subway graffiti

I made this masculine birthday card for a friend a little while ago using prima julie nutting aidan, my trusty and well loved brick stencil and pumice modeling paste.  I sprayed the pumice bricks with dylusion sprays (squeezed orange and cherry pie) and primary elements artist black emerald.  I absolutely adore finnabair's primary element artist pigments.  Such incredibly beautiful colours.  Have you seen dragonfly wings?  Stunning.  Simply.  Stunning.

Aidan was coloured with distress inks (pumice stone, vintage photo, black soot, weathered wood) and markers.

I'm currently working on a whole bunch of new projects using a whole bunch of new product.  I think my favs (memory box, tim holtz, mft, finnabair,gorjuss, elizabeth craft designs) have outdone themselves this season(don't worry mr.everythingshetouches I have shown some restraint).

I also have some very fun class crafts to post.  Two dragon bits (an eye and an egg) and a finnabair project canvas.

What has been your favourite new product that you purchased this season?

holiday cards: wrapping up 2014

Now that the gifts (almost all) have been given and the cards (nearly all) have been sent it's time to wrap up 2014 with a holiday card post that will inspire, if not for this season, than possibly for next year.  Here are my holiday card templates for 2014. 

I have also included the card Alex made for his teacher this year.  The design was provided by Dawn (The Inked Stamper), the details and layout were all Alex's ideas and I tied the bow.  Come on.  It's a very nicely tied bow.

Enjoy, my blogosphere peeps and I will see you in the new year.

I am entering happy winter in Simon Says Wednesday Anything Goes Challenge.

12 favourite 2014 projects over 2 posts

As 2014 is coming to a close I thought it would be fun to join some of my blogosphere friends and post my twelve favourite 2014 projects.  There is something very satisfying and fun looking back over the year remembering the work, the grumbles, the mistakes, the successes and the laughs (I still love the story of how Pinocchio got his twig nose) now embedded in each little (or maybe not so little; I'm still working on that) project.  I love remembering the support, the feedback and the people who surrounded me as I crafted.

Here they are in order of appearance:

12. another prima birthday (January) 

11.   goggles and tophats: a steampunk january (February) 

10.  valentine's day tags 42 over 2 posts (February).  This was really an all-time favourite.  I know, I know, it's really three (five if you count post one) projects but I can help myself.  This was my first humungous swap (42 tags) and I love how each set turned out.  Gold star for Valentine's Day 2014.

9.  lil monster layout (March)

8.  shabby freya chic (March) 

7.  scottie and yolanda birthday wishes (May)

6.  always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need - julia child (May)

Stay tuned for post two with the second half of my favourite project picks.

inked stamper design team december project: all you need is love but a little (hot) chocolate now and then doesn't hurt - charles schulz

It is starting to look a lot like Christmas!  Mother Nature has definitely prepared us Edmontonians for the winter solstice with a HUGE amount of snow just before the weekend.  And although the snow and the road conditions have fostered a number of colourful words, when all tucked up warm at home, sipping my Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte (no whip, non-fat if you're in the neighbourhood), past the din of tires spinning and snow plows beeping there is something so magical and peaceful with the world covered in white. 

Is it any surprise then that white is the in colour again this winter?  White ornaments, white trees, white deer heads.  White.  Which totally adds style to our December inspiration photo all that much more.  My Mind's Eye kicked it out of the park with their Sleigh Bells Ring collection.

Using MME's Sleigh Bells Ring collection and Prima's Coffee Break Cup O Joe paper I put together this fun, wintery, sparkly layout.  It has been a super long time since I worked on a layout.  For those who can date Alex's age by the toque he wears, you will recognise that this is an early 2014 winter layout.  Oscar has now been retired.  Not sure what it is about my monkey but he can definitely make a toque look good.

There are quite a few layers to this layout.  I started off setting up the first layer by laying down the book page, the burlap pieces and Prima's Coffee Break Cup O Joe papers.  I then inked splatters and hot chocolate cup rings using distress ink (pumice stone)/Tim Holtz splatters layered stencil and added stars and random droplets with dylusions sprays and izinks.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, because this is the second time I will sing their praises in two posts for the Design Team, I will once again mention how great those little bottles of ink are.  Izinks are super easy to use and have a fantastic dramatic effect for very little cost.  Afraid to use them, you say?  Let me know in the comment section if you are interested in a class and The Inked Stamper can set something up if there is enough interest.  So don't be anxious about letting us know if you would like a demo on how they can be used.  Classes at The Inked Stamper are always super reasonably priced and you definitely get your bang for your buck.  

I outlined some of the stars to ground them.  A technique I learned at The Inked Stamper from Dawn.

Once that first layer dried I was all set to start building.  I added the photos, the snowflakes (Lawn Fawn stitched snowflakes) and the MME embellishments. 

I love dimension and I love creating dimensional pieces so that each time you look at it you find something new to notice which is why I will often add a pop-up piece or two.  The Prima cups O Joe and the little toques were perfect for adding that additional layer.  
 

Thank you for stopping by, remember to leave a comment and if you have any questions do not be afraid to ask!  I always love hearing from you and the Design Team have the bestest and mostest craft knowledge to share.  I am always learning from them.

Stay warm and craft-on my North American friends and to those in warm wintery locations: send us warm crafty thoughts.  We will need them until April.

another prima birthday

I designed and crafted this card for my sister-in-law's birthday with a few self-inflicted "had-to-includes".  The card had to include Prima.  If I had to redesign the Prima Doll to better reflect my sister-in-law and her personality I would replace the stilettos with soccer cleats.  Beautiful, elegant and tough.

It had to include my first new find:  Marvy Uchida snow marker.  The snow marker is like a hedonists' chia-pet dream.  Add heat and watch grow in far less time than it takes to grow a grassy critter.  I highlighted the ruffle on Prima's skirt with the snow marker for a little whimsy.

The banners on the right were distressed in with vintage photo Distress Ink.  The popped-up dots accent the corner.

The card had to include my second new find: Viva Decor Inka Gold paint.  The texture alone is enough to keep me in crafting bliss.  Messy, intimate.  Good, good fun.

It had to include the Silhouette vintage old chair.  The chair was mine as soon as I discovered it.  No stops to the wishlist, no hesitation, didn't pass Go.  In the checkout before you can say vintage old chair.

I cut the chair out of grunge paper, distressed it with Distress Ink vintage photo and highlighted the edges with gold
Viva Decor Inka paint.

The chair cushions are part of the Silhouette chair design which I also cut out of grunge paper, covered with cardstock taken from the Recollections: Tattered and Worn paper pad and gently curved to give it a more 3D effect.

 

The new year has kicked off a crafting frenzy so stay tuned for the outcomes.  I have been informed that I must create 42 Valentine's Day cards/tags for a card/tag exchange (I love you regardless and I will not disappoint in terms of effort) and asked to join the Inked Stamper's Steampunk 10-tag swap.  Over 50 tags between now and the beginning of February is a challenge, preparing for Alex's birthday party and crafting 50 tags is a venture. But I cannot wait to share them all with you.  

Sneak-peak preview: I purchased some Octopode Factory stamps and I joined a Junk Journal group which means, yes, there is junk in the tag and I have a growing stack of pieces that need some upcycling.  Follow me on your favourite RSS feed application and you won't miss any exciting updates.

phoebe, buttons and poppies banner

I went back to The Inked Stamper for another amazing mixed media class and this time I got to play on canvas.  We used so many different media and I got fabulously messy making this adorable Phoebe Prima Doll banner.  My end product doesn't exactly resemble Dawn's template.  At the bottom right was supposed to be an alcohol inked heart marked "princess" and my version had turned out well enough, however, the positioning of the heart was really bothering me.  Issue: when you pull up a glossy piece of paper from a printed canvas things don't always turn out so pretty.  When you do it at 10:30 at night your judgement and skill is quite impaired.  It is probably best to wait until morning to exercise a more rationale judgement.  Advice: Don't pull up said paper in the first place or have a darn good back-up plan to fix the boo-boo you create.  My back-up plan: buttons.  It only took 1.5 hours to figure out.  I pulled the green hue from the acrylic painted green stems of the poppies and had a good time hot gluing the buttons to the canvas (that was not sarcasm although at about midnight when I finally decided on buttons "good time" was not the term that I was thinking).

For the backdrop of the banner I used a large script stamped directly onto the canvas.  The poppies were also stamped on using a foam stamp and acrylic paints.  Foam loves paint and the result is fantastic if you are willing to accept some imperfections.  You can ink up the foam stamp quite heavily to get a more pronounced image, however, I didn't want the red to overwhelm Phoebe.

.

The dress was cardstock paper and highlighted with markers and my gelly roll pen.  I painted in Phoebe's hair using Tim Holtz distress ink (vintage photo) and markers.

The adorable lettering was added with a coloured matte gel medium and a stencil.  We added gold to the the gel medium.  Easy peesy coloured gel medium.

My midnight buttons.

Dawn's classes are always fun (and so so messy - makes me so so so happy).  Even with the late night emergency (if only in my own mind) correction I adore this banner and my newest addition to my ladies (I have a growing bunch of girly stamps), Phoebe.

I'm entering my Phoebe banner in the a blog named Hero Challenge #31: Button It!

Here's to late night plan Bs.

washi .. pamshi birthday card

Have you had a chance to check out PJ Challenge yet?  My amazing friend Jo (Three Cs) has put together a great blog with the sole purpose to challenge creators and allow us to create using our cache which we collect (that's me using Jo's Three Cs in context (context is a "C" of a different kind - ack double parenthesis!): Collect, Cache and Create).  The prize is self-satisfaction and if you really want to push the envelope check out the New Technique Challenges where you can demo a technique that's "new to you".  You are encouraged to learn something new and then show off your nouveau mad skills in your own project or interpretation.

This birthday card, made for my mother-in-law, will count as one of my two PJ Challenge entries and I am also using it to demonstrate a new technique which I have now added to my ever-growing repertoire.

Washi is a style of paper first made in Japan and it translates to mean Japanese (wa) paper (shi).  For more information on washi link to the wiki page.  Here's my introduction to pamshi - paper created by me, Pam.

How to create your own washi tape in three easy steps for pennies a strip:

1.  Roll your double-sided tape onto tissue wrapping paper.  I like making loads of tape at one time and I love the slight imperfections in the strips as you line up the adhesive and attach it to the paper.  Both items, the tissue paper and double-sided tape, can be found at the dollar store of your choice.  You can play with types of paper (doesn't have to be tissue paper although it does give you that fun transparent style and if you check out my final product you can really see through the paper fringe which is fun) and you can play with the width of your tape.  I didn't want very many thin strips in this project but I did run two thinner strips of double-sided on the pale yellow tissue paper.

2. Rip the taped paper into strips.  And again, you have a choice depending on your style or the style of your project.  You can (a) rip the strips carefully and enjoy the rough edges, (b) cut the strips out to get more accurate and straight lines or (c) combine both techniques.  I, as you might have guessed, am a rip-and-fall-in-mad-love-with-the messy-rough-edges kind of girl but guess what friends - I ended up with (c) combining the two techniques.  Ripping was great for most colours of tissue paper but for some reason (maybe the fibers are more dense for different dyes or different manufacturers make certain colours) some of the colours didn't rip as easily.  To ensure that I didn't muck up the whole strip I ended up cutting some of them out.  You can wait to cut up your strips of washi after you have stamped your images onto the tissue paper, however, I like to capitalize on my paper and so I place the tape rather close to each other and because I didn't want the stamps to run into each other (or maybe I do in the future - that could be fun) I cut the strips out before stamping.  If you notice I left the two lines of thinner tape on one tissue strip and stamped the flowers onto both at the same time (fifth from the top in the image below).

3.  Stamp the tissue paper side of the strip.  Et voilà. Washi tape haute couture to match your project.  You may use whichever stamps you have in your arsenal, however, I found the ones that work really well are those that repeat in pattern or are small enough to repeat by hand.

Side note: enjoy the messy.  Imagine this:  tissue paper all over my work table and strips of double-sided tape sticky side up.  It didn't take long for one of those lightweights to accidentally get stuck onto my double-sided tape in a crazy random askew kind of way.  As I gently pulled the tissue from the tape, thinking I would just have to cut that section out I had a lightbulb moment: enjoy the messy.  I decided to rip up tiny pieces of tissue and randomly stuck them onto the double-sided tape.  Hence the two strips of messy pamshi which somehow reminds me of ballerina tutus. Seriously, this was the most fun I had in creating this project.  There will be more messy pamshi in the future!

The end product:

Prima Doll's backdrop was created with Tim Holtz's distress inks (tea dye, black soot) on watercolour paper.  The Prima Doll, herself, was stamped onto script cardstock paper from the Recollections: Tattered and Worn ginormous book of cardstock paper and her dress was made from scraps of various cardstock paper and leftover wrapping paper (see mr. everythingshetouches? there is sometimes a method to my madness in keeping random wrapping and packing materials which means there has to be a different better nicer word than hording).

The wings (Graphic 45 Steampunk Spells stamp set) were stamped onto the same script cardstock and highlighted with my Viva pearl pen.

The Happy Birthday tag was created from leftover watercolour paper from the main backdrop and distressed with black soot.  The brad is from Recollections collection and the little butterfly punch was a treasure found for $1.50 at Michaels.

 

I had been playing with the idea of this card for a few months.  I really wanted to highlight the washi tape and keep its integrity.  The front of the card is, therefore, a bit shorter than the back and the washi tape is a fringe along the length of the card.  I adore the transparency and delicate personality of each strip.  

PJ September Challenge #2 soon to follow: stay tuned my wonderful blogster friends.  And I greatly thank each one of you for the amazing words of encouragement.  You're all so very very sweet.