Monday 18 November 2013

Christmas decorations

Artcuts Christmas decorations


The Artcuts wooden decorations are great to work with. They can be sanded to give a lovely smooth surface for stamping, or coloured with stains or acrylic paint to give a coloured surface to work on.

The bird has been painted with Paper Artsy chalk paints and then over-stamped with a Chocolate Baroque stamp and blue Versafine  inkpad. When this was dry it was painted with PVA glue and a clear glitter sprinkled over it.
 
 
The bell was coloured around the edges  and then glittered in the same way.
Four small hearts were then stuck on and a flower centre finished it off.
 




The gingerbread man was just glittered straight over the laser burnt side so that the burnt edges showed through , underneath the glitter.
This is one of my favourite techniques as I like to see  the natural wood with the burn marks.


 
 
These  have been stamped with Versafine and clear embossed. They were then coloured with water colour pencils. The moon was glazed with Glossy accents and glitter sprinkled over.
Little Claire stamp called Little George


Little Claire stamp
 
 
 
 
The bauble has been stamped in the same way as the owls and then each section was glued and glittered. This was time consuming but pretty when done.

 
Artistic bauble stamp by Chocolate Baroque
Stamps by Chocolate Baroque
 
These were coloured with Versamagic inkpads. They give a lovely matt finish, which I like.
 
  Hope you have enjoyed the projects and thank you for visiting my blog.
 
 
Happy crafting
 
Carole

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 





Saturday 9 November 2013

A parliament of owls

A Parliament of owls
 
This is a favourite project of mine.
 
I have a great love for anything owl related as I mentioned in my profile.
 
 This was a project I did a while back but I still enjoy looking at it every day.
It incorporates some metal embossing as well as stamping and using Dreamweaver stencils.
 The large Dreamweaver owl was done with Ferro paste, which gives a lovely rough texture with a slight shimmer. The two small owls were done with black matt embossing  paste.
The little owls look so feisty sitting on the branch, I find them amusing.
 
 
 
 The owl stamps are from Crafty Individuals and Katzelkraft and the tree is a P.I. stamp, stamped onto acetate. 
 
 The trees are difficult to see in the bottom left and right corners, but the acetate is curved and tucked into the window, to give it a bit more dimension.
 
 
 
 The font used for the writing is called Lingfield by Go Create.
 
 
All the products used were from The Craft Barn.
 
 
Update.
 I was lucky enough to teach this project again to a lovely group of ladies who visited the Craft Barn in July.
As  some of the products are not sold there now , I adapted the  design slightly with other owl and tree dies. Stupidly , I didn't take a photo of the variations!
 
Hope you have enjoyed looking and thanks for visiting.
 
Carole


Tuesday 5 November 2013

Owls
 
"When was the last time you did SOMETHING for the first time?"
I love this quote!
 
I can't tell you the source I'm afraid, as I can't remember where I saw it.
 
But I decided that for my birthday each year I would do exactly that. Do something I had never done before and would like to try.!
 
Last year my family bought me a rally driving experience, which was great fun. My father always used to joke that I should be a rally driver. Can't imagine why!!!
Just as well that I didn't take it up though as I proved to be rubbish, but it was great fun and the instructor was VERY patient.
 
This year I wanted to go gliding but then I found something that appealed much more. Gliding can wait until another time.
 
 
SO I went on an OWL PHOTOGRAPHY session
 at The Hawking centre in Kent.
 I was in my element!!!
 
I mentioned in my profile that I like owl related things. Well this was an amazing experience.

These are a few of the  photos that I took of the beautiful Great Grey Owl. What a majestic creature. It was perfectly relaxed and 'what a poser!'

 

 
I took hundreds of photos  . Didn't quite master the flying  ones but I'll just have to go back and have another practise!!
Thanks for stopping by.
 
Some owl related crafting to follow.
 
Carole x