Nature's Beauty - an ATC swap

One of the blogs that I really enjoy following is that of Diana over at The Velvet Moth. Diana makes the most exquisite pieces of art, often incorporating textiles and beads and of course often velvet!!! A while back Diana put out a call for anyone interested in doing an ATC swap. I was rather behind everyone else by the time I replied, but Diana and I did make contact and agreed we would do a one to one swap.

I have had a very busy time over the last few months with family commitments taking up a lot of time and although I have been doing various knitting and crochet projects, plus had a much needed and special holiday, apart from some essential card making, I have not been keeping up with my papercrafting and mixed media projects. So making contact with Diana and agreeing to do this swap, gave me a much needed incentive to get myself organised and plan something a bit more creative and demanding on my creativity.

Diana was ahead of me and her beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, decorated box and tag arrived while my project was still pretty much in the planning stages!  Diana's project incorporates die cuts, lace, velvet, beads, gold embossing and script. For more information about Diana's design pop over to her blog where she has also posted about our swap.

Not surprisingly, I had also planned a nature themed project as the natural world provides a great deal of inspiration to both of us. The title for my project - Nature's Beauty only came when I was nearing completion of the project.

My first step was to take a sheet of A4 white card and cover it with my leafy background technique (see my labels on the right for other posts about how I do this), using Distress Inks. I cut out the ATC panel and I then added stamping with the little ferns with first and second generation stamping and a little stencilling, before adding the heat embossed tree die cuts and the little ferny butterfly which must be one of my most used stamps. I shaded the edge of the panel to give a glowing light to the centre, as I wanted it to look like a woodland glade. The final touch was the word "Beauty".

Diana had made a lovely little box to hold her ATC so I thought about what I could do as an alternative.

I used the beautiful Crealie labels dies that I had a feeling Diana would like and cut two out of the leafy backgrounds and two out of toning green card for the insides. I stuck them together back to back and joined them at the bottom.

These are decorated again with die cuts decorated with Treasure Gold gilding wax, some tiny micro beads on the hollyhock flowers and butterflies stamped with the script stamp in the beautiful Delicata Gold ink which I had never heard of until another of my special crafty friends gifted it to me. The insides are stamped with dye inks. I made a matching small tag and finished that off with some leafy ribbon that has been in my stash almost since I started crafting, so it was nice to find a use for it.

To hold the ATC, I wanted something to hold it in place vertically so had a play with some scrap card and managed a little paper engineering to invent what I needed!

I absolutely loved doing this swap with someone so talented who likes the same sorts of motifs and themes as I do. I have been struggling to get inspired and motivated and working on this little miniature gift has got me kickstarted again I think, so thank you Diana and for the beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, box and tag you sent to me!

My project used the following supplies:
Dies - Impression Obsession - Hollyhock; Craft Emotions Hogweed; Tim Holtz - Wildflowers; Memory Box - Darla Butterfly; Sizzix Framelits Tags Rounded; Taylored Expressions - Birch Trees; Crealies Extreme Labels; Stampin Up butterfly punches; Tim Holtz Bigz tag die

Stamps - Inkadinkado - Meadow; Darkroom Door - Artist; Crafty Individuals - CI207/231/021; Woodware script; Chocolate Baroque - Poppy Meadow

Inks and sundries - Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Squeezed Lemonade & Twisted Citron; Stampin Up dye inks - Crumb Cake & Chocolate Chip; Ranger Archival Olive; Delicata Gold & Versamark. Treasure Gold in Florentine Gold, Oxynite and Green Amber. Embossing Powder in Copper and Gold. Dark Green micro beads.

A Lavinia fairy card

It is one of my lovely crafty friends birthdays today and this is the card I sent her.

The main image is a Lavinia stamp and I used Memento Luxe ink which was recommended to me for its coverage for silhouette stamps, and I have to agree is very good, but takes a while to dry. I am not a great one for fairy images, but I think I have said before I love their little hats in this image, like the knitted hats we used to wear when we were tots! I am showing my age a bit now!

All other stamping and ink shading is done with Distress Inks in Crushed Pistachio (fast becoming a new favourite), Peacock Feathers and Chipped Sapphire.

The other plant images are a mixture of Lavinia, Inkadinkado and Inkylicious and the sentiment a cheapie I picked up at the Rubbernecker stand at Ally Pally sometime, probably for 50p.

It has been so hot here this week, I hope we are over the real peak of temperatures as we have a family barbecue to attend on Sunday which could be a trial otherwise! Being past midsummer does mean more is starting to happen in the veg patch now. We have had our first strawberries and some sun berries with our breakfast this morning and the first courgettes will be ready to pick in a day or two. This is where I hope we will start to reap the rewards of the extra work in the garden that retirement has allowed me!

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

Elaine

A little book

When we were on our mini retreat I found this lovely set of two papier mache boxes in the shape of books. I thought one would make a great alternative to a birthday card for my OH who is absolutely addicted to books.

I wasn't sure how to colour the box at first, I had planned to paint it, but found that Distress Inks in my favourite Vintage Photo gave it a great faux leather look with very little effort. I added a gold embossed image from the Inkadinkado Utopiary set, to try and make it look like a tooled leather cover. Then I added some of my favourite metal corners.

I added some gold rubbing paste on the spine and edged the box with some gold paper I had marked with the finest embossing tool I had to make it look like pages.

I lined the box with a 6 x 6 Webster's Pages paper that I thought looked like a book end paper design and added a greeting - this is one of my favourite Elusive Images designs, I love art nouveau and use it a lot, plus a little calender from the new Tim Holtz Lost and Found pad. I added the greeting on another tag later. I would normally decorate the inside of the box with many more bits and pieces, but my OH is not one for lots of fussy detail, so that didn't seem appropriate this time.

I think it looks a little ragged round the edges, but maybe that is OK for an old book!!

Thanks for popping by and I hope you are having a good weekend.

Elaine xx

I'm still here!

It's been quite a while since I blogged, both because I have been really busy, but also because I haven't been satsified enough with anything I made to share it! Finally last weekend I did manage to get some quality crafting time and tried out my new set of Inkadinkadoo Utopiary stamps.

My first effort is a card - my favourite 8 x 8 size.

The background is Basic Grey Marrakech Green Tea paper with leaves added in Adirondack Pesto dye ink, sponged through a stencil. The tree image and flourishes on the tag are from different stamps In the Utopiary set, stamped in Olympian Green Versafine, shaded with Citrus, Lettuce and Pesto Adirondack dye inks using a stipple brush and Cut n' Dry foam. The sentiment is from a Paper Artsy mini stamp using the same colours and cut out with a Nestabilities label set in the Cuttlebug. The design is finished off with some paper leaves and some stick on dots in the corners.

Next I tried some ATCs to practice my inking, which I think is gradually improving - inking backgrounds is something I have really struggled with for some reason - other people make it look so effortless. These also use the Utopiary set.

I added some pale Adirondack dye inking  in the background with the stipple brush and then I stamped the images in my favourite ink for a good clean image - Versafine. More ink was added with Cut n' Dry foam to add shading in toning colours. I think the pinky ones are my favourites, these used Sunshine Yellow, Sunset Orange, Watermelon, Cranberry and Eggplant inks.

I hope now I have got back into the swing of crafting, I might have more projects worth sharing.