Through the Years

My in-laws will be celebrating their wedding anniversary soon.  Well into their eighties, theirs exemplify the greatest love story that spanned decades and continents.  It is a long and beautiful romance and I wish them many more years of endearing stories! 

Since this is a heavily-embellished layout, I used a canvas board for better support. And it takes the various mists and paints very well.  The slight texture also gave it some "tooth" to grab the stickles, glitter and german glass.

I just picked all sorts of mediums to play with and ended up with about twenty bottles of mists, stickles, dimensional pearls, reinkers.  And that's excluding the Glossy Accent, Beacons and matte mediums for adhesives!  So let me try to list them here: Dylusions sprays in Lemon Zest, Squeezed Orange, Fresh Lime; Distress reinkers in Scattered Straw; Adirondack Dimensional Pearls in Lettuce, Butterscotch and Bottle; Stickles in Gold, Cinnamon, Sequins, Orange Peel; Distress Stain in Mustard Seed, Shabby Shutters and Tumbled Glass; Perfect Pearls in Plum, Blush and Interference Violet; ColorBox reinkers in Pink and Green; Archival Ink in Black.

My favourite corner began with a juxtaposition of metal, pearls and wood.  After looking at the random items on my scrap desk, I decided to add paper raffia and hemp twine from a previous project to the mix as well. So now I have a good reason not to tidy up between projects - you never know whether a piece of this-and-that will end up as a perfect touch for the next project!

Family ... we have a lot in common ... such as our love for jigsaw puzzles.
Here is a layout for MWL capturing a precious moment we shared, fixing puzzles after Sunday dinner.

The photos alternate with clear sheets embossed with Sizzix folder (657490 Love Print) and coloured on the reverse using Dimensional Pearls (Red Pepper, Butterscotch, Lettuce and Bottle) and Stickles (Lime Green and Orange Peel) - using mostly my fingers LOL!  The front was inked with Staz-On (Jet Black and Timber Brown).

I loaded the background with a riot of colours by spraying with Dylusions Ink Spray (Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise, Squeezed Orange and Lemon Zest) as well as inking with the new Spring Seasonal Distress (Peacock Feathers).  A few knick-knacks from my stash of embellishments and I'm done!

I loved getting my hands messy - except when I washed my hands in a hurry and arrived at work looking like this:

Everyone is complaining about how the weather is so "hot! hot! hot!" and that's my latest layout for Made With Love.  Hopefully these pictures of my girl playing in the fountain at Bugis Junction will offer cooling relief.  I certainly felt good playing with some Sizzix dies, and Distress Inks and a stencil from Ranger.

Featuring a hidden journalling spot revealed by sliding away the photo on the bottom left.

The colours and texture reminds me of batik ...

While I was trying to conjure more cooling thoughts, I got wondering how many butterflies would it take to generate enough wind.  Sheets of real wood die-cut into butterflies.  The butterfly body is wrapped with twine and topped with a seed bead.

Behind the butterfly, the background was painted with white acrylic paint and the Dylusions Dotted Flower stencil from The Crafter's Workshop designed by Dyan Reaveley of Ranger.

As for the title, it's gesso on paper tape using a homemade stencil featuring the Cherish Sizzlit alpha set.  The font is sleek and funky, and it's on sale at MWL.  It's a very good deal since the set comprises both upper and lower case as well as numbers and punctuation - a 35-piece set in a storage box.

Sizzix dies used:
657209 Mini Butterflies Mover and Shaper Magnetic Die
657495 Butterflight One the Edge Die
654546 Cherish alpha set

From Mud to Gold!

You know how you mix Distress Inks and sometimes get mud?  Especially greens and reds, like below:

Festive Berries and Evergreen Bough (Winter Seasonal colours)

And if you add purple, you get muddier mud, if that is possible.

Seedless Preserves (Fall Seasonal colour)

Watch what happens when you add Mustard Seed - I tell you it's magic!!

Don't blink now ...

 Tada!!!  Everything just brightens up!  That colour should be renamed Midas' Touch!

So I declare:

Mustard Seed is the new black!!

I mean, it goes with everything ...

The finished tag:

What, you saw something in the earlier photo?  Yeah, my ink storage gone high-rise:

Merry May

May is looking to be a good month for crafting. I have dug into the depths of my pile of unfinished Club Scrap projects and completed four books.

This first is my favourite, featuring the tags from my misting/inking experiments.

The next is a teeny tiny dos-a-dos book weighing in at only 3"x3", it has 3 mini canvases for covers.  I painted the covers with Adirondack Pearls and overlaid with images stamped on clear sheets with Staz On black.

 The instructions for this album was a little confusing and I had to restart it a couple of time.  But once I had the hang of it, it went really well. I like the "V"s made by the stitching at the head and tail of the spine.  The 28 tiny stitching holes were a pain to pierce, though!

And finally the most recent book completed today, after hunting high and low for my Crop-a-dile Big Bite.  A stab-bound book with cover art featuring gelatos, distress inks and a cool image from the Connection kit.

I do have a couple more UFOs waiting for some hardware before they can be completed.  Hopefully they will be ready for sharing in the near future!

Album in a hurry plus and a washi banner how-to

I needed an album - fast!
Ingredients: Club Scrap 6x6 cardstock, book boards, cover papers (inside and outside), 6x6 page protectors, and washi - lots and lots of washi.

Done in a couple of hours including time for brunch and entertaining a persistent kiddo.

A how-to for the banner on the cover:

• Measure and cut twine to length of banner plus 2" on each end.  I tied a knot to indicate the working length I have.
• Lay twine on a non-stick craft sheet.  Tear off different lengths of washi tape and stick over twine approximately midpoint of the washi tape.
• Fold the washi tape over.
• Cut the ends of the washi tape - for narrow tapes, just cut at a diagonal.
• Secure ends of twine with the banner forming a gentle curve.

Brilliant! That's my girl

 For MWL: Layout featuring Maya Road.

The youth cell's item at Pastor D's Tribute Dinner.

The sheer paper mutes all colours applied to the back, be it patterned paper or mediums.  In this layout, I painted the colours straight out of the bottle using a soft paintbrush.

The two photos below show the front and the back of the same spot.

 

Here's another back view of the intense colour from Maya Mist.