Claritystamp Challenge - Love and Romance

Time for another new Challenge over on the Claritystamp Blog.  This month it's Love and Romance.

Thank you to everyone who entered the January Challenge, so many fabulous entries, it gets harder to choose the Top 5 each month.  Huge Congratulations to the a Winner.

Why not have a go this month - you could win a £50 Clarity Voucher!

I took the opportunity this month to use my Meltpot in my Design Team piece and this is what I came up with,

The heart was made by pouring gold UTEE over the Clarity Heart Stamp which I'd inked with Black Archival.  When it had cooled I removed the stamp and rubbed over with Treasure Gold gilding wax.  This certainly made the pattern pop.

My idea was that as it's Valentines Day it would be a good opportunity to use my Postcard set of stamps.

All was stamped onto Ivory Centura Pearl Card and mounted onto dark brown and Kraft Card.

I hope you decide to enter the Challenge - who knows you could be next months Winner!

Fussy and Fancy Challenge

Well, this is a very special day for me, it's my first project as a member of the Fussy and Fancy Design Team!  How honoured and delighted am I???

To enter this amazing challenge please click HERE

The theme for this Challenge is Vintage.  The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the theme was this little MDF cupboard, which came along with a small set of shelves.  These two items were bought as a Xmas present to myself!!!  I haven't decorated the shelf unit yet but the cupboard definitely represents a Vintage theme.

This was how it started

First I covered all the outside with luscious Tim Holtz papers,

After sanding all the edges I painted the inside with a regal purple colour.  This paint is English Cottage Acrylic from Indigoblu, such lovely highly pigmented acrylic.

I left this overnight to dry and then I applied Treasure Gold wax to all the edges

After this I completed the most important part of the project - I filled it with Distress Paints and Distress Stains!

Thank you to all my new followers from Fussy and Fancy I really appreciate your interest in my tiny pieces of crafty work.

Sweet Lilac flowers - buttons and lace

.This is a canvas I made using flowers and lace from Sweet Lilac flowers.

I started by making a flower using the lace and then I worked everything around this piece, which I coloured lightly with Mowed Lawn Distress Ink.

I coloured the canvas with PanPastels and layered different flowers together, added the picture, buttons, butterfly and swirls and a strip of lace.

I felt that there were a couple of spaces which needed something so I used a stencil and embossing paste to add a butterfly and swirl pattern which I then covered with glamour dust.

This piece I've decided to enter into the Sweet Lilac Challenge.

New Beginnings - Claritystamp Challenge - Happy Hogmanay

.May I take this opportunity to wish all my followers and visitors to my blog a very Happy New Year.  May all your wishes and dreams come true for 2014.  I'd also like to thank you for your comments for which I am very grateful and never take them for granted.

It's certainly a time of new Beginings for myself and my husband as we moved house a few weeks ago from Warwickshire to the Somerset/Dorset border.  We still haven't got a place for everything and certainly everything isn't yet in its place!  So far so good though - we're absolutely loving it.

It seems very fitting at this time that the subject for the Claritystamp Challenge is indeed New Beginings.  For my piece of inspiration I decided to make a Happy Hogmanay card. This gave me the perfect excuse to use a lovely piece of tartan ribbon and of course the Clarity Deerscape stamp.  This is my first Design a Team project using the Gelliplate, I loved it and resolve to use it much more during the coming year.  The Meadowdance stamp goes perfectly with the Deer stamp which reminded me of the Hogmanay celebrations.  The sentiment was also stamped onto a Gelli print using the new shapes to use with the Letterbox set.  I chose the diamond shape as it reminded me of Argyle to follow the Scottish theme.  This was all finished off with a brushing of Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink through the dotty wave stencil - of course using one of the Clarity Stencil brushes which I find so useful for many projects.