Fun with my new gelli plate

I've had a Gelli plate for a few weeks now but have been lacking a bit in inspiration. Last weekend I finally decided to give it a go and had lots of fun experimenting. Then when I saw that this week's PaperArtsy guest designer Pam Thorburn had been using her own homemade gelli plate I knew I had to have a go at creating something. Here's what I came up with:

The background was made in three layers; first I used stone fresco paint to pull a flat print and clean off the gelli print from my experiments the day before, hence the random green flecks here and there. Once that was dry I used a Lin Brown stencil and some haystack to make the circles. When I pulled the print off the circles weren't very defined so I decided to replace the stencil once the paint was dry and go round each one with a gold promarker. When that was all done I stamped the flowers in amethyst, trying to line them up with the circles and then I stamped the leaf in sage. The sentiment is heat embossed in gold and the paper flower was also painted in amythyst. All the stamps are PaperArsty Lin Brown stamps. The green strip was an offcut from another gelli print.

I would like to enter this card into the PaperArtsy challenge.

Spring-y flowers

Wow, think January must be my lucky month! I have won three challenges and now just got a top 3 spot in the last PanPastels challenge - thank you!!

It's very cold here today, it's been snowing the past few days so don't think we'll be seeing any spring flowers for a while so I made my own.

This make is inspired by this week's new guest designer over at PaperArtsy Clare Lloyd. Her first post was a springy person but I didn't want to make a springy person (and don't have the stamps to do so) but I was inspired by the idea so put my thinking cap on. I got some lovely JOFY stamps for Christmas and as I'm always managing to kill plants I decided that maybe some fake ones would be easier to look after, so that's what I decided to make.

The flowers and dragonfly were made from JOFY stamps and stuck onto coiled wire with hot glue. I added glossy accents and glitter to the dragonfly and then proceeded to get it all up my arm as I tried to add it to the flowers too - oops!! I coloured everything with promarkers as I'm terrible at painting and didn't have the right coloured paints anyway.

The pot is made from a toilet roll inner and the lid from a sweet tub all painted in bora bora fresco paint and stamped with JOFY stamps. The flowers round the bottom were used to hide the glue I used to stick them together!! The white ones were precut bought ones and the blue ones I cut from leftover card painted in bora bora with a die.

I did realise after taking these pictures that I probably should have painted the inside of the tube too - oops! I will put it up high so I can't see it lol!

I would like to enter this make into the following challenges:

Arty Inklings - Springtime

PanPastelsUK Challenge - Anything goes

PaperArtsy - Challenged by Clare Lloyd and guests

PaperArtsy tag

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and got lots of nice new crafty goodies. I got some new Promarkers and some PaperArtsy JOFY stamps so I am very happy and have been playing today :)

This tag is inspired by Jo Myhill's 3rd piece this week where she has been exploring texture. I decided I needed to make a tag instead of a canvas but used similar techniques and layout. First I used a piece of brown package paper and roughly tore out a rectangle before spreading modelling paste in the centre and scoring it with an old credit card. Whilst that was drying I cut out a tag shape from some green Coredinations card, inked the edges with Pine Needles distress ink then stamped it with JOFY 12 stamps in Fresco Stone. I then decided to use some stone paint on a baby wipe to go around the edges too and once it was dry I sanded it back.

I also cut an oak leaf from patterned paper using a PaperArtsy die. I distressed the edges with brick red and vintage photo distress inks before using clear embossing powder to emboss one of the sentiments from JOFY 12. (I didn't have a red that was a good enough match).

Once the modelling paste was dry I gave the whole thing a coat with stone Fresco paint and then mixed up some claret and pansy which I dry brushed on. In the picture it still looks very purply but in real life it's a lot more red but it's very hard to take a photo as the light is not good today. Finally, I dipped the edges into some clear embossing powder (you can just about see it where it caught the light) before mounting it all together with some PaperArtsy lace.

I would like to enter this tag into this week's PaperArtsy challenge.

Colour my world card

This is a simple card that was inspired by the challenge over at Paperartsy by their guest designer this week Joanne Wardle. I didn't have any of the Halloween stamps used in the original card as I don't really do Halloween and I wanted to give my own unique spin on the technique so I decided to use this 'Colour my world' stamp from Panduro Hobby that I got recently and use 6 strips of paint instead of just one to make a rainbow (well, almost, I didn't have any purple paint and when I tried to mix it it came out horribly). I mounted it on a piece of black card to make it stand out and that was it (apart from I had to make it twice as the first time I smudged the paint from being too impatient!).

Paperartsy inspiration

I'm currently running on very limited crafting supplies since packing up all my worldly goods and moving to Sweden, leaving all my stuff behind in England for the time being. So when I saw that Paperartsy  had a really great deal on some goody boxes of stuff, called Monster Monday boxes to celebrate their 10th birthday (you can get them on Monday at 6pm from their website) I decided to treat myself with a box to keep away some of the boredom I am otherwise suffering from not having enough craft stuff to keep me occupied.

With my new stuff I decided I would have a go at their weekly challenge, which is to create something inspired by their guest designer of the week which this week is a lady called Carol Quance. I chose to use her card project here  using her layout as inspiration and her tips on making all the elements touch to bring the card together.

I made the background paper using metallic yellow-orange paint, then stamped the script repeatedly using faded jeans distress ink. The image and sentiment are coloured with brick red distress ink and highlighted with a little orange colouring pencil. I stamped the dragonfly and leaves but decided they looked too flat as they were so added the detail with a Sakura gold gel pen which I then decided to use to edge the image and sentiments too.

This is definitely a lot less cutsie than I normally do but I like the finished effect, I hope you do too.

Thanks for looking :-)