Birthday canvas

Another friend, with another birthday... this friend likes hearts, so I used those instead of/as well as buttons.


I painted the canvas with white gesso, then added a coat of Golden fluid acrylic in titanium buff, then coated the top half in Golden fluid acrylic raw umber, then added a little more titanium buff where the colours joined, to blend the edge a little.

I stamped some flourishes using Golden fluid acrylic bronze, then 'sewed' the hearts on with gold 28 gauge wire.

Birthday canvas

Life has been way too busy of late, and I haven't really had much time to have fun, but this canvas for a friend's birthday was fun to do!!! The background is canvas painted with white gesso, then acrylic paint, then stamped with white gesso. The heart is fun foam - heated, stamped into while hot, and cut out when cold. A touch of rub on wax in a metallic finish adds something, too.


I hope she likes her 'birthday card'!!!

Victorian Gothic themed wedding

So, when a friend invites you to their wedding, and tells you it is 'Victorian Gothic' themed in terms of clothing, you have just the thing at the back of your wardrobe, don't you?

After trawling through what seemed like millions of websites, and a couple of costume hire shops, I decided I would have to make my own costume.

I'm not quite sure what Victorian Gothic looks like, but I couldn't find much in the way of sewing patterns, so I went for a 'kind of' medieval style of dress, and thought the dark colour of the taffeta fabric made it a bit more gothic. As the wedding was in mid August, when it is supposed to be hot here in the UK, I took the advice of the fabric shop staff, and lined the dress with antistatic/anti cling lining material. Of course, that meant making 2 dresses, and sewing them together round the neck. About half way through, I did begin to wonder about my sanity...



The front of the dress has a net panel, with small diamante gems and iridescent beading, using seed beads. I did the beading while working away from home last week - about an hour before breakfast and 2 hours after dinner for 3 days.


Husbands like to take pictures from the most unflattering angles...




The back of the dress is laced. We hunted everywhere for the right kind of ribbon or cord to lace it with, and eventually bought some braided cord in a pale gold, which I was dyeing with Adirondack colorwashes 2 hours before the wedding. I went to the wedding with very gothic looking deep green fingers LOL.

The bride wore a blood red dress with a basque style top and medieval sleeves. Only a few others dressed up, one lady had a black dress with some sequins and embroidery on the bodice, and several men wore frock coats, frilly shirts and cravats. I didn't feel too out of place, and the dress attracted a few compliments!

Iridescent gift wrap background

I have been in a fantastic 'angelic' skinny page swap which involved quite a few Australians. Some of them had used fantasy film in an interesting way on their pages. They had stamped and embossed an image onto their backgrounds, coated the page with gel medium, added fantasy film and heated. The embossed pattern shows through the fantasy film - a really neat effect. I tried it with a couple of chunky pages I am making and it was a complete disaster - the fantasy film shrank and distorted the pages beyond any possible flattening out. I wondered if I had done it wrong, or should try again using much thicker cardstock.

While I was thinking about this, I remembered some other 'stuff' - a year or two ago, Zeborah (see blog links) was playing with some iridescent gift wrap, trying to make 'faux dichroic glass'. I couldn't get any of the giftwrap here in the UK, and 'Legs' (http://www.picturetrail.com/queenoftexas) very kindly sent me some. I have since discovered fantasy film, which is thicker, has better colour, and stands up to heat better. However, for this technique, I think the thinner iridescent gift wrap has the edge.

I painted some cardstock with Stewart Gill Byzantia Aegean paint, then embossed it with a Stampcamp stamp which looks like the veining in rock, and a deep green iridescent embossing powder. I coated this with some gel medium, laid the gift wrap on top, and zapped with my heat gun. This is how it looks:


I then used the background to make some ATCs - for this one, I stamped onto heatproof acetate, and embossed the image in white. It is adhered to the ATC with Glossy Accents.



For this one, I stamped and embossed the image on acetate, then added some embossing to the background so that it is hard to tell where the acetate begins and ends.


For the final ATC, I dumped a small pile of 'Macquirie' Opals embossing powder onto a craft sheet, heated until melted, then stamped into it using this stamp from Cre8it. Once it was cold, just peeled it off the craft sheet and stuck it onto the ATC.

Had to have it swap

For this swap, you had to use something that you 'had to have' at the time you purchased it, but haven't actually got around to using! There were so many things in my stash to choose from...




In the end, I chose 3 things - some charms which I love but couldn't bring myself to use; a pasta machine which I had bought with the intention of conditioning polymer clay; and polymer clay, which I bought ages ago but haven't had the confidence to play with.


I covered some mountboard (about 2.5 inches by 4 inches) with brown paper, and gave it several coats of purple Stewart Gill True Colour paint (I still seem to be on the 'purple' trip!).

I stamped it with a texture stamp in Brilliance Galaxy Gold, and didn't like it, so gave it another coat of purple!!! It does have slightly more depth as a result.

I used black Fimo polymer clay for the embellishment in the centre - Fimo is most commonly available brand of clay in the UK. I conditioned it in a pasta machine, then stamped into it with a flourish stamp. I trimmed it into a tile shape, and brushed it with purple and gold PearlEx before cooking it in my Melt Pot (which I hardly ever use).

I attached a little hanging bracket to the back, and adhered the polymer clay tile and charms to the front, using Golden extra heavy gel medium. I hope my partner like it, because I will have a little trouble letting it go!

Purple & gold skinny page

I made this page for a small swap, the brief was that we had to make the page mostly purple with gold, and that we had to use a Paper Artsy stamp somewhere on the page.

The front of my page is on the right, I painted white textured cardstock with some purple Stewart Gill paint, then painted a layer of Jo Sonya's gold dust medium on top. This is a thinnish gel medium with small gold flakes suspended in it. When it dries, you can't see the medium, just the gold flakes. I accidentally did a second coat on one page and the medium has gone semi opaque, I won't make that mistake again.

Next step was to add some gold down the left hand side. I have some starry punchinella, so I stippled gold paint through it. I then stamped the Paper Arsty stamp several times over the length of the page, and embossed with violet interference embossing powder. This gave quite a subtle look to the pattern. The main embellishment is a moulded piece of friendly plastic - I like the partial mould effect rather than the 'perfect' moulded piece. Friendly plastic is lightweight and resilient, and survives postal journeys really well.

The back of the page is sprayed with 2 or 3 purple colour sprays, the daubed with some scrunched up plastic to give some texture. I stamped the image 3 times with Versamark and embossed with jewelled gold embossing powder, then stamped the image twice more in purple dye ink.

Fabric paper ATC

I made an ATC for a friend, using fabric paper:

http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/2007/11/beryl-taylors-art-soul-class.html

as the background.

I stamped and embossed it and added an air dry clay face. Sadly, it hasn't scanned too well, because of the thickness of the face.
It's a shame to send him on his travels,
I'd quite like him to stay and keep me company!!!

A deco book

I haven't had a deco to work on for a little while, then this one arrived. It was completely bare, i was the first person to work in it. Daunting, or what. I looked at the blank page for nearly a week before I managed to put some paint on it.

Finally, I coated both sides with Stewart Gill paint, then adhered a piece of fantasy film (mother of pearl) with gel medium, then ironed the page between 2 sheets of baking paper. It has left a kind of mother of pearl effect on the page.


I stamped over the fantasy film using Ranger archival ink in grape, and used the same ink to stamp the words above.


The back of the page is also 2/3rds covered with fantasy film, and the purple piece is a piece of glossy cardstock, stamped with an image (Diva Impressions) in Brilliance, dried and rubbed all over with purple dye ink. The Brilliance resists the dye ink.