February 365 Challenge

Hello peeps, its almost the weekend!  Woo-hoo!!

Today I thought I would share my latest month in Kate Cranes 365 journal challenge. 

 I have been doing this for years and all it takes is a small drawing or sentence to sum up your day.  Once your months page is prepped it only takes a minute which is why I probably have stuck to this challenge for so long!!

My pages were coloured with TH distress stains then I overlaid a circle stencils and sequin waste which I inked through adding a few stencilled numbers.  I then added some white acrylic with an old gift card and then added the date squares and doodled a border.

I then stamped the month in black ink.  Coloured it with red posca pens and added some red stickles glitter (I bought it over 5 years ago and its STILL going strong!),  I stamped and cut out some hearts and doodled string to turn them into balloons.

There you have it...all 29 days ready for February.

Happy crafting

Kyla

 

Dying fabric with Distress Inks

 Evening all....we have just had the most awful storm!  It lashed it down for about 15 mins, complete with lightning.  The roads flooded almost instantly as the ground was already so wet!  Add to that the fact that Dr Who is filming their Christmas (oops...sorry the C word again!) episode in the centre of Bristol over the past couple of days and the fact that there was a security incident in the centre of the city today meant that it was GRIDLOCK!!!!

What fun.....so I have retreated to my craft haven (I can say haven as its still tidy!!) to chill (you have to admit crafting is SO very therapeutic....apart from when Mr Mojo decides to take a wander!).

I decided I didn't have a enough tags (gulp....please don't look behind me at the basket full of them!!) and made a tag out of pearlescent card, distressed it with DI and stamped the background with the same DI and inked through some sequin waste.

I added a leaf and some flowers with a tag and some vintage book pages (also stained with DI).

I then tried dying some satin ribbon with DI and water, and guess what...it worked!  I got lots of this ribbon, which was a neutral colour from the scrap store for next to nothing (I had a carrier bag full for a couple of quid, including leather scraps, boxes etc....so it really was a few pennies for several meters of this ribbon). 

When I dried it with the heat gun, I loved the fact that the satin shine was still there.  I think it complements the pearlescent card rather well (even if I do say so myself!!).  I attached it with some coloured mini staples I picked up in a discount shop (you know the ones, where things are 99p or £1) and mounted it on some TH Crowded Attic papers.

I love the fact that this uses almost free items (I need to go back to the scrap store to see if they have any more of this ribbon!!) to make something so dimensional with many layers-I had to buy nothing for this, it was all scraps I found hidden on my desk when I cleaned up last week! 

 I am entering this into the Simon Says Stamp and show challenge which this week is 'No Rules'.  I have not tried using just one colour before or dying with the DI, it was a 'what the hell' moment and I gave it a go.....and I think i will give it a go again!

You can find all the details for the challenge here, there are some lovely design team pieces which are totally inspiring.

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge x

 

Giant Swans

 Hello peeps!  So, finally it is the end of the week, and what another wet week it was, finishing with flash flooding here in the West country today!  Yep, summer is well and truly here!

On a positive note I had a couple of days off this week to spend some time with my Nan who is over visiting from New Zealand.  88 yrs old and still travelling the world (she came to the UK via Disney florida!!)-I hope I am like her as I get older.

In order to spend some quality nan/grand daughter time, we went for a day trip to Wells, to visit the Cathedral and shops.  A bonus is that they currently have 60 large swan statues that have been decorated and placed at various points around the city.

Over the past couple of years we have had lions in Bath and Gorillas in Bristol, so I had to take photo's of the swans we found so I can make another scrap book of them!  So far we found about 20, not bad for a days wandering (and a few stops for coffee!)

I thought I would also share with you another one of my travel journal pages.  I made the background with distress stains, using white distress stain on a script stamp to add some details, over stamping with TH papillon stamp.  I stamped some other butterflies on a page from a japanese book and added some border stamping and journaling to finish the page.


I hope that you all have a fab weekend, whatever you have planned.


Happy Crafting


Li'l Pidge
 

Days off is all sewn up

After such a hectic day yesterday I pre-planned a day off to play.....and so far I have finished my machine embroidery picture, adding silk rods, cocoons, wool, leather etc and burning back some areas.

The whole lot was stitched on felt, for stability, and I then used distress stains to colour pale fabric so that the main colour carried over the edges and then I stretched the whole thing over a pre bought canvass.

Off to play a bit more!!

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge 

Hair gorilla journal page

Happy Saturday, I hope you all have a lovely weekend planned (those of you not working that is)
 
One of the downsides of longer hair is that I often wake up like this!!!  Yep, many a morning I awake, my hubby's face usually tells me we have had a visit from the hair gorilla during the night!!
 

The background is coloured with distress stains, the hare (geddit?!?!) is an octopode stamp I coloured with watercolour pencils, the circles are from my dylusions stamp set and the gorilla hair I drew myself and added the white designs with a ranger white pen.

Now, off to get the hair straighteners out!!

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge x

A mini book

 Some of you may remember the mini book that was on my desk a couple WOYWW's ago.  Well I have now finished it.


I cut the mount board with my ATC sizzix die, used medium gel to adhere some scrap paper to the covers then painted on some crackle paint.

Once it had dried, I coloured the covers with DI flicking some water to help move the ink then used my crop o dile to punch holes and added some metal corners.

 I used my new Tim Holtz techniques that I learnt on the Creative Chemistry 101 course, without this course I would never have thought to stamp with distress stains!

I coloured the keyplate with alcohol inks to grunge it up a bit

Then tied it all with some raffia

Voila, a lovely wee book of inspiration that I will keep in my handbag for those days when I need to remind myself that I can create art, no matter what I think!

I am going to enter this into the Simon Says Stamp and Show for the Tim's techniques the deets can be found here .

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge
x