Cornwall, cider and a tag!

Got back yesterday from a lovely weeks holiday in Cornwall. The scenery along the coast is fantastic, wild and windswept with plenty of rocky peaks to clamber up and admire the view from. I must have looked an absolute state most of the time with my hair whipped up by the wind!

We stayed in a cabin at Deerpark Forest Holidays which was off in the middle of nowhere (Cornwall seems to be a maze of pretty single track roads with grass up the middle). It was a lovely spot and our cabin had massive windows and a deck that looked out into the forest.  We even had our own private hot tub on the deck - lovely to relax in with a glass of wine and watch lots of little birds flitting about in the trees.

View from our cabin

Our cabin

As well as soaking up the scenery (if not the sun so much), we had some delicious gooseberry ice cream, seriously tasty beer battered fish and chips from Rick Steins Fish and Chips in Padstow, and plenty of cider (we found some that was made on a farm near where we stayed that came in what looked like a windscreen washer fluid bottle but tasted great!).

Anyway, It's nice to be back home, catch up with everyones blogs and do a bit of crafting.

I originally set out today to make something inspired by the colours of some beautiful flowers and plants we saw at the Eden Project, but I got distracted and made the tag below instead! Its my entry for Dragons Dream Tag It On challenge, which has the theme of 'Faces' this week.

I used Graphic 45 steampunk papers and stamps (loving them at the moment!) and Tim Holtz distress inks, tattered florals die, and book plates. The visage word stamp was one of the freebie stamps with Craft Stamper magazine a few months ago.

Edited: I'm also entering this tag into the steampunk challenge at Just for Fun.

Think thats enough from me for now. Thanks for looking :0)

Sarah xx

Steampunk Flower Tag

This week the Sunday Stampers theme from Hels Sheridan is 'steampunk' and, if you've read many of my posts, you'll know I love steampunk stuff :0)

I also love the Tim Holtz tattered florals die which I got recently, so when I saw this challenge, the first idea to pop into my head was a steampunk flower and I think it's worked out really well:

Using the tattered florals die the flower layers were all cut from this fab sheet from Graphic 45's Steampunk debutante range which has a wonderful dark cog background on the back. I glued the flowers to some grungepaper cut with the same die to give the petals a bit more ooomf (if you get what I mean). The edges were inked with vintage photo distress ink for definition.

The wings were cut using the Tim Holtz fanciful flight die and inked with vintage photo and black soot distress inks. I then spritzed the wings and the flowers with some heirloom gold perfect pearls which unfortunately hasn't shown up well in the photo, but looks fab and shimmery in real life.

The tag was just a plain brown luggage tag (from WH Smiths!). I left it it's natural colour and stamped a script stamp and a couple of Tim Holtz clocks, before distressing the edges slightly - all in vintage photo again.

Finally, I used the Tim Holtz hardware findings die to cut a keyhole shape (can you tell I'm slightly addicted to my Big Shot!) which I gold embossed and distressed a little to make it look a bit like metal  and fixed over the hole in the tag. I then attached the key charm to the flower on a chain from an old broken necklace.

I'm  really pleased with this - I think it's one of my favourite things I've done so far. Hope you all like it too :0)

Sarah
xx

Winged things

Having a busy week, but managed to find the time for a little bit of crafting.

There's a fab theme of 'winged things' at Dragons Dream Tag it On challenge this week - I was going to go down the butterflies route  (just got the Tim Holtz Papillon stamp set and I love it - taking so much effort to resist using it on everything!), then I remembered some cool images from the Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante papers and decided to do something a little different.

I stamped a variety of Tim Holtz stamps (clock, papillon words) in broken china and vintage photo distress inks onto a tag cut from a sheet from the steampunk papers. The main winged figure and the stamp images along the bottom were cut from another sheet from this paper set. The definitions were from a paper from the Tim Holtz Lost and Found stash.
Finally, I felt it needed just a little something more so in the end I couldn't resist stamping papillon butterflies over the top!

It also fits the theme at the Just For Fun challenge this week - 'anything Tim' - First time entering this challenge but since everything I do involves something from Tim Holtz It just had to be done :0)  

Sarah
xx

Steampunk ATCs

This has been a great week!  My butterfly card got into the top 10 on a challenge on the Gingersnap creations blog and... I now have 4 followers! So pleased that anyone is interested enough to follow me - thank you so much!

I just finished making a few ATCs using bits from the Graphic 45 steampunk papers. I started off with the idea of birds coming out of a top hat and I knew there was a couple of hats in these papers. Flicking through them inspired me to make the other cards.

I'd like to enter the first card into the Stampman resist techniques theme challenge. The background used a embossing resist technique - I heat embossed a stamped script image with clear embossing powder then blended brushed corduroy distress ink over it. I removed most of the embossing powder by re-melting it and soaking it into a sheet of paper,  then stamped watch and bird images with vintage photo distress ink. The lady is cut out from the graphic 45 papers as was the banner which I painted to allow me to stamp 'imagine' instead of the original text.

The blackbird ATC (below left) used a Paperartsy mini-stamp stamped in clear embossing ink covered with gold perfect pearls. The bird, roses, and clock were cut from the steampunk papers and the bird was embossed in black to make it stand out better.

The final one with the birds coming out of the hat used a Tim Holtz stamps with some lovely background paper from My Minds Eye - but spot the "deliberate" mistake in the background (oops! - I really need to pay more attention to what I'm doing!).

Oh well, back to work tomorrow, but hopefully I'll still be able to find some time for crafting in the evenings.

Sarah xx

Simple pleasures

"I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex",  Oscar Wilde.

I just wanted to share a little frame thingie I made at the weekend. The cardboard frame was something I bought on impulse ages ago and never got round to doing anything with. That is until a fantastic article on altered books in this months Craft Stamper magazine inspired me. They created a frame from an old book covered with tissue paper stamped with script to give a really beautiful shabby chic effect.

Here I used some decorative tissue paper  (packaging from an online clothing purchase!) to cover the frame. The embellishments and central image are from the gorgeous Graphic 45 steampunk debutante range of papers. I finished it off with an 'Adore' stamp and wrote the Oscar Wilde quote above on the back - very fitting I think.

I'm quite pleased with the way its turned out, although I did make a bit of a mess of the stamping - enthusiasm winning over care and attention! Now I've got a little box frame that I think would work very well done in a similar way. Just got to find the time!