Creative Expressions Thursday.

Hello all

And A very happy new year to you my internet family and friends.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with lots of family and friends round you all.
I got to see my son and so all three of us were home together which was special for the Christmas week. Unfortunately I had the dreaded lurgy and currently am fighting a sinus infection but it is on its way out thankfully.

Sometime before Christmas we were sent the lovely stamps you see on today's card so meet Alfie
isn't he adorable. If you look at the background it is a lattice work A6 stamp but I have used it in my hand and stamped it randomly with coffee Archival ink. But the cross sections in the lattice are little tiny paw  prints isn't that cute haha. Of course it is called Paw prints lattice stamp so easy to find.

 I wrote this post a while ago now and here I am adding a huge message of good will to all for the upcoming year and getting back on track with the blog posts and getting videos up so thank you for sticking with me and I will let you know my uploading schedule very soon.

Meet Alfie.

I started this one by stamping Alfie onto some Coconut white card with Coffee Archival ink and heat set it so I could use my Inks and Distress pens etc without disturbing the ink.
I also stamped out the lovely quote using the new Clear Creative Expressions Paw prints on your heart verse set of stamps.

 I inked the edges and mounted onto soft gold card to draw your eye into the words.

 I took the Paw print lattice stamp and randomly stamped it onto some coconut white foundations card stock using Vintage photo Distress ink.

 Here is the look so far 

Next I took Peeled Paint and used the same stamp, cleaned between colours so not to muddy the inks.
I stamped again randomly over the first brown layer .

 At the moment it looks a little jumbled but don't worry it all comes together. I inked the edges with Vintage photo to cover the white raw edges and draw your eye to the focus on the card of course.

 Green seam binding on the left side of the card in a small simple one line strip

 I used several brown, grey  red distress markers a grey/blue alcohol marker and a white gel pen for highlights.

Here you see the background piece we made earlier mounted onto white and then soft gold then raised onto foam and mounted on the same card again.
  

 I tied a small bow from the same green seam binding and topped it with an 8mm pearl

 To ground Alfie I have added a small shadow to the foreground in grey/blue, these colours fool the eye and make your image pop out from the page much more than if you left it empty.

I added some foam and popped it at an angle onto the card. I decided not to add any pearls to the corners or extra embellishment as I wanted all your attention to go to the two focal points  on this one.

I hope you enjoyed today's post and I look forward to showing you more from this new pet line.

I am next on your screens at the beginning of February so I hope  you will pop by and have a look at a new line of products for Creative Expressions on the show.

Thank you to all for your continuing patience re the giveaway now Christmas is over I will catch up on all the emails , I have 1050 to get through (ouch) too and lots of extra goodies to get out to all the winners.
Huuuuge thanks to Carol Clarke for my Gorgeous bracelet  she made me for Christmas  what a clever lady you are and I look forward to thanking you in person real soon now the festive period is over.

Thanks also to Karen for popping into where I work to meet me in person and say hi.

And again massive thanks to all you lovely ladies for stopping by and for all your comments as always. I look forward to catching up on all of them and getting back to 'normal' now I am starting to feel human again.
I welcome 2015 as the last one certainly has been a challenge and happy new year again to all my blogglies and friends to the blog.

best wishes

Kim 

XXXX

Creative Expressions Thursday.

Good Morning My Lovlies

How are you all today? Feeling crafty?
Our design team stamps for this month were The Vintage dress forms and two of the new Handbag stamps each to create with.
Today I decided to use one of the dress forms and one of the verses from the set too, Plus some nifty little embellishments and here we have it.

Hope you like.

I really enjoyed making this one.

I have a step by step for you today also so I started by getting a piece of white paper around 6x6 and stamping the little measure tape and the scissors randomly with Vintage sepia archival ink.

Next I took The Tied Together Couture creations embossing folder and ran the paper through it, which took 2 times as I had to elongate the pattern, but it matches perfectly so was easy.

So to choose some colours in Distress inks.

I chose. Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge,Peeled Paint,Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain

So to blending.

You can see the pattern I discussed before on the show that I always find works for me, side, side middle with one set of colours and the same with the other set. With the darkest at the outer edge and the lightest in the centre, we finish with a very dark colour to frame and draw the eye in. Next this piece was matted onto a very thin black mat for stability.

I cut a piece of thin corrugated card and matted it onto black also. Then took a piece of paper from the Creative expressions and Teresa Collins paper pad. I chose the one that looks like Dictionary and amused myself reading all the entries until I realised I was supposed to be making the card haha.

I cut the paper to slightly bigger than my inked card and slightly smaller than the corrugated piece, distressed the edges with scissors and inked them to match the inks used on the other piece. I rolled some of the corner around my pokey tool to age it further.

So in this picture you can see I wrapped a small piece of measure tape ribbon which I slightly coloured with vintage photo just to stain it a little. I then used foam pads to lift this piece up and added it onto the paper then the corrugated section, I also gave it a slightly wonky angle so I could keep the rolled edges, I think I quite like that look.

So then I chose which dress form I wanted to use, second left and the longest verse slightly out of shot. I stamped this and the verse again with my Vintage sepia Archival ink.

So next I needed to cut out the dress form and the verse too.

Which I did with the largest of the Just rite vintage labels 3 and inked it while still in the die. I also wanted a black matt for it to sit on so I turned over my die and drew around it in white and then simply cut around it with scissors.

I mounted all the pieces on to the card on the right side mid way. I hand cut the verse into a tag shape to tuck under the edge of the main image. Then it was just a case of dressing the card.
I used some of the half Cotton reels and full cotton reels from Creative and they are so cute, I wrapped some twine around them and glued it with cosmic shimmer glue. I also used two of the metal corners and a wooden button with a clock print which I also threaded some twine onto.I found a antique gold colour scissors and used some spider webby stuff and some raffia to make the bow and put the scissors onto this with Pinflair.

Embellishments.

So Lastly you can see I made a little soft gold flower with the new die from the new Heartfelt Creations Majestic morning collection released yesterday and don't forget you have until the 15th to leave a comment on their blog  at heartfelt as I posted yesterday so you can be one of the 2 lucky people winning the whole collection worth $180 each. I also added some Little gold pearls on some of the corners. 

And the full view once again. 

I hope you enjoyed this step by step it took a very long time to blog it so you can imagine this would not be possible every day but I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 

Have a wonderful Thursday and I will see you very soon with more to look at and enjoy.

Please leave your comments below I don't know where you all disappeared to yesterday haha.. come back....

love and hugs.

Kim 

xxxx

Visible Image Sunday.

Hi everyone

Well I have had a wonderful Visible Image weekend playing with lots of inks and stamping and even some of my drawing has crept along into today's card.

Have you been getting your craft on this weekend, what have you made?
I have a pretty big card which is almost wall art to show you today I used the fabulous new stamp set 'Once upon a time' only launched a few weeks ago from Visible Image which I simply adore, I have been waiting to have a proper play before I used it so I could really get stuck in and I think you will agree I certainly did the right thing haha.
So here it is...

Now don't be fooled this is actually 9 by 8 inches big haha , but unless I start adding to the pictures you can't tell really can you haha.
This is very technique rich with the reflection in the water and the masking used to the blending in the sun to create a face rather than draw it in. I hope you like it and of course I like to know if you do.

Here are a few more pictures.

 I decided to curl the page back so I found some text paper and added a small piece under the corner and rolled the the image which I lined with some lemon paper to match the image and rolled it over the edge of the table to get a nice round edge.

 Here is my sunshine face and for the most part I created the shapes simply with different yellows and shading.

 You can see I used many masks here from the clouds to the hills.

Here you can see the reflections in the water quite well and the fabulous font which is simply one of my favourites,I love to have a go at most things as all of us crafty bunch do and one of those things used to be Calligraphy so I definitely do appreciate a really special font whe I see it and this is gorgeous.

Last Image.

Once upon a time...

So if you would like to have a go at this one please do but it isn't very easy to write about as I have hand drawn in the walls around the beautiful castle image so I thought this one may be better to save to do one of the first you tube videos once I get set up so I can actually show you rather than write it out but here are some simple ways to get started.

• I took a piece of card no particular size at this point but mine was A4 in white and super smooth not too thick, this was 210 gsm.
• I stamped my castle, the centre image in black archival. I also used London fog Momento ink (as it suggests its a grey haha) to stamp the reflection in the water or what would be water in the end. It is important at this stage to know where your sun or light source will come from so you know where your shadows and reflection in the water will sit.
• I masked off my sun. And set to work on te clouds with several Distress Inks in the blue family.
• I the set about drawing in the rest of the building and bridge and moat , drawbridge etc and then the next two hours I coloured in with a mix of promarkers and distress Inks in different areas to get different saturations.
• The last thing to colour was the water which some think would be the hardest but its the quickest bit but you can't do it til the end , for several reasons , and even as simple as I was leaning there all the time to work.
• Once everything was coloured I decided to roll back the corner so .. I added some lemon card to cover all the alcohol marker stains which always bleed through the page etc.And I wanted some old script type paper under wich I found in an old Theresa Collins pad of papers. I also stamped the lovely words in black and quickle covered in clear embossing powder and blasted to melt.
• Then I mounted the whole thing onto some lemon and blue cards for a warm sunny happy feel picture/card.

So you see even with simple instructions it was quite long but we will revisit it once the videos get sorted out and that will be fun to show you as well as tell you I think.

Here is the set from Visible Image so you can see the actual stamps I used.

So I hope you enjoyed today guys tomorrow I will show some of the cards left from the show and I hope you all enjoy , Have a great Sunday.

Love 

Kim 

xxxx

Oh Christmas Branch haha...

Good evening lovelies.
I made a nice little card with some Kraft cards sent to me with my Craftwork card goodies, so I made up another Christmas card for them! Of course I have to share it with you all to see if you like it and that I'm still on the right tracks.

I do love receiving your comments, as it's good to have another crafter's opinion too, I think! And also it keeps you grounded.

I just heard the sad news that Patrick Moore passed away earlier and it is very sad; he was a funny, eccentric guy but my late husband was a huge fan of his work so it's very sad. His family must be devastated at the loss so I want to pass on our condolences to his family. If you don't know who Patrick Moore was (have you been hiding forever?), he was a very clever scientist who had a very dry sense of humour and some, as I said, very eccentric ways, playing a xylophone on stage in said crazy manner was one of them, haha! But he was also a very nice man who found time to always help others too. R.I.P Patrick. My husband passed on the 14 Dec last year so maybe they are finally meeting up and having a chat now. Sad week ahead.

Now back to my little card...

• So i started with my Kraft card and cut out some red card for the base and the back pieces, sticking them on and setting them aside.
• Then cut an embossed swiss dot type card and rounded corners, and also inked edges to show up the dots and contrast with the red.
• I matted that on foam pads and onto a piece of checked paper from Craftwork cards Christmas pad, adding a small strip of American seem binding across the bottom before adding pads.
• Inside the embossed pad was some dye cuts of trees and birds etc so I took a tree x 2 and a circle to use as the moon and a long branch. I inked all pieces and added sparkle where needed and also punched out some circles from the sparkly gorgeous paper pad too for the baubles hanging from the tree.
• As this is going to be an Easel card I stuck my art panel to the base at this stage and attached my stopper which was a strip of card and a Happy New Year sign in gold and also and & sign as I new I wanted to have With Love at Christmas on the top piece.
• So I attached a piece of gold trellis to my dotty panel and then inked my moon with distress ink in chipped sapphire, a rich deep blue and covered it in a shimmery Sakura pan and water brushed it out to give a moonlight sparkle.
• Working on the tree next, I coloured 2 trees in gathered twigs and a coppery sakura pen, again water brushed out a little. The bottom layer I didn't fuss too much with but the top one I tried to have one side darker away from the moon etc. I stuck down the first piece then for dimension matted the next on foam and rounded it a little. The twig I mounted onto foam after colouring and added to the top of tree and in front of moon.
• I used a small piece of green ribbon in strips from the branch. and added a tiny tied piece to the top of 2 baubles I made from punch 1" circles out and mounting them onto a slightly larger piece of red card. I also pierced a small whole in each and added a jump ring and a tiny Chrystal that I added to a headpin and snipped off the excess. Some of the pics don't have the crystals and some do.
• I added them to the card and nice bow to the base of the tree with an iridescent sparkle in middle then I needed to dress the tree so I inked up some leaves and curled them added them randomly to cover the gaps in twigs and also I used some card candi in the Christmas designs to add to my tree.
• A Couple more stones and sentiment features and the last thing needed was a few flowers to the base and a leaf. 
• Et voila.... done. 

I hope your enjoyed looking at this one I sometimes wonder where these ideas pop in from! But I love the finished result, so I hope you do too.

Oh Monday again and back to work and dragging my heels. I really am not enjoying these cold, dark mornings and would love to ship off somewhere new to start a new career... Ahhh... the dreams, haha!
Have a great week guys!

Let me know your thoughts on jewellery items added to cards for movement... What do you think?

Out for now...
Kim xxx