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Showing posts with label Our Creative Corner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Our Creative Corner. Show all posts

Saturday, 7 May 2016

Encore - Time to Bloom

Encore Posts
Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook while I'm away.  Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

Hello!  Just another quick encore before you get something new on Monday - and I think Monday's project may take you by surprise!  But for now, here's a large canvas created as a Sponsor Spotlight for Our Creative Corner when I was on the team there.  This was to showcase our sponsor for that particular month, Tando Creative - so there are lots of their fabulous chipboard pieces involved.  Here's what I wrote back in April 2014.
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Hello all!  I've got a 12 x 12 canvas for you today...


... with lots of texture in the background, and lots of crackle...


... and dimension and words aplenty.


I started by coating the largest of the Tando clocks with Croco Crackling Colour by Viva Decor.


My crackling medium is actually white, so once it was all dry and crackled I applied Distress Stains in lots of colours from nature... starting with earthy browns at the bottom, working up through the leafy, grassy greens, to blue skies at the top.


I spritzed with water as I went to allow the colours to mix and blend on the surface.


I made sure I had the clock hands approximately in position (I generally go with ten to three - "And is there honey still for tea?") so that I could see where the colours needed to go, and gave them the same treatment.


They're fastened together with one of the Prima industrial effect brads.


I'd originally been thinking of creating some sort of hanging mobile but, when push came to shove, 
I realised it would be tricky to get the hands in the right place and so on.
So instead, I decided to mount the clock on a 12 x 12 canvas.  (That should tell you how big the largest clock is!)
You can see an early draft here... the untreated clock and flowers, with a plan to "hang" the clock on a "tree"!


In the end, rather than the tree bark paper, I used a piece of 7 Dots Studio paper from their 9th Wave collection as my background.  It already looked pretty good just as it was, but I decided to augment it with some actual texture.


I added pieces of lace and cheesecloth, and glued them down with multi-medium.


And I applied some texture paste through the Tim Holtz doily stencil in various places.


Once all that was dry, I applied gesso fairly roughly here and there...


... and then set to with some spritzing and spraying and inking.


I used partly Distress Stains which I'd put into misters (ED: before the days of Distress Sprays!)...


... and various other sprays including Dylusions, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists, and Ayeeda sprays from 13Arts.


I sprayed and dabbed and knocked back and sprayed again until I was happy that my added texture looked as though it was an organic part of the paper.


I glued the whole thing down to the canvas and gave the edges a good roughing up for texture and dimension.


Next it was time for the flowers...


Having created such a busy background, I decided the flowers themselves needed to be relatively simple and neutral.


I stamped the lovely SheArt Print Texture (by Christy Tomlinson, Unity stamps) in Coffee Archival...


... and did a little light inking around the edges, and then arranged the stems around the clock face, trying to make sure they balanced nicely.


The words arose out of the two Tando products in use - clocks and flowers... time to bloom, then.


They're stamped with my Hero Arts Playful Flowers letters...


... and inked and mounted on padded tape over the textured background.


The final step was to add some musical tissue tape around the edges of the canvas.  Never neglect the edges!


And I used the Distress Stains here too to tint the tape slightly to blend in with the main surface of the canvas.


So that's my Tando Creative Canvas for you.  I hope you like it.
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It's funny how some projects have stayed very familiar and immediate to me, and others I'd almost completely forgotten about.  This was one of the latter sort, so it's great to have it gathered in to the fold here at Words and Pictures finally... Now I might even remember its existence!

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and, as I said, I promise there'll be something new for you on Monday.

As long as we are persistent in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow.  We cannot choose the day or time when we will fully bloom.  It happens in its own time.
Dennis Waitley

Tuesday, 30 December 2014

For Auld Lang Syne




What with all the singing tags and ringing cards - I hope you haven't missed any of them! - it's almost New Year's Eve... a time of endings, changes and renewals.

As you'll have guessed from the fantastic influx of international talent, it's time for a changing of the guard at Our Creative Corner, and the Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas challenge in December was sadly my last hurrah.  If you haven't seen who's come to play in the Corner yet, then check out this post.










I couldn't just disappear without a word so I thought I'd share just a few of my Our Creative Corner creations as a thank you and farewell to Laura and the rest of the team, as well as to all of you who've played along and made Our Corner so Creative!


I won't send roses...








So here are some of my personal favourites inspired by the stimulating challenges set by my team-mates throughout the 20 months, and even one that was a Sponsor Spotlight creation.












Click on the captions if you'd like to revisit any of them, and clicking on the Our Creative Corner label at the foot of the post means you can catch every single one of my OCC projects!


Blissful Baubles










As you can see! I've had a very creative time in the Corner over the last year and a half or more, but lovely and unexpected opportunities which keep arising in my other life mean I need to create a bit more space and time in my world.










I'll miss my amazing team-mates, and I'm sorry not to get to play alongside the new wonderful new designers. I know that the New Year is going to be really exciting over at Our Creative Corner.  But from me it's farewell, and thank you, and let's not let auld acquaintance be forgot!


Let your heart fly...



Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Robert Burns

Monday, 1 December 2014

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas!

Hello all!  I've a mini-trio and a milestone for you today.  This is the 500th post here at Words and Pictures.  That seems worth celebrating, so how about a little butterfly giveaway

                                                                   UPDATE - The winner has now been drawn.
Thanks so much to everyone who joined in!

If you'd like to win this trio of ATCs (plus some of the little extras I can't help but include in a crafty envelope) just tell me so in your comment.  These have been created for Our Creative Corner's new challenge - more of that in a moment! - and now they could be yours.


So leave a comment saying if you'd like to go in the draw; I'll pop all the names into a hat and draw one out a week from today.  Hopefully, that means you would have them in time for Christmas.





Back to business!  You may already have caught my Nostalgic Christmas tag for the new Country View Challenges theme (the 499th post!), and now it's time to head over to Our Creative Corner.

I'm your host this month, and I'm looking for ATCs, ATBs and chunky ATCs.  That's right, it's time to Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas!  Hence my three winter festival creations here...











Once you're done with my trio, do head over to Our Creative Corner to see what my brilliant team-mates have created, and check out the rules and guidelines while you're over there.  You wouldn't want to miss your place in the prize draw, sponsored this month by Tando Creative.






Just in case anyone isn't already singing along, here's the divine Judy Garland to put you in the (slightly melancholy) mood.

I know I've linked to this before somewhere in those 500 posts, but it really is a strong contender for my favourite Christmas song (as opposed to Christmas carol - that race is much more competitive!) so I make no excuse for using it as the title and soundtrack to my whole challenge theme this month!





I started out with three of Tando's chipboard ATCs, thinking I'd like a fairly sturdy substrate in case things got heavy.  I started with some French Roast Fresco paint, a palette knife's worth of PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze and a coat of Chalk Fresco over the top.

Next up, some of the wonderful Artistic Outpost winter stamps (this is like my whole blogging life flashing before me... from DT to DT!), stamped in Potting Soil Archival ink.





I used a blending tool to apply more of the Potting Soil around the edges of the ATCs and then dipped them in UTEE.  I really loved the crystal glitter effect of the UTEE sitting there - yes, before I'd heated it! - so I immediately decided to go down a (for me) fairly unusual route and add some glitter.

The UTEE was already on there, so I had to melt that first.  Then I added some Ranger Sticky Embossing Powder over the top and scattered some of the Tim Holtz Rock Candy Dry Glitter onto it.







Generally, I'm happy to play with neutrals at Christmas, but somehow these weren't quite doing the job for me yet.  So, influenced by my recent workshops with Andy Skinner, I reached for the DecoArt Quinacridone Gold to add a rusty look.









On the ATC with the little cabin in the photo above, you can see the Rock Candy by itself, while on the fir trees I've already added the Quin Gold, seeping along the cracks.

I do like the combination of the rust colour with the crackled paint - it has that look of weathered paints tainted with iron oxide.










And I especially love it over the glitter.  The Quin Gold is translucent so you get to keep the shimmer.  Plus you get a really cool rusty texture.










I still wasn't quite happy, so I played around with washes of Raw Umber, Paynes Grey and Phthalo Turquoise until I got closer to the wintry look I wanted.














I'm very happy with the result - I think they have the look of paintings on old wooden panels, complete with the rusty nails to hold them in place.











Those rusty nail heads are created with one of Andy Skinner's magic recipes, and then punched out with a hole punch!













I did some shadowing around them, to make them look as though they've been there for years, rusting and tainting the "wood" around them.














I tore some pieces of Maja Designs It's Christmas Time paper, and added those, inked with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, as well as some baby pinecones and my favourite little wooden stars.












Nearly there... what else?  Ah... white splatter of course!  Yes, that's more like it.  And as I was splattering, I decided the pinecones and the stars needed to be properly snow-covered while I was at it.










So you have the stream running through the frozen woods...














... the tips of the pine trees in the thickest part of the forest...











... and the little house where, despite the deep snow and freezing temperatures, they will be keeping Christmas with warm hearts.









Oops... was that a touch of sentimentality there?  Sorry - it must be the half-millennium creeping up on me.

The 500th post seems a good time to say a huge and heartfelt thank you for the extraordinary generosity and warmth I've found here in Craftyblogland, not to mention the astounding inspiration available at the touch of a keyboard.








Giving away this ATC trio - plus some bits and bobs to go with it - is just a small token of my immense gratitude.  Do remember to say in your comment if you'd like to be included in the draw.  And yes, I will post to anywhere...

And once you've done that, hop over to Our Creative Corner and be blown away by lots of tiny festive creations from my team-mates.  We hope you'll have time to join us this month, with just a tiny ATC or ATB offering and Have Yourself A Merry LITTLE Christmas!










Thanks so much for stopping by today, and for all the amazing comments and feedback here at Words and Pictures over the last 500 posts. The journey would be a fraction of what it is if it weren't for all of you.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, 
Let your heart be light.
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.
From the song by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane










(Oh, and do check out my Country View Challenges tag too, if you've still got a taste for festive sentiment and nostalgia... Compliments of the Season to you!)

Happy Crafting all!