Thursday, October 31, 2013

Ghostly invitations

It’s nearly my son’s 4th birthday, and this year we chose ghosts as a theme
(suitable for the time of the year and it also links to Casper the ghost as my son’s name is Kasper).

I started out by making a stencil with small ghosts and experimenting with it on my gelli plate.
When I cleaned of my stencil, it gave a nice image of the ghosts which I really liked.
So first I made some colorful prints with different textures on which I added the stencil loaded with black paint.

I then added a printed friendly ghost and the text “Party Time!”





Now I need to get cracking with the decorations. In a couple of weeks time I will be showing these.

I will be linking this one up with the deligthful gelli print party!

And stay tuned because one of these days I will be announcing my very first ever sweepstake!

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Puff Paint Paintings

This week there is no school, so extra time to be creative and get messy with the kids.
Yesterday we played around with some puff paint: easy, cheap and a lot of FUN.
We started out by making a batch of the puff paint:
therefore we mixed equal parts of  flour, salt and water together, divided it in smaller portions and added food coloring ( we added liquid and powder coloring) to achieve the desired color. Then made piping bags by pouring the different colors into plastic bags and closing them with an elastic band, snipping the ends of and ready to go.



Seeing my son piping the different colors onto a piece of cardstock and creating as he called them “his treasure maps”, I could imagine that he would also be a good cake decorator J


A few seconds in the microwave and the masterpieces were finished.



It doesn’t look as puffy as some of the examples I’ve seen on the internet, so next time I’m going to try what difference it makes when you use self-raising flour and maybe using fizzy water.


Thursday, October 24, 2013

Letter L with a twist

Aplha/dictionary challenge…

Letter L with a twist:
we have to include a window on the page (uh?!?)
But browsing the L-words, lavender stuck to me and  immediately the Provence sprung to mind.
And with the Provence came the houses and windows (hurray) over there.
So I started out by painting the background in hues of blue and purple,
printed a  picture of  a picturesque façade and cut this in little squares to create a mosaic.
This also looks like the windows with the dividers.
To finish I added a twig of lavender, not only pretty but now my book also smells nice.


Monday, October 21, 2013

Christmas came a little early for me this year

On friday there was a package waiting for me at my doorstep, it was my Zutter Bind it all.




Luckily for me I also received my owires the same day, I ordered them separately from a wholesale seller where I only paid 32 euro for 100 pieces (shipping included)

So this weekend I had to test drive my new toy.
I made this 20x20 cm (8 by 8 inch)  book using pages I printed, I found this fabulous blog with downloadable backgrounds: www.farfarhill.blogspot.com
I haven’t embellished it yet.




Then I quickly made a coloring book for/with my son.
I used a mix of printed coloring images and blank pages (both white and colored ones).
My son had fun punching the holes and seeing the process of loose pages turned into a bound book.



My first findings are that the punching part is a bit stressful (need to practice on having a straight line of punches)
And the binding is a bit too loose, I reckon I just need to adjust the knob a little more.
But overall I’m pleased with how this machine performs and will be using it more.
(I already have a few projects in mind, so be sure to stop by regularly or just subscribe by mail and you will not miss a thing J )

Bye for now.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Alpha/dictionary challenge – letter C



Another catch up letter, C for clock.


I started out by making a texture plate for some gelli printing :


Therefore I embossed 4 pieces of cardstock 
with a clock embossing folder 
and glued them to another piece of cardstock.











Then came some experimenting on the gelli plate,
 while doing so I noticed 
what a FAB stamp the texture plate was. 






So I used my new homemade stamp with turquoise paint and the gelli plate as stamp pad on a golden background ( the gold to me represents the color of the mechanism of a clock), added the tag which was embossed with the same folder and colored with some walnut stain distress ink. The quote by Andy Skinner was added before embossing and fitted so well with the clock theme:
Wake your dreams

My husband likes this page a lot, so I made him a card/gift certificate in this style for our fifth wedding anniversary last week. The certificate is good for an original canvas by me :-)

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Art book for my son

My second book is an art book for my son, in here we can document all the cool projects we’ve done or want to do. For the cover I used a pasta box, this has a much wider spine then my gelli journal where I used a pizza box.  So this means that this book contains 8 signatures, each made up of 5 pages. This makes 80 pages in total. 
A lot of space for art projects, which we both love. 
This book is a work in progress. 
I wrapped brown packaging material around the cover as a basis, on top I glued a pirate’s treasure map which I tea dyed and burnt the edges to give an aged look.



My initial plan was to alter each page before binding the book, but I’m not a quick crafter, so the book was taking forever to complete and I wanted to start using it for our projects, so I decided to bind it as it is (4 signatures were ready) and alter the remaining 4 as time goes by, maybe this leads to a couple of restrictions, we’ll see.

Each signature is different, so for example one I embellished with gelli prints my son made himself,



Another I colored using ‘magical crayons’ (= magische krijtjes), these are triangle shaped crayons which are very durable and can be used in different ways, they blend with terpentine. That’s the downside if you’re working inside; you always need to provide plenty of ventilation.



The book has many pockets with tags in them, flip out pages… So in fact the book in itself becomes a piece of art.

This book is better made than the first one, the pages are cut more neat, the sewing is tighter, I’m learning as I go along.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

gelli fun with thrift store finds

I often pass by the local thrift store to browse for interesting textures that I could use with my gelli plate. Last time I found these 2 tablemaths for only 1 euro:



Especially the one with the circles gives gorgeous results, also becomes an awesome stamp then.





I definitely will be using this more in the future,

Now I only need to figure out a good storage solution for all my texture tools, I started out with a cardboardbox but it is now seriously piling over



any suggestions anyone J







Sunday, October 6, 2013

Birthday calendar – October


The tartan background was made using alcohol inks: 
apply dots of the desired colors next to each other on a folded baby wipe 


and apply on the paper, re-ink when necessary. 



 The background of the actual calendar was made by using green ecoline, sprinkling some salt on it and leave it a while to absorb. It was a little bit too bright as it was to my likings so I added woodn' bucket brown antiquing medium from Folkart. 
Add some different textures  for interest and voila, won’ t forget any birthdays this month :-)



Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Alpha/dictionary challenge – letter J

Hello,

This fortnight the challenge over at The Craft Barn is the letter J. Although the pages were limited in my dictionary, there were a couple of words that sparked my creativity. One of them was jack o’lantern and because we are already October and Halloween is just around the corner, I found that one fitted.



I am busy on a couple of other letters to try to catch up, so be sure to stop by and check those out. (or subscribe so you don’t  miss anything :-))