May Tag Live the Dream!

Hi Everyone,

Here I am once again, last minute once again, with my May tag. I had a huge problem with the tag this month as I did not have any rub ons, and as that was the main feature of the technique that Tim used it was really something I had to find.  As some of you know I went for a visit to see my best friend Anne yesterday and she came to my rescue with some rub ons she had left over from when she did her tag last weekend.  Thanks Anne x.
So today I was up with the birds and  got on with it, so here it is.  

 

The tag is done very much on mine and my DH's hopes and dreams for the next few years - let me explain as quick as I can without boring you to much.  Everyone wants to Live the Dream right so the ticket wording is self explanatory, Top right is the compass with the finger pointing to the south as we wish to live on the South coast thus the lovely mix of sea blue colours. We hope to go when my DH retires at 65 thus the GO part bottom left corner with the 65 underneath it.  The clock has no hands, a sign that time would not matter, and the aeroplane on the bottom is a hope that we would have the time fly on holiday wherever and whenever we want.  The birds under the word band represent one of our joint hobbies birdie watching and photographing birds and wildlife which we do quite a lot on our walks along the coast and in the country. The butterflies & moths represent the fact that life is short and you need to make the most of it and pack in as much as you can (bearing in mind that they only live an average of 30/40days and some as little as 3 days).  With all this in mind the lengthen or shorten is our choice to lengthen the quality time we spend together enjoying each others company.    So these are our wishes hopes and dreams as on the ceramic tag. No. 5 only really represents the month of May for the tag. 

 

Phew! sorry about that but I hope I explained what was going through my head as I was constructing the tag.  The background was a mixture of Shaded Lilac and Broken China distress stains and a dab of Dusty Concorde here and there.  The weather has been dark & grey today so I had to take it outside to photograph it once the rain had stopped for 5 minutes.  There is still some background stamping detail with the Dusty Concorde and broken china, that does not show up very well on the photo, but this is the best shot I managed to get for you.  I quite like the finished tag, hope you do too.

Hugs

Mo x        

WOYWW 208

Hi Everyone,

Firstly as always I am overjoyed by seeing 3 new followers join me in this week, so, Sandy, Astrid, & Rosie, welcome aboard the almocraft showboat to join me on my journey throught crafty blogland.

Its a huge HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY to Julia and WOYWW.  To celebrate we have all been busy making atc's to swop (how exciting).  What is WOYWW? its a weekly jaunt around the crafty worksdesks around the world to see what everyone is up to click here to find out more.

This is all thats on my desk today, my atc's ready to send out.  One is already spoken for but the other 6 are up for grabs.  Let me know which one you like and the first name up for that atc I will email you for your address and send it to you.
I am keeping it short and sweet this week as I have a workshop this morning before I go off to visit Anne and have a nosey at the completion of all her building work that has been causing her so many headaches recently.  I will catch up with you all when I get back.
Big hugs till then and have a great day.
Mo x

Inchies Galore

Hello Everyone,

Just popped on with a very quick post to show you a small selection of creations from last weeks Nautical Inchies Mirror workshop.  The ladies worked played very hard with all things Nautical/Seaside themed, getting very painty & inky creating no less than 40 yes 40 inchies each to mount onto one of those well known mirrors from a well known swedish furniture store.


This was my original for inspiration
 

Christines first ever try at inchies

Love the original hand drawn ones on Sandras



 

Lovely effort by Ann

 

 

Thank you ladies and well done!

 

Hugs

Mo x



WOYWW 207

Hello everyone,

Firstly a very big welcome aboard to my new followers Anne and Creafrea.
I know we say this every week, but where did that go? Its time for our weekly hop around the crafty desks of the world to see what everyone is up to check out how to join in the fun here.

Sorry folks but I am being a bit boring with my desk this week as I am busy doing samples for my next batch of workshops and as you can see from my desk there is lots going on at once (no change there then!).  Unfortunately you can only see the componants to make some of the projects as I cannot show them yet -as I dont want to spoil it for the ladies taking part - sorry.  One of the cards is face down on my trusty step by step note book which dominates the front of the desk, and I have a couple of stamps and spellbinders and of course distress stains in use.  

 

 

 

You can however see top left my altered box, and wall hanging  which I have completed  last week, here they are for you to have a closer look if you missed them. 

 

 

 

 

I have to keep this post short and sweet this week as I have to rush out soon, so a huge Thank you for stopping by my little blog and I will try and visit you when I get back. 

 

Have a great Wednesday.

 

Hugs

 

Mo x

A little bit of Bump

Hello Everyone,

As you can see I am on a roll now with my posting, and wanted to show you another project I had started on my desk last week and is now finished.

As you know I had a trip to Port Sunlight with Anne last week and we spent quite a while watching the very talented Leandra from Paper Artsy 



demonstrating the Bump technique.  I thought I must have a go at that and this is  my first attempt.

Using a few of my new goodies I got from the show, I set about altering a plain papier mache wall hanging.  First I give it a good coat of gesso, (then I decided I was going to add texture paste and a few other bits so I needn't have done that!) So - on went the texture paste through a leaf swirl mask from Imagination crafts and I glued on a few punched butterflies and book page pieces. When dry I gave it a second coat of gesso.  I have quite a good collection of eco-paints and I used a mixture of Ocean/Lake & Olive I also used an artiste one - Lagoon, and Fresco Beach Hut & Hey Presto.  I used cut n dry to blend the colours together for the background,  this did take quite a while to do to get it how I wanted it.  I gently sanded back the edges and some of the textured leaf swirl to bring someof the white through again.  Using my new TCW Mini Bingo mask I dabbed through with the Lagoon acrylic paint and let it dry.  Next I placed the bingo mask back over where I had it originally and moved it a fraction to the right and down, I used white eco-paint  to dab through again and this now became the top colour with the turquoise creating the shadow.   I love this technique.
I used a set JOFYstamps (set09) to stamp my flowers, leaf, and circles in archival black, then painted them with Hey Pesto & Beach Hut Translucent Fresco paints plus white eco-paint.
A little tickle of treasure brass on the edges, the ivy and  the butterflies and it was done.  I added a couple of ribbons to the string to pretty it up a bit.  I decided not to put any sentiments on it, as I like it as it is.  I really enjoyed making this and am looking forward to doing another one.     Hope you like it too.
Thanks for visiting,
Hugs
Mo x

Blazing Poppy Box

Hello Blog Friends,

I am rushing against the clock last minute as usual today as I  had started to make a box up with my Indigo Blu Blazing Poppies Stamp a couple of weeks ago, and only just got around to finishing it today to enter into their latest  Forever 21 Challenge  - Flowers.  As this challenge closes tomorrow, I am cutting it a bit fine.  I am also entering it into FSC Challenge Alter it. 





 I bought a few plain wooden boxes from a store near where I live for £1.00 each which I thought was a bit of a bargain.  The first stage was to stamp tissue paper with the Indigo Blu Poppy stamp in archival Black ink.  I used the Indigo Blue itsy bitsy background stamps once in archival Coffee and again in archival Cobalt around the outside areas of the poppy image then when dry, glued it onto the side and bottom of the box using




Altered box

 



plenty of  of PVA glue.  Whilst this was drying, I cut a piece of mount board a bit smaller than the box lid, and used a few different colours of distress inks to colour the background.  I repeated the above  stamping process, and used Barn Door, Mustard Seed  and Spiced Marmalade to colour in the poppy flowers.  I dried this off and dabbed Versamark all over the image followed by clear embossing powder and heated.  I triple embossed the image to give a good shiny surface and used some black embellishments I got from Chloe's craft stall in Port Sunlight for the centre of the Poppies.  Once the rest of the box was dried, I used the same distress colours on the stamped tissue and coloured in the poppies the same.  I found they were a bit too dull over the pva so I went over them with a couple of colours of pro-markers to brighten them up.  I used Treasure brass around all of the edges and glued the mount board image onto the top.  I Had a small brass catch in my stash that fitted the box perfectly on the front, and the chain, butterfly, lock,key were all bits of broken down jewellery (finds from car boots).  The  brass flower on the top of the box is ideology and the brass corner is from Creative Expressions.    The POPPY scrabble letters were made from 1" pieces of shrink plastic stamped with letters with black stayzon.  The smaller numbers were an identical set in a smaller size and shrunk down turned out to be just the right size. 
I quite liked the way it turned out and this beautiful Poppy stamp was a perfect fit for the box.
Thanks for dropping in, hope you like what you see.
Hugs
Mo x

WOYWW 206

Hi Everyone,

Its WOYWW (Whats on your workdesk Wednesday) time which is the Creation of our host Julia and has folks from all over the world sharing their workdesks with each other. If you would like to find out more and maybe join in the fun check out the link here to find out how.

My DH had a few days off work during the nice weather and we were able to enjoy a little quality time together. I also got chance to do a couple of car boot sales.  My lovely friend Anne and I had lots of crafty bits we did not use any more, and we put it all together and made some money for for us both to put towards new stash.  A visit to the Happy Stampers show at Port Sunlight was the venue for our retail therepy and we had a really lovely few hours (DH Redanne and DH almo in tow to carry bags! and keep each other company).  The deal was that we had them both back home in good time to watch the FA cup final which fortunatly had a late kick off.
So this was my desk on Monday when I laid out my purchases from the show, I had put a coat of Gesso on the wall plaque before I took the photo.

I bought one of the six lovely new Indigo blue stamps only released last Friday, and a couple of translucent fresco paints,  a Stamps away Lighthouse stamp, 3 masks (one was a pressie from Anne along with the pretty pink atc and rusty wire) some JOFY stamps, a wall plaque, Chloes lattice stamp, embellishments and treasure gold.  The 3 eco paints were a bargain at 3 for £5.
This was my desk this morning when I had started to play with my goodies.

As usual I have lots of things on the go and they are in various stages of drying, distressing etc. I have used texture paste through the vine stencil onto the plaque glued four punched butterflies at the top and book page pieces at the bottom.  The Poppy box at the back is for the current Indigo Blu floral challenge and is nearly finished.  There are quite a few atc backgrounds on the go and   on the top left is a coloured image from playing with my new Indigo Blu stamp but I am not happy with it so it will be re-done.

Just  before I go can I introduce you to a a lady who is fairly new to blogland and who has very recently joined WOYWW.  Her name is Julie Ann and she has some amazing projects well worth a visit if you get chance just click here for a look at Magpieheaven.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my desk today, as usual I will get around as many desks as I can and visit everyone who visits me.
Happy Crafting - have a great day.
Hugs
Mo x

Playing Catch Up!

Hi Everyone,
Sorry, Sorry, What a bad blogger I am, I have been absent for a couple of weeks and totally neglecting my posting duties.  I must try harder.  I have not been idle however and wnted to share a couple of projects that have been made recently.

 

 A simple clean mens card with a couple of die-cuts and a little background stamping.



Here we have a few versions of Tims Tags of 2013 for April/May - not my efforts these ones, but the work of the ladies on the workshop last week.

 

Another mens clocks & cogs card with a bit more texture this time.  I love the dimension that you get using the metalic tape. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for visiting

Hugs Mo x