Joy to the world - Swirlydoos

 
This is the first LO I made using my swirlydoos December kit. Krissy really did a fantastic job putting this kit together. It's my first swirly's kit and I'm absolutely delighted with my decision to sign up. I used the Bo Bunny range of pp's from the kit. I also made it for the Christmas LO with a regular pic challenge. The pic is of my youngest son Matt when he was about 6 months old.

I used this gorgeous vine from my stash that I bought from my dear friend Katie's etsy shop. I've been holding onto it for a Christmas LO. I just love all the bling she assed to this vine

I layered some pointsettia petals which I bought from iamroses.com. I misted them with some perfect pearls and some aged mahogany ink to get the right sde of red. The leaves were made from some clay which I painted green and sprinkled with some fairy glitter.

I cut this title lock from some of the pp in the kit and coated it with some clear UTEE which I then cracked when it was dry amd added some pearls and rhinestones.

SNR - Mini December issue now available

Great news!!! The mini December issue of SNR magazine is now available. If you haven't subscribed as yet then this is the issue to start with. It's packed full of lovely Holiday inspiration. There's a little something for everyone. Don't forget to check out the mixed media section.....this is one division that I'm absolutely falling inlove with. There are also some great holiday themed tutorials to help inspire you with your holiday home decor and paper crafting. So if you're ready to be inspired then check out the mag  HERE

~Baby Girl~

 

This is a picture of my DD Erin taken on Mothers Day this year. I just love her in red. Like most little girls she's usually in Pink from head to toe but occasionally she'll wear another colour and it's such a treat!!

This is a lift of one of my favourite artists Robin whose work I've always admired. All the embellishments have been handmade on this LO

I used the ribbon rose tutorial for this months ribbon and fabric twist for the DIY challenge I host over at sb.com. These are really quick and easy to make and although it may be tricky to get them started in the beginning, they super easy once you get the hang of it. I then placed the ribbon roses into a layered flower I made using black satin and chiffon.

I made some more of the brilliant Lisa Gregory's ribbon rose bud vines using red and black satin ribbon. I painted over the green floral tape with some Onyx Creative Imaginations paint. These paints are sooo gorgeous and the colours are beautiful and rich. The paints are also a lot thicker than shimmerz and really add a lovely finished touch to a project.

For the 3rd set of flowers I just twisted some strips of black chiffon around and the made coils with the twisted strips and then added some paper roses on top of those. I then layered the coiled blooms onto some red organza ribbon I had in my stash 

I then took some black UTEE and mixed in a little white perfect pearls which I them embossed these butterflies and the title chipboard lettering with. It has a beautiful shimmer to it IRL and a great way to revive some old dated chipboard pieces you may have in your stash.

I then thought it would be fun to play around with some modeling paste and made some distressed paper edges by randomly applying some paste and then brushing it out using a very small paint brush. I added some red acrylic paint to the paste before applying to the paper. I then randomly painted some onyx creative inspiration paint over the dried paste.

Tip - Making your own 5,6 & 8 petal flowers

For those of you who don't have all the fancy die cutters and punches but really want to make your own flowers, here's a tip on how to cut your own 5, 6 & 8 petal flowers ANY size and shape you want.

Step 1 and 2 are common for all 3 variants

5 Petal Flower

Step 1

Cut a piece of CS or PP into a square. The size would depend of the size you would like your flower to be.

Step 2

Fold the square corner to corner forming a triangle

Step 3

Find the centre of the base of the triangle and then fold the right corner over to the left at a 135 degree angle as shown below

Step 4

Fold the left corner over to the centre as shown making a 90 degree angle to the base

Step 5

Draw the shape of the petal you would like. For my example I did a distressed looking petal

Step 6 - Cut around your drawn petal and open the folds............Viola, a 5 petal flower!!



NOW FOR THE 6 PETAL FLOWER

Follow steps 1 & 2 as above and then move onto step 3 from here

Step 3 - Find the centre of the base of the triangle and fold your corners up at an angle to form a cone shape as shown

Step 4

Draw the shape of the petal you'd like and cut out with a scissors

Step 5

Open the fold and you have your 6 petal flower

8 PETAL FLOWER

Again, use step 1 and 2 from above and then follow from here

Step 3

fold the right corner over to meet the left corner thus forming a smaller triangle

Step 4

Take the top layer from the left corner and fold it up to meet the opposite corner

Step 5

Turn over and do the same on the other side forming a concertina fold

Step 6

Draw the shape of your petal and cut out with a scissors



Step 7

Open the folds and you have your 8 petal flower



Now how easy was that!!!!!! Hope you enjoy!!







Christmas Tag ~ UTEE and Perfect Pearls

So after browsing the net for some Perfect pearls tips and techniques I was in the mood to play around with some of my own. I thought it would be fun to combine some Perfect Pearls embossing with some UTEE. I wasn't up to making a full LO so I made this Christmas tag.

 I first created the bg by applying some aged mahogany and pine needles distress ink to my non-stick craft mat. I spritzed some water onto the ink and then layed the tag over that. I dried the tag with my heat gun in between layers. This is a technique taken from Tim Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities.
Once that was dried I embossed using my script stamp with some white perfect pearls. I then applied my Santa image over the embossed script bg and inked the edges of the image and tag with some walnut stain distress ink.

 Once all the ink was dry I added several layers of Clear UTEE over the entire tag sealing the image. After applying the third layer of UTEE I stamped into the UTEE with the same script stamp I used for the embossed image. Tip: Remember to apply some clear embossing ink to the stamp before you stamp into the UTEE to prevent it from sticking.

I used my dear friend Amarily's Pointsettia Tutorial for the bloom to add the final Christmassy touch.
The alphas are white Making Memories mini alphas which I painted one light coat of antique gold creative inspiration paint over and then outlined with some gold paint liner.

This is my first ever tag and I think I really like the idea of being able to play around with new techniques on tags instead of an entire LO.

SNR - Issue #11 now available

It's time for another issue of Scrapbook News and Review Over the next few weeks, SNR has a lot of fabulous things headed your way. In the meantime, check out the latest issue, chat on the message board, read some cool articles on the front page, and submit your artwork for our calls. You just might see your beautiful projects in Scrapbook News and Review Magazine!

Scrapbook News and Review - Announcement

I've been so crazy busy these last couple of weeks that I only just realised that I had completely forgotton to post about my EXCITING news!!!!! I am officially  a staffer at SNR ezine!!! For those of you who are not familiar with SNR, it's an online magazine filled to the brim with gorgeous eye candy to inspired scrappers of all styles, brilliant articles, honest product reviews (good & bad) and best of all some great tips and technique advice. SNR caters to scrapbooking, card making, stampers and recently added mixed media which is filled with exciting new ideas. There are also some fabulous new departments in construction which will be launched in the new year.

For those of you who love getting their work published or even for first timers who have always wanted to submit something but have been intimidated by the process, SNR has made it as easy as 1,2,3, to get it done. If you have some great Christmas crafts stashed in an album somewhere that you feel deserves a moment in the spot light then please pop along and check out the Holiday Sampler Calls due by November 1st. This could be your moment........

~ The Woodland Fairy ~

This is my DD Erin posing in the garden for her plant crazy dad....LOL! My DH is as passionate about our garden as I am about scrapbooking so everytime a new flower comes into bloom he has one of the kids pose for a pic around the flower. He's come up with an idea to make a calendar with all the pics he's collected which I think is a marvelous way for us to combine our hobbies. But for now I just used the pic to create this LO which was made for several challenges.

The first being the October DIY contest over at swirlydoos. As the host of the DIY challenge over at sb.com this challenge was just screaming out to me to join. The prize on offer is also fab (8 smooch spitz worth $36) so I just had to give it a bash. This is also my entry for the monochromatic and no pp's challenges over at sb.com.

Last but not least I also made this LO as an example LO for the October DIY challenge using all 3 twist options in the respective categories.

I used the same technique as in my "a rare moment" LO using only white cardstock, UTEE and distress ink to create all the bg pp's. This time I first embossed the white cardstock with some clear UTEE using my large elegant script stamps from Heartfelt creations. I then inked over the embossed image with some spiced marmalade distress ink. As you can see the white cardstock shines through the clear UTEE......cool, hey!
I used walnut stain distress ink for the layer between the orange pp's and water distressed the top 2 layers. I made a short tutorial for this technique if you want to check it out

The twist for the paper embellishment category for the DIY challenge was these marvelous Mountain Lilies By Amarilys. They are so pretty and Amarilys has done a easy to follow step-by-step tutorial. I used 3 cream coloured beads as my center.

 The twist for the ribbon/fabric category was these Ribbon Rose Buds by Lisa Gregory which is now one of my favourite tutorials.................what's not to love. I made these using 15mm ribbon. I then added some floral wire spirals to create a mini vine. The floral tape was a rather bright lime green so I used some chocolate shimmerz paint to cover the tape.

I had some cream coloured lace in my stash which I first randomly painted with some orange craft paint. Once that had dried I used some tattered leather glimmer mist. IRL you can see the specks of orange a lot clearer than you can in this pic.

Dusty Attic is fast becoming one of my favourite chipboard brands. The details on their pieces are just exsquisite. I used the Lamp post #4 (DA0152) for this project. I first embossed the chippie with some walnut stain distress embossing powder and inked over it. I then spiraled some mini rose buds I found at a local craft store around the lamp post and added some mini leaves from my Swirly Leafs stamp set from heartfelt creations.

TFL, hope you enjoy all the tuts as much as I did.

~ The Purest Love~

This is a picture taken of my cousin Tammy with her DD Lily-Anne recently while they were on vacation in Durban and visited us. This is Tammy's first child and as with all first time moms, she is completed inlove with her little angel.

I did this LO for a couple of challenges over at sb.com and must admit that I had a hard time with this one. I've become so addicted to making my own embellishments that I felt a little lost doing a LO using all store-bought items.............CRAZY, Hey!!!! .....LOL!

The colours for the October colour challenge were Brown, cream, burgandy and pink..........sounds delicious hey!!!! I think these work fantastically together. I used the pink and burgandy as accent colours only for my LO. For the October Round We Go challenge we had to use 3 circles on circles so I used a simple design of just layering my circles with a LOT of distressing. 

 

I also made use of these 2 adorable Dusty Attic pieces. I used the "rusted" technique from Tim Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities using the vintage embossing powder and distess ink.

I added bubblegum and caramel Shimmerz paint to some Prima Innocense flowers for a dusty pink finished look and then used some more of those great swirly leafs stamps from heartfelt creations. I used pine needle distress ink for mine.

This gorgeous vine is from my friend Katie's etsy shop. She makes the most divine vines and corner bouquets. The original vine had burgandy and white roses so I altered the white roses using shimmerz paints and spritz.

TFL.................



Tutorial ~ UTEE Embossed & Inked Background

I recently did a LO making my own bg using only white CS, UTEE and distress ink (post below this one) and have since been asked for more details by several people so I thought I'd do a quick step-by-step tutorial to demonstate just how easy it really is. I've checked the Ranger site for existing tutorials but only found those using the melting pot. This is obviously a much simpler way of using the product but has great end results.

What you need

Heating tool

UTEE (I used Ranger brand)

Embossing ink

Distress ink

Blending tool

Stamps

Cardstock

STEP 1

Stamp image onto carstock with embossing ink. For my demo I used an Elegant Script stamp. If you want your image to appear faded around the edges you can wipe the embossing ink off with a paper towel before stamping the image onto your carstock.

STEP 2

Liberally cover your stamped image with the UTEE. To demonstrate I made 2 examples using black UTEE on one and clear UTEE on the other

 

STEP 3

Dust off excess UTEE powder onto a craft mat or scrap paper. Pour back into container. Heat stamped image using a heat gun.

 

STEP 4

After the image has been embossed you can then go back and lightly emboss the corners of the cs. You will need to do this step 2-3 times until you get your desired look. Just take your embossing ink pad a lightly dab the CS. cover with UTEE powder, dust off excess and return to jar

STEP 5

Heat the UTEE on the corners, wait for it to dry (which should take only a few seconds), dab some more embossing ink, add UTEE powder and heat again. Repeat this until you have the finished look you want. For the "black" demo I embossed the corners heavily and for the "clear" demo I lightly dabbed the corner with embossing ink and sprinkled the UTEE to get a scattered look.

STEP 6
Using distress ink and a blending tool if you have, ink over the embossed image. You can use several different colours or a single colour of your choice. You'll notice that the CS colour on the clear embossed image will shine through. For my demo I used a combination of Aged Mahogany and Walnut Stain.

AND HERE IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT