covered hands ... I am in my element!

I used all my muslin and freezer paper yesterday (freezer paper is not an English thing - least I am not sure what we call it if it is - hence it is not readily available and horrors of horrors my usual supplier is out of stock, but I found a supply on Ebay at a good price if any of my fellow patriots want some!)

 Too impatient to wait for new supplies I have used some thin (ish) calico and some palette paper, hopefully that will work if not I am stuffed! I realised after yesterday that I was concentrating too much on what the base layer was, when in fact it's mostly going to be covered in colour, plus my first attempt was too much of a 'picture' so can't really be cut up. Its all a matter of experimenting and learning. Helli (author) suggests adding colour whilst the cloth is still wet, Belinda seems to prefer not to, so I thought I would add some colour to a couple of my sheets today and form my own opinion. They green one has acrylic paint added to the PVA and the blue one has been sprayed with Adirondack Inks - I'll report back!

Last night I had a play with the sheets I made yesterday. This one has been painted with diluted Claudine Hellmuth paints - I bought these at Ally Pally, wow they still keep their vibrancy even after being mixed with water. I also highlighted the words with permanent pens and framed the woman with 3d fabric paints but didn't like that so added some micro beads, don't like them much either!

Here is number 2 - before painted and after painted. Boy I LOVE this one, makes my mouth water! I will have to say the picture does not do it justice in anyway whatsoever. Adirondack inks sprayed on and sponged off the excess           I wanted it to be a bit glossier and experimented by covering one half with a gloss medium - well that didn't work, in fact it looks duller, so I sprayed the whole thing with Cosmic Shimmers. That made the half which had not been 'glossed' very vibrant and did improve the glossed area slightly.

and finally number 3, which was very purple/pink. It's not now!

In one of my insomniac moments last night I thought I would use green and blue on the ones I made today - colours I rarely use, but I am trying to get out of a colour trap - and then I realised that I never use Yellow.  So this is my Yellow one - oh no it's not  I hear your cry. in my defence it started off yellow and does look more yellow in real life, but I concede a bit of orange/red/copper/gold has crept in!! This is using acrylic paints and stamped with stazon with a bit of copper/gold/orange utee sprinkled on (doubt you can see that) I think its looking good.

Fingers drumming now whilst I wait hopefully for the other pieces to dry - not much chance of that on a dull autumnal day here in the UK..... will the palette paper work or not??


Stitching next - anyone got a machine I can borrow??