Completing the Flowers and Leaves for my Altering Project

WOYWW visitors – please scroll down to previous post.

I have now finished making the flowers for my mystery project, and I have also made some leaves.

I made a selection of single-piece flowers and layered some of them for a bit more interest.

I used Orange Peel and Turquoise Stickles for the centres of some of them, and for the rest, I added a nice big blob of hot glue and sprinkled this with orange Flowersoft equivalent – this stuff is called Soft Magic from Carole’s Crafts, in light orange – I’ve had the set of these for ages and can’t remember where I got them. I don’t use it very often and it does make rather nice flower centres. It’s one of those supplies that lives in a drawer and gets forgotten about!

Here are all the turquoise flowers I have made.

Moving on to the leaves, I cut them all with the left-hand die from this Die’sire Classiques set, “Assorted Leaves.” I don’t much like the second die and haven’t used it yet, but I bought these dies at a craft show early this year, for the first die which has proved very useful.

I cut all these leaves from scraps of American Crafts white cardstock so I didn’t have to break into another whole sheet. I then hand-embossed them all with two sizes of embossing tools into a piece of fun foam.

Colouring two sets of leaves, one to go with the turquoise/terracotta flowers and the other with the brown flowers.

For the terracotta ones I coloured them with Rusty Hinge Distress Stain, painting on the ink in a random, blotchy way, and then repeated the process with Gathered Twigs Distress Stain, and finally distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using a home-made ink blender.

For the brown ones, I used the same method, first with Pumice Stone Distress Stain, followed by Gathered Twigs, and finally with Antiqued Bronze Distress Stain for a subtle shimmer, and again, distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

Here are the brown leaves, together with a selection of brown flowers.

These are the terracotta leaves, together with a selection of turquoise flowers.

I am now ready to continue with the rest of the project – I have already made good progress – and I will be able to show the finished results in a couple of weeks’ time.

I have made far too many leaves and flowers for my immediate use, but will use up the excess for other projects – most probably when I alter the little frames that my hubby gave me recently.

An Altering Project

There are a few things I need to make over the next few weeks, so it’s studio time again. I can’t reveal too much detail yet, but later I will be able to tell you more. In the meantime, I can safely share the early stages without giving away too much.

Recently my hubby bought four small frames and then realised they didn’t have any glass, which he didn’t like, so he gave them to me, and I thought they would be lovely to alter.

I took them apart and pulled off all the embellishments for use elsewhere. Each frame had a tiny clothes peg with a message attached, and the whole thing tied onto the frame with some gorgeous jute string which is definitely going in my stash! The shiny card can also be used for something else. Not much gets thrown out chez Shosh.

The next step, when I get time, will be to paint the frames with gesso in readiness for altering.

I am awaiting the arrival of some supplies for this project from Ebay, and can’t make real progress till they arrive. I also have several wallpaper sample sheets,  and I have decided to use one or more in the project.

The patterns are quite large, but there are some lovely bits I can cut out, and some nice texture for backgrounds, and the colours are gorgeous. I decided to make lots of paper flowers, mostly roses, and to try and match up the colour to co-ordinate with the wallpapers.

I spent a long time cutting several 12 x 12 sheets of flower pieces on Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, using American Crafts Cardstock in white, which cuts beautifully with Sheba, and although less strong than watercolour paper, is strong enough not to disintegrate when wet, and thinner too, which is ideal for the flowers that I make. Here they are, all laid out ready for colouring. The pieces in the bowls are individual flowers, and the others on the desk, stacked up in piles, are the pieces necessary to make individual roses in two sizes and styles. All these flower patterns are svg files from Penny Duncan, and I use them regularly – easy to resize as necessary in Inkscape, and then cut out.

For this flower factory, I began with the roses. I selected a variety of different colours from my collection of Distress Stains. The idea was to produce a nice subtle mix of colours to co-ordinate with the wallpapers, and I knew it would take several layers.

I began with Worn Lipstick, smearing some on my non-stick craft sheet and spritzing it with a bit of water, and roughly painting both sides of the required number of flower pieces to make some roses.

The next colour I chose was Victorian Velvet.

After this was Seedless Preserves.

You can see how the colour is darkening, and with subtle variations. It was all looking a bit pink, so the next colour I chose was Weathered Wood, which is a lovely slate-blue colour verging on grey, which I thought would make them more purple and dull the colour down a bit.

It needed more of a brown look, so I chose Pumice Stone, which is a very useful colour in the Distress range – added to any colour, it has the effect of dulling it down.

It still needed to be duller, and more grey, so the final colour I chose was Hickory Smoke. I do not have this colour in my Distress Stains collection, so I smeared the Distress Ink pad on my craft sheet, spritzed it with water, and used that instead.

This was the effect I was looking for. At each stage, I dried the flower pieces with my heat gun, before proceeding to the next colour. When the pieces are wet, they are very fragile, especially the ones with the slit. The final step was to distress the edges with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink, using a home-made ink blender.

Once they were fully dry after the final colour, I hand-embossed each petal, some cups and some domes after deciding which side of the piece should be on top, according to their eventual position in the rose.

The first of the small dark roses completed. Each layer is stuck with hot glue.

Time to move on to the larger, shabby roses – what Penny Duncan calls her “Grungey Rose” pattern. These have more interesting tips to their petals, and the roses are more open and natural looking. Each flower requires the same number of pieces, and the method of construction is the same. Here are the pieces in the middle of being coloured, using the same succession of colours that I used before.

The pieces after embossing.

Here are the three dark-coloured shabby roses that I made.

Having documented the colours I used and how I coloured the pieces, I can refer back to this post and repeat the process, should I need some more.

Both sizes of rose together.

I really like this subtle, dark and dusky purple – actually not purple but a mixture of colours to give interest and depth. Laid on top of a couple of the the wallpaper samples, they are a pretty good match, I think.

I shan’t know how many of these roses I shall need until my supplies arrive from Ebay, but that shouldn’t take more than a few days.  At least I’ve been able to get ahead a bit. Watch this space!

Box for Floral Mini-Album–Completing the Project

I am happy to say that so far at least, the metal corners have remained in place on the boxes, after my second attempt at sticking them on, this time with Pinflair gel glue in place of the failed hot glue. Today it still felt slightly tacky, and I am sure that it will soon be dry and holding the metal embellishments firmly in place.

Today I began embellishing the boxes, in a similar style to the albums that they will contain.

I got my dies out and cut more of the Moroccan tile trellis one in gold mirror card. Before cutting them, I covered the back of the card pieces with double-sided tape, which I tend to do for complex or small dies because it makes applying them to the project so much easier.

I love this die. It’s not just really pretty, and a brilliant foundation for applying flowers and linking them together, but you can cut it up and use just bits of it, or join it up in a different arrangement if you want.

I then die-cut quite a few leaves from a selection of dies – I’ve got quite a few flowers left over from the album project but unfortunately I’d used up all the leaves.

I cut them from scraps of cardstock in different shades of green. I didn’t have to cut into any whole sheets. Even quite small scraps are adequate for this so it pays never to throw anything away!

After this I gave them a bit of variation with three shades of Distress Stains.

Most of them I left flat, but the simple leaf shapes I hand-embossed into a piece of fun foam with a ball embossing tool.

Hot glue comes into its own for sticking down paper flowers and hand-embossed leaves. The centres of the flowers were embellished with Stickles. I love the effect these colourful glitter glues give, adding a subtle touch of bling. (Unfortunately I took the next photo before I’d remembered to do this!)

The completed boxes.

The side of the box.

Detail of the embellishment on the top of the box.

Detail of the front of the box.

Detail of the side of the box.

The box with the album inside.

That just about wraps up this project. I am so pleased to have finished it in good time for Thursday when one of them will go to its new home.

A WOYWW Visitor and More on Infusions Mini-Album

Today Margaret (Glitterandglue) spent the day with me – she is down in Devon, about to attend a course on Pergamano being held locally. She really didn’t want to come all this way down and not meet up, and we had a really lovely day. I’d set up the table in my studio so that we could both work in there, but we didn’t actually do anything except natter and have a Really Good Time!!

My hubby was out, so she and I shared a home made soup and bread lunch. I’d made broccoli and Stilton soup, and a plaited challah loaf, followed by stewed apple and  custard and we tucked in!

She had brought some absolutely fabulous Pergamano pieces that she’d made. Here she is with some of them displayed on the table.

A detailed shot of the pieces.

The little pyramids are a selection from a total of 24 which she made as an Advent Calendar. Each one is numbered, and they are all different. They have a painted design on one face, with the number on the opposite face, and on the other two faces, panels of Pergamano work in different patterns. These parchment covers slide up the ribbon loop at the top, exposing a box underneath, with the ribbons attached to the top. The sides of the boxes can be opened in order to insert a chocolate or other small gift in each one. They were utterly and completely exquisite – I couldn’t believe the fineness and detail of the work. The flat triangular piece in the centre of the table is a card – the three triangles open to reveal a small card inside.

Margaret had, of course, brought her Pergamano kit with her, ready to use on the course, and she got it out to show me – there are lots of different tools for embossing and for piercing, and two different mats for these processes. She was going to get me going on this but when I saw just how tiny and detailed the work was, and how incredibly time-consuming, I knew it wasn’t for me – it reminded me of my abortive attempt to learn Honiton lace making before I was married – incredibly intricate work that you have to do for weeks before you get anything worthwhile to show! I may be a patient person when it comes to my creativity, but there are limits!!!

I admire Pergamano greatly. It looks like a combination of lace and embroidery, and the designs can be very pretty indeed. Having seen it being done for the first time, I admire even more the people who do it. As Margaret says, when you see images of it online, they are always close-up photos, and you don’t really get a correct impression of just how tiny the patterns are.

I think I shall stick to mixed media and playing with stuff that makes lots of texture and colour, and above all, mess!!

After she had gone, I spent a couple of hours in the studio, working on the Infusions Mini-Album again, and tonight I finished making the tags for Volume One of the album. Here are the latest photos.

I had originally decided that I wouldn’t put any text on the front of the “Stamping” title page tag, but decided to go ahead and do that after all.

The reverse of this page is as I left it when I completed it back in September. This page shows my wild grasses stamps on an Infusions background.

Moving on to the next page in the album, we come to the water droplets page. This is a stamp from Designs by Ryn, and one of my favourite – it is incredibly realistic.

Turning that page over, we have the painted flowers page.

Finally, the Versamark stamping page.

I added more Infusions to the back of this tag. You can see that the reverse of the page has not been decorated. This will be covered with endpaper of the album.

The final photo shows the set of blotting up sheets that I created. After sprizting each tag, rather than wasting the wet Infusions on the craft sheet, I blotted it up with some small square cards I'd cut for this purpose.

Not sure what I’m going to do with them all yet, but in the meantime I shall add a distressed edge using Black Soot distress ink. I’m getting quite a collection of these now.

Quadruple-Embossed Birthday Card

The second of two posts today.

After making my triple-embossed purple get-well card the other day, I thought I’d take this one one stage further and make it quadruple-embossed! This is a sort of embossing sampler: embossing with an embossing folder; embossing with a die; heat embossing, and finally, hand-embossing! I’m pretty much embossed out after that lot.

It is my aunt’s birthday on 28th September and I needed to get on with this before my next chemo session on Friday because after that I won’t feel like doing anything for a week to ten days.

I began in exactly the same way as with the previous triple-embossed card, with the same sized card base and matting and layering, and the same Cuttlebug embossing folder because this is the only one (except for a gearwheels one that wasn’t appropriate) that is wide enough for this size of card.

I inked the blank area with Spun Sugar distress ink, and heat-embossed the Cuttlebug-embossed part with clear embossing powder (this time I applied the Versamark with my brayer which worked better, and it was certainly improved by my remembering to use my anti-static bag this time!). I inked it using more Spun Sugar, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, so that the clear embossing acted as a resist.

Then I began work on the embellishments. I had intended to stamp some flowers and cut them out, but my few flower stamps are all rather solid and don’t give much scope for colouring in, so I decided to draw some flowers. I outlined them in pencil first and then used a Ranger Brush Tip in its holder with my new Hickory Smoke distress ink. I love this new colour – a lovely soft grey which tones very well with the Wendy Vecchi archival ink pad called Watering Can.

After I had drawn them all with the Hickory Smoke, I coloured them in using two shades of pink coloured pencils, blending the colour with a paper stump.

After cutting out the flowers, I hand-embossed them with two sizes of ball-ended embossing tools onto a piece of fun foam.

Here are the flowers, all embossed and ready to go.

I could not stick them down until the end because the glue would still be wet. I moved on to stamping the sentiment on the front of the card, using said Wendy Vecchi archival ink in Watering Can. I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Memorable Moments.” This is a lovely set because it can be used for anniversaries too, and comes with a set of numbers. I used my stamp lining up tool to get it in the right place.

Now time to start matting and layering. The first matt layer was done with Hickory Smoke distress ink and was 1/16 in larger than the card topper.

I found an excellent tip a while back for lining up the matt layers accurately – with such a small difference in size, the slightest inaccuracy would show. I ran my ATG glue gun over the back of the card topper and then went over the DS tape with a glue stick, which makes it slick and moveable for a short period, giving you the chance to get it just right.

The second matt layer, again 1/16 in larger than the previous one, was done with Forest Moss distress ink.

To complete the card assembly, I inked the edges of the card base with Spun Sugar distress ink and matted and layered the rest on top.

I then stamped the sentiment on the inside of the card, using the same Stampin’ Up stamps from the “Memorable Moments” set. I inked around the edges with Spun Sugar distress ink.

Now for the embellishments on the front of the card. I found some small leaf trails from my stash, that I’d cut with Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, ages ago. I stuck them down with Crafter’s Companion Stick & Stay spray adhesive.

I stuck the flowers down with Pinflair gel glue. I always use a cocktail stick for this – I find it a lot easier to control than a syringe, and I find that if you put this glue in a syringe, it is not long before it dries out and sets, wasting glue and ruining a good syringe!

The final step was to add some holly Stickles (glitter glue) to the centre of each flower.

The completed card. Nice and pretty for an elderly lady, I think!

Left out on the desk overnight to give the Pinflair glue and the Stickles time to set.