THE MALE ROOM -#201 THE UNIVERSE

I must admit I found this challenge a challenge for The Male Room this month lol! I kept looking at it and not finding anything I fancied doing and then I remembered years ago I had created a similar background using Distress Oxide Inks.  It hadn't really worked back then as at the time I didn't have Black Soot Oxide but now I do so I had another go and I was really pleased with how it turned out.  The only problem was knowing when to stop with it.  It was such fun to make I think I'll be making some more.

The Distress Oxide colours I used were Dusty Concord, Wild Honey, Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers and  Lumberjack Plaid but you can really use any bright colours you have.  The Oxides just help it all to blend perfectly.  I used watercolour paper too although I think it could have been a bit heavier.  Once I had added my colours, I spritzed with water and I then dried it with the heat tool.  I then added a top layer of Black Soot and dried it again.  I kept adding Black Soot and drying until I got the effect I wanted.  I also added some Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Powder in Emerald Green and Aubergine Dream to add a bit of sparkle and some droplets of Distress Spritz in Broken China.  Once it was all dry I used a white paint maker I use for splatters to add extra stars and some shooting stars.

The sentiment is from an Anita Jeram set called Treat Yourself and I thought it worked perfectly.  I used a circle die cut to cut it out and added some marks in black soot to make it look like the moon. I embossed the sentiment in silver embossing powder. 

I'm adding this into the following:

Alphabet Challenge - I is for ink blending - plenty of that in this background 

Creative Moments - Embossing 

Creative Inspiration - AG 

Word Power 

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday - Quirky 

Girlz Make Guy Cards - AG 

THE MALE ROOM - KINETIC CARDS

We hope you have fun with our challenge this month at The Male Room which is to make your cards move - however you like.  I've gone for a type of side slider card where you can see the panels move in and out of the card.  I had great fun playing with Tim Holtz Professor stamps and lots of lovely grunginess.  The inks are Unchartered Mariner and Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo.  I used some of the Watercolour Pencils to give more of a vivid intensity to the Unchartered Mariner.

I'm  not normally a lover of trying to make cards move but I did enjoy making this one.  

I'm adding this into the following:

Creative Fingers - AG 

Word Art Wednesday - AG 

Stamping Sensations - AG 

We love 2 create - Mixed Media 

Inkspirational - Layer it 

Spring is in the air

My card today is inspired by Tracy Evans who has a challenge running on her FB group for circles.  I also wanted to add a card for Ukraine and used their colours.

My  card uses Tim Holtz Distress Oxides in Salty Ocean and Fossilised Amber  with a watercolour background with the Flutter stamp white embossed on top.  I then added part of the Bird Song stamp set and the words Fly Free which I thought were apt for Ukraine at the moment. 

I'm adding these into the following challenges

The Paper Players - Spring mood board 

Mod Squad - Ukraine 

Addicted to stamps 

Mixed Media Lovers 

Everybody Art - Beginning with B for Birds 

HAND STAMPED SENTIMENTS - #IC361

Another lovely Spring Moodboard for you from Hand Stamped Sentiments this week. I hope you all managed to have a nice Easter.  We actually had some nice warm weather in the UK and we were finally, after 3 months, able to see up to 6 friends or family as long as it was outside.  We were all so grateful that the sun shone for us!  

I chose to do a tag for my project today.  I started off by stamping my images on to the card stock and then masking them off.  I used a stamp set from Simon Says Stamp called Thoughtful Flowers. Once the masks were in place I used 3 Distress Oxide Inks in Chipped Sapphire, Salty Ocean and Fossilised Amber.  I don't have an awful lot of the oxides so my choices were a bit limited but I think these go lovely together.  I added a spritz of water before removing the masks.  

I added some greenery at the bottom with some Archival Ink in Peeled Paint.  I used a Spectrum Noir Sparkle paint in clear for all the masked pieces to give them a shimmer.  A tough of twine at the top and layering onto some cardstock finishes off this tag.  This is to go on a friend's 40th birthday gift so I hope she likes the tag as well as the gift! 

I'm adding this into the following challenges

The Flower Challenge - Pretty Pastels

Try It On Tuesday - Hello Spring

Dream Valley #245 - Springtime 

Make My Monday - Easter or Spring

Inspiration Challenge - image

Use Your Stuff - moodboard 

QKR Stampede- AG 

SWEET STAMPIN - INSPIRED BY BOOK OR A SONG

What a great challenge we have for you this week over at Sweet Stampin - Well I certainly loved it - there was so much to choose from but my eye was drawn to this stamp I have from Visible Image from a set called Dream, Imagine, Inspire and as soon as I saw it I kept humming that song - yep you know the one!  Are you humming it too now?

I've been on a bit of a mixed media craze lately so I decided to make a tag.  I started off with some Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Ink in Salty Ocean and added some Peackcock Feathers Distress Ink and Chipped Sapphire Oxide around the edges.  The Dream stamp and the words comes from Visible Images and I just cut around all the words - I stamped it in the Salty Ocean Ink.

The dreamcatcher comes from a Kaisercraft set of stamps called Hide and Seek.  I used the same inks to colour the dream catcher.  I then used an old SU set called Feather Together for the little feathers and I stamped them and cut them out.  I added them with some thread and also covered them in Glossy Accents.

I added texture by using some of SU textured paste and a Tim Holtz dots stencil.

I hope you have fun with this challenge and I can't wait to see what you do!


 

PLAYING WITH COLLAGE

On a Blogger note - I am using the new Blogger format which apparently is coming into force in June.  Gulp - I find it quite confusing at the moment - I suppose it will take a while to get used to - especially the labels.  Is anyone else finding it tricky? 

I've been inspired by watching some of Tim Holtz's recent Facebook videos to actually have a go at some collages.  Here is my first attempt.  I found this image of a very dapper gentleman in some Tim Holtz Ideology ephemera pack I had so he was the basis of my piece.

I started off with some Distess Oxide ink in Chipped Sapphire and Pumice Stone -and used the spray to add some water.  Once dry,  I added some old Tim Holtz stencils I have which are clocks and gears - I can't remember the name of them!  I also used a word layering stencil by Tim and used some of my Distress Crayons in Pine Needles to add some words and numbers.  I used another old Tim Holtz stencil of dots with some Picket Fence Distress Crayon.  Just to break up the blues I added some Distress Ink in Fired Brick to add a bit of brightness. 

Once my background was done and I was happy with it I added all my pieces of ephemera. I liked the piece that said J & P Coats which I thought went very well with the man and added a few extra pieces.  I had some samples of backgrounds I had made with the distress crayons in Vintage Photo and used this to cut out some Tim Holtz thinlets.  I added some words which I thought went well from a new set of Idea-ology sticker book and decided to call my man Maurice! I went over his coat with an embossing pen and clear embossed it just to make him stand out a big more.

I quite like my first attempt - I think I need to get a few more things for collaging though especially maybe some sort of gel medium and just have a bit more of a play around.  I'm amazed that I had all this stuff in my stash and have never really had a go at collaging apart from on Scrapbook pages.  

I'm adding this into the following challenges:

 Simon Says Stamp It's a Man Thing

Always Fun Challenge - for Dad 

Double Trouble - For a Man

Use Your Stuff - Man

We Love 2 Create - Mixed Media Anything Goes

 

SWEET STAMPIN - CELEBRATIONS - BONFIRE NIGHT

What a great challenge we have at Sweet Stampin this week - Celebrations for Bonfire Night.  When I was a little girl all those years ago we used to celebrate Bonfire Night at home - we had a large garden and always had our own bonfires. Mum and Dad's friends and their children would come round and we would do apple bobbing, make toffee, have baked potatoes cooked in the fire and bowls of hot soup.  There would be a few fireworks but nothing too noisy or spectacular.  It was a night I always looked forward to and we did the same for our children when they were little. Sadly I now think commercial Hallowe'en has taken over our traditional bonfire night and the fireworks seem to get louder and go on for longer - and last more than just the one night.  My pets are always terrified of the screams of the rockets.  How bah humbug that all sounds.

So anyway on to my card for this celebration - and did I have anything to do with fireworks?  Nope I didn't so I had to think outside the box a bit and came up with Stampin Up's Dandelion Wishes - I know - who would have thought it?  But I think you'll agree they look quite good as fireworks.

I started off by creating my background with Tim Holtz Distress Inks with lots of Black Soot, Fossilized Amber, Fired Brick and Chipped Sapphire.  Once dry I added the stamps and heat embossed them in white embossing powder.  I then added some glitter all over them and extra ink.  Different coloured rhinestones were added to the middle.  The word is from SU and was cut out of plain white card stock.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

I'm joining in with TGIF Challenge Christmas In July with another card inspired by one of their Design Team Elizabeth Price.- I hope it's ok to post two!  I loved the way her card looked and the fact that she said it probably couldn't be repeated as it was a question of add this then that.  That's exactly what happened with my card.

I went for an unusual palette for Christmas as I normally do reds and greens so this was completely out of my norm.

I started off by using masking off a part for the moon then using Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Inks in Fossilized Amber and Pumice Stone to create the background.  I sponged the edges to give it the vintage look.  The script type stamp is an old Cherry Pie one and I inked it in stamped off Blackberry Bliss by SU.  I added some gold pen to parts of the ancient script.  I  inked some of the trees from SU Winter Woods in the Pumice Stone to give them a soft effect.  The trees were cut out of Very Vanilla card stock and covered in ink and a touch of white gel pen for snow.  The ribbon and flowers were from my stash.  I wrapped some bronze thread around the card before sticking it to some SU Crumb Cake.  I also added the Reindeer from Gina K Designs and the snowflakes from the same set called Season of Joy.  I love how this turned out and may well keep this colour palette for this year's cards.

 

ARTIST TRADING COINS AND TIM HOLTZ

A friend of mine Jane Allmark who has her own blog Amethyststarcrafting is organising an Artist Trading Coins swap.  I'm sure I did these years ago in a forum but Jane thinks they are only a year old but I'm sure they are older.  Anyway I jumped in to join in with her swap and I've made four coins.  They are 2.5" big.

I started off by using Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks to make all the backgrounds for my coins.  I added some water to get that mottled effect and also used one of Tim's stencils for the little dots. I think this is my favourite stencil of his and it gets used a lot.

The images I stamped are from an old stamp set which I call Folk Art but I''m not sure who it is by but it has these cute animal and flower images. I stamped them in Memento ink and then used some Tri Blend Spectrum Noir inks to colour parts of them in.

I really enjoyed making these - then I received an email from Simon Says Stamp saying it is Work It Wednesday and what are you working on that is Tim Holtz related - voila! They are also able to go into Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Card - not a card! 

If you would like to join in with Jane's Swap I've included her link above.