Vintage Transport

Such a pretty picture of an old fashioned bridal car it just called out for a Wedding card.  Edged in silver mounted on frayed mulberry paper and mounted on a silver edged, black mat.  Congratulations stamped in white and edged in lace with sequins.

I am entering this into Make my Monday challenge this week at http://mimchallegeblog.blogspot.com/
and Love to Create Challenge at
http://lovetocreatechallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

Mouse House

Once again I am so proud of my daughter's work.   Last year she hand made a model of a hobbit house and this year it is a mouse tree house, fashioned after the spring house in the Brambly Hedge book.  I love the detail she has put into it, her work with clay is astounding.  Also who could resist that adorable little mouse.  Her blog can be found at http://madsmousehouse.wordpress.com/

Do leave a comment for her as encouragement is always welcome.

Make my Monday - Vintage Children

The theme this month is Vintage and for this week the topic is Vintage Children.  My printed image of the little boy at the seaside is mounted onto two mats of distressed paper and the edges of the bottom mount are curled at the top.  I stamped a star fish and a shell along the bottom edge and added a fishing net with distress stickled star, fish and shell shapes.  A ribbon of clay coloured blue across the bottom to represent water finishes the card.

A link to the challenge can be found here http://mimchallegeblog.blogspot.com/

Show us your Twinchies - Stamped Image

Went to a thrift store today and picked up some Design 2 Art Markers that are alcohol ink pens with broad an fine tips at each end.  I paid very little for these pens and am thrilled with my find.  For this challenge I stamped a sunflower image with versamark on cardstock and coloured it in with my new pens.  Tried the same thing on glossy photo paper but the versamark ink image blended into the alcohol inks.  I will have to try that one again with stazon.

For my second stamped image I chose a clematis stamp and painted the background, flowers and leaves with Twinkling H2Os.  I do love the effect these paints give .

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last pieces and I look forward to seeing all your entries.  Link to the challenge is here  http://twinchie-twinchiehotmaillive.blogspot.ca/ .  
Thanks for dropping by.

Heart Journal September - Puffy Heart

For this month we had to create a heart using cotton wool balls sandwiched between two heart shapes, with a border of material.  A while ago I bought a wonderful peacock stamp that I wanted to use, this of course decided on my choice of colours.  For the front heart shape I sprayed some sheet music with Glimmer Mists in blue and olive green and for my border I added some loosely woven ribbon that I sprayed with the same blue.

The cardstock base was coated with gesso and the ribbon and cotton wool was added while still wet.  This was left to dry completely overnight.  I stamped the peacock with blue Versamark and heat embossed it with clear holographic powder that shimmers and picks up all the blues and greens surrounding it.  I cut some heart shapes out of the same sprayed paper, fanned them out into a representation of a peacock's tail and added them with a blue brad.  I stitched the top layer onto the bottom with blue and green thread.  "Peacock Tail" is written in blue felt pen.  This heart has a shimmer that cannot unfortunately be seen in this photo.

Off to look at the wonderful contributions by the other ladies in this challenge.  Thank you for looking at my blog and for your wonderful comments last month.

Make My Monday

Been such a long time since I entered a piece on the challenge over at Make my Monday.  The theme this month is "Vintage" and the challenge this week is "Fashion".  The image I have used is cut from a Graphic 45 sheet. The ladies in their beautiful underwear look to me like they are from the 1920's and I am sure that the price of $1.95 for an "Ever Dainty" petticoat was quite a sum to pay back then.  I made a frame from white Brodraise Anglaise for the background then distressed and aged it with antique linen distress ink.  The mat for the photograph and sentiment is made from wax paper crinkled and then distressed with aged photograph ink. After I mounted the picture and sentiment I gave them both a coat of gel medium to give them a glossy appearance. I coloured some yellow string pearls and lace flowers with the same ink to colour co-ordinate all the objects.  This challenge can be found at http://mimchallegeblog.blogspot.com/

Apologies for my long absence but hopefully I am back into the swing of things.  Off to look at some of the wonderful work that is being put up here.

Altered Book Lesson 17 - Polymer Clay

I have not really made much from clay in the past, my daughter is the expert on this, her blog is at http://madshobbithole.wordpress.com/ scroll down to see her food items made from clay.  

For this lesson Elizabeth showed up how to prepare, roll, cut and bake polymer clay to make embellishments for pages, cards, scrapbooks etc.  She explained the importance of dedicating all your equipment used with this medium for clay making only.  On my page I have used ultra light Fimo, which is white, and painted my stamps with pearl-ex prior to stamping onto the rolled out clay.  The "Visit From Santa" coloured well but the holly leaves and berries were a little pale so I used some felt pens to intensify the colour.    My pages in my book were coming away from the outer cover so I first of all put a strip of Christmas ribbon along the seam to reinforce it.  Magazine pages cut up for the hearth and stockings, flames, coals and Santa.  Embossed metal tape coloured with alcohol inks for the presents at the bottom, and a distressed edge torn piece from a magazine with the words finish the page.

I will certainly be trying some more embellishments with this light weight clay, I will have to make some clay in moulds, I have some hidden away somewhere if I could only remember where.  Beads for an edge would be fun to make also.  Thank you Elizabeth for your tutorial.

Show us Your Twinchies - Autumn

My last set of twinchies has been removed as they are more suitable for Halloween, a challenge to come later, so I am replacing them with these.  Anyone else have problems photographing shiny things?  No matter how I tried the colours are not true.  The background is copper paper with leaves dry embossed onto them.  The tiny leaves are die cut from the lids of yogurt pots and embossed in the same folders as the background and then inked with red green and copper alcohol inks.  I mounted them onto black cardstock, then onto autumn leaf patterned paper and then onto a card.  I edged the mounts and the card with copper ink.

Thank you for all your comments on my entries into the last challenge, encouragement is always  appreciated.  The challenge can be found at http://twinchie-twinchiehotmaillive.blogspot.ca/ of course as usual the more the merrier.

Spirited Peaches

The peaches and nectarines are just so sweet and juicy and cheap at the moment I decided to preserve a few.  I have a wonderful preserving book called Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving that apparently contains 400 delicious and creative recipes for today.  Well I have only tried about twelve so far but all seem to be great.  The simple recipe involved peeled, sliced, and treated to prevent browning peaches boiled in sugar water for 5 minutes then hot packed in sterilized canning jars with a tablespoon of your favorite liquor,brandy in this case.  the jars are then completely submersed in rapidly boiling water for 20 minutes.  Turn off the heat  and after 5 minutes resting in the water remove the jars.  I guess the worst part of this process is the peeling of the peaches, dip into boiling water for 60 seconds then shock in ice water, the skins come off easily but when you have a lot of peaches to skin it becomes boring.  We have a very large saucepan that we used for frying chicken and a high heat burner with gas tank so I can do all the hot work outside, also it is much faster at cooking than our gas range in the house.   I have 10 jars in total to add to my store.  

Can't wait to try them over some vanilla ice cream.

Show us Your Twinchies Challenge - Awaiting Halloween

The theme this time is Autu\mn.  This reminded me of the frosty mornings in England, oh how I miss them, cold and crisp.  I decided to make a tiny spider on his web frosted with holographic glitter, hence the bad quality of the photo.

My next one was to represent Halloween.  Clay witch on broomstick, background star paper, blue glitter paper and silver glittered border.

Finally a pumpkin patch on a frosty night.  This American tradition is lovely and so much fun for the kids.  

Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments to my last entries, I feel very proud to display my badge in my side bar.

http://twinchie-twinchiehotmaillive.blogspot.ca/