Green as Grass

Hi all, thank you for stopping by.  Today's offering is for the Anything But  A Card blog challenge, and this time the theme is - green.

Green isn't may favourite colour, I have to say.  I wasn't even thinking of entering the challenge.  In fact, I was trying to overcome crafter's block that had set in while trying to produce my mum-in-law's Mother's Day card. When I was making my tag for Tim's 12 tags, I'd accidentally printed out too many sheets of the background paper (from Sheena Douglass's Paint Fusion CD), and was trying to base the card on the papers I had left over (waste not, want not).  I eventually abandoned that idea, but used some of the paper to cover a tag I'd made a mess of for another chllenge (Tag- You're It!) - so this is green in more ways than one!

What else?  Well,  I stamped the fern frame around the edge of the tag (stamp from Kanban) with some Peeled Paint Distress ink; the roses are from My Paper Stash, the silver mesh was a scrap left over from another projct, and so was the silver bead chain.  A scrap of ribbon from my stash and that was it - and I wasn't even trying!

The Green Man

Hels Sheridan, queen of the Sunday Stampers Challenge, has ordained that, for this week's challenge, we must create something green - so here we go!

This tag is green in more ways than one.  For one thing, it's cut out of a piece of a cardboard box that some cans came in.  The backing material is a Colour Catcher cloth that came out of the washer a rather pretty shade of blue-green, before I got at it with inks and sprays.  The leaves in the four corners of the tag were cut from the same material.  The rest of the leaves were cut from paper that was coloured with Starburst Stains (LOVE that stuff!)  I cut into the stamped image to attach the leaves and fluffed the leaves up a bit. 

And there he is - The Green Man.  Hope you like it!

(If you want to know more about the Green Man, there's some information here.)

A crown, golden in show



The quote is from John Milton, which makes me look a lot cleverer than I am (we did read some of his poems when I was in school - he wasn't my favourite.  I think my opinion was coloured by his attitude to the women in his life;  in fact he was a real MCP!)

This week Hels has set the theme of "Shiny" for the Sunday Stampers challenge.  I had lots of ideas for shiny things...but none of them included stamping so didn't meet the challenge criteria.  Then I remembered the Flitterglu and the Kanban Steampunk stamps and the Problem Was Solved!

The large crowns were cut with Spellbinders dies.  The tag is actually greener than it looks in the picture, being coloured with Peeled Paint, Pine Needles and Evergreen Bough DI's - the gilding flakes I used were from Crafy Notions (Variegated Green) and I wanted to pick up the green tints. 

Thanks for visiting - I hope you liked the tag.

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Compendium of Curiosities II - Challenge 13

This week Linda Ledbetter (sponsored by Simon Says Stamp) has challenged us to produce something using the "Spritz and Flick" techinique from Sir Tim of Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities Volume 2.  Now, a few bloggings ago I used "Men Are From Mars" as my tag theme, and ever since then I've felt like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop!  So, at last -

Women are from Venus!

I have a confessionlet to make.  The tag on this one was going to be the "Starry Night" tag for Sunday Stampers last week, only it went a bit wrong.  I'd stamped the stars onto the plain white card in Versamark and put the first layer of colour on, then stamped the swirls and added more colour - and they all just disappeared.  Far from Resistance being Futile, the resist wasn't happening, so rather than throwing good ink after bad the tag went into the "do something with it later" pile and I started work on V2.

As you know, Crafters Never Throw Anything Away.  And Crafting Austerity measures are still in play chez moi, so it occurred to me that I could use the tag as the basis for this week's Studio L3 challenge.  In astrology, Venus's colour is green and her metal is copper.  (Her day is Friday, so very appropriate for a Friday challenge!) I wanted to incorporate the correspondences into my tag, so out came the green distress inks (Peeled Paint and Mowed Lawn, with a touch of Peacock) over the top of the blue that was already on the tag they went, in readiness for the technique.  And, blow me down, the stars and swirls I'd never thought to see again reappeared as if by magic!  I stamped some of Sam Poole's Dress Forms in Cactus Green Staz-On (second generation stamping to get the faded, barely-there look) into the background while I was at it.

The glyph I designed and cut on the Cameo then crackled wirh copper Croco paint, and stamped "Women" and "Venus" on shrink plastic (having to stop now and then to satisfy Craft Supervisor Mysti's demands for head rubs).  A bit of "emerald" (AB hotfix crystals coloured with Promarkers) bling ) and there we are. 

Thanks for visiting!