An Oxide Experiment

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I had some time to play today so I brought out my new distress oxide inks, a present from my youngest son. He is not only very good at getting me to waffle on about my latest craft enthusiasms, but is also a total nerd who became very excited himself when told about the reactive nature of these hybrid inks!

 

I know I'm late to the distress oxide party but I was particularly excited about the opacity of the ink. It means light colours show up on darker card, and this card was an experiment to see what would happen if I used the inks with a stencil. I chose a dark yellow card for my background panel and blended Spun Sugar and Picked Raspberry inks into Uniko's Gerbera stencil. I added Squeezed Lemonade to the seeds in the flower centre and also sponged a little round the edges of the panel.

 

After that, I masked the flower and added some stamped lines (but wish I had used a tone on tone dark yellow instead of the black!) The sentiment from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said fits nicely in the lines though :) Before mounting the panel on a card base, I sponged Spun Sugar ink round the edges of the card front. The card was embellished with some delicate iridescent sequins from SU.

 

CHALLENGES

I used Hannelie's Yellow and Pink palette at Color Hues so I'm linking up there; also at the Stencil Fun Challenge where there's an optional theme of Spring/Flowers; The Sisterhood of Crafters' latest challenge is Showers or Flowers which amused me :D

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Drier weather has come at last and I am giddy with it! The golden girls and I are able to do longer walks and there's no need for any spa baths or even foot baths. What more could we ask for?

 

Perhaps, says Lulu, we could get a real puppy...? Don't tempt me Lulu, don't tempt me!!!

Sending hugs,

On a bright note

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I needed a quick note card for a keen grower of flowers so I whipped out a stencil, some inks and a bold sentiment. Here's what I came up with:

 

The stencil is Gerbera from Uniko's Pure Florals range - I cannot get enough of these gorgeous large, detailed stencils! I chose inks in yellow, pink and green and used them to create a bright floral arrangement. I love the way the inks blend on the flowers!

 

 

I originally stamped the sentiment directly onto the stenciling but (wouldn't you know it!) it came out slightly wonky despite using a stamping platform :/ So I stamped it again on a scrap of white card stock and fussy cut it and glued it over the first. Still a very quick card!

CHALLENGES

I'm joining in with Happy Little Stampers Stencil challenge where Anything Stenciled Goes; also Word Art Wednesday where Anything Goes.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

We are enjoying fun with our canine friends this summer! Here's one little cutie who had a whale of a time finding all the toys that I 'buried' under the cushion of her bed!

 

Peekaboo!

Sending hugs,

Something pink and sparkly

Hello, crafting friends!

 

Isn't it lovely to have new crafting goodies?! I recently took advantage of a flash sale at Uniko to stock up on some stencils I've had my eye on, and a new sentiment set. Today's card is the result of my first play with a couple of the items.

 

I was thinking pink in quite a big way!!  The Gerbera stencil was positioned over a card panel and I sponged three shades of pink ink into it; the stencil was then moved a tiny bit and I used a sponger dauber to add a touch of yellow in the centre. Once the stencil was removed, I added lots of detail with some coloured pencils to get a bit of depth to the image. When I was happy, I trimmed the panel with one of the Crimped frame dies from the Greetery.

The sentiment is from the Birthday Sentiments set - I just love the fonts in this set! I carried on with the pink theme using a light and a dark pink ink to stamp the different words. I wanted to add a bit of sparkle, so I attached a few pink sequins...

... and used a Wink of Stella pen to give the flower petals a lovely shimmer.

CHALLENGES

I'm joining in with the Sisterhood of Crafters where Sistah Diane's theme is Pink; I'm also linking up with Allsorts where Pauline's challenge is to Add Some Sparkle; the May challenge at Four Seasons is Anything Spring Goes, so I'm also entering there too; and last but not least, this is the first outing for the Gerbera stencil and the sentiment stamp set, so I'm sharing this card at Darnell's NBUS challenge where we show off our Never Before Used Schtuff.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

A friend of mine has recently welcomed a deerhound puppy into her home and asked me to bring Eva round to set a good example. My eyes did widen a little when my friend praised Eva as 'such a good girl' but I went along with it. We set out on a short walk and I'm afraid the first thing Eva did was dive off into a hedge where she had unerringly guessed there would be a ditch filled with muddy water... The pup didn't join in but she did watch with great interest as Eva emerged from the hedge looking like The Creature from the Black Lagoon!

Sending hugs,