Trash to Treasure - No 3 Continued......

As I suspected it took a while to get this little tutorial edited, finalised and uploaded to You Tube!  So here is the card I made using the same techniques I used on the box in my last post.  I have repurposed some old jeans and used scrap paper to print my images on for the image transfer technique.

On Friday I taught my class how to make these cute flowers using white sheeting which we stamped with a background stamp using distress ink before gathering it up to make a frilly flower.

I love making these flowers as they are quick and easy and really pretty.  Just think of all those scraps you have lying around or before you put the old clothes out for recycling I am sure you could use hubbies old stripy shirts!!!  A nice way to preserve a child's pretty dress on a layout too.

And here is the video tutorial of how I made the top card on this post which features 'a how' to for the image transfer technique and how to make the denim flower. Hope you like the video tutorial and try out the techniques for yourself.

The top card is the card I am giving away on my next Trash to Treasure post in 2 weeks time.  All you have to do is leave me a comment either here or on my previous post to be in with a chance of winning.

Thank you for popping by X

Trash to Treasure - No 3

I really wanted to start this post by thanking everyone that has left me such lovely comments over the past week.  You have really confirmed to me how much I love to craft and how wonderful this blogging malarky is.  Who knew a year ago when I started blogging how addictive it was and that is really down to you, all my fellow crafters out there in what I think of as a virtual community.  Everyone has been so willing to help when I didn't know how to do so many things but best of all is the sharing.  I know it might sound a bit soppy but I think you will agree with me there is such a generous sharing of ideas and knowledge, sharing of art and inspiration and a willingness to encourage and support out there and that spurs me on to try harder to make beautiful things.  I might not always manage it but I really enjoy the trying!  Thank you to everyone that has liked what I have been doing here on my blog enough to follow me.  I still check out my statistic page and colour in my map each time a visitor from a new country pops up.  How cool it is to have coloured in 68 countries to date.  I have been brushing up on my Geography and thank goodness for the internet or I would still be searching the atlas for the whereabouts of Kazakhstan.......ok ....... and lots of other countries I only vaguely knew where to look for!!!  I have just spotted Moldova on my list of visitors and I will have to look that one up too!!!  I still need a visitor or two from Alaska though as that is a major colouring job!!! ;-)

Now as I suspected when I decided to do a regular Trash to Treasure post it is going to be two weekly!!!  So without further ado my trash this week was old jeans and this is what I did with them.

The jeans have been torn into strips, frayed and fashioned into flowers and ribbons!  As I wondered how to use the flowers I had a huge pile of very large flowers that were in need of a storage solution sitting on my desk and I had this box (actually it was a set of 3 nested boxes I bought some time ago) and decided to make a pretty home for my pretty flowers kindly gifted to me by my friend Barbara.

I white washed my wooden box with acrylic paint liberally thinned with water.  Just to make sure that the wood colour was toned down a bit as I wanted to try out an image transfer technique on a 3D object rather than the flat ones I have done this on before.  That is when the Trash to Treasure ethos popped in to my head and I decided to print my images on to unused instruction sheets that I have left over from previous classes I have taught.

So I found a lovely blue and white Toile image on the internet and I  printed out several sheets (ink jet printer) on my recycled instructions!!

Then working on a side at a time I trimmed pieces of my toile print roughly to size and then you need to work fairly quickly for step one of this technique.  Liberally coat the piece with acrylic paint - I am using white as my print has a white background.  Work quickly and evenly coat the side with a thick coat of paint.

 Next press the printed image onto the side into the wet paint.  Have a piece of kitchen roll handy for mop up of excess paint and an old plastic card (gift card or similar) to gently at first press the paper over the piece and then being careful not to tear the paper smooth it out and against the side making sure you have good adhesion.  Then it is time to have a coffee and let it all dry.  You can use a heat gun if you want to speed up this process.

 When it is totally dry it is time to wet it again!!!!!  I use a paint brush to coat the back of the paper with water and leave it a minute or two to soak into the paper.  Then use your finger to rub the paper and gradually remove the top layer of paper to reveal the image below.  If you have not done this before then be careful.  If you rub too hard you will remove the image entirely.  Gently does it.  There will be bits that don't work but don't worry as this adds to the shabby chic look and the over all charm of the image transfer.  There was a slight problem using the recycled paper in that the black ink did start to bleed.  I manage to avert disaster by rubbing away from the revealed print so as not to transfer the ink back on to the transferred image.

Let your image dry out again and then take a piece of kitchen towel and gently buff off any large stray bits of paper peelings.  Then carry on working to cover the entire box.  This technique is messy but I think it is worth it.

Here is the outside finished.

And then I used more of the printed paper cut to size and glued into position to cover the inside of the box as you can see here.  

I inked all my edges with Chipped Sapphire Distress ink.

Including the inside edges  and then gently sanded the whole piece to shabby it up some more.

And here is my finished Trash to Treasure piece with its recycled denim embellishments.

and here it is filled with pretty flowers - perfect!  Gotta love a bit of gorgeous storage!!! (I am soooooo modest!!!! ;-))  I love this image transfer technique.

I am in the middle of making a video of this technique and using it on the card I am going to give away this on my next Trash to Treasure post.  I wanted to get this post up first as it is a bit long and I will post the card with video later today or early tomorrow dependent on You Tube upload times.  So if you want to win the as yet unseen card then please comment on this post.  Have you tried this technique?  It is a bit messy to do but I think it gives a lovely result and I hope you like it too.

I have done the draw for the Trash to Treasure No 2 card and the winner is.........

Eliza!!!!

Thank you Eliza and to everyone that took the time to comment I really do appreciate it.

That's it for this post.  Pop back later to see the card you could win if you leave a comment on this post.
Hope you enjoyed this Trash to Treasure project and try it out for yourself.

Thanks for popping by x

Ever After Challenge

Tinkerbell Card - Make a Wish!

Guess what I was doing yesterday!!!???  When I saw this weeks Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge I knew immediately which fairytale character I wanted to put on my card.  I love the idea of fairies and there is one fairy in particular who is cute and sassy and here she is!  Bonus point that she wears green which is my favourite colour.  I made my challenge piece at our crop and I was asked a few times who my card is for and I said .......well actually I think it is for me!  I am going to put it on my wall ;-)  I thought you might like to see how I put this one together.

I made a card 5 3/4" square with black card stock.  Quite a heavy weight card stock as my intended embellishments are heavy.  I cut some Tinkerbell green card stock at 5" square and then stamped it with flowers using Tinkerbell green Ink.....are you sensing a theme here :-)  Ok it was Peeled Paint distress ink and the stamp was a flowery background stamp from Hampton Arts.

I inked the edges of my card and then mounted it on my card front and then got to work with this little pearl maker.  I have had this for a while in my stash and it was the first time I tried it.  I have to say it was quite easy to use and the pearls looked just like the real thing when they had dried.

Next I cut a square of white card at 4" followed by a square of black 4 1/4" which I layered on to my card.  That's not a white square I hear you say!  I cut an inch strip off the side of the square and here is what I did with the rest of it after I trimmed an 1/8 off the long edge....

I have a very lovely book that I treated myself to that teaches you step by step how to draw fairies!

Here is my step 1

Step 2

 Step 3

I then added the colour with my Peeled Paint distress ink and outlined her with a black pen (forgot to photo this bit)....too busy chatting!

Then I took 3 little bottles - Why are tiny things so darn cute??  I filled them with fairy dust (glitter to us mere mortals) and added labels and ribbon.  I stuck the wishes to my card with Pinflair glue gel, made a 'Make a Wish' label and added a Making Memories enamel charm in that fabulous green colour!!!  A couple of touches of glitter in Tink's hair and here is the finished result

Tinkerbell!

I am off to my crop again now - how lucky am I two days to ....well...... mostly chat, drink coffee and eat cake with my pals but now and again we do do a bit of crafting as you can see.  I am going to work on a layout today.

But before I head out I would like to say a really big thank you to everyone for their lovely comments on my last last weeks Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge.  I  was bowled over especially this morning when I logged on to make this post and found lots more lovely emails and the fab news of making the top three!!!!!  So cool  -  a big big thank you everyone.

If you are just happening by this way and want to see what wonderful things a good challenge inspires then follow this link to see more Ever After inspired works of art at the Simon Says Stamp Show Challenge Blog.

Hmmmm I suppose I had better get dressed before I head out to my crop ;-)

Thank you for popping by X

WOYWW 192

Hello everyone out there in WOYWW land!  I hope your desks are ready for inspection and full of stuff to rummage through!!  I can't believe it is Wednesday again already.  I have polished my specs and have my coffee to hand (no biscuits ;-( I am trying to be good).  

Desk number one has some pieces ready to make into card sample Number 2 for my Card Class on Friday.  Look at those cute flowers we will be making.  These strips of cotton remind me of having my hair tied in rags to make ringlets when I was little.  I have to say it was never really worth the hair pulling as the ringlets were wound nor the discomfort of finding a way to put your head that was comfortable enough to sleep and then more hair pulling to get the rags out and then for me the result was always........Frizzy ringlets.  I think my hair was always that bit too short so there were lots of stray bits of hair and no long Shirley Temple spiral curls!

Desk number 2 has part of my pyramid mini that I am in the middle of filming a video tutorial for.  I love those Basic Grey Papers Indie Bloom Papers.  I still haven't got item number two in my shop yet but it should be today or tomorrow.  I have ended up with 14 tutorials (over 2 hours of tuition).  I just kept thinking of different ways to use the patterns and I do like to offer value for money.  The worst part is how long videos take to upload to You Tube.......Someone could make a killing working out how to do this quicker!  They are taking so long that I am now prepping the pattern and tutorials for this item number 3 to hit my stock!

If you want to see a finished Pyramid then please feel free to follow this link.

I am flying off to visit with you guys and gals now and am looking forward to seeing what you have been up to this week.  If you want to do the same then head to Julia's place as she holds all the keys to all the desks in all the world!

See you next week - have a good one X

Tag Tuesday

This is my first Tag Tuesday post this year.  As more and more of my time is spent on my new business I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to be part of the lovely Tag Tuesday team this year.  I didn't want to give it up but I knew I couldn't spend the time I did last year having fun with all the 3D tags I made.  Then thanks to some inspiration provided by fellow tag team mate (sounds like we wrestle!!) Arnold when I visited his blog and saw a lovely zentangle card he had made I knew what I wanted to do for the Alphabet theme.  I am late out of the starting blocks I know but here is my E tag and my catch up A tag!

Zentangle Pattern Alphabet Tags

I am going to work on a Zentangle Pattern Alphabet!  I am fairly new to Zentangling and I do enjoy the relaxation of it.  I need more practice and I need to know more patterns and so each of my tags will feature patterns beginning with the letter of the week and I will catalogue them on the back so I can find them again if I want to use them on a project.  I am also going to use my Distress Inks to create a rainbow effect when all my tags are gathered together.

I am not sure how I am going to display them yet but I was thinking a carousel or hanging rack so I can leaf through them easily.

I was going to have a coffee and go and see what my fellow tag artists over at Tag Tuesday have been up to this week but I have to go mop up a plumbing leak first!!!!  As I was typing this there was a strange banging noise and water is coming through the ceiling in the Downstairs loo.  A radiator has rusted through in the bathroom upstairs and has sprung a leak everywhere :-(  Can you believe it???? It would happen just as the weather has turned icy again????  Deep breath - good job I did all that zentangling and I am calm, I am calm, I am calmish........I am fed up that my coffee is going to get cold and me too if we don't get the heating back on soon!!!!!

Trash to Treasure - Two Weekly!

I thought it might and I proved myself right!!!!!!  I will be making the Trash to Treasure post every fortnight rather than weekly.  It gives me a little more thinking and creating time.  I have a card class to prep for on Friday so things have gotten a bit hectic this week......Oh and Callum has broken another bone!  It is his little toe this time....I thought Gymnastics was supposed to keep you fit!  He is ok and is quite happy to be on crutches for a few days!!!  I think he will be bored with them soon enough.

I am sharing a card design with you today and it is definitely in the Trash to Treasure genre!  It is one of the cards I will be teaching to my class on Friday.  I love embossing heavy acetate packaging and I really don't know why I haven't tried it before.  I love how it looks in this apperture.

Luckily for me I have a couple of students who kindly keep me in Spellbinders packaging!  (Mentioning no names!)

I will do the draw for the card giveaway from last weeks post when I do my Trash to Treasure post next Monday but thank you to everyone that kindly commented.

I will be finishing off the packs for my second card for my class tomorrow and I am working on the pattern for my Pyramid Mini - Part One of the video tutorial is in the can so those film types say I believe!! - I had such fab feedback on my last post that I could wait to get started on it ;-)  Thank you again to everyone for your kind words.

See you again soon x

For My Little Star!

I wanted to take part in a challenge this week and I spotted the Simon Says Stamp and Show when I was reading at a great blog that I follow The Artful Maven Haven and Anita mentioned the challenge as she is now part of the Simon Says Stamp design team (I am not surprised as she is a very talented lady) so I followed her link to see what it was all about.

The theme this week is Seeing Stars and here is what I made.

It was really difficult to take a photo of the stars in my Challenge piece!  But I think you can see them here (put your glasses on and get closer to the screen!!) but the biggest star in this piece is who I made it for.  My youngest son turns 14 this month and this is his card come keepsake.  I know he is not going to see it as he is too busy chatting to his pals on his phone to think about checking out Mum's Blog!!!

As you can see, and those that know my work will not be surprised, I got a little carried away with the construction again!!  I really loved making this and it did come together relatively quickly ....that means not to many technical  design hiccups.  I loved being able to use my Graphic 45 papers for this as they have so many great mix and match designs and these ones were perfect for a boy....sorry young man!!

The first pyramid opens up exploding box style to reveal a smaller pyramid inside.  Callum plays guitar so these stamps are perfect.

 Which in turn opens up to reveal a birthday surprise!!!

Confession Time!! I didn't plan for the small pyramid to stay partially up like this but because I used the bottle tops to decorate they propped the sides up a bit and it was a happy accident as it looks rather good....if I say so myself...and at this time in the morning I am definitely the only one awake to say it in my house ;-)

Another view of the centrepiece.  I think I have managed to get all the bits of hot glue strings off it!

The faux drawer at the bottom pulls out to reveal it is actually a hidden mini.

Last photo.....and now I am off to link this to the Simon Says Stamp Challenge before I hide it somewhere safe until the 12th and then to go to bed.  Night all and thank you for popping by.