Mother's Day card

Oh flip it's March and I've not blogged for the whole of February. Been to Costa Rica though so it's a genuine excuse.

I'll access my phone and post my mum's Mother's Day card I made then April or end of March I'll start doing some tutorials. Follow me on Twitter for more diatribe.   @Jodshopp1

Well what do you know got a winners badge- my first YEAH!!!!
from Winners badge

Inspired now so watch this space

Good day all. I have been experimenting with some new ink products. Ken Oliver colour bursts.

Take a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCvGa_UyEs

They are amazing but take some time to get used to. Here is the result of 2 attempts. The lighter speckled background was my second attempt and the first was the panel on the right which I cut up as it was too dark as a whole page of colour.

You puff them on from the bottle and add ink after you have wet the page or you puff them on and then add ink. BEWARE you only need the tiniest amounts and this is where it needs getting used to. Love them for creating backgrounds and Paul Church used them on Hochanda.com  when demonstrating the Clarity Groovi plates.

Top tip. As the ink seems to go everywhere, if you use these directly onto your card without copy paper behind. I have the Ken Oliver craft mat behind instead and then you can spray that after and transfer a print onto card. It works really well and I couldn't believe how much ink I could have wasted if I'd not done that.
Anyway take a look if you like it the inks come in two packs, I have them both but to be honest one would do.

Hope you like it- let me know Stamps are all from Claritystamp.co.uk
I am entering this into all about the boy.

Links
fantasystampers.blogspot.co.uk

https://www.claritystamp.co.uk/

Latest Card

FLOWERS

Well hello again. I've only been gone 2 years!!  Its not that I left crafting, quite the opposite- too busy to blog.
Pathetic excuse I know particularly when Barbara Gray who is uber busy finds time every day.

I am determined though, as retirement looms in the next 2-3 years I need to create a new life and this is the one I have wanted for a long time. Crafting, cards, sewing and indulging my mind into creating things. Dream life eh!  I hope so. Anyway, I digress (I am known for digressing, my husband calls it waffling)
The above card I have entered in the Clarity channel and a new one I discovered today.

All the stamps and masks are Clarity and coloured with spectrum noir alcohol pens and pencils.

 http://claritystampchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/winner-and-top-5-challenge-34.html

http://fantasystampers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/53-happy-birthday.html

Man's card

I dont always think men's cards should be dark colours and grungy and this card reflects a friends love of birds. We are neighbours and feed our birds like children.
I used a clarity stencil, adirondacks and pencils with a bit of zentangling

A shop window and a peek inside the card

Hi all,

Been playing with the Gelli plate again and I'm calling this one Gelli plate fantasy and it's entered into the Clarity challenge

I found that by using a mixture of silk paints and acrylic then silver and blue glossy craft polish after I had pulled the print it gave it a dimensional look.

The silk paint seems to retract from the plate if you leave it a while, it doesn't dry at the same time as the normal acrylic and so it gives a crackled effect when used together. I was really pleased with the effect

The stamp is a Clarity one of course gilded and painted and the embellishments are some jewellery wire and clasp

Hope you like it. Have a great creative day

Hi There

Had a go and double sided adhesive sheet today. I haven't done this for ages. Took Sue Wilson die and cut it out in black. Placed it on the adhesive sheet, pulled off one side and covered it in fine glitter and then stuck it onto some butterfly embosssed centura pearl. Coloured it in with perfect pearls and added a few dazzlers

It doesn't lose the sparkle too much when painted

What a trauma !

I love the Gelli plate and usually I pull a print and then let the print inspire me but this time I decided to use some stamps I've hd a while but didnt get around to using. The Chloe blossom stamp. I have recently bought some silks paint from ebay and love it so picked a vibrant purple and cut out the stamped image on my Brother cutNscan which I am sure I'm not using to its best effect but haven't time to play enough yet.

So I painted the flowers with the purple paint and then used the lime green for the centres from the same range.

I overlayed a large one and small one. and put a sparkle in the middle.

Then I got out the Gelli plate. I mixed green silk paint with green acrylic and put the Clarity leaf stencil on it. I then took the stencil off and let it dry. Then I covered it over with the purple silk paint and then used the stencil again. I pulled a print and didn't like it so overlayed it again in green and used the stencil and the result was much better BUT I used canvas to pull the print not paper and loved it.

That wasn't the trauma however because the postman came in between all that and delivered the Sue Wilson Leaf dies. Great I thought (foolishly) these will do for my card. So I painted some canvas green. Let it dry and tried to cut the leaves with the die. Oh how I messed about for literally hours. They wouldnt cut the canvas. I tried using waxed paper, slightly better. I went on my facebook page marilynscrafting and asked people I went on Sue Wilson's page but no response. So I cut some leaves from the tattered lace collection and no trouble what so ever. Not impressed with Sue Wilson die at all but no matter.

I then ripped some more canvas and stained it with lettuce adirondack and used Clarity Happy Birthday stamp and put some ribbon on.

Bit of everything going on here including Craftwell card stamps Clarity stamps, Tim Holtz stamp, tattered lace dies and to top it off the flowers painted with Martha Stewart glitter paint. Bit over the top maybe should have just put one flower on probably

Morning all

Made some cards yesterday using craftwork cards papers and stamps. Very good quality stock and really quick and easy to do.

Pop out Easter Card

This is the time of year that makes me day dream and think of possibilities so I have designed a card which reflects that

I started gathering ingredients

Using a combination of adirondacks and Tim Holtz I wanted to create a blue sky thinking approach.

I also used a couple of moon masks to add to the effect and then inked through the mask

You can see in this picture which isnt shown in the top one, by using perfect pearls, what a shimmering effect you get. I added some glossy accents to the red yellow and blue ribbons in the top half of the stamp which gave it some dimension.

Thanks for stopping by.

What an amazing day, summer is around the corner and the colour yellow is in my head.
Why dont you post a link to your blog to share with the world

What I really like about cutting dies is that they make really quick cards. This was made with tattered lace dies, perfect pearls and clarity stamps and a bit of cosmic shimmer fine glitter.

Just a new toy I have. Using the same technique as in the last blog but this time using cosmic shimmer paste on Black clarity card. What a surprise I had when "Frosty Dawn" turned into copper. Wow I love these unexpected twists.

I used a poppy stencil, loading the paste from the top. Then dragging the paste to the bottom at about a 45 degree angle.

They sell a metal spatula but I used the cake one I used in the last demo post

Sorry about the photography! See how I have taped the stencil just at the top and secured it to the mat with low tack masking tape.

I then started to colour the butterflies with acrylic paint but then decided to use perfect pearls  Mixed with the smallest amount of water, you can make a paste and paint over the cosmic shimmer when dry. 

The paste takes about 24 hours to dry sufficiently to paint.

The perfect pearls just gives it that shine but I like the contrast of the acrylic as well 

I didn't quite know what to do with the finished art so have just left it for now

Hope you like it!

Hello everyone

Today I want to share my card that I am entering into the Clarity Challenge, with an outline of how I created it.

I called it memories because fish allegedly only have a five second memory.  

I started with a white piece of 7"x 7" piece of card from Clarity stamps  This card is especially useful when I used the 6"x6" Gelli plate later. I first used grunge paste together with the clarity stencil you can see in the finished picture above.

The pictures below shows the technique but with a different stencil than the one in the finished picture. I practiced with this one first, it really needs a bit of practice although you might be better than me at it.

First of all place the stencil on a piece of copy paper and secure that to the work surface with some masking tape. Then secure the stencil at the top only as you are going to lift the this up to remove the stencil with as little movement as possible and if you were to secure it on all sides this would disturb the grunge paste too much.

So now you have your stencil in place and your grunge paste. Give it a good stir and apply it evenly over your stencil.

This is the bit that needs practice. Don't apply it too thickly and place it at the top and drag it down with some very stiff card or I used a spatula that I had for spreading icing.

Now peel off the stencil from the bottom carefully.

And hey presto!!! Cool eh!

This has a range of uses. You could paint it or use pro markers, anything you like really but it looked like sea to me so thats what it was. I like the Gelli plate and so made the project a little more complicated but painting the grunge or using Tim Holtz distress pens would have worked but given it a slightly different look.

So here are the ingredients

Just a couple of things

Never use the same speedball brayer for your inks and the acrylics. Work quickly, get everything you need to hand acrylic paint hardens very quickly. Wash everything in warm soapy water asap.

The paints I used were Martha Stewart pearl acrylics and a shimmer acrylic glaze to make it really shimmer like the sea.

Put your gelli plate on a piece of card or copy paper and put the smallest amount of each of the paints.

The glaze will lighten the colour and also make it slippy.

Use the brayer now to spread the paint evenly. Work quickly

Place the stencil over the paint and place a piece of copy paper over the top and press down over it lightly.

Lift off the copy paper and stencil and now place your grunge pattern that you have just made onto the Gelli plate pressing lightly and then pull it off. You can pull at least another print from this or add more paint and repeat placing a piece of card onto the plate and removing.

Magic! and messy but great fun.

Now what I did was gather some clarity fish stamps and using fantasy film and angelina fibres created some fish.

I also used some bashful blue H20 paint with a paint brush to enhance the raised area of my picture.

I then used a cloudy blue adirondak ink and brushed in between the raised area to lessen the light gaps.
I cut slits into the card and pushed a couple of the fish through to give the impression of the fish going through the reeds and stamped fish images directly onto the art work
Nearly there

These stamps come from clarity and I stamped them with Denim adirondak and Cobalt archival inks along the bottom to give the illusion of grassy tendrils.
Finally I stamped the words of another clarity stamp from the word chains collection "memories" with Cobalt archival ink and made a frame and mounted it on American Crafts card.

Its not perfect and a fair bit of work but I tried my best. Hope you like it

A thought for today

Good day everyone

I thought I would share a quick sentiment that a friend sent me.

Latest card

This was my mum's mothers day card. I made a box by folding an A4 sheet of centura pearl. The flowers were from both tattered lace dies and craftwork cards Kitsch die cut pad.

If anyone wants to know how to make the box then if you post that in a comment, I will blog with pictures how to do it. Thanks for looking