Garden of Dreams

Inspired by Dounia Large's post in this fortnight's paperartsy dark to light challenge, I decided to have a go at pulling the inks through from a dark to light layer like she did. I started with a piece of black card and sprayed some dylusions inks on to it. When that had dried I painted over the ink with some eggplant fresco paint. When that was finally dry I cut it into 2 pieces and on one piece used a stencil and some modelling paste to create the latticed background and on the other I stamped some Lynne Brown paperartsy stamps in white gesso. As you can see both mediums pulled the inks through from the layer below but I love the almost tiger-print pattern I got on the leaves and flower from the gesso. It was harder to stamp the sentiment with gesso as it kept running into the crevices but I used a white gel pen to create 'shadows and it looks better IRL than it does in the photo but it had to do as I didn't have anything else light to stamp it with. I then finished it off with some metal springs which you can just see if you look carefully!

Bright bold colors

Being a teacher my year starts in the middle of August so I just bought a new planner ready. This one has a plastic cover where you can put your own cover so I decided to make one using some of the practise backgrounds I made with my new dylusions inks. I had lots of inky shimmery fun!

Ingredients: dylusions sprays funky fuschia and after midnight
paperartsy frescos haystack, amethyst and bora bora
Jofy stamps
sakura gel pen
white posca pen
donna downey stencil
distress oxide spiced marmalade
cosmic shimmer mist
light molding paste

A close up to better see the shimmer

Paperartsy Aqua Challenge

I bought some new craft goodies yesterday, mainly dylusions inks and distress oxides, so I decided to spend the evening trying them out and decided that the challenge - Aqua - over at Paperartsy at the moment would be perfect.

I started off by blending cracked pistachio and broken china distress oxides on some white cardstock. Then I sprayed some polished jade dylusions through a paperartsy stencil but I didn't really get the effect I wanted so I went back over the stencil with some more broken china ink. I quite like the halo effect it's given to some of the circles. I then stamped with some turquoise archival straight onto the background with some free stamps from a magazine. I'd found these adorable wooden pieces when I was craft shopping and thought they'd be perfect; the branch is painted with stone and claret frescos for a pop of colour. The bird was painted with claret, crackle and mermaid but it didn't really work so I overheated the paint with my heat tool so it bubbled then added some patina guilding wax over the surface. The sentiment is from the Dina Wakley stamp set scribbly birds.

I had lots more fun making backgrounds last night so will hopefully have a few more projects to show in the near future!

Lavinia Landscapes

The challenge over at Lavinia stamps this month is landscapes so I thought I'd have a go. I started with the sky using distress inks and I was really impressed with it (I'm terrible at blending distress inks!) but then when I tried to do the land it all went a bit wrong so I kept the sky but painted over the land with Paperartsy fresco paints. I then sprayed the sky with glimmer mist through a Tim Holtz stencil to get the rays as the sun sets and finished off with a few Lavinia stamps in archival ink. It's been so long since I last did any stamping the inkpad was starting to dry out - oops! An excuse to buy some new craft goodies perhaps?!

Fairy door - free digi image

Hmm, it's been a while since I last blogged! I have been crafting kinda sporadically the last couple of years, partly due to lack of space and partly due to working too much. Now it's the summer holidays and with lots more free time on my hands I got struck by the crafty bug again :) I'd been scrolling pinterest and decided to do some fimo/sculpey sculpting and make a fairy door. I must admit, 3-4 year old fimo is NOT the easiest thing to use!! It took rather a long time to work the clay so that it was useable. Here's the finished product:

I've also been playing around with drawing digi images so I decided to make this into a digi to practise. Feel free to download and use the following image - I think right clicking should work, otherwise leave a message here or DM me your email address on twitter and I'll send it across (I'm @emscraftcorner). If you do use it, I'd love to see what you make with it!

Happy crafting!

Natalie and Amy's Challenge - All things new

It's time for a new challenge over at Natalie and Amy's and this month's theme is 'All Things New'. This was a bit of a challenge for me as I've just moved house and found that everything I wanted to use was packed in a box somewhere. It took me nearly half an hour just to find the plates for my big shot - no idea why I hadn't packed them together!

Anyway, I went for new stash for this one as I don't need any new house/baby/year cards at the moment (I'm good at building a stash of unused cards!)

I used:
New 6x6 card blanks (so hard to get here, my mum brought me a packet when she came over a few weeks ago)
Authentique paper
Co'redinations card
Don and Daisy Winter stamp
Darice embossing folder
New Crafters Companion Die'sire fence
New Nellie Snellen Trees
New snowflake embellishments

Natalie and Amy's Challenge - Cute and Cuddly Christmas

It's time for another challenge over at Natalie and Amy's and this month the theme is cute and cuddly Christmas. 

Here is my creation:

Christmas with Dawn

First Editions paper (don't know the name)

Joy Crafts flower die

Memory box snowflake corner

Stitched grosgrain ribbon

Coloured with promarkers.