You rule my world

I love numbers and so this month's challenge at Country View Crafts Challenges of Numbers is perfect for me! For my second project this month I made a grungy imaged tag as my house if full of teenagers this holiday! Not that there's a blossoming romance you understand but my daughter does have blue hair! It, will of course, be back to 'boring' brown for school in September. Shame as I really like it!

I started by inking a tag with Wild Honey Distress Ink and then using Tree Branch Archival Ink though a couple of stencils. I added a strip of wash tape to act as a ground for the stamped figure and stamped her onto the tag. This is a bit of a cheat as she is a very detailed figure and to save trying to cut out all of that detail later I use the stamped image as a base!

I stamped her out again on cream card and coloured her with watercolour pencils. The boy usually has wigs but for this tag they were clipped! a little more wash tape and I thought I was done! However, when I came to it the next day I knew it needed more!

I added some Tim Holtz stamps to the edges and I was much happier! I hope you'll join in with us this month.

Super Exciting Newness from Emma

Oh my! I was so excited when I was asked to be Emma Godfrey's wingman for her new PaperArtsy Halloween and Christmas stamps. They are just GORGEOUS and have so many uses beyond these holidays! The video introducing the stamps is below (Mum, my Christmas makes are from 7:45!) and has some amazing projects from some seriously talented folk.

Let's start with Halloween

 

I was allowed to keep my Halloween makes (my Christmas ones were posted off to PA HQ - that's how they're in the video!) and so I wanted to make a page in my journal.For a more spooky feel I randomly applied the Purple Rain paint with some Cut and Dry foam. I didn’t want a perfect finish and when the page was dry I lightly sanded it so there were some areas of interest. The nice thing about journal pages is that you can resist the urge to be 'perfect' and so the patches of lighter and darker areas are to be embraced!

When I saw the stamp set the first thing I saw was skull flowers and so I made some stalks which took some cutting out but were completely worth it! By painting the paper first you don't lose any of the detail of the stamp - but if I'd carefully painted the reverse of tissue paper I wouldn't have had all that cutting out - a note for the future there!!!

My journal is pretty small so I didn’t crowd the page with too much detail but loved the stamped detail in the background making the skull flowers ‘pop’! Those skulls are fabulous!

Bingo Journal

These fabulous images lend themselves nicely to a Halloween Bingo journal page and so I blanked some parts of a stencil so I get nice large boxes for my images.

Having first stencilled straight onto the page I didn’t like it so redid on some card and then, when dry, sanded it and the card took on a purple hue. Unexpected bonus! The images fit perfectly! The cobwebs are going to prove to be a really useful stamp and they work really well in the background! This might work well as a Halloween invitation... mmm... food for thought!

Now on to Christmas - in case you didn't know, as much as I long for hot summer days, Christmas is my favourite time of the year! I am always on the look out for new Christmassy things and this stamp set is perfect!

The snowflakes in this set reminded me of a 1950s book I have and so I tried to recreate it! I used Concrete as a base and the Sage on top so there was a good depth of colour.

The snowflakes are so cool and look fabulous with a little paint to accentuate them. I love the huge tag and the wonderful sentiments fit it perfectly. I added brown Distress Ink at the edges and suddenly the whole project took on the retro feel I was going for!

The circle stamp on the edge gave me an idea for my next project! 

Snowman

The circle stamp looks like snow falling and I realised I could make a winter scene! The varied the intensity of the background so it’s whiter at the bottom so it looks like the snow has fallen. The snowflakes I adore are stamped on circles to make a snowman’s body and I cut of a top hat from a Lynne Perrella stamp. 

I was beyond excited when I saw my snowman take shape! There is a huge versatility with these stamps - I think the snowflakes could easily be satellites with a retro space feel or flower heads or even a strange underwater creature! Such possibilities!

A HUGE thank you again to Emma for asking to me to play along - I LOVED every minute!

Tulip

For my post at Country View Crafts Projects this time I have used the rather scummy new tulip stamp from Lin Brown... pop over and see more!

September

Blimey! It's a new month already! As it's September my monthly journal page is 'back to school' themed as that will occupy much of my thoughts over the next few days!

I started by putting Slate Fresco paint all over the page. I didn't worry about having perfect coverage as I wanted to create a blackboard! Then I added stencilled numbers, letters and gold stars (got to have gold stars!) and some stamped images in Watering Can Archival Ink.

The spaces to write on are (I hope) emulating pages from a torn notebook using both ends of a Tim Holtz die. 

The added decorations are my favourite Wendy Vecchi stamps. The jars are stamped on tissue paper. I didn't want to use acetate as it wouldn't show up against the dark background. There's an extra gold star on the 24th - that's there to mark my son's birthday - as if I forget...!!! ;)

I hope you have a wonderful September, thank you as always for stopping by! If you want to see more then I have grouped my calendar pages this year here and there's a Facebook group full of incredible inspiration with loads of different styles - really worth checking out!

Three

Hello! It’s time for a new tag challenge at DragonsDream Tag It On and the lovely Catherine has chosen the Number Three. I bought this stamp in April and hadn’t used it (I know, I know!) and so this was the perfect opportunity to use it! 

I love how Silvia often incorporates her tag into a journal page. Not sure mine really works – think I need to add more (CAS isn’t my forte!) As always, we hope you’ll join in with us and as always the only rules are to use at least one stamp and a tag!

Think of a number

I love numbers and so the new challenge at Country View Crafts Challenges of Numbers is perfect for me! I chose to put stencilled numbers in the background and make the stamped figure hold one of them. 

I covered the page in a layer of PaperArtsy's Beach Hut blue paint that I scraped down the page with a credit card for a different effect. The numbers were stencilled in white (Snowflake) paint and then again in Bougainvillea. I then sanded the page carefully so that the numbers looked worn.

The stamped image is from Kate Crane.Normally the little bird is perched on her arm but I wanted her to hold one of the numbers so he was relocated!  I had a good tidy of my Studio the other day and found my Dymo machine so used that for the sentiment! As always, thank you for popping by. I hope you'll join in with us this month.