Heart beat of a butterfly

My second project today was inspired this rusty butterfly.

I went into the craftroom earlier in the week and saw it on my desk. Apparently my OH had found it in the garden. We think it's off an old flower stake that we used to have.

I found a heart and painted it with Squid Ink Freshco Acrylic and when dry added some Ranger crackle   To add texture, this is also highlighted with treasure silver.

I wanted some more texture and though Frantage in shabby blue would add what I needed.

I distressed some paper and found a small piece of paper with a flower sewn on which to sit the butterfly. A metal flower finished off the heart.

Thanks for taking a look see you soon Debs xxx

Ellen inspired tag

Hello everyone, hope your Saturday is going well. Mine started at stupid o'clock with a wide awake ping! I had two coffees, breakfast and then fell back to sleep, so my plans for getting up early went out the window.

I love the weekend as it is the only time I have to play as like most of us the week is taken up work, chores etc. my play for today started with a tag inspired by Ellen Vargo. She was a guest designer over on the Paper Artsy blog whic you can view here. 

I do not have the stamps she used so I used one I made playing with fun foam. First I painted the tag with Nougart Freshco finish acrylic paint and when dry, scraped  some pumpkin Soup onto the tag.

I inked my stamp with watering can from Wendy Vecchi range with Ranger and stamped over the tag.

Ididnt think anymore stamping was needed but did use black soot distress ink around the edges.

For my smaller tag I put London bus and Pumpkin Soup on my craft sheet and picked up both colours at once with dry cut foam. This blends the colours slightly as you put them on the tag it's also streaky and uneven which I like. To add interest to the bag round I used JOFY 22 numbers in both direction  in watering can archival ink. I next used a stamp from Lin Brown 01 for my feature which I stamped in black archival.

 added a sentiment to finish.

 

Thanks to a friend of mine I would like to enter this into the stamponique challenge 146  which you can see here.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you soon. Bye for now

Debs xx

Happy 5th Birthday

Happy Birthday To Us

Happy Birthday To Us

Happy Birthday Dear CRAFT Challenge

Happy Birthday To Us!

Can you believe it? CRAFT Challenge is already 5 years old. Originally started by Tracy from Just Tracy Crafts and with a DT mostly recruited from Trimcraft forum members (Hence the term CRAFT Challenge, which stood for Crafters Residing Are Friendly Trimmies. Or if you wished alternative meaning of Can't Remember A Flipping Thing) on the 4^th of May 2009.

We have now grown to be a large team of Design Team Members from all around the world, supplemented with lots of Guest Designers who join us for a month at a time.

We have always welcomed all kinds of craft, not just paper craft (unless specifically stated so in the challenge at the time) and are happy to have such a large group of faithful followers.

So, how are we going to celebrate this milestone?

Well, how else can we celebrate than to have our yearly Blogaversary Blog Hop?

We all feature one of our sponsors for this blog hop on our blogs and I have the honour of featuring and offering a prize from the following sponsor. You can win this prize by adding your name to Inlinkz at the end of this post. I would love to see your comments as well.

Yours or Mine Papercrafts

The prize is

How can you get to win any of the prizes provided by our sponsors?

That is easy! Just follow the route on our blog hop (you can also find that in our side banner), 
Our Blog Hop lasts for the duration of this challenge, which means a closing time of Wednesday 6pm GMT on the 14^th of May 2014.

And here are our little rules for this challenge/blog hop:

• Our challenge this week is Birthday
• Create something with this in mind
• Add your project to our Inlinkz below to be in with a chance of 3 digital stamps from Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More
• Follow the route of the Blog Hop
• Add your project to the Inlinkz at each of these stops to be in with a chance of winning the prize advertised on that blog
• Collect the words on this and the blogs on the blog hop
  
  
• Form a sentence with these words
• Return to our challenge blog and put your winning sentence in our comments under the post.
• We will choose a winner randomly from the correct answers entered, who will win a special Blog Hop pack by Trimgym's Digistamps and Images
• We will enable comment moderation for the duration of this challenge/blog hop to ensure there is no cheating, lol.
• And the main rule: HAVE FUN!

What can you win on our challenge blog?

1. The winner of the winning sentence wins

And here is my project for this week, hope you like it. I have used a lovely stamp from gorjuss which I have mounted onto a die cut oval. I have coloured it with spectrum noir. For the background I embossed some plain white card. I aged the card and used distress ink around the edges. To finish I added some embellishments. 

This card is inspired by Yours or Mine paper crafts.

And now for our Blog Hop route:

CRAFT Challenge Blog (you should have started here)

Abby

Aunty Sue 

Carol (you should have come from here)

Deborah (you are here now)

Elisa (you should go here next)

Helen

Jeanette

Jo

Marlene

Monica

Saskia

Silvi

Sparkle and Glitter

Sujin

CRAFT Challenge Blog (you should have returned here at the end of the hop)

And here is the word to be collected on this 

Your next stop is Elisa's blog. Enjoy the rest of your hop! Don't forget to add your name to Inlinkz below to be in with a chance of winning the prize on my blog.

A groovy kind of weekend

Evening and welcome to my weekend. The plan was to have a long weekend filled with crafting and Saturday went that way full of ink and paint and all things messy but Sunday and Monday didn't see me getting dirty instead I was out enjoying other people's art and a mix of gardening and sewing.

Sunday Began with a visit to Hyde Hall to see the spring garden and the craft and design show. This is only tiny fair in spring but still interesting to see all exhibits

I didn't take any photos for obvious reasons but it was good, and you can see more about it here 

We then went family visiting, as well as picking up my mum and bringing her home for the remainder of the weekend.

I made her a cover for her tablet while she read out crosswords clues. I love this time with my mum, she chattering on ( you may remember if you have visited me before that my mum never stops talking hehe) while I play at some crafting project. It is fun, relaxing and a happy time for both of us.

On Monday after our leisurely breakfast we spent some time gardening. I love my garden in spring, it's a tiny garden but has all we need. It really is an outdoor part of our home. Here are a some of piccy from the garden.

After dinner I was back to the sewing room. I needed a pin cushion and so made this.

After we took mum home I settled down to start a crocheting project I have been planning for a while. It all started with seeing this in a shop.

I just loved the look of this yarn and had to have a go. I love this stuff.

I mad a circle and using a double stich just kept going. This is how far I have got.

I need to add some more rows and then...

You will have to wait to see the finished project.

Well thank you for visiting, as I writing this I'm smiling thinking what a great weekend it has been. I hope you all had a good time too.

Bye bye for now, take care Debs xxx

3UP no 3 inspired by Carol

I was intrigue with carol's post, I had never heard of slide mailers let alone got any but thought I decorate a lovely little book I recently got from Parper Artsy. You can see Carol's here.

I started by giving the book two coats of Nougart and blended in Baltic blue which I called ocean in a previous post hehe (must need a holiday) as well as dolly mix and pansy.

I embossed some sentiments and rubbed treasure silver over the words. I added some script to add interest. 

I stamped, cut and mounted my centre pictures and assembled with embelishments. 

So that's the last of my PA challenge posts. It really is worth a visit to the blog there have been great art on there this week. 

Bye for now, take care 

Debs xxx

3 UP no 2 Craftyfield

Here I am saying hi again. Just had my dinner which was a nice prawn madras and all the trimmings. Now this is not on my what I can eat list but I couldn't help myself hehe.

I have been planning some days off which led me to think about late July when my third granddaughter is due to say hello to the world. This led me to think about having a photo of all three and how nice that will be. I loved the page Craftyfield shared on the PA blog and thought that making something similar would be great. 

I have a had these vintage photo copies for a while and when I saw the scrap page I thought they would be fab for this project.  You can see Craftyfield's here.

I used two papers from Chatsworth collection, one of which I cut to make it slightly smaller than the other. I loved the way Craftyfield had aged and tattered the page and so used similar techniques on mine. 

I  used fresco acrylics in Claret, London bus and Pumpkin soup to tone done the the paper and add some warmth. This was then stencilled with Lin Brown 001 stencil in the same colours to add pops of colours. 

I assembled all my bits and placed them on my page.

I cannot wait to be able to create something similar with the children it will be great fun. Thanks for looking. I loved to read your thoughts, come back again for my last post tonight. 

Debs xxxx

3UP post no 1 inspired by Helen

Happy Saturday everyone, here in the shed it's rocking. I'm listening to Paloma Faith's new album A Perfect Contradiction and It's really good. The sun is shining but it's a little windy. It's still pleasant though.

I'm having the whole day to play, which is fab, as it will give me the time to take part in the 3UP challenge  over on the Paper Artsy Blog this week. They have had three volunteers each night with lots of really great creations. There's a massive prize too. You can see all the fun here but hurry because it's nearly finished.

I was thrilled to see a twitter friend Helen on the 3UP. I loved her hanging board and was inspired to make my own. You can see Helen's great board here.

I started by painting the board using the colours Helen used.

Embossing  around my board with shabby green added texture, in places. On top of this I stamped the stem from Lin Brown 07 and some text. The stem was also stamped on some white card. I painted, and cut these out to use later.

The flower I stamped and cut out. To give it a different look I cut into the flower and curling inwards  created the look of xxxxto which I added a pearl.

I arranged the elements and stuck the in place.

Here it hanging in the craft room.

Thank you taking a look. Please leave your thoughts and come back for 3UP post no 2 :)

Debs xxxx

tag with no name

Hello I'm back again. This tag was inspired by the last one I made, see earlier post. I really enjoyed painting the pod looking flowers on JOFY 007 that I thought do some but in a different colour. I'm sorry I forgot to take pictures until finished. I completed the back ground in the same as before. One dry I stencilled the flowers in snowflake and then dried them ready for painting.

I used sky and Baltic Ocean with snowflake for highlights. I also added Tulle fastened with lace.  Burlap Frantage in shabby blue, topped with a rolled zip flower, finshed the tag.

All the paints I used were Fresco Finish Acrylic from Paper Artsy. Thanks for the visit, I would love to read your comments Hugs Debs xxx

Spring Tag

Hello everyone, here's a spring Tag I made, using one of my favourate garden flowers. I'm entering this into the Country View Crafts challenge which you can see here. The background was created by dabbing distress paint onto my craft sheet and spritzing with water. I swiped the tag through the colour a couple of times, then dried it.

Once it was dry I applied shabby shutters, and tea dye distress stains to the mat and ran the tag through. I then knocked it back with a little Nougart Fresco Acrylic paint from Paper Artsy, to softening the colours.

I placed a stencil from JOFY 007 in place and stencilled in white. I painted them in blush and Orchid.

I love this photo...

I cut out some pansies, stamped and coloured them around the edges. I love pansies, they are so pretty. Before I assembled the flowers I added some tulle  secured with a brad.

Once the flowers were dry I assembled them onto the tag.

I felt something was missing so added a tiny Tag which I had stamped.

Thank you for looking, see you soon Debs xxx