Crafty Individuals Summer's Ball

Yes, I know, I still haven't shown you the end of the Rose Album yet... but I need to take a slight detour to meet a deadline!  Crafty Individuals, who make the most amazing stamp sets (amongst other things) have a June Challenge which closes at midnight tonight.  The theme is Summer's Ball, and the condition is that you need to use at least one Crafty Individuals' product.  

How fairytale appropriate that a Ball challenge should have a midnight deadline.  I came late to the party and, as is my wont with deadlines, I'm afraid I'm taking it right to the wire as usual - I can almost hear the clock striking! - but here's my contribution, a wall hanging... (there are some more detailed photos further on).  I hope you like it:

One of the wonderful things about Challenges is they encourage and inspire you to go in directions you otherwise might not.  For instance, I found this gorgeous sheet music cover for The Hippopotamus Polka ages ago online, and without this challenge, the chances are it would have languished in my Vintage Images folder for ever.  Occasionally, I'd flick through the folder, and it would raise the same smile it did the first time I found it, but it might not ever have come out to play.


But as soon as I read the words Summer's Ball, he popped into my head, and I started to plot how I might use him for the Challenge (bearing in mind I'd only 3 days to work it out!).

The choice of stamps was made for me - I have only one Crafty Individuals set so far, having succumbed to their gorgeous vintage perfume labels set.  I can remember being slightly disconcerted when I received it... 

In my newly-addicted crafting obsession, I hadn't realised that it would arrive with all the stamps on one red rubber sheet, and it took (a) some research to work out that I needed to back them on to foam (there are various options, but I used EZ Mount and found it really straightforward to use), and (b) some  courage to actually start snipping away at them.  

I gave myself a slight talking to: "Come on, do you call yourself a crafty individual or not, eh?" and made the first cut.    You can't rush it, as some are very close together (hurrah, say I, all the more room for more stamps!), but once you get going, it's really no problem.  And the stamps are utterly worth the extra effort.

I knew I wanted to use the four large labels.  My brain was still busy working out bottle-possibilities while I started stamping them on to smooth white cardstock.  I made the mistake of experimenting with colouring in the stamps with my Distress Markers, and once I'd done it once, there was no doubt in my mind that, again, it was worth the extra effort.  Here are a couple of comparisons for you... see what you think:  

The stamps are undoubtedly beautiful all in one colour, but it adds a little something when you mix and blend.

I say it was a mistake to try it - I only mean in terms of it taking longer, but what's lovely is  you become really intimately acquainted with the stamps as you do it.

And this one (probably my favourite) is splendid in Forest Moss, but when you add Bundled Sage, Dusty Concord and a hint of Black Soot, I think it really comes alive.








So, perfume bottles then.  I've been stashing little glass bottles at home for projects throughout the house clearing process, and had amassed a lovely selection (not all alcohol miniatures, since you ask, no).  Alas - they are all in the UK, and I'm in the Czech Republic!  When it came to making the cut for how much of my crafting stash and equipment I could ship over for the couple of months I'm here, the 3D collage stuff lost out.  So, now what...  I was going to have to go freestyle!  I decided I'd just have to (aagh!) draw myself some bottle shapes.


Firstly, I needed something to cut them out of.  Time to get messy!

I swiped some Bundled Sage and (a tiny bit of) Forest Moss from Distress Ink stamp pads onto my craft mat, and added a couple of drops of Peeled Paint Re-Inker (all Ranger/Tim Holtz - wow, I think that's the first time I've mentioned him today!), spritzed it all with lots of water and set about turning my white cardstock glassy.  

You can see the mess, and I think you can see the glorious sheen on the still-wet card.  Of course, as it dries some of that gloss disappears unless you're using glossy cardstock (again, not in my supplies here, bah humbug), so I gave it a couple of squirts of my homemade glimmer spray.  For more about that, have a look here.  I always have an extra bit of paper nearby to use up any leftover ink on the mat - waste not, want not.

Urgently in need of some sort of help, I focussed on the shapes of the labels to guide the bottle design.  In fact, I decided it would be best to do a trial run of the whole thing, so I deployed the discarded single-colour stamped images onto some plain card, and started sketching around them.  

It wasn't until I was done that I realised this tentative approach had a hidden advantage.  If we assume that I might want some bottles for the labels again at some point in the future (with some glossy cardstock to hand next time, please), I now have a complete set of templates to use, so I needn't go through all that drawing stress again!

Here are my templates on the left...





... and here they are on their respective "glass" bottles:

I did some shading down the right of each bottle to give a bit more dimensionality, and aged the labels themselves with some Old Paper Distress Ink.  It's got a greenish tinge, so tied in well with everything else that was going on.

As we're on colours, I should just point out that the whole colour scheme was dictated by my printer!  

The sharper-eyed amongst you will have noticed that my lovely Hippopotamus Polka was a beautifully aged sepia colour.  I'd probably have set off on another b+b scheme again were it not that the printer, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make the whole thing come out in a gentle shade of lilac.

After some gentle remonstration, couched in the kindest of terms, I decided that maybe the printer was right - this was for a 'Summer's Ball' after all... lavender and lilac might do very well.  Oh, the happy accidents of scrapping!

I knew music, flowers, leaves, ribbons and lace would all play a part, but as I started assembling the piece on my craft table, I felt it needed something more.  What could be more summery than a butterfly?  Sadly, the only 3D ones I had were in shocking pink, another cheapy bargain, but too big for the project with their double wings... time for some more altering.  


After my experiments with bookrings, I knew I could emboss onto metal, so I fished out my Wow Vanilla White and got to work with the Versamark Watermark stamp pad.

Pretty pleased with the results!  Though I was compelled to distress it with some Vintage Photo in the end, of course.






And here's the butterfly in situ, with my little music scroll (stamp - Pink Paislee, London Market; parchment - the leftover centre of the doily I used for the border)...

I was fairly happy with the thing overall, particularly how I was building dimension into it: the scroll working well, not only curled at the ends but also floating free in the middle; the butterfly's wings nice and perky; the smaller bottles on padded tape; the flowers sitting up nicely on the leaves (for more on how they're made, have a look here), but I was after something else.

I felt the need for some words to tie the thing together.  



Looking at the woman in the picture, she seemed so humorously resigned to the whole situation.  And he's so charmingly self-deprecating.  I toyed with a version of "If you could see him through my eyes...", but I wanted to bring in the perfume somehow too.  

In the end, I just let her speak to me, and put the result on to TH's Tattered Banners (I knew it wouldn't be long before he tipped up again): At least I know one of us smells lovely!

In this photo you can also get a closer look at the Memory Box treble clef die newly arrived from America (thank you, Simon Says Stamp, for your very reasonable European postage costs, and incredibly speedy transatlantic delivery to an addict needing her fix!).  

And finally, here are just a few close-ups so that you can get a really good look at those Crafty Individuals stamps:

So, that's it for now...

I hope you're all having a ball this summer, one way or another.  I'm really happy you've spent some time with me here, and I hope you've enjoyed the stages of this project.

It's always lovely to hear your comments.  In fact, why not join up and follow the site?  There's lots more to come, and some very unusual applications of scrapping supplies in the near future... Watch this space!

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Colours of the Rainbow Part 2

A quick recap - here's my mini album using Prima Fairy Belle and Paper Cellar Victorian Classic.  We're going to take a quick flick through the album page spreads.  If you want to see the cover embellishments in detail, have a look here.


With all these On the Edges lined up, I've entered this in the Allsorts Challenge "Any Die Will Do" this week.





In some cases, I've allowed the papers to pretty much speak for themselves - they're so lovely - with just a little inking/distressing to bring the edging into focus.   The Tim Holtz On the Edge dies offer lovely, decorative definition to the pages.  This one to the left is one of the two edges in the Brackets die.





Here you get to see both halves of the Scallops die, with the perforated one on the left page.  When they lie one on top of the other, the scallops are designed to line up perfectly, with the holes adding an extra dimension of decoration.
  
I've also added some stamping to the Paper Cellar paper on the left: the chandelier embossed in white; some extra text; and I used the lacy corner from the Pink Paislee London Market collection to create a matching semi-circular pattern on both papers.



I used the Brackets edge die again to create the vertical pocket on this page spread.  It echoes the edge of the page.  And I used the wavier bracket to add a border to the tag inserts I made for journalling.  


The stamps are from Prima's Nature Garden Collection, and the background text is also a Prima stamp.  







The little girl and the teacup are stamped in Black Soot Distress Ink rather than Archival, as I wanted that aged, vintagey look, rather than a pin-sharp image.


For the inking I used a blending tool to layer TH's Distress Ink in Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky.

There are some pages I altered very little, once I'd decided on the papers.  There is a little guest appearance from the Pink Paislee lace corner in this one... can you spot it?  I wanted to pick up the lace detailing and carry it over.






Other pages got a lot of attention before I decided I was happy with them:

This double page spread takes advantage of one of those happy accidents you encounter while crafting.      I was experimenting with creating my own misting spray.  I've got some with me, but nothing green, and scrapbooking supplies are pretty thin on the ground here in South Bohemia.  I did, however, have some Perfect Pearls mica powder, and a Bundled Sage Re-Inker (all Ranger/Tim Holtz), and a newly empty deodorant mister bottle!  



And I was actually doing all that for another project entirely.   I tried out the spray (on the gorgeous Tattered Angels Timeless Romance Glimmer Screen) and left it to dry while I carried on looking out papers and ideas for this album.  


When I brought the heart back to the table, I put it down without really paying attention, but when I looked, it was lying on this page saying, "hey, look, why don't you make a pocket out of me?".  So I did, adding the mirror image in Forest Moss using the matching Timeless Romance stamp set.






As well as the little hearts, there's a tag for some journalling bundled together in this little collection.  It's very plain and simple: just a small size luggage label that I've inked with vintage photo.  The hearts are diecut from the seedling pots Ive mentioned before. 











I stamped them on the lovely canvas-effect side, using Sepia Archival Ink with the London Market set from Pink Paislee, and inked the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. 








I edged the reverse with the TH Vintage Photo too, where you can see what I mean about the gorgeous, knobbly texture of the outer side of the pots.











In case you're not sure what I'm talking about with the seedling pots, here they are.  They were only 25Kc (Czech Koruna, or Crowns) for 18 pots... that's about 75p, or just over a dollar), and I'll get plenty of use out of them... so many crafting possibilities!




I'll share the remainder of the album with you soon... more ideas and discoveries to share, but I do have to spend some time on my Czech, or I'll be for ever stuck with standing and pointing in the shop, instead of being able to ask for my seedling pots by name!

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.
Confucius

Colours of the Rainbow

Finally, as I promised you, some proof that I do have colours other than blue and brown on my palette!  Here's my Rose mini-album:

I also want to start showing some of the new techniques and possibilities I'm discovering every step of the way.  

This is a 6x6 album, with the front and back covers made of heavyweight chipboard, and the internal pages based on lightweight kraft cardstock.  The papers for this one are partly from Prima's Fairy Belle 6x6 pad (gorgeous!), and partly from Paper Cellar's Victorian Classic 6x6 pad. 

I found the Paper Cellar pad very much reduced in The Range one day (I guess it's sort of as close as we get in the UK to Michael's but, from what I read about it, oh, how I envy the American crafters having Michael's!), so I bought two or three books of it.  They're nice shabby chic designs in fairly neutral colours, but with plenty of scope for me to get creative dressing them up, as you'll see.  This is one of them on the cover, with additional inking round the edges.

The metal corner edgings were one of my e-bay bargains.  I'm sure you'll spot them coming up again somewhere down the line.

I added some mixed ribbons and strings to the binding rings, some lace ribbon across the centre, and then the silky rose in the corner.  It was originally white (part of a very cheap bridal set, from the same place as the ribbon... the Czech Republic may not do much scrapbooking, but they do do white weddings), so I used my Tim Holtz Distress Markers on it.  

The rose is backed onto some die-cut distressed florals I got on e-bay, cut out of kraft card.  I used pale acrylic to get a matte background, and then inked the colours on, again using the markers to get the detail of veins on the leaves and petals.  Over the top of that I painted some Rock Candy (clear) Distress Crackle Paint, 
and left them to get on with crackling.

I mentioned in the last blog that I'd been playing with the TH On the Edge dies... well, here they come in to their own, I think.  Page by page, different edgings reveal themselves (though I've not got a full set yet, so there are some repeats!).


I love how you get a tantalising little sneak-peek of what you're about to get and, most of all, I like letting it fall open like this, so that you get a sense of the whole paper collection in one go.


Next time we'll take a closer look at the page spreads, and some of the detailing I've been adding to get the Paper Cellar designs to reflect the Prima ones they're being used with.


Thanks so much for dropping by... there'll be more very soon!




I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Lousia May Alcott

Brown and Blue Mini Album

As promised/threatened...


This is a mini-album I made some time ago using the BoBunny Weekend Market papers (some 12x12, some 6x6), with some of the Papermania Persimmon collection intermingled with them.  I think they mix and match together well; and of course they fulfil my passion for brown and blue combinations.


I'm sure many of you will recognise the structure: it's one of the toilet roll mini-albums.  There are lots of great tutorials on youtube, and that's where I first picked up the idea - crafting and recycling simultaneously, what's not to like?



It wasn't until I was nearly finished that I realised I had only silver book rings - no use at all for this brown and blue affair.  And I haven't yet started to dabble in alcohol inks, though from what I've seen and read online, it seems that would be a way to re-colour metal.  So I tried an experiment...


My sister-in-law had passed me some copper embossing powder which she had no use for, so I pressed my book ring into the Versamark Watermark ink pad, scattered on the powder, and heated away.  (I was, of course, very careful to wait until it cooled before I went anywhere near it again!)  I did the same on the other side of the ring, and had a beautifully shiny copper book ring for my efforts. Would it open and close though?  Or had the embossing sealed it for evermore?  Well, as you can see, it still works perfectly well.  Sadly I've now no excuse to go ebay-shopping for differently coloured book rings - bah!

Obviously, all your sizings are going to depend on the brand of toilet paper you use, as the rolls inside do vary quite a bit in both length and diameter, but having gathered and flattened a good collection of rolls, I found that for a "5-roll" album, I only needed one sheet of A4 medium chipboard to make the front and back covers as well as all the tabs for inserting into my toilet roll pockets.




I like to have matching or complementary double-page spreads as you turn the pages.  With five rolls, you get six 'spreads', plus the front and back covers, to showcase lots of the paper collection.  The main difficulty for me is that working with such lovely papers, it's hard to remember to leave room for photos and journalling! 

It always seems a shame to cover up the papers themselves, so I try to incorporate "blank" spaces, either on the pages or on the tabs, using plain cardstock.  I ink, or stamp, or edge the cardstock to match whichever papers I'm using for that page, so that there's somewhere for personal additions.

I was also using this project to experiment with my new Tim Holtz On the Edge dies - the Scrollwork (on the chintzy blue page, left) and the Brackets (on the chintzy golden-brown, below).  I like that with the brackets you get a 'top and bottom' when you cut, so that you can use both edges.  







Can't quite do the same with the scroll work, as it's so detailed; but I was really pleased with how the vine border stamp (from a set by Recollections) fitted in to the scheme on the blue page. 






There's another border from the same set visible in this close-up to the left.  The vertical borders on the page and tab are from within the BoBunny Weekend Market Stripe page, and the horizontal borders are the stamped version.


Well, I did promise we'd be moving on to include some other colours soon, and we will; but it's interesting that over the last few days as I've been writing these posts, the only crafting I've been doing has been all brown and blue... it's like a spiral of b+b creativity.  I'll share some of it later on (after we detour in to the rest of the rainbow for a while), because I think the work shows the trajectory of what I'm learning.  


Each project moves on from the one before.  This album was an early effort and, while I do like its simplicity, I've since discovered so much more of what's possible by reading the blogs and watching the tutorials of the massively talented and prolific crafters out there.


I know I'm only a beginner, but I'm having so much fun... and I'm determined to keep getting better.  Thanks so much for joining me for at least part of the journey.  Hope to see you back here again soon!


A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-Tzu

Brown and Blue Too/Two

Starting with the completely brown...
... so it should qualify for this week's Simon Says Stamp challenge, 'Something Brown', I think, and for the Everybody Art Challenge, 'Monochromatic Brown'.


I made this for my first web challenge, for a Czech site, prettypapers.cz (I'm in the Czech Republic right now, setting up some strands of life here, and starting to learn the language).  I struggled for a while to work out what they meant by "Liftovani" as the theme.  More seasoned crafters than me will spot that they were working with the idea of 'lifting' and adapting an existing page template.  The examples on the page were pretty clear, though, with each of them using this three-by-three pattern.  


The other condition was 'sewing' - which, as yet, I'm afraid, I simply don't do!  I thought threading the panels together with raffia, rather than sticking them down, was an inspired version of sewing (especially as they're prepared to accept marker pen 'stitches' as qualifying), and I love how it gives the panels a higgledy-piggledy dimensionality.  But then, just in case, I added the buttons.  Even though I used to put my skirt hems up with double-sided sticky tape, I'm happy to say I can at least sew on a button...




The pale cream card is background-stamped with Kaisercraft's text stamp, and both it and the Kraft panels are inked with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo Distress Ink, sometimes with a touch of Tea Dye and/or Walnut Stain added for extra colour depth.




Apart from dividing up TH's LoveWishDream stamp on to three individual panels, the other stamps I've used come mainly from the Pink Paislee London Market set, which I love - and it produces such clear, sharp images.  There's a BoBunny one hiding in there too and, I think, one 7 Gypsies bird.  Tiny paper flowers, inked to complement the card, finish off the raffia strings.



Then add some blue...


While I was hunting out the buttons, I found the crunchy wax paper I'd ordered from PaperArtsy, which set me off on another blue and brown odyssey, playing around with how it held an image compared to other papers... which led me to this:   







The image I was playing with is by Tim Holtz (yes, again... I'm going to pursue the TH abbreviation quite often, if it's okay with you, because it's a name which will come up a lot) - the photograph memories one, which I love, even though it seems slightly melancholy to me.



I think the combination of the era of the picture with the serial numbers makes me think of displaced families in wartime - refugees seeking a new home, as in my own family heritage.  I think that gives it a real sense of character and history though, adding layers of meaning to the layered papers, I hope.







The main image is on plain white cardstock, inked; and then on the wax paper, crinkled afterwards; and finally on some crinkly tissue paper - all three using Archival ink in either black or sepia. Each of the background images becomes more ghostly (quite hard to see at all in the photos, I'm afraid), which adds to the sense of the disappearance or loss of the children.


The background wallpaper (from Prima's En Francais pad) is also frayed, torn, inked (charred?) - signs, perhaps, of a deserted, abandoned home. The travel label, with grids and authorisation stamps, offers at least some reassurance:

Not all who wander are lost.






I enjoy the little bird a lot; he offers some hope of escape - he can fly away home.  And he's on a die-cut heart, symbol of love.  But what I like most is what he's printed on... 


I spotted some of those little seedling pots made of rough brown heavy-duty card in a bric-a-brac store, and thought, "I can use those!".  This is the reverse (inner) side of the pot, and it gives a fantastic canvas texture.  The outside is even chunkier, all lovely and knobbly.  You'll get to see what I've been doing with that in future posts, I'm sure.

So I still haven't got round to showing you the Brown and Blue mini-album I promised in the last post... no time now - there's football to watch - so you'll just have to come back again some time. 


And for those who may be starting to worry that I only know about brown and blue, there will even be (shh, whisper it) other colours arriving soon...


Thanks so much for dropping by, and have a lovely time with the rest of your day.


Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead