Anniversary card

Just a quick post to share an anniversary card I made for my in-laws, and some tags I made to go on the bottles of wine we got them as a present.

Firstly, the card...

It's mostly Tim Holtz products (no surprise there). The background was inspired by this tutorial on the Gingersnap creations blog showing how to make your own kraft resist style paper. I used the Papillon stamp set  - stamped the background in archival ink, then clear embossed the butterflies, then coloured over the top with distress stains and inks.

I cut the flowers from book pages using the tattered florals die and stained with distress ink and added the skeleton leaves (I've had these for soo long and not really found good ways to use them, but I really like this).

On to the tags:

These were again inspired by a tutorial on Gingersnap creations. The tutorial was on an alcohol resist technique on glass. I didn't have any glass so I did something similar on acetate.
For each tag I cut two pieces of acetate. I coloured one of them with alcohol inks, then stamped the Papillon background stamp onto the alcohol inked surface using archival ink. I dabbed the archival ink off and it takes away the alcohol inks below leaving the image as a resist.
On the second piece of acetate, I simply stamped my other images in Black Stazon.
Finally I layered the acetate pieces up with a piece of white paper to show the background clearer and fastened the layers together with some mini brads.

Anyway, hopefully my in-laws will like them - if not I'm sure they'll still enjoy the wine.
xx

Once upon a midnight dreary

The skeleton piece I did for Grungy Monday inspired me to do another tag using the same skeleton stamp.
.... and since Gingersnap Creations are currently running a horror themed challenge I thought a Edgar Allan Poe quote would be very fitting - in this case the opening lines from 'The Raven' which is one of my favourite spooky tales/poems.

The tag was coloured with crushed olive and forest moss distress inks and stamped in black archival ink. The skeleton stamp is from Kaycee Crafts, and I also used alphabet stamps from Studio G and a writing stamp from Paperartsy. The whole tag was covered with rock candy crackle paint, which I think makes the colour really zing. The little raven (well ok it's a bit too cute for a raven really, but its as close as I can get with my current stash) is a Tim Holtz die cut.

Now I really need to get on with all the christmas cards and handmade gifts I actually need to make, rather than playing :-(

Sarah
xx

Eastern dreams

Hope everyone is enjoying the extra long weekend - I certainly am as its given me lots of time to play with some new crafty bits. I seem to have spent a fortune on craft stash this last couple of weeks including being seduced by a Tim Holtz lost and found paper stack and spinners in Hobbycraft this morning - I shouldn't be allowed near the place. Unfortunately hubby is encouraging me a bit too much... because he wants to scan my stamped images, papers etc to make textures for his digital photo art! I think he may have caught the distressing bug - he's just taking a digital approach rather than an inky one :0)

Anyway, despite the amount of time I've spent, I don't really have that much to show for all the playing. One thing I did manage to finish is this oriental theme tag which I'm going to enter into the Gingersnap creations red and gold theme challenge:

I started by covering a white chipboard tag with fired brick distress ink and covered most of the front with a chinese dragon image. I then painted the whole lot with crackle paint just to see what it would look like - I think its worked out ok. The butterflies are made of vellum and were edged with red and black ink. The fringing and a couple of cute buttons seemed to finish it off quite well.

...and I'll have to leave this post there as there is a delicious scent of roast beef coming from the kitchen and it's just too tantalising to stay sat in front of the computer.

xx