Cheeky

This month at Show Us Your Stuff the challenge is a sketch. I wanted to do create a card or a journal page because I just don't do layouts, but in the end I gave in and created one.

I kept putting off creating it as I just had no idea what I was going to do. Then I had no choice but to leave it till the end of the month as we had a huge rain fall that according to the news it was a 1 in 100 year storm and the rain came in the window of my creative space. I then had to empty a lot of my stuff out first to dry the carpet, which lucky didn't take long and then while it was all out I decided that I really needed to go through it all. Stuff has be either thrown out, give to my children's school for art or kept. I still haven't completely finished but i am certainly a lot happier with the way things are organised.

Ooops got a little side tracked there, sorry about that. Getting back to the challenge, I really am very happy with how my layout turned out. My hand made item would be the journal circle which was very simply die cut and the edge inked. I did colour the stars and heat emboss them which changed the chipboard.

The sponsor for this challenge is Rainbow Splendour please pop on over and say hi to Chloe and her design team. The robot and rocket ship can be purchased from there.

I hope that you are inspired by the sketch and enter the challenge.

Products used: die cut circles, orange thread, chipboard stars, whipped spackle, decoart stencil - short circuit, distress inks - festive berries, mowed lawn and salty ocean, ranger embossing powder, lindy's stamp gang magical - freaky franken-lime, faber-castell - fine pitt pen black and big brush deep scarlet red.

Happy Creating

I Have Been Keeping a Secret

Since the end of November I have been keeping a secret and I am now able to share it and I am really really excited.

I have been lucky enough to join the design team for the challenge blog Show Us Your Stuff.

Show Us Your Stuff is a blog devoted to all things Handmade. You can enter a layout, project life page, card or Off The Page but it must have at least one handmade or hand dyed embellishment.

Shall I share with you the first challenge of 2016?

This mood board is so gorgeous, so much inspiration can be had. What caught my eye was the red and white umbrella, the sand and the blue of the sea.

And this is what i turned that inspiration into

I had so much fun creating this card and it actually turned out the way I pictured in my head and that doesn't happen very often.

Products used: Art Basics - Heavy Gesso,  Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen big brush - Cobalt Blue, Nougat, Deep Scarlet Red, Faber-Castell Gelato - Blueberry, Cotton Candy, Snow Cone, Silver Ice, Faber-Castell Glass Bead Glitter Gel, Lindy's Stamp Gang Magical - Cafe au lait, Tim Holtz - Idea-ology Small Talk. Everybody has there favourite adhesive mine is Express It TripleTac Glue.

My hand-made embellishments are the umbrella that I drew and fussy cut out of corrugated cardboard and then painted white with gesso and red with my big brush pen. The thongs are are hand drawn and cut out using cardstock then I found a piece of patterned scrapbooking paper to give it the pattern.

Please remember to follow the link at the top of the post to visit Show Us Your Stuff to see who else is on the amazingly talented team and to find more inspiration for the gorgeous mood board.

Happy Creating

Where Flowers Bloom

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a friends place for a creative play. I had no idea what to take so I did ask for some advice from a group on fb and the suggestions were fantastic but I still was confused. In the end I took pre gessoed timber boards, most of my stencils (and I have quite a few), gesso, a few stamps, heat gun, printed tissue paper, embossing powder and my gel medium.

I really had no plans of what I was going to create. In the end started creating a back ground and an idea started forming in my head.

This was the background I created at my friend's place and below is the finished piece.

Happy Creating

May Challenge at Off The Rails Scrapbooking

Does the mood board above make you want to create? I know it did with me. I love the fact that with mood boards/colour palettes, you don't have to been inspired by everything on it. Take the things that inspire you and run with it.

This month I used the colours, the timber and the saying to create my art journal page. We are our own worst critics and the saying reminds us that there is enough people out there criticising what we do that we don't need to do it to ourselves.

If you would like to see what other members of the Design Team at Off The Rails Scrapbooking create please click HERE.

Happy Creating

Creating Texture

I love playing with stencils, in fact I think they have become an addiction, but I wanted to create texture on a canvas background with out them. So I assembled the following products on my desk to see what I could create.

Finnabair Art Basics 3D Gloss Gel - Transparent

Golden Fluid Acrylic - Titanium White

Derivan Matisse Flow - Bleached Titanium

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist - L.E.D. Red

Limor Webber Designs Lindy's Stamp Gang Flat Fabio Spray - Pop Rock Purple

Faber-Castell PITT artist pen big brush - Pink Madder Lake

Faber-Castell PITT artist pen big brush - Magenta

Faber-Castell PITT artist pen big brush - Manganese Violet

Tim Holtz Adirondack Alcohol Ink - Cool Peri

3 10cm x 10cm x 3.3cm canvases

Using my plastic paint scraper I quickly scrapped some of the 3D Gloss Gel on all three canvas. I did it quickly as I did not want them to be the same or perfect. I wanted the bumps, the missed bits and the thin bits.

I picked up two of the canvases and pressed them together. I held them in one hand while I pushed the canvas from the back with my fingers . I then slowly pulled them apart and this amazing texture began to appear. Wondering how I was going to get that texture on the third canvas I again quickly used my paint scrapper to smooth out some of the gel so I could press the 2 canvases together.

Once I had texture on the canvases used my heat gun to dry the gel. At this stage I still had no idea what I was going to create on the canvases as I really was just playing. As I was drying them on two of the surfaces I could see a flower, the third was still a mystery.

Now that the gel was completely dry it was time to use my white paint and a very fine angled paint brush to create the edge of my flower. You can use a grey lead pencil to draw your shape but I found it easy enough using my paint brush. To create the flower I just followed the textural lines made by the gel.

Using the white paint i could clearly see my flower shape, leaving the inside of the flower alone, using my fingers i spread white paint around the rest of the canvas. Taking the top of my Pop Rock purple and L.E.D. Red I used the end of the tube to paint with. I coloured in my flowers, making some parts darker than others. Drying the sprays to speed up the process, and then adding more colour on top. Happy with the coloured sprays I used I them started adding different colours with my PITT pens.

The middle of my purple flower was coloured with the glimmer mist and the middle of my red flower was coloured using my alcohol ink.

The final step was using my fingers to add some unbleached titanium to the canvas.

Dont be afraid to play with your products, use them different ways because you never know what you could end up creating.

The colours I used came from the current challenge at Off The Rails Scrapbooking.

Happy Creating

Card Tutorial

Today is my turn to share a tutorial on Off The Rails Scrapbooking blog.

Sometimes I struggle to think of what to share but this month was easy. I want to share with you how I created my card for the current challenge over at Off The Rails Scrapbooking

If you click on current challenge above it will take you to the blog and you will see that the challenge is a mood palette. The colours are yellow, black and white. These three colours are not something that i have worked with together before so I did have to do a little bit of thinking, ok to be perfectly honest I had to put a lot of thought into.

I first created not one but two different art journal backgrounds. Both of the backgrounds were created using water, Lindy's Stamp Gang Spray and Archival Black Ink.

I didn't like either of them and I couldn't see where they were going. So I did something that I would normally not do, I torn them into strips. It felt really good to.

Now that I had ripped the pages into strips, what was I going to do with them? Currently I am cutting 300gsm water colour paper into 8x8 squares for my journal pages, but I needed something a little more robust to support the strips. So I decided to use my mixed media paper that is (I think is the same gsm) stronger and doesn't warp for the support. As you can see below there is no rhyme or reason where strips went, they are not all the same length or thickness. To glue them down and have a clear coating over the top I used my X-press It Triple Tac Glue. I use my Triple Tac for everything, from attaching paper to metal embellishments and everything in between.

Once I had completely cover the strips with the triple tac I then used my heat gun to dry it. There were two reasons for this. The first is that I am impatient and wanted it dry immediately and the second is that when drying it I could create more texture by causing the glue to bubble and leave those magical little lumps. In the photo above you can see them if you look closely.

When finished drying and creating texture I then used my paint scrapper to apply some gesso. Again I used by heat gun to dry the gesso, but not completely as I wanted to rub some of it off.

I decided that although I had a lot of texture I needed more colour so I found my Sunshine Yellow Alcohol Ink from Tim Holtz and while gently squeezing I ran the bottle across the top of my page which I was holding on an angle to let the ink run down my page.

The paper has been through a lot but I haven't finished with it yet. Using my nail I scrapped it down the right had side causing bit of the paper to come away and then I carefully remove a strip of paper from the left hand side of my card. I then applied more gesso with my scrapper and wiping away the excess. Finally finished and stopped to look at my background and reminded me of weathered painted wood.

The final step was to add my gorgeous flower, some muslin and thin black ric rack. All attached with my Triple Tac Glue.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Creating.

Happy New Year

Today is the first day of the New Year, looking forward to the new memories, spending time with family, friends and what ever else this year will bring.What am I doing today, spending it at home and enjoying the peace and quiet as my family has gone away camping in tents and I am just not a camper. When I go camping I need a proper building, plumbing, electricity and a proper comfy bed.

It is also the day for a new challenge at

 Off The Rails Scrapbooking. 

As much as I love this mood palette it threw me in a spin as black, white and yellow are not colours that I would normally choose to work with.

I started two journal pages and I did not like either of them so in the end I combined two things that I love doing - card making and mixed media.

If you would like to see what the rest of the Design Team created please follow the link above.

Happy Creating

Do You Have a Favourite Shape?

I never knew that I had a favourite shape but it seems that I do.

When I am working with circles I go to my happy place and something comes out the other side that I love. What is your favourite shape?

Below is an Art Journal page that I created for my turn today on Off The Rails Scrapbooking. If you would like to follow my process and how I created it please follow the link (here).

Happy Creating

Watercolour Background

Have you ever created a background that you loved so much that you had no idea what to embellish it with. Well that is what happened with this card that I designed for the new challenge at Off The Rails Scrapbooking pop on over to the blog to see what the rest of the talented design team created.

The challenge was to use the colours from a mood palette. I found this extremely challenging as it was a mix of colours that I would not normally put together. But it works.

For this card I used all Stampin' Up products :

Inks - So Saffron, Blackberry Bliss, Tangerine Tango, Wild Wasabi and Hello Honey

Stamps - Itty Bitty Banners, Four Feathers and Off The Grid
Punch - Bitty Butterfly.

Thank you for coming past and Happy Creating.

Dollie, a Paper Flower and A Heart

What does a dollie, a paper flower, and a chipboard heart all have in common? 

They are on a new page of my journal.

To find out how I went from here 

to here pop on over to Off The Rails Scrapbooking

The quote I used is a little hard to read but it says

'Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable'

You still have 4 days to enter into the current challenge on the blog

Happy Creating

Dont Follow - Leave a Trail

It was my turn to share on Off The Rails Scrapbbooking blog today. Please pop on over to see what other projects that the amazingly talented Design Team has created. Every day there is something new.

Sometimes things just come together without much thought and this is one of those times. Using my Golden Fluid Acrylics, left over pieces from previous projects and my Faber Castell Pitt Pens I created a new page for my Art Journal.

Happy Creating

Paint and Hessian

It was my turn to share on the blog at Off The Rails Scrapbooking and I wanted to try something that was different for me. This included using paints and hessian to create a mixed media card. My colour palette was chosen for its simplicity, as I didn't want my card to look too messy.

I might just have to find something else to create with the rest of the hessian, as it is quite effective as a background. Will have to put my thinking cap on.

Happy Creating

Blue and Gold

Today is another reveal day on the blog at Off The Rails Scrapbooking. The theme this month is a stunning Mood Palette. 

Now with a mood palette you use what ever catches your eye. What stood out to me was the bright blue, gold and feathers, but I only ended up using the blue and gold.

For this challenge I combined two of my favourites things - cards and mixed media, and of course I had to put a butterfly in there somehow.

Please don't forget to pop past blog for more inspiration.

Happy Creating

Up Up and Away

I know it has been awhile since I have posted anything, so thank you for still being here.

The challenge at Off The Rails Scrapbooking is Up, Up and Away. The first things that always comes to mind are butterflies. Butterflies are one of my favourite things.

I was asked to create a card for a friend and it fit this theme perfectly.

Would love to see you enter the challenge, so many possibilities with the theme.
Happy Creating

Stencils and Masks

I love playing with anything that is messy, in fact my hands are still purple and blue from creating the layout for this fortnights Off The Rails Scrapbooking challenge. We had to use stencils and mask, you can do so many things with them. 

The first stencil I sprayed Heidi Swapp Colour Shine through. It is there in the back ground (tiny rectangles) you might have to look closely. The other one i used my Stampin' Up ink and moved the stencil around the layout for my butterflies.

The sponsor of this challenge is 

http://www.darkroomdoor.com/Blog

And this is the prize that you could take home

Happy Creating

Off The Rails Scrapbooking Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you have fun on the blog journey. This hop will take you to many wonderful and talented designer's blogs.

Now for the all important part, what you have to do to play along. Each of the designers have chosen their favourite embellishments. You need to create a layout, card or mixed media project using four of those embellishments. Once you have created your project you will need to link it to the

Off The Rails Scrapbooking Blog

Within the post on your blog you will need to highlight which four embellishments you have used and the designers whose favourite embellishment it is.

1. http://offtherailsscrapbooking.blogspot.com.au/ 

2. Narelle Fasulo - http://www.enchantedcreationsnf.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/my-favourite-embellishments.html

3. Deena Otway - http://deezignerpapercraft.blogspot.com.au/
4. Erin Manz Reed - http://scraps-of-reflections.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-scrapbooking-blog-hop.html
5. Diana Rivero Gonzalez - http://itsmylifeandimscrappingit.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-scrapbooking-blog-hop.html
6. Carol Theng - http://www.carolpaperie.blogspot.sg/2014/03/off-rails-scrapbooking-blog-hop.html
7. Gayle Gordon - http://baggiesplace.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/hello-and-welcome-to-off-rails-scrap.html
8. Fiona Paltridge - http://pastichescrapbookstudio.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-blog-hop.html
9. Felicity Wilson - http://herhand.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/blog-hop-otr.html
10. Sue Plumb - http://soupie75.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-blog-hop.html
11. Rose Andrew - http://www.cardsforallreason.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/memories.html
12. Jelissa Mei - http://jelibeanz.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/blog-hopping-fun-with-off-rails.html
13. Wendy O'Keeffe - http://scrapbookingandmixedmediabywendy.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-scrapbooking-favourite.html
14. Catie Kennedy - http://www.catiescraftcorner.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/off-rails-bloghop.html


Would you like to know what my favourite embellishment is? I will share my layout that I have create and then tell you.

My favourite embellishments are buttons. I don't think it is an obsession but it could be close I have 5 huge jars of them. For this layout I used wooded buttons that I sanded to take the varnish off and then coloured them with Dylusion - Melted Chocolate.

Off The Rails Scrapbooking is lucky enough to have Graphic 45 as the sponsor of the hop.

Graphic 45 i an award-winning scrapbook and paper crafting company. We offer vintage inspired crafting products that capture the flamboyant style of the 1920's and 30's - with vibrant colour, irresistible texture and imaginative design to create products with decades-old appreal that's both fresh and familiar. Let our products inspire your next scrapbook layout, card, album or home decor project.

To be in the running for the Graphic 45 prize you must follow Off The Rails Scrapbooking Blog and all of the designers blogs. Please leave a message on each of the blogs so that we know you have been for a visit.

Thank you for hopping along with us, cannot wait to see your finished design.

Happy Creating

It's All About Bling

I have struggled lately, well since Christmas to find my creative side. Two and a half months is a long time and to only have created a couple of pieces, it makes me a little sad and to have a lot of doubt in myself and my journey.

The current challenge at Off The Rails Scrapbooking is all about Bling. So the piece I created was something for me. I can hang it on the wall in my creative space and look at it and believe.

If you would like to see more from the Design Team at Off The Rails Scrapbboking then please visit the blog as they have all worked so hard and created some amazing pieces.

The sponsor for the challenge is Close To My Heart, would love for you to pop over and say Hi, either at their Etsy store or facebook page, links below.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/hobbiesfromtheheart

https://www.facebook.com/hobbiesfromtheheart?fref=ts

Happy Creating

Background stamps

Have you ever been looking for the right background stamp and just could not find it well why not create it yourself. All it takes is for you to let your imagination loose and use what ever you can find. If you want to see the full tutorial please head on over to   Off The Rails Scrapbooking.

The photo above can use see those annoying thin stringy bits of glue well I have a little secret that I am going to tell you of how to get rid of them.

Once your hot glue is dry blast them with your heat gun and they melt away like magic, see the after photo below. No stringy bits.

So after this success I got to thinking what else do I have in this room of mine that I can create another background stamp with. I opened up my cupboard and one of my huge jars of buttons caught my eye (I have 5 jars of button, it's not an obsession really it's not).

I decided that I was going to use two different coloured inks on my buttons and this is the result that I got.

All these ideas are buzzing around my head now. 

Next time you are looking for a background stamp why not try and create one of your own. 

Happy Creating

Inner Child

When we were kids we loved to colour, but as we got older that favourite past time was push away. Well I went back to my inner child and learnt how to colour in a more adult way.

Scrap It With Attitude is a facebook group, that I belong to and every month they have a couple of challenges. One is a sketch challenge and the other is a Design Team inspired challenge. The Design Team inspired challenge for the month of October is "Use Your Stamps"

I used a Whismy Stamp from the The Kenny K Collection - Craft Star and to colour her in I used my new Spectrum Noir Alcohol Ink Pens.