Bl**dy beads... but a great hangy piece!

The latest guest designer at Paperartsy, is the talented  but sadistic Carol Quance who produced a beautiful hanging piece with (this is where the sadistic bit comes in) a (on hers anyhow) beautiful beaded fringe.

Now, I don't have very nimble fingers, I have trouble threading a needle with cotton and I don't "do" beading projects (and after tonight, I won't be taking it up any time soon either ...) but I have done one.

 I mixed some Chocolate Pudding and Blood Orange Fresco paints together and painted the whole hangy piece.
I used the harlequin stencil and applied some grunge paste down the length, then once it was dry,painted it with Blood Orange paint, before brushing over some Spanish Topaz and Indigo Treasure Gold, and edged the piece with some Little Black Dress paint, also catching some of the high spots of the GP, using cut and dry foam.

Like my friend Sam I stamped a Paperartsy script stamp randomly on the board, as my main centrepiece isn't long enough to fill the space.

I stamped the owl on crackly tissue (I have a little left!!) and painted it using brown and the blood orange to match the base.

The bead fringe was my biggest headache. (as the twitters amongst you are aware!) I can't do fiddly faffy stuff very well and I was going to use something other than beads for the fringe, but it didn't look right....

so I took some scissors to.....








...a bead necklace that I was given some years ago when these dangly things were all the rage - don't think I've worn it.   Each strand seems to be fixed at the top so I cut one off, thinking I had hold of the thread.... sadly there were two threads through the beads and so much swearing ensured as I picked them up from the bedroom carpet...
I expect like pine needles after Christmas, I'll be finding them for months... (ignore the pink dylusions spray on the rug....)

I am hopeless at knots but when I realised I couldn't re-thread the beads (they are TINY!!|) I decided to cut several lengths (one at a time) and knot the ends as best I could...

I painted a strip of white satin ribbon with a mix of blood orange and chocolate pudding paints, so it matches the base, and fixed some red-line double sided tape to the ribbon... stuck the top of each piece of beading to the tape and then folded the ribbon over to stick it in two.
After I finished this desperately fiddly operation I did think I could probably just have folded the one strand to the tape, concertinering it up as I went... ah, hindsight!! I stuck the fringe to the base with red-line tape.

Probably a good job you can't see it too well in this picture!!

Oh well, I managed it.... hope the next project isn't this fiddly, Carol - though I did enjoy most of it.
I did leave the string handle as it came, rather than replace it with beads or anything else, for that matter!

Take one stencil ....

...two Size 10 tags and some Grunge Paste... Leandra from Paperartsy recently made some more videos demonstrating grunge paste - check them out via her blog here   Some of these techniques I've tried before, but if it's new to you, take some time to watch them.

I started with the tag on the left - painted it with snowcap paint, then a very light brushing of ice blue.

Took the mini Cornflower stencil and stencilled Beach Hut fresco paint, the flowers.  I used the flowers fairly randomly over the tag.

Next, mix some grunge paste on your craft mat and mix in some paint (I used Beach Hut again).  On the tag on the left, I just over-stencilled the largest of the flowers (masking off the others).    On the second tag I used the rest of the tinted paste, as shown.

 Using aquamarine archival ink, I rolled the criss-cross stamp (Tim Holtz's mixed media set) without using a block to get partial stamping, randomly over the tag.  The colour wasn't quite right so I washed over a mix of the ice blue/snowflake to tone it down into the background.

Then took a script stamp (Paperartsy, from ID09EZ) and tumbled glass distress ink, again stamped it without using a block.

I painted a spare piece of kraft card stock with ice blue and snowcap paints, then stamped the Paperartsy Mini 90 in black archival.  Inked the edges with vintage photo distress (which I also used round the tag) and cut it in half as shown, inking the cut edges too.









Finished with some pale bluey-white fibres

 The second tag, I took out my Treasure Gold pots.  (this was the first tag I actually completed of the two) based on Leandra's videos, I brushed all of my colours randomly over the tag. I have, Spanish Topaz, Indigo, Aquamarine and White Fire, plus an un-named one which is a pinky-purple (it was a limited edition one a few of us were lucky enough to 'grab' at Ally Pally)

It would have been MUCH easier with a bigger brush but I didn't have a spare, clean one I could use. Leandra recommends keeping a brush dedicated for Treasure Gold, so I'll be going shopping soon!

Anyhow, covered the whole tag, then sanded back the flowers, to get back to the tinted grunge paste.
To finish the tag, I took a Kraft paper chain (I got these from Ally Pally too, several years ago) one side has aquote on them, the other is a ruler.  I stuck this to the tag using double sided tape, then gave it a light coating of fresco paint (Stone) to knock back some of the kraft colour and stamped one of my Donna Downey stamps on top (see next photo for a better look)

 

It needed something at the bottom, so I rummaged in my stash and found an oval watch face (that I picked up at - you guessed it - Ally Pally - in a pack of the same) and glued it onto a piece of Kraft scrap on which I'd stamped another Donna Downey stamp.  I sponged a little Chocolate Pudding paint round the edge of the watch part to hide the Kraft edges and blend it in.
Tied some fibres to the tag (they were a bit too 'clean' so grunged the creamy colour with some walnut stain distress ink.

So, one stencil, two tags, two very different looks (hope you're still with me!!)

A Little Bird Told Me...

Following on from yesterday, I had a piece of grunge pasted mesh left over. It was too good to waste, so I took the facing journal page and painted it with South Pacific Fresco paint.

I then laid the mesh, diamond shape-wise on the page and squashed some more grunge paste through it..

I repeated it below the first one.



I then took the Roman Letters stencil again. and cobalt archival ink. I did this sparingly.

The mesh was then painted with Blood Orange, and dried.  I cut the bird die again (making sure to cut it so that the bird could face the one on the other page, and stuck him to the journal with glossy accents.

Took an alphabet stamp set and wrote out A Little Bird Told Me.

Thank goodness for baby wipes, because my 'B' is mounted the wrong way round on the peg (and though I have written on the stamp to show which way up to use it, I didn't look this time...) Luckily I was quick enough to get it off before the archival ink dried on the painted surface..!

... a pair of little love birds!

Inspired by gauze...France style

Well, the last project of the week from France, at Paperartsy, was using some gauze and grunge paste.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to play, but then remembered the rolls of mesh that I got from craft club last week - I cut a couple of pieces off - was originally going to do something with them yesterday before I saw the Paperartsy post, but what with one thing and another it didn't happen...

Anyhow, rather than go straight to my journal like France, I thought I'd try on a tag first.... but it worked a treat.

 I allowed the paste to dry naturally (I was messing about with the phone, again!!)

I painted the journal page with Mushroom fresco.. stencilled using walnut stain,the roman letters stencil (that luckily arrived this very day!), randomly

The tag is painted with Squid Ink and wiped off slightly to enhance the texture.

I took one of the pieces of guaze and cut it (using a piece of scrap card, which had some paint sprayed on it to stop the bigshot plate cutting up too badly) with the Paperartsy bird die;  and decided I'd leave the card behind the mesh

The light (I took this with the daylight bulb) is poor, so you can't see the bird mesh too well.

However, it was a fun challenge and I am entering it on the Paperartsy blog.

**Edit - in daylight, I have got a better picture of the mesh finish...

 going to play with this again!!

Dragons Dream - Tag It On

This fortnight's theme is chosen by the lovely Monique who has had to call time on her DT membership with us at Dragons Dream - we'd like you to use on your tag, yellow, lightbulb and wires.  Don't forget to use one real stamp, too.

I decided to use my lightbulb somewhat differently.... it's broken free and is flying away for an adventure!

The lightbulb itself is a chipboard shape I got given at a show from a demo by Jennie (the Artistic Stamper) and whose top decoration has fallen off (oops) ... she stocks the chipboard shapes though

anyhow,I covered my tag with Mustard Seed distress stain and stencilled the cityscape (stencil by the Crafters Workshop) in black soot distress ink. I stencilled some white stars using snowflake fresco paint.

the wings for the flying lightbulb are part of a 'time flies' stamp from Paperartsy coloured with squeezed lemonade distress, and the text is by Wendy Vecchi. The wires are some thin fuse wire I had lying around and are glued to the back of the bulb.

WOYWW 206?

So, here we are. Another week closer to the WOYWW Crop... better start thinking about what I want to take to "play" with this time... I think it will have to be the journal... certainly not going to be Christmas cards like it was in October!!   Julia has all the info here both for today's desk link ups and the Crop and the ATC swap (what do you mean you still haven't done one, hehehe!)  I only have 5...will decide nearer the time how I'm going to "distribute" the spares!!

But today, it's desk time... well I have a journal page drying (see Tuesday's post for the full details)

what a mess...

and this is the pile next to where I perch at the computer (the higher stool I showed you a couple of weeks ago went straight away, it was totally the wrong height) of my recent projects, all piled up in a muddle - must get some of them displayed!  Under the Moleskine notebooks (a recent buy) may be a sneaky peak of today's tag for the DragonsDream tag due to be posted later... tee hee..

and I know how you like to see what I've been splurging on (and I have splurged lately!) well this has mostly come since last Wednesday... oops! Have used lots of it already too, so that's good!

anyhow, this is too long for 'short and sweet' so I'd better go.. I have the day off (waiting for a new phone) so will get to lots of you, hopefully!

I'm feeling blue...

This afternoon I started playing with a journal page... as usual, no real idea where it was going...

Indeed,it was going to be this way round for a while.. I saw a journal page somewhere, (wish I could remember where!)  done this way round and thought it was really interesting... but in the end I turned it back

 the 'normal' way! I used the pointy circles stencil (crafters workshop, Balzer Designs) this is the large 12x12 version.

The paint is Ice Blue Fresco, applied with cut and dry foam, filling the page.

I outlined each pointy circle with a sparkly blue gel pen and stamped inside each circle (stencil in place) a script stamp in Aquamarine archival ink (mini 61, Paperartsy, one of my faves)   I didn't use a block to get a random stamping.

 I then took a foam stamp (designed for use on gelli plates) and used South Pacific Fresco, stamped in the four corners, turning the stamp each time.  No, I don't have a gelli plate, just the stamp...

and a narrow stamp that looks like twisted rope (Dylusions) using South Pacific again, again without the acrylic block, filling the gaps between the circles.

I found 4 single word stamps (Wendy Vecchi) and black archival, stamped them randomly around the page, roughly outside where I was going to do the next stage..

 Then laid a piece of sparkly pale blue fibre around the page, draping it "carefully" and then gluing it in place section by section.  I used Matte Accents rather than Glossy, so hopefully when it dries, any excess won't show too much...

Obviously I haven't waited for it to dry before photographing it... that would require patience!

The fibres came on a 'thank you for your order' tag with an order from Craft Obsessions, and was a lovely long single piece, ideal for my journal page!