LOC Challenges - Water

Time for another challenge at Left Of Center and this time we are sponsored by Delicious Doodles.  I've chosen Steampunk Mermaid for my project this time.  I've said it before, but the beauty of digital stamps is that you can have them in any size or colour your printer can cope with.  And they take up NO ROOM WHATSOEVER  - how good is that!

A few years ago glittering on acetate with Art Institute Glitters was all the rage and I acquired a fairly substantial amount of them, which have languished in a box under the table for lo, these several years.  It was high time to bring them out again and put them to use.

I printed the Steampunk Mermaid  on inkjet acetate, got out my glitters and a Quickie Glue pen and spent a happy afternoon applying glue to the back of the acetate section by section (starting with the darkest colour and working to the lightest).  Once I was done I coloured the sky and the rocks with alcohol markers (Promarkers in this case) and on the front of the acetate I added in some subtle shading to give definition here and there.  I trimmed the piece square as I wanted it to fit in the aperture of a little Graphic 45 box I happened to have about my person, and stuck it to a piece of Centura Pearl card with double-sided adhesive sheet.

The box got a "Weathered Wood" effect learned form Andy Skinner's Timeworn Techniques course and I moulded the shells and starfish from paper clay.  Once painted they all got a coat of Klear floor polish (this is a great sealer and gives a lovely soft sheen to things - and I've even used it as a clear adhesive where a lot of strength wasn't needed and the piece could take a long time to dry). The net was originally gold, and a bit flashy if truth be told, but once dunked in brown acrylic it came out looking good!

The inside of the box I painted with turquoise acrylic then put white over a coat of crackle glaze (Decoart, in this case).    Just right for storing a mini-album with memories of the seaside.

If you want to see what the rest of the DT have been up to, hop on over to LOC and take a peep - and perhaps share your project!  

Crafty hugs,

Keren.

PS I'm entering this in 

Country View Crafts Blog challenge - Layers

Altered Eclectics - Anything Goes

Our Creative Corner - Forgotten Things

Time gone by

Hi blog friends, and welcome to my blog.

As I'm writing this, the British Summer has arrived - although storms are promised for later this week - and a summery feel has crept into this little panel, which will form the focus of a scrapbook page.

I started with the photograph, which is of me with my two sisters.  I'm the two-year old toddler;  my elder sister is holding my little sister, who is decidedly unhappy about the whole proceedings - probably because she's too hot, being wrapped up in a woollen shawl.  We're sitting in our back yard, and it would be around June or July 1957.  My father was probably the photographer. 

I printed it twice, and cut out the figures of my sisters and myself to layer up over the background.  I prepared the panel with a faux wood effect (one of Andy Skinner's Timeworn Techniques) and die-cut a circular aperture.  While I had the Big Shot out (who am I kidding?  It never gets put away!) I die-cut the clock face (Tim Holtz Alterations) and the cogs (ditto) and the letters (ibid). 

I used two different techniques for the rust effect.  For the clock face and cogs, I gave them a coat of PVA glue mixed with some sand to get a  pitted texture.  Once they were dry, I painted them with dark brown paint and finally rubbed some gilding waxes lightly over the surface. 

The letters got a different technique.  I coloured them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and then sprinkled on Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder, heated it, and finally rubbed away the release crystals. 

I stamped the panel with a hexagon texture stamp from the Artistic Stamper, using Mushroom Adirondack ink.  I stuck the clock face around the aperture, and put the photograph behind, with the cutouts popping out of the frame.  I played about with the position of the cogs until I hit on the idea of using them to make a "sun" .  I stamped the words "If I could turn back time! and "Time machine" using my trusty £1 alphabet and Coffee Archival ink.  Finally, I glued a scrap of net, which I'd soaked in runny brown acrylic paint, and stuck the letters onto a length of chain which I'd dipped into the same runny paint and then baked in the oven to cure. 

The last process was to stick the chain letters (geddit?) to the panel. 

I'm entering this into the following challenges -

Sandee & amelie's Steampunk Challenges - Rust
Our Creative Corner - Captured Memories
Country View Crafts - Summer Sizzler
The Artistic Stamper  -  Ladies Day

Thank you for visiting - come again soon, why don't you?

Crafty Hugs,

Keren

Precious Time

Hello blog friends, and welcome to my bit of the Blogiverse.  With Father's Day fast approaching, there are quite a few blog challenges that have set masculine/father type criteria.  And as Craft Supervisor Mysti is scrupulous in her observance of Father's Day, quite apart from bring Daddy's Cat and having missed him TERRIBLY when he was in hospital recently - well, something had to be done!

The Love of My Life loves pocket watches;  he has quite a collection. So when the Alterations Pocket Watch die came out, I had to get it - and it was just perfect for this year's FD greeting.

Open the cover and inside -

The cat face stamp is from Stampendous and the kitten has been stamped with a Creative Impressions stamp and the cut out from its background.  Open the inner frame-

to reveal the concertina fold album inside, featuring CS Mysti herself!  (she's going to get me to write a special message inside!)

If you'd like to see the "How I did it", you can see the details here -

This is being entered into the following challenges -

Anything But A Card - Masculine

The Artistic Stamper Blog Challenge - Makes for Men

Country View Crafts Blog Challenge - Use Die Cuts

Thanks for visiting!

Crafty Hugs,

Keren

Papillon

Hello everyone and welcome to my little bit of the Blogiverse.  I'm really happy that you've chosen to visit me.  Without further ado, here's today's offering-

I bought some Kroma Crackle medium a while ago and have been trying to get around to using it for some time...and finally did.  I painted this MDF heart (which came in the kit - from Create and Craft - with the Kroma) in pale green, added a splash of pink paint to the Kroma, and dolloped (technical term) the stuff all over the heart, and waited for it to crackle...and waited...and got fed up and took the heat tool to it.

I found out (later) that the Kroma can take up to three days to crackle if left to itself.  If you accelerate the process you get some mighty big cracks (ravines is probably a better word).  And it continues to crackle, so that by the time it was finished, you could hardly see any pink bits at all.  In fact, you'll probably need to click on the picture to get a larger view of it before you can spot it.  Trust me, it is there!

Well, now I have a large sullen lump of mainly green and slightly pink-ish MDF and I'm asking myself what came over me as I don't much like green or pink, so what am I going to do with it?  When in doubt, add Distress!  I blended Peeled Paint DI over the edges and Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry over the surface to try and pink up the Kroma a bit, then I sealed it all and thought about what I was going to do next. 

In search of inspiration, I went rummaging through my leftover bits box (all right, it's not just one box.  I'm not saying how many there are.) and found a piece of Tim Holtz Tissue wrap, some paper I'd coloured with mica sprays in shades of blue and lilac, and an Eiffel Tower that I'd cut out with my Cameo for another project and never used.  I don't know why, but the ol' Tour d'Eiffel seemed to work well on the project.  The blue paper reminded me of butterfly wings.

The tissue wrap and the Eiffel Tower went onto the heart with the aid of some Bindex medium (from Pebeo).  I die-cut the lower part of the butterfly (it's an old Quick-Kutz double-cut die and is one of my all-time favourites)  from the paper and the upper part from black card.  I stamped the "Bright Elusive Butterfly" stamp (my own design, made with my Imagepac) onto ordinary tissue paper, tore it out, and stuck it onto the background with the Bindex.  Fast forward through the drying time (actually not too long), during which I layered up some Prima flowers which have been in my stash for a LONG time and stuck the two layers of the butterfly together.

Finally, it was time to stick the flowers and the butterfly onto the base and pretend that it was All Planned From the Beginning. 

I'm entering it into the following challenges -

Country View Crafts - Butterflies
Sunday Stampers - Paint

Thank you for visiting;  I hope you enjoyed!

Crafty Hugs,

Keren

When I am an old woman...

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
(Warning, by Jenny Joseph)

Have you heard of the Red Hat Society?  It's a social organisation of, er, mature ladies which began when one of the founders gave a friend a red hat and a copy of the poem.  Here's my little red hat, which has taken me a very long time to make - well, not so much the hat as the display stand, if truth be told!

 

The hat is adapted from a pattern by Kim Costello (see here) that was published in Craft Stamper magazine some time ago.  I coloured the feathers with alcohol pens.  The stand is a CD with a cut-down packaging tube stuck to it.  The base I covered in Artists' Spackle texture paste, sprayed green and sprinkled with Flower Soft.  The upright I covered with paper left over after Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals Challenge (blending a little Vintage Photo DI over it first) and added a couple of flowers that I'd made for the Tattered Florals challenge but never used.

And there it is - my entry for the "Anything Goes- Pick and Mix" Country View Crafts blog challenge.  Thank you for taking the time to check it out.  I hope you liked it!