A Bit of Bling for That's Crafty!

Hello on a somewhat dull and dreary Friday. A quick post to let you know that I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a mixed media piece of artwork with a bit of bling from the amazing That's Crafty! 3D holographic gel medium and some bright and cheery flowers.
Here's a sneak peek to tempt you to hop over if you'd like to see the whole project.

You can just see the bling in the background and hope you like the bright flowers as I wanted a strong contrast to the darker background which was an experiment on MDF with the flat matte ink sprays.

Have a great day and a lovely weekend.
See you soon.

Fliss xx

Longing For Spring Artist Trading Box

Hello everyone on a very wet and miserable day here in the South of England. I decided to finish off the artist trading box I started creating last week to cheer myself up as I'm really longing for some better weather to arrive.
Hope you like my cheery artwork.

Here's how it began:

I found some ink spray overflow paper with shades of green and yellow with white space in places and a sprinkle of orange in my box - perfect for a spring themed creation. I took the gorgeous leaf silhouette from one of the sets designed by Lynne and stamped leaves in shades of green on the papers cut to fit my box. A couple then had additional stamping with another leaf and orange ink.

I stamped some of my own flowers, choosing the one that makes me think of spring as it looks a little like a parrot tulip and coloured them with flat matte sprays, using orange, saffon and tomato.

I then assembled my box adding in some leaves from my box, not exactly spring shades but oranges, browns etc to contrast with the background.

 

I added text from Lynne's Leaf sets and some of her beautiful affirmations together with the lovely butterfly from That's Crafty! Textures Collection set 3 stamped on overflow paper.

I hope this has cheered you up if you have a nasty wet day.
Have a good week whatever the weather.
Fliss xx

A Bit of Mixed Media for That's Crafty!

Hello! Hope you've all had a good week and managed to fit in some crafting as I did (in between accounts and VAT!). I'll have some more things to share over the weekend I'm hoping as I have several things in progress at the moment.
In the meantime, I have a post today over at That's Crafty! blog which is another of the samples I created for the last Hochanda shows which featured some new and gorgeous background stamps and masks designed by the ever talented Melina.

Here's just a sneak peek and you'll have to pop over to the blog if you'd like to see the whole thing which has a bit of bling in the form of the gorgeous That's Crafty! holographic texture paste which I really love.

Have a great weekend and see you soon.

Fliss xx

Creating Grungy Background Papers

Hello! It's been ages since I've done some creating just for me so over the last week or so I've snatched a bit of time and managed to make some rather grungy mixed media backing papers so that I had some to put some cards together for those occasions when time is short - most of the time in my case!

I took some photos of the process as it was kind of one layer a day so thought I would share here how I created them as if you do several at once it's much quicker.

 The first step was to cut an A3 sheet of smooth cartridge paper into 6 pieces as these happily fit card blanks 15cm square, my size of choice.

I took some pastel shades of That's Crafty! multi surface paints - Apricot, Lavender, Light Blue and Teal and put a small amount of each on my glass craft mat. I misted them with a little water to dilute them a bit, then used an old store card to scrape the colours on to the paper squares. You can see the results above, sort of rough stripes.

Once they were dry, I got out the Distress Oxide inks and Melina's new Just Doodlin' background stamps which I know will get inked up an awful lot as they're so versatile. 

You can see below the shades I used and I've put a link to the stamps at the end of each photo.

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 3 by Melina Dahl

As you can see from the photos, quite a bit of overstamping and second generation stamping came into play here as I was aiming for a grungy textured look rather than an obvious pattern.

I then made a few cards so that you can see what you can do with the papers once you've made them. The colours were kept fairly quiet so that the images on top could be much stronger shades and stand out well.

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 1 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 2 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Flowers Collection Set 6 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl
That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 4 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl (for the text)
That's Crafty! 6 x 6ins Mask - Leaf Circle by Melina Dahl


Hopefully I'll have some cards to share soon using the remaining papers and hope you like what I've done so far.
Enjoy the rest of the week!

Fliss xx

Dreaming Artist Trading Block

Hello all, trying to get back into blogging again is one of this year's resolutions along with trying to fit in a lot more crafting.
I will also try and visit more than last year which was mainly because of having to do quite a lot for my father in law after his terrible fall and slight stroke which have left him struggling to do everything so he's needed help. As I only work part time, a lot landed on me.

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today sharing the artist trading block I created for the Hochanda shows on Monday with Melina's gorgeous new stamp and mask designs. If you haven't tried making one of these, I can recommend it as it's so much easier than you might think.

All the details can be found over at the BLOG

Have a great weekend and see you soon.

Fliss xx

PS: Just a little quickie to say that I've had to activate comment moderation as I got deluged with a ton of spam comments on some of my posts (had to delete a couple as there were so many to deal with)