Ally Pally stash

Managed to have a play today with some new goodies that I bought from the show at Ally Pally. I made a bee line for the Paper Artsy stand to watch the demos by Leandra and Lin. My offering has a background demonstrated by Lin at the show and if you hop over to her blog she gives a step by step tutorial. I used a small piece of 4 by 4 greyboard which I bought so I could use it as a practice piece before breaking into my packet of full size pieces. I applied grunge paste through two different crafters workshop stencils, then layered with fresco finish paints. The main stamp image is a Chocolate Baroque stamp plate which is sadly discontinued now. I bought a pot of the luscious treasure gold to try - I have discovered you only need a tiny bit lol, I have added way too much here. Even though I think this piece isn`t perfect by any means, I`ve decided thats ok. After all, how are we to learn unless we try things in practice ? I really think I am guilty of spending too much time on the internet lately and not spending enough time trying out new things myself so I intend to spend more time DOING instead of looking.

playing with docrafts goodie bag

I recently bought one of the docrafts creativity magazines which I have to admit I very rarely ever buy but wanted the free chronology stamp on the front. I liked the look of the new chronology goodies so popped over to my local branch of the Range to have a nosey. I ended up buying the goodie bag since at £15.00 it seemed much better value for money than buying things separately at approx £4.00 each. I am quite impressed with the contents, not just the chronology bits but lots of other goodies in there as well. I`ve used the 8 x 8 papers in the pack, the stamp and some distress ink for my cards. The brown version is stamped in versafine vintage sepia and some brushed corderoy distress ink inked round the edges of the image. Simply matted onto a piece of background paper.

My blue version uses some of the paper again, love these hot air balloons. This time I used a piece of the background paper with the cogs on to overstamp the image using versafine ink in black. Loved the effect it gave, looked like I had used a background stencil underneath the stamping although I don`t think the scan shows this up. I used a few of the small cog stamps from the magazine free gift as well arround the edges of the card. So there you go, two quick and easy cards suitable for those hard to please men. I need to make a stockpile of cards for birthdays since I leave everything to the last minute lol.

play time

Oh my goodness, I have been such a bad blogger of late. Time has flown by, here we are at the end of January - just ! My crafting mojo has definately gone on vacation lately. So I have been spending time looking at what everyone else has been up to rather than doing much myself. This tag is heavily influenced by the videos Leandra posted on the Paper Artsy blog, in fact I think I`ve probably used more or less the same colours and stencil from the video, only slightly different. I got a bit mixed up literally with the opaques and translucent colours so my background came out a bit more muddy than I would have liked. However, I cannot remember the last time I just got to sit down and play without an end must make project in mind so I`m still quite pleased with the outcome. I used the Fresco paints from Paper Artsy and a new set of the Lynne Perella stamps which just happened to fall into my basket in the same order ! Now I need to schedule another play session to try out different colours and stencils of which I seem to be a bit obsessed lately. Do pay the Paper Artsy blog a visit and watch the videos, lots of inspiration to be had and guest designers at the moment. Thanks for looking x Lavinia