Shiny Happy...

The latest challenge over at PartArtsy is Shiny Stuff - metals, mica, beads, wire, jewellery, paint effects, Treasure Gold, in other words, all things shiny, rusty or metallic.   This is waaaay out of my comfort zone but as my learning continues in the world of mixed media I've had a lovely time experimenting. I had some black cloud clay (goodness knows what I bought it for originally) and so inspired by Lin Brown's post played about with that and stamps, perfect pearls and tiny beads. The first couple of attempts were not great but the third one I was happy with - I couldn't decide what to do with it until I found an old wooden block that I'd removed the rubber stamp from (storage issues!!) and this is how it ended up -  

I stamped into the clay with a Stampendous stamp, added some holes for detail and roughed the edges a bit. I applied perfect pearls and then also added some gold leaf (applying a little glue first with my finger tip) and silver Treasure gold and finally some Ranger beadazzles around the edges. 

For the background to my clay piece I stuck a piece of sticky back canvas onto the wooden block and coloured with pumice stone and milled lavender distress stains, then ran picked raspberry and seedless preserve and touch of Treasure Gold (silver) around the edges.  I stamped the feather in Stazon 'ganache' (love this colour - just a bit softer than black) and added more shiny things ! The words are stamped in Stazon (yep Ganache!!) onto strips of silver card.  

This is so far outside of what I normally create and I've loved doing it !! Thanks for stopping by - Happy Crafting....Esther xx

Let it Snow...

.....well no not really - I know it's pretty but i'm in no hurry to have to battle the snow to get to work. But I have enjoyed being a bit creative with a snowy theme today. It's been ages since I've had time to browse through blogland but I did a bit of hopping this morning and found inspiration to try something a bit different. Brenda at Floral fantasies has a tutorial for these ornaments. Brenda uses DP, but I got out my inks and stamps and did what I do best - make an inky mess. I clear embossed Crafty Individuals snowflakes on half the pieces and coloured with Faded Jeans Distress inks. The other pieces I coloured with Tumbled Glass DI and stamped with Faded Jeans.

For the Centre piece I stamped a PSX snowman (The first Christmas stamp I ever bought and I still love it) onto a scalloped circle coloured with DI , added some colour with Promarkers and triple clear embossed over the lot.  On the final layer I sprinkled a little white embossing powder and love how it turned out - I think it looks a bit like floating snow. All I have to do now is decide where to hang it.

I'm sharing this here -

The Stamp Man - Create an Ornament

The Artistic Stamper - Christmas

Craft Your days Away - Snowmen

Moving Along with The Times - Last minute Christmas

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

Winter Wonderland - Let it Snow

My second make today was a simple card - having to do quick cards now as rapidly running out of time. Inspired by CAS-ual Fridays I made some snowflake masks, sprayed with Perfect pearls mist, then layered a sheet of acetate over the top stamped with white snowflakes , kept in place with brads.  

Hope you've all enjoyed the weekend  - Thanks for stopping by...Esther xx

An Inky weekend

 I received through the post this week some new stamps from Lavinia stamps - they are some of those gorgeous fairy stamps I have seen about and lusted after for some time. Well I had a little money left over from Christmas (thanks Mum) so in the shopping basket they went. Subsequently I have had a lovely inky play this weekend and made some things for a few challenges.

I really just made this up as I went along. Using Distress Inks I started with my brayer, continued with my Distress inks applicator and finished off with a  little cosmetic sponge! The stamps are a combination of Lavinia's stamps and  Hampton Art. I gave the whole piece a spritz with perfect pearls mist in perfect pearl  - (you can see how it's affected the DI ink on this pic but not the lovely shimmer it gives) and used a white pen to add some highlights. Oh and of course there is stickles on there too - black on the mushrooms and crystal on the fairy wings! So now for the challenges- The Artistic Stamper - 'Things with Wings', ABC  - 'M' is for Magical,

Also through the post yesterday I received this months Craft Stamper magazine and my next project involved pretty much casing one of the cards from within it's creatively brilliant pages! Using the Blended paper technique, (including a spritz of DI re-inker in Milled Lavender) I made this card -

 I've used my favourate colour (purple) to fit with this weeks Play Date Cafe Challenge which is a colour splash challenge. I'm also going to enter both cards over at Lets ink it Up - 'Anything Goes' and Stamptacular - 'whateva'.

I made this as an entry for Simon says Stamp and Show - childhood memories but missed the entry time by a few mins - I struggle with working out the time difference!. I've used script and music images for the background technique which represent my two biggest loves (other than crafting) discovered in my childhood and carried on through my life (hence the journey sentiment) Books and Music. I always had my nose in a book as a child and spent many happy hours reading - had even been known to walk to school with a book in front of my face! I also learnt to play the piano as a child - I can remember teaching myself a few notes while playing at a friends house who had a piano and then crazing my parents to learn.   So there you have it - bit beside the point as I missed the challenge I know but I'd put the work in so shared it anyway!

Talking of sharing I received a blog award earlier this week from Lynn (Spyder) who lives here. It's lovely to know people are interested in my blog especially when I've been pushed for time lately and haven't done as much visiting as I'd like. In accepting this Award, I should tell you 8 things about myself and then pass it on to 8 others. Well this post is already very long so I won't bore you further. I also realise that some people don't like doing the write about yourself and  pass it on thing, and there are so many fantastic blogs out there I'll just say thanks so much to Spyder and anyone who would like to take the award and pass on to others please do so!

Hope you've had a happy creative weekend - thanks for stopping by...Esther xx

CCC # 21 ...and it's only Monday!

 Wow..I can't believe I'm actually posting my entry to CCC 21 on the SAME day it opened...gotta be a first! This is such  great techniques though I just had to have a play straight away (and I had the day off work which helps!)..it's on P38 and if you've been under a rock somewhere and haven't come across this great challenge set by the lovely Linda at Studio L3 go have a look, now...go on...go...(but come back here after...!).  So this is my entry - a Gothic Arch, I love making these little arches and this will also be entered into the challenge on the Gothic Arch Challenge blog which is currently 'Baubles'. The large bauble stamp is one of my oldest and favourite Christmas stamps, by PSX , not sure about the little two. The pine branch round the outside is from Judikins Winter Botanical Cube and the tiny star is from Hero Arts.

it's really tricky to show the sheen of the Perfect Pearls but I managed to catch the gold over the red DI on the large Bauble in this pic below - as well as being able to see where the ink splashed as I was too heavy handed with the water spritz - still, it adds character I say, my version of the technique should be called imperfect distress! 

Oh and has anyone noticed the new banner on my side bar...have a look...right at the top under my profile blurb...oh I can hardly contain myself...I've been picked for the Stamp Addicts Design team..so excited... I hope they know what they're letting themselves in for!

Have a happy crafting week....Esther xx