WOYWW 30th March 16

Good morning

Sunshine here in Kent, UK today for once.. I'm getting fed up with all these April showers already..and it isn't even April yet! Lol..

This morning I am again bringing you my desk to join in with Stamping Ground What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday Blog.

Here you will see my cluttered desk from where I was working on the layout below.

You can also see in comparison to last weeks that I have got a new addition to the top of my desk.. a deep plastic tray that I am keeping allsorts of objects in to feed my new passion of mixed media., buttons, old key rings, charms, etc . This is the mini canvas I have made this week too.

Finally, one of the other changes since last week is that I (finally) have my blind up! Meaning I can now work in my craft room without being seen by all the neighbourhood! Having moved into a more built up residential area recently, I have been craving a bit of privacy so I am delighted with my blind that I can now angle for the right amount of light during the day and close it at night for privacy.

The other change is this shelving unit my dear husband built for me last week.. he's a treasure and I am so grateful!

So that's it.. I'm off to have a nose around other peoples desks..why not hop over to Stamping Ground and have a look with me..and, of course, join in too.
.

Have a good week all.. come back soon!

Elaine

x

My second mixed media canvas

Good evening,

Thanks for stopping by again so soon.. I'm hoping you will think it is worth your while as today I am bringing you a second canvas.. really quite different to the last.

For this one I took some PVA glue and covered it with gold tissue paper, wrinkling it as I went. Once dried I took two stencils, a swirly circle one and a script one and used Prima texture paste with them. I left them to dry and added some rose gold mist (home-made) and some gold acrylic paint.

I then set about making my arrangement of bits and pieces I had collected together. The large brass saying 'Expensive but worth it' is an old key ring I have held on to for a while. I also had some paper die cuts, a fence, a fern and a heart. In addition I added a couple of gold buttons, some chain links, some charms and a few paper roses. I also added a crown into the arrangement that was left over from my sons wedding in 2012. I had a negative piece of card too that I had punched circles from and I used that too. The large square with a circle in is a piece of foam packaging painted gold and sprayed.

Once I was happy with the arrangement I took some Prima Translucent Gel and stuck each of the items down as planned. I wasn't overly happy with the way it was going so I realised that I needed to find a more cohesive colour scheme so I decided to paint all of the items with the gold acrylic paint.

It was looking pretty at that time so I filled in all the gaps with small pearls, gems, beads and bead spacers. I added two bows and misted it all with turquoise Perfect Pearls. This gave me the effect I was after but not enough of the blue, so I dripped some darker blue from the Dylusions range- so here is the finished canvas.

Thanks for popping in again.

See you again soon.

Elaine

x

Mixed Media Messiness!

Good morning..

Today I am bringing you something a little different for me..a mixed media canvas.

Just recently, although I've always been intimidated by them before, I have been getting more and more excited and interested in the Finnabair style by Prima. I have seen some wonderful examples on FB and on Pinterest, so I thought I'd have a go!

Now..I know I have a long way to go and a lot to learn..but here are my very first attempts...please bear with me while I'm on my learning process. Of course, because I'd watched a few tutorials on You Tube..I decided I just 'had' to get some more products! So off I went with my credit card (!) and bought some Prima Translucent Gel, Prima Gloss Gel and some new texture paste(my old stuff had gone off quite hard but there wasn't a lot left so I didn't mind too much) I haven't thrown it away yet..so if anyone knows of a way to instill new life into uber thick paste..do let me know. I had quite a bit if stash anyway but I found myself ordering some glass beads and Cosmic Shimmer sparkly texture paste too!

Then I had to decide what to decorate. As luck would have it, over on good old UK Scrappers, there is a mini canvas art swap..so without further ado, I ordered a set of mini canvasses from The Works. (6 for £2.99.. A bit of a bargain I thought!) and I started decorating.

It ended up as a really rather sparkly affair! First I covered it with extra strong tin foil sticking it with PVA glue, ensuring I wrinkled it as I was sticking it down. I then used four different Adirondack alcohol inks and daubed them all over the background. Once dried I adhered the title made from some Teresa Collins mini alphas. Which left me with the spaces that I needed to embellish.

I selected a collection of flowers (recently purchased from Wild Orchid Crafts) and layered them in a bit of cooking mesh I bought at Poundland eons ago (I knew it would come in handy one day) and then I poked in bits of broken jewellery and some smaller flowers.  I then finished it off with a smattering of pewter coloured bead spacers, various pearls and some sparky turquoise stars.

At this point I was happy enough with the composition but I wasn't happy with the way the title was sitting proud of the canvas. So this is where I got out the Sparkly Texture Paste... And I literally splodged it all around the title along the edges filling in all the gaps. It looked much better! Then I got a bit carried away! I added more and then..as if it wasn't sparkly enough.. I added some silver glass glitter that I had bought last year at a retreat I attended. I bought it from the on site shop supplied by Crafts for Eternity.

It covered a lot of the sparkly texture paste with the glass glitter and I then shook off the excess.

In the end I was quite pleased with it for my first attempt...any suggestions what I could do differently are always appreciated.

Well that's it...but come back soon as I have another, in my opinion, better canvas for you to see.

Elaine

x

CKCB Blog Hop March 16

Good morning and welcome to the Counterfeit Kit challenge blog hop

You should have arrived here via Tina  in her Scrap Corner

Without further ado.. it was challenge no.3: ' Insta Inspiration' that inspired me to get my squares out and make this LO here with my March CK kit.( I never got around to naming it..doh!)

So here it is... I cut all the photos into squares and I used a series of photos that were taken at Christmas of my sisters family messing about with square cards that clip to their noses to give them silly faces.. what a laugh..especially my 86 year old Mum who joined in too! Happy times!

I used the remainder of my Kaisercraft 'Take Note' papers from my kit and added extra embellies and co-ordinating hearts and arrows too.

Well.. that's it.. short and sweet... but do carry on with the hop.. there are so many things to see.. the next stop on your hop is the Lovely Margies blog.. happy hopping (and Happy Easter too to all my followers!)

If you get lost along the way, here's the order for the Blog Hop

CKCB        http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com
Jemma    http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk
Sally        http://sallyschallengechatter.blogspot.com
Natalie    http://thebigdills.blogspot.com
Susanne  http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
Tina         http://tinasscrapcorner.blogspot.com
Elaine      http://chidkids26.blogspot.co.uk
Margie    http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com
Lisa          http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de

Thanks for stopping by.. see you again soon..

Elaine

x

Challenge
                                                  #1/2/3 was to ... and
                                                  here's my project ...

Thanks for
                                                  stopping by and now
                                                  you should hop over to
                                                  link-to-next-person-on-the-blog-hop-list
                                                  ...

The full blog
                                                  hop list will be
                                                  published on the
                                                  link-to-the-CKCB so if
                                                  you get lost along the
                                                  way, head over there
                                                  to find your way back
                                                  onto the hop.

Don't forget
                                                  to leave me a comment
                                                  to let me know you
                                                  were here and happy
                                                  hopping!"

WOYWW

Well Hello...LOOOONG time no see!

Last year saw me out of 'Blog land' action while I was moving house.. four times... but enough of that! I'm back with a vengeance and am so happy to be joining in here again.

Today I am showing you my (very cluttered for me) desk! You can see there are several small piles of bits and bobs stacked up on the desk. This is because I was recently finishing off my Grand-daughter Ambers Simple Stories Snap Album for her first year.

I had taken a lot of my stash downstairs and worked on it in front of the TV, and when I carried it back upstairs again, I put it into small piles of stuff to make it easier for carrying.

If I'm honest, there isn't enough creativity in these books for my liking so, unless I get more Grandchildren, I can't see me making these very often. I am trying to learn how to upload the video to You Tube but so far the technology is evading me! Lol

Anyway.. thanks for stopping by.. do stop by again soon.

Elaine

x

 

A happy theme

Afternoon all

Today I'm bringing you a LO that I made with the Scrap Our Stash blog challenge in mind.

The idea is to look at this picture and glean inspiration from it and make a page..and to include some gold embellishments or use gold alphas.

Regular followers of my blog will know that I have recently moved house and have moved into my newly set up craft room. More details here in my earlier blog post. I was also lucky enough to be featured in the Counterfeit Kit Blog on an article about storage here .

In addition I wanted to join in the Scrap Like You Mean It Reboot over on UKScrappers . The theme for this challenge was to scrap a happy story.. and what better way to celebrate some happiness than to scrap my new scrapping room.

The book cover really caught my eye because of the title of the book.. my Dream Room..is just that..a room to call my own to scrap in. In addition the pink in the cover attracted me too so I used Carta Bella patterned papers and I added some butterflies and birds. The gold elements I chose were all the gold sequins and there is a strip of sparkly gold ribbon between the large photo and the two smaller photos.

I do hope you like what I've made..and if you do, please leave a comment and become a follower so you can see what else I get up to in the future.

Until then, thanks for stopping by!

Elaine

x 

 

#summerchillin'

Morning all

Having been away for a few day, we're now back and I'm back in my craft room..lol

First day back and I got out my Counterfeit March Kit from the CKCB blog here to create the layout below.

 As regular followers of my blog know, there were very few patterned papers included in my kit so I added some co-ordinating papers, namely Pink Paislee, and set about this.

I was lacking a bit if inspiration so I visited Me and Mines blog and decided to use her March challenge sketch here. Thank you Sue for the challenge.



I used a variety of scraps too to create the layers and I used Stampin' Ups Gorgeous Grunge to add some splatters behind them .

Finally, I added two photos to my LO rather than the one in Sues sketch..but I am sure you can still see the basis of the sketch?

Here it is

#summerchillin'

March tags..

Afternoon all...

I'm back from a lovely lunch..stuffed to the gills and have definately overdone it! Lol
Oh well, it's only Mother's Day once a year..

Anyway..as we're now home and DS2 is watching the football with DH, I thought I would come on here and blog some tags I made earlier in the week. Over on UKS I am in a go round that exchanges tags on a monthly basis and this month our theme was 'Arrows'... so here is my take on them

First I took some large tags, covered them in dictionary pages and sealed them with PVA glue. Then I took a Tim Holtz arrow stencil and used Prima Translucent gel through the mask. Unfortunately I underestimated the translucency of them and they barely showed up at all. So, once dried, I took the stencil again and used a Tim Holtz Walnut distress Ink and inked through the stencil over the top of the gel. Once dried, I also took some Treasure Gold and rubbed over the arrows to give them some more definition.

Then I took some Papermania wooden frames and cut them in half and stuck them onto some cheesecloth and adhered them to the background. I took some mesh and added that too and added more embellishments to create two clusters of interest. I also added some stamping on the edges.

Once everything had dried I took a dry paintbrush and added gold acrylic paint in places. I finished it off with another Studio Calico arrow on each tag and added ribbon.

Any excuse to get messy eh?

4 pages and a Mothers Day card

Good morning everyone..and a Happy Mothers Day to all those in the UK

I'll have to make this one quick as I am being whisked off to lunch later and I have a mountain of things to do before everyone descends on me.. I'm so lucky to have my family so close by..and to still have my own, lovely Mum..shes 86 next week and not in the best of health so I'm making the most of every minute with her :0)

Anyway..on to the reason you're here! To see what I've been up to!

Yesterday I went to a crop and managed to get 4 LO's done, one of which was a DLO here

As you can see I made this out of my Counterfeit Kit compiled from inspiration over on the CKCB blog here.

I used  the Heidi Swapp stamps and the Kaisercraft Take Note collection within my kit.

I also made this LO using the same kit...it also fits in with a challenge on Shimelle.com blog. She is hosting a virtual crop this weekend and although my time is limited I aim to do a couple of layouts.

Then to finish off I used a few random sheets and made this LO which  was inspired by the Scrap Like You Mean It Reboot over on UKS where we were encouraged to 'Scrap with Three'. In this instance I used three patterned papers, three decorative brads, three small brads, three pearls on each pennant in the bunting, three x three layered flowers and a three word title.

Finally I wanted to share my Mothers Day Card.. so here it is.. my first attempt at an Easel Card

Counterfeit Kits Challenge Kit March 2016

Good morning all

Today I am bringing you a kit I have counterfeited from the CKCB here.

This month we were encouraged to think outside the box as the sample kit they had supplied was bereft of patterned paper! Yep.. that's right... no patterned papers!

Instead they gave us this image  from the kit they had selected to work from

Whilst I like a challenge, along with the next person, this did throw a bit of a curve ball for me! (As I gather it did for the design team too!)

But, after some consideration and thought, I decided to so with a simple kit including Kaisercrafts Take Note collection which features cameras and has some of the more autumnal colours that feature in the original kit.

I also added some Heidi Swapp stamps and a couple more stamps, some photo frames and stopped there..never have I collated a kit as quickly as I did this one!

Now while I know I have 'cheated' and used some PP's, it is mainly PL pages and stickers so I reserve the right to add more card stock and extra embellishments.

So, without further ado.. here it is!

Its great to be back amongst my friends at CKCB after an absence of over a year (having moved four times in 2015 I was a bit pre-occupied!) Also, having now taken early retirement, I am looking forward to getting back into the world of blogland!

I do hope you'll join me on my journey... feel free to follow my blog as I aim to be a regular blogger again.

Thanks for stopping by!  

Elaine

xx