Colourful All Round!

This card was made following inspiration seen on Angela Radford's blog 'Felix the Crafty Cat' (see HERE).  She had decorated both the front and back of a card to create a continuous background.  I decided to colour my card with Distress Oxides as well as stamping on it to add a pattern.

Artist Trading Coins: Blue and Yellow!

The latest challenge over on Junk Journals and Mindful Mixed Media Art (JJAMMMA) involves making Artist Trading Coins, a new phenomenon introduced by Joanne from Craftyhodges.  I shall also be sharing these on Nina Ribena's Art Journal Prompts and More as they fit the May prompt 'Trade It'.  The colour scheme to be used in the challenge was blue and yellow which I love in combination.

Mothers are the Stitches That Hold a Family Together!

This tag was made for the monthly challenge over on the That's Crafty Challenge Blog: A Stitch in Time.  It didn't take a great deal of time to make, thanks to my stash of inky backgrounds.

A Card for Coffee Lovers!

Having been working in my art journals for a few days, I decided to make a card for a change.  I have various coffee themed stamp sets which I hadn't yet used, so decided to work with those.  As you will see, I created a gatefold card.

Stamping - Collage - Green

This page was created in response to the second Explore your Creativity challenge on Junk Journal Junkies and Mindful Art.  The colour had to be predominantly green and stamping and collage had to be part of the process.  I had fun working within these constraints and the quote chips used as the finishing touch describe both the process, and the lack of planning that went into this page.  As the colour is green, I am also entering this into the fortnightly That's Crafty Challenge 'Green with Envy'.

Distress Oxide Play!

My complete set of Distress Oxide ink pads arrived on Saturday, so I spent some time yesterday playing with a few to see how they work.  I had already watched lots of YouTube videos about them, but there's nothing like experimenting yourself.  For today, I'll just show you how they react; tomorrow, I'll share how I carried on and the card that I made with the finished tag.  This is as far as I progressed using the Distress Oxides.  I chose three colours that I know go well together; Cracked Pistachio, Broken China and Faded Jeans and worked on several #8 manilla tags to try out different effects.
 








Firstly, I added some colour from each pad onto my glass mat, spritzed with water and dragged a tag through the ink.  I dried the tag, then repeated the process, adding extra spray to the tag and tipping it to encourage the ink to move.  I did this for a third time and this was the result. 
 



















Next I tried blending the ink directly onto the tag with a small blending tool, then spritzing with water.  The different inks blend amazingly well, just as I had seen on other blogs.  Before the ink dried, I added some water and once again, tipped the tag to encourage the inks to run, then dried everything with a heat gun.  This produced a more vibrant, deeper colour, although there were nowhere near as many drips and dribbles of ink.  It was the second tag that I chose to work with.  I chose three of the stamps from the Journalling set by Claritystamp and stamped them over the dry background with Vintage Photo Distress Oxide.  The Distress Oxide inks stamp far more crisply than normal Distress inks, although the top photo was taken after I had spritzed the stamped images with a fine mist of water, which caused the images to soften a little.  I haven't tried working on dark card yet, although I have seen from other people's examples how vibrant the colours remain, even on a dark surface.