Mandy's Canvas...

Hello Friends

What a beautiful start to May we are experiencing here in Sunny South Wales!  Long may it last!  (I do hope I haven't put a curse on the weather now!)

You will recall I made a canvas for a very Special Friend who had a birthday in April?  Well, I had another Special Friend who also had a birthday in April and whilst making the first canvas I shared with you, I made a second one for my Buddy.  Only hers was a rectangle with a deep edge, and I made it toned with her bedroom colours (a little bit of sneaky texting her Hubby to make sure I had the colour scheme right was involved!).  

So here it is for you to see.....

Again I used the Sheena Douglass style of painting the canvas and crackling the background.

I used the same SD Bramble stamps, Tim Holtz dies and stamp and the same swirl but I managed to get two totally different looks just by changing the format and colours.

The swirls and Believe I stamped and then embossed with gold embossing powder. 

And here here you can see the edge of the canvas which I think gives a nicer finish than a narrow edge.  Guess what I will be buying more of in the future!

Again I used the same waxes and some more Christmas decoration for the Ivy as well as the Spellbinders die for the flower.

Which do I prefer?  I really don't know as they both look so different.

Again I used Snippets on here so I shall take it over to the Playground to see which one my Playmates like best.  Don't forget, you are always welcome to enter any pieces you have made using Snippets, whatever your craft passion is!  We all play nicely!

Have a great rest of the week.  Yippee! Bank Holiday this Monday.  Think I might just do some crafting!

Hugs

Hettie

Time for a Canvas....

Hello Friends

I think April has to be one of my family and friends' busiest month for birthdays, which means I have alot of cards and/or pressies to make.  There are alot of "Special" Peeps' birthdays too including Mr Hettie,  two of my bestest friends and my former Boss!! 

So today I thought I would share one of my above mentioned friend's present.  I know it has been received and so it is quite safe to reveal. 

As most of you know, I have recently been converted to Sheena Douglass style of Paint Fusion painting, having never been able to paint previously.  I know what I want to paint, but I cannot seem to do it.  Well, I decided it was time to put what I have learnt thus far to the test by making a canvas!  Scary, let me tell you! (You might want to get a cuppa here as this is a bit picture heavy!)

So here is the first canvas I have made......

I chose to do bramble and the flowers (it being Spring allegedly!).  The colours above are not quite accurate and the two pictures below are more of a likeness but I could not seem to get it right on the puter without losing something else.

The canvas is around 12x12" to give you an idea of size.  Painted using the crackle technique with a dark blue underneath and a Cornflower white over the top (made by the paint company that has a large dog featuring in its advertising!).  

The stamping was done using a mixture of Tim Holtz and Sheena Douglass stamps using Archival Cobalt and Chipped Sapphire DI.

The glittered ivy leaves were actually a Christmas decoration I had bought knowing I would use them for crafting at some point!  The Roses are cut using my latest Spellbinders dies I bought at Ally Pally and I inked the centres with Mustard Seed DI.  The bird cage was cut using chipboard and TH die, painted and inked, then run through the brick wall embossing folder and finished off with Treasure Gold wax. Some brads in the holes at the base and then bashed with my bashing hammer!  Then I found some chain to suspend the birdcage from.

Forgive me but I have forgotten the make of the flourish stamp.  It was one I had when I subscribed to Craft Stamper all those years ago and I use it A LOT!

On the flourishes I used clear schparkly embossing powder.

On the painted leaves you can see I used some more Treasure Gold but green this time.  This pot I bought in Nottingham at the Quilting AGM.  I love it when different crafts come together.  The flower paints are all Pebeo paints.

Lickle birdie which was flipped, inked with Gathered Twigs and made a little darker with Walnut Stain DI, clear embossed, and I used enamel paint for the eye and then placed on a swirl with two small leaves.

I was delighted to receive several emails yesterday from the recipient who seemed to like it!

I shall pop it down to the Playground now as there are a few small Snippets in there.  I wonder who will take charge as to where it will be hung in the Treehouse!!

Sorry this post is a little picture heavy and thanks for reading thus far.

Have a great end of week!

Hugs

Hettie

Happy Birthday Daisy

Hello Fellow Bloggers

What a strange time we are having with the weather at the moment!  I got up nice and early to see to the Girls and found everything covered in the white stuff....you know.....Snow!!  Did not expect that especially after the way it rained yesterday evening!

Hey Ho!

I thought that today I would share with you the small canvas I made for my Boss' Grand Daughter Daisy.  It is her birthday around now (not sure when, but my Boss is a man after all!).  

Yep.  I have used the Sheena Douglass Daisies using the Paint Fusion technique and made a small piece using a Snippet of Recycled Chipboard and then mounted this on to black mountboard and then again onto a small canvass, again recycled from another project, having painted the leaves and two more daisies on there. I am a little happier with the greens that I used on the canvas itself as they are the Pebeo paints that Sheena recommends, and they are well worth getting.  

I hope you have a great Sunday.  Off to do some of the H stuff that we all dread, as the House Pixie has gone on strike round here!  I am sure you all know what I mean!

Have a great rest of your weekend, whatever you are doing.  

TTFN

Hettie

Oh Yes.  Almost forgot.  I have used Snippets on her so I am going to take it down the Playground for all the Peeps to see.  See ya there!

x 

Creative Chemistry 101 - Day 8

Hello Peeps

I am still trying to play catch up with this course and still LOVING it!!  I actually started these last night in between coming from home and going out to Dancing!! 

So Day 8 is all about Resist - No! Not resisting chocolate but paint resist.   Hope you like what I have done.....

I have to say that I love how these have turned out and the fact that the one on the left is a lickle curly is perfectly natural as Tim Holtz has told us - phew!!  The one on the right is a little larger than usual as it was supposed to be done with sticky back canvas.  I don't have any and cannot find my role of canvas so I used a canvas board and a larger stamp 'cos I could.  I think I will be fiddling with that later.  The third technique are some die cut flutterbies using chipboard and then turned into glazed flutterbies by magic!!

Off to see what today's Chemistry lesson involves now.

Hugs

Hettie

Ingredients:-  Stamps - Tim Holtz, Stampington; Distress Stains - Peeled Paint, /mustard Seed, Chipped Sapphire, Bundled Sage, Dusty Concord; Dabber - Snow Cap White; Dies - Butterflies and Tag - Sizzix; Distress Crackle - Rock Candy, Brushed Pewter (love it!)



Happy Anniversary - ATC Canvas - Snippets

Hello There Peeps

What a perfick Spring kinda day we have had today and lucky for me I have been home, having booked the day off!  Yippee!!  Just as well really, as I am still not quite 100% but getting there slowly (physically not mentally thank you!).  Many thanks to all of you for your kind messages.

I thought I would share with you a pressie I made for my good friend Mandy and her husband Andy for the occasion of their Wedding Anniversary recently.  

Mandy has been making comments along the lines of her wish for one of my ATCs which I have made recently so I thought I would make her an ATC canvas instead of an Anniversary card.

The image was sent to me by a friend of mine and I absolutely love it.  I shall be endeavouring to buy the set which I believe is a Papermania set.  I used some Distress Inks (Fired Brick, Broken China) to colour the background of the stamped piece and then used some of my Copics to colour individual parts (clock and plant).  

I then started to work on the canvas itself.  I coloured the canvas with a mixture of Picket Fence and Chipped Sapphire Distress Stains.  Once this had dried I then stamped around the edge of the canvas with the same DIs as above and also using a Tim Holtz text stamp I stamped the base.

I added a snipped of manuscript paper (recycled from an old book bought for £1),  added some washi tape and lace, and then placed the stamped image onto canvas. 

I used a second stamping of the image and cut out the word "Love" and the butterfly.  I coloured the word with Fired Brick DI and added some Glossy Accents.  I used some Copic pens to colour the butterfly, shaped it and attached it to the background with glossy accents and foam pads.  I also attached the Love to the background with foam pads.  A key with ribbon attached and also some Martha Stewart hearts and hey presto it was complete!

So, what do I use to put the lickle ATC canvas in?  Well this lickle bag!  It came about because I could not find a box or bag to buy so I set about making one.  I remembered a blog posting HERE which I saw some time ago so set about making a miniature one.  

Mission accomplished I gave Mandy and Andy their "card" and they were most pleased with it, and I believe it is on display.  Better than a card I think.  

As this canvas is made from snippets I think I will put it into Di's Snippets Challenge.  Click HERE to go to the playground and why not join in for all the fun of the playground.  A very posh playground too as there are pogo sticks, and swings, and roundabouts, and a duck pond!!  See ya there and Tag you are "It"!! LOL!!

Hope you like it .  Off for my bath and bed now.  

TTFN

Hettie

Mojo Monthly - In a Reflective kinda mood!

Hello Peeps

How are you all on this lovely weekend.  The last full weekend in January.  Nearly the first month of 2012 over with.  I had planned to show you some more of my Snippets cards in the last couple of days, but internet was not playing and was very flaky! It was too slow for me to access my e-mails and no chance of loading any photographs up to Blogger.  Grrr!

It appears to be better this evening so as I made my Mojo Monthly piece today I am going to attempt to upload it on here for you to see.  Fingers crossed ey!

This month Sarah got down to talking to Anneliese Bates.  Click HERE to see the post.  It really is worth reading about Anneliese's work and wandering around her blog.  Some stunning work on there.

Sarah asked us to make an ATC for our piece this month.  Up until this month I had only ever made one ATC which was at a make and take in Warwick at a Craft Fair.  Not my best piece of work I must say.  So I made an ATC for my Grungy Monday Challenge and now I have made a piece for my MOJO Monthly piece and do you know what?  I think I might make some more!  I really like the challenge of getting everything onto a smaller piece of art.  I hope you like what I have made.......

I have used a piece of canvas board which I had cut down to to size, I tore a page out of an old book and coloured it with Distress Stain - Peeled Paint, and adhered it to the board using Golden Gel.  I tore another piece of the book and coloured it using Mustard Seed Distress Stain and adhered it using the gel and another page using Bundled Sage.  I then adhered some masking tape to the board before puling the masking tape back off quickly so that it took the surface of the top layer off.  I did this several times so that the different layers would show.  I then added some Distress Stain over the board - Chipped Sapphire and Picket Fence as well as Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  I distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  

I stamped the background and then added gold wax to give it a light shimmer.  Then I set to work on the various elements.  First off I stamped a little birdie, coloured him in, layered it and then decided it would be better suited on a landscape piece.  So.  Which stamp then?  I  stamped the tree instead using Archival Ink in Coffee, stamped the background text using Antique Linen.  I coloured in parts of the tree with my watercolour pencils, distressed the edges and layered it with Basic Grey paper and I did the same with the word Reminisce.   I stamped up a small flower and grunged it, threaded some twine in the buttons, tied some more twine around the board and then started to adhere all the elements to the board.  

Some Sepia Glossy Accents on the tree and flower and that was me finished.  I am now contemplating having a go at framing it using my mitre block, but that will have to wait until another day as Hubby is getting me a G Clamp in order that it can be fastened to a desk. It moves too much if it isn't strapped down as I found out the other day!!

Don't forget to pop over to Sarah's blog to see some of the other wonderful work that is there.  And of course don't forget to pop over to Anneliese's blog too!

TTFN and have a great remainder of the weekend.  I have a day of scrapbooking with my Buddy tomorrow - really looking forward to it.  Expect to see some stuff soon!

Hettie

WOYWW 120 - There seems to be alot of cake here...

Hello there Peeps

Here we are again.  Yet another Wednesday!  Happy Hump Day too!  I cannot believe how quickly this year is going and how quickly Wednesdays seem to come around. 

So today is Wednesday so that means one thing to a large bunch of Crafters - WOYWW Day!!  So without further ado here is my desk....

All this Wednesday madness and mayhem is hosted by the lovely JULIA.  This is a fab way of hopping around the world in the middle of the week via crafting desks!

As you can see there is an awful lot of cake on my desk!  I have a few birthdays coming up in the next couple of weeks so I thought I would bake a batch of Birthday Cake cards.  That way I can pop some in the tin until later.  As you can see Monkey is supervising the whole thing now.  He has also kindly pointed out that I seem to have missed a trimming off one of the cakes.  Why he couldn't have told me that whilst the Big Shot was out I don't know!!!  If he was any kinda good Monkey he would cut it for me whilst I was at work.

Do you remember this......?  It was on my desk a few Wednesdays ago.

Click HERE and I will show you the finished article!  I say "finished" in the loosest sense of the word.  No doubt I will add a few more bits on there as Christmas approaches.

Off to work and then dancing later so will try and get to see some of you today, otherwise it will probably be tomorrow.  Hope you don't mind me being late.  Have a Great week and see you all very soon.

TTFN

Hettie

Christmas Canvas

Good Evening there Ladies and Gents

How has your Monday been today? Or for those of you over the Pond, how is your day going?

Some kind person has given me some sort of lurgy so I have been doing the ole' hot and cold, sore nose and itchy eyes and ears thing.  But!  Gotta keep going or else I will just seize up!!  I suspect that yesterday's Mushroom Foray, that did not happen, did not help.  We turned up at the location we were told to meet - Abergavenny's Bus Station, the lady who was giving the tour arrived and ticked all our names off, and we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  After a flurry of phone calls we were told that our bus had broken down and there would be another one shortly.  The long and short of it is that we stood outside in the wind and rain for nearly two hours before the trip was abandoned!  Apparantly the second driver couldn't find the Bus Station!!!!  Gutted we were as we had tried in previous years to join the Foray but without luck.  Any how.  After a short stop for a lovely hot chocolate with all the trimmings we went home and I decided to warm up in my Craft Room instead!!

Do you remember this.........?

Well, yesterday I decided it was high time that I took the Bull by the horns and finished it.   I had been having all sorts of ideas about painting the canvas with various colours of inks and paints, or maybe stamping some images on there.  However, yesterday I took a long hard look at it and thought that in reality 90% of the background is covered up so what better way to cover it than some of my lovely MME Christmas papers so that the loveliness comes through.  As the canvas is 14" I decided to make a sort of patchwork of different papers because I wanted the baubles on the right of the paper to be made a feature of. 

I then spent a few happy hours just "faffing" with the canvas, papers and trimmings until I was happy with it. 

The numbers had all been printed and cut using my Silhouette last year but I had not got round to finishing it off.  Unfortunately I lost one number so had to print and cut another one.

I have used Vintage photo around the letters and numbers, as well as Black soot around some too.  The "Christmas" were inked using Fired Brick and Forest Moss.  I am still undecided as to whether to use Glossy Accents on the letters.  I don't know if the glossiness would look right in the corner?!!  What do you think?

Once I had finished faffing I sprayed the whole thing with Perfect Pearls mist in gold and red, however, you cannot really see it in the photos.  (I say "finished faffing" but I am sure I will probably add a few more things between now and Christmas!!)

The chipboard pieces are K&Co.  Ribbons and lace are just from my stash.  The Stocking is from a pair of earrings that my friend bought me one Christmas many moons ago.  I cannot actually wear them as (a) they have metal hooks and (b) they are really too long for my short neck!

I know you cannot see it from the photos, but all around the edge of the canvas I have stamped using my TH Flourish stamp in Forest Moss. 

Well, I hope you like it.  Please feel free to let me know what you think about glossing the letters. 

TTFN

Hettie