Bird in a frame...

I made this card with the new Crafty Individuals stamp Royal Bird CI-378. It's stamped onto a piece of old Prima packaging (I liked the green) and coloured with pencils and a nice bit of Florentine Treasure Gold round the edges. A bit of Travels in Italy paper and die cutting just finishes it off:

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Softly, softly....

I've made a very quick card using the new Crafty Individuals Love Lovely Life stamp CI-382:

To achieve the soft focus, I've coloured the central part of the brown Kraft card with white chalk pastel, stamped over the top in black and then used chalk pastels to add more colour. You can just rub the pastels to achieve a halo effect round the flowers and trees.
I've pressed the brads onto one of the trees to get the pattern.

Talking of Crafty Individuals, I've got a class at the Craft Barn on Saturday 2 March using CI stamps and dies, Stampbord, canvases, glossy card etc.:

It's going to be fun and just in time for Mothers' Day, so if you fancy coming along just go here.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

At the movies

The theme over on the Craft Barn blog this week is 'At the Movies'. Now I had to rack my brains for this one and in the end came up with this:

Can you guess what it is from this sneak peek? It uses Crafty Individuals stamps, stencils and Fresco paints.
To see the full project hop over to the Craft barn blog - it'll be up sometime this week.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Crafty Individuals demo

Crafty Individuals have just brought out some new stamps, some of their originals and some Alice Palace, which reminded me that I never posted pics of the samples I did at the Craft Barn demo the other week, so here goes:

I've used a mix and match of stamps to make these just to show how well the whole range works together.

Thanks to all those who came along - it was great fun.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Lin Brown at PaperArtsy

Lin has got some new stamps out at PaperArtsy - they are based on her own hand carved designs.

I was given some of the stamps to make up some art ready for the announcement on the blog and this is what I made.

First of all a tag set using Portfolio oil pastels, stencilling and acetate, a technique I used in my first posts as a Guest Designer for PaperArtsy:

Then I got out the glossy white card (love that stuff) and stamped up a background with the stamps and Distress inkpads and then stamped and cut out the flowers in StazOn black:

A white pen is used to highlight:

Then I used translucent Fresco paints to build up a background with the flower head and added flowers in black and white:

The buttons are stamped with the flower centres:

 Finally I stencilled onto an artboard (more of that in my March posts) and used white tissue paper for the flower heads. The leaves are stamped directly onto the board, overstamped in several different colours:

Head on over to the PaperArtsy blog to see lots of different ideas with these stamps - they lend themselves to many different styles.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

PaperArtsy Blog Week 2

It's my second week of posting over on the PaperArtsy blog this week (probably starting tomorrow - make that today!) so hop on over and have a look. I've been making stuff with the Crunchy Wax paper.
Here are a couple of sneak peeks:

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Detailed tutorial on embossing round the edge

After the Craft Stamper Blog Hop, I've had a lot of comments about my post (which is below) and questions on the embossing technique, so I thought I'd do a step by step/pic by pic tutorial on  embossing round the edge.
Warning: this has got a lot of pics in, so if you know what you're doing, just ignore it all!

Start off as before with a sprayed and bleached image ( this is PaperArtsy Urban Snapshots Arched Apertures Plate 4):

Choose your embossing folders: (Floral Frame, Postcard and Regal Flourishes):

There are 2 ways of  doing this embossing:

Method 1: If you want to be really accurate this is what you do (this was shown to me by a lady at a demo - many thanks!) First position the card in the folder:

Then place the folder on the cutting mat just up to where you want to emboss - the rest of the folder just hangs off the end:

Then put the other mat on top:

and run through your machine. It will only emboss as far as the lower mat, so does not go over the image:

Method 2:  if you're a bit more slapdash (like me!), just position the folder as before and make your embossing sandwich, not worrying where the lower plate is:

Line it up on the machine and then you're going to roll it through up to the end of the embossing pattern you want (where my finger is pointing):

That's as far as this:

and then roll the machine back so you only emboss a small amount like this:

Then emboss the other edge:

Next take the all over floral embossing folder and we're going to emboss along the top, just down to where my finger is:

This is where the width of your machine comes into play. The Big Shot plate is 6 inches (15cm) wide and you can see that this card is slightly too big. If you attempt to roll it through you'll damage the edge:

To solve this, I just trimmed the card a tiny bit to fit:

Then emboss the top edge using Method 1 or 2:

Next use the Postcard folder on the lower edge:

Turn the whole card round and just feed in the bit you want to emboss:

Here you can see that the postcard folder has slightly gone over the Floral Border:

Don't worry, just re-emboss the border. I've gone in at an angle to just emboss that corner and so I don't end up flattening out any of the top design. The width of the plate comes into play again here; you'll only be able to roll the folder part way through the machine before it becomes too wide:

Here's the whole embossed design with the image in the middle left flat: 

Next brush on some Florentine Treasure Gold (Leandra suggests a large soft brush):

Hope this tutorial answers any of the questions you might have had!

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Craft Stamper Blog Hop

Craft Stamper Blog Hop: Looking Back

Welcome to this stop on the Craft Stamper Hop! If you don't know about the Hop then be sure to pop over to the Craft Stamper Blog to join in, as there are lots of prizes to be won!

I’m Helen and I've been on the Craft Stamper Design Team for more years than I can remember. My style's kind of eclectic and quirky, and I love to experiment with textures, surfaces and new products.
I looked back at all the stuff I'd done for Craft Stamper in 2012 and did have trouble choosing, but eventually decided to do a project using bleach and edge embossing. 

The bleaching method is a really quick and easy way to add highlights to your artwork and the embossing round the edge of a card just opened up a whole new world for me as far as embossing folders were concerned (and a good excuse to buy more!) I've chosen to use a couple of collages from Crafty Individuals.

Stamp the image CI-297 in black StazOn onto white linen card (you MUST use StazOn with the bleach):

Spritz the card with water and then spray with the green, pink and turquoise Dylusions spray inks (available from the Craft Barn):

Let it dry and then paint on the bleach (it won't affect the StazOn) and watch the colour fade out:

 Choose your embossing folders (available from the Craft Barn):

and then start embossing round the edges. Start with the dots:

 Add the floral border next and then the flourish to the bottom left:

Finish off by highlighting the embossed areas with White Fire Treasure Gold (available from PaperArtsy) and mount onto a white card:

Here's an alternative card using the same techniques:

The letter to collect from me is: D

I hope you enjoyed this post. The next person on the Hop is Kate Bentley

If you get stuck go back to http://www.craftstamper.blogspot.co.uk/ for the full list of those taking part.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Note: Am adding this as several people have commented on it: one embossing folder will cancel out the other to a certain extent (you can see that the dots under the floral flourish have disappeared.) So, you need to work out which pattern you want to dominate and emboss with that last. 

Don't forget, you can always re-emboss an area if you need to by slotting the embossed pattern back into the folder.

Some folders are great for filling in the odd space and diagonally across corners (random dots are great). 

I found any patterns that are very straight or aligned (such as squares) are more difficult to line up - they tend to go wonky which annoyed me! But I would suggest just getting all your folders out and having a go!

PS Thank you for all the lovely comments.

For these cards I've used:

Crafty Individuals stamps: CI-297 Mallard Duck Pair; CI-343 Patriotic London
Dylusions spray inks: Fresh Lime; Bubblegum Pink;Vibrant Turquoise; London Blue; Crushed Grape
Sizzix embossing folders: Dots, Floral Frame; Flourish from Tim Holtz French Connection set; Pocket Watches; Collage
Treasure Gold: White Fire
Good old, bog standard, thick bleach!