Hannah's Pink CJ- Queen of He-ART-s

Here is another entry for our UK Stampers' 'Colours' CJ. This is Hannah's lovely little pink book, and for once I decided to stamp directly onto the page, as the page colour was so delicious! I love pink, but don't use it in my work as much as I used to, despite having lots of yummy paper in that colour. Must remember to use it more often...

Colour: Dee Greunig Blending Blox (again!), Distress Ink, Glimmer Mist, Sharpies, Stickles, Versafine, Stazon
Stamps: Elusive Images (small 'art'), Limited Edition, unknown 'A-R-T' signing stamps, Tim Holtz (Grunge Alpha)
Other: Playing card, border punch/fancy scissors (used to create paper lace), cardstock-weight vellum for corner, Ranger Crackle Accents (used on A-R-T)

Sunday Challenge No11

Credit crunch?...........
It's all over the news and in the papers.
This weeks challenge is to create a little something using credit cards, well not you proper credit cards but gift cards, you can pick these up free from most places. Lets see what you can make with them!
Happy stamping

I'm sure this is a shock to anyone who comes here regularly, but I have done and photographed this week's Sunday Challenge a whole day before the new one gets posted! I am stunned, too :D. Dan has actually napped three times this week, leaving me time to get on with my crafting commitments. Don't ask about the housework, though, I'll do it tomorrow, I promise!

Colour: Versamagic, Versafine, silver ep, Stazon, Paint Dabbers, gesso
Stamps: Limited Edition
Other: gift card, old book page, coke-can metal, mulberry paper, sanding block.

I am fascinated with the look of etched metal at the moment. I don't have the time to experiment with a new technique (yet), so I decided to try and recreate the look by using silver ep on metal, then rubbing white paint into the depressions. For this piece, I also decided to use rust coloured paint, to give a more distressed look. I am quite pleased with the overall effect, and will definitely keep playing to see what else I can achieve.

Petra's CJ.

This is my first ever entry in someone else's journal! If you recall, I am in a circle journal with 9 other people from UK Stampers, and the idea is that we send a journal around with an unmounted stamp, and everyone does an entry with that stamp. Well, this is Petra's journal, and she has chosen a journal made of envelopes and tags. Each player decorates an envelope, then uses Petra's stamp on the tag. Petra's stamp is a sort of hippy-chick from Time to Stamp, quite a challenging one really! First of all, it made me think of 'Hair', then I started to think about 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' by the Beatles. Hence the colours etc! (Check out the 3rd photo for the lyrics if you need an explanation).
The envelope is covered in paper made using the usual water/craft mat/Distress Ink technique. The diamond stamps are by Limited Edition, and the swirl stamp is from Paperartsy. The 'tangerine tree' is done using stamps from Aud Design, and the 'cellophane flowers' are also Aud Design. They are yellow and green, coloured with alcohol inks, but didn't photograph well.
The tag inside was inspired by those star charts, which show the night sky as a join-the-dots picture to explain the constellations. After sponging on some distress inks, I used Field of Sky to stamp on my stars in silver, then used Petra's stamp with Versamark and clear holographic embossing powder. As you can see from the photo, when you tilt the tag the image of the woman becomes clear, tilt it back and she's invisible!
I'm up to my eyeballs in birthday cards again, I have three to do this week. Then I have a flurry in January, and that's it for a while! I think that in February I need to sit down and make a few, so I'm not always playing catch-up. But I did take the time to make some arty ATCs for UK Stampers. I got really inky and pricked my fingertips (I used hand-sewing on them!), but afterwards I felt really good. Sometimes you just need to go where your muse takes you, it's really therapeutic. I forgot to take photos, though, sorry!

UK Stamper's Jacob's Ladder swap.

Good old blogger! I knew it would put these photos on one above the other so I didn't need to mess around in Paint Shop Pro, stitching them together! This is my finished Jacob's Ladder for the UK Stampers swap. For those of you who don't know what a Jacobs Ladder is, it is a child's toy made of squares held together with ribbon. When you turn over the top square, all the other squares flop downwards in turn. And, thanks to Craft TV Weekly, this one does work! I will make a little matching box to store it in, but I wanted to show the photos now, as this is also going to be my entry for Wednesday Stamper, for this weeks open theme.
The stamping on the front is all done in various colours of Brilliance Ink, using stamps from Paperartsy, Crafty Individuals, Rubadubadoo, Anita's, Limited Edition, and PSX. The back is heat embossed in white and the stamps are Judikins (flower) and Rubadubadoo (butterfly). And just in case you can't read the phrase, it says "Live life free like a butterfly".
PS. The patterned paper for the base is from Fancy Pants, but the bit with the name is stuck down!

Think Monday, Think ATC- Faces.

I decided last night that, despite the presence downstairs of the wakeful baby, I would leave him under the supervision of his Daddy, and go into the dining room to stamp. I was getting withdrawal symptoms! I wanted to make something small, and so decided to go for it, and make something for the new challenge site, Think Monday, Think ATC. This week's challenge is faces, and so I have used my gorgeous new Limited Edition stamps, plus some old favourites.
I stamped the frame first, in Versafine, and masked it off before stamping the Hero Arts script. Then I did a reverse mask and stamped the Cherry Pie face. I watercoloured everything using Distress Inks in Shabby Shutters, Scattered Straw, Tattered Rose, and Weathered wood. I stamped on the Prima flowers (with the new stamps), and attached them with brads from my stash.
For me, that's pretty simple, and I got it finished just as Dan started to be ready for sleep!