Halloween Fun

 Good evening,

I wanted to share two Halloween projects that I have created.

Firstly, are the 'drippy' candles that Tim Holtz demoed two weeks ago.  You can see the video here.

Here is my version of the candles

The candle on the right hand side was the very first creation.  I kept it small like the candles that Tim demoed.  I took my learnings from this to create the larger candle on the left.  I totally love this one.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  

I really got to know my glue gun during this project.

I used PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic paints and finished off with drips of Distress crayons.

I would really encourage you to give this project a go - it was great fun.

My second project is in readiness for trick or treaters.  This year has thrown so many curve balls and I know many children will be disappointed to not be able to go trick or treating.  So, I created treat bags for the neighbours children.

I kept the bags simple, using the Tim Holtz Snarky Cats Halloween stamp set.  I simply adore this set.  So many useful images as well as those sassy cats.

So, there we have it - 2 Halloween projects in one post.  I really hope that I have inspired you to give these a go.

Happy crafting!

Miriam

Morty Bottoms by Cassie Campbell

Hi Everyone. Cassie has been keeping herself busy crafting and look what she made this time. This was a special gift for Tracy Easson who designs these gorgeous stamps

MDF & Morty Bottoms Stamp

Cassie stamped and enlarged then cutout the image to use as a template on the Clay. On a piece of MDF she created the background using these stencils & medias

Once the clay was dry, Cassie painted using these decoart mixed media products.

And the final plaque

It's beautiful Cassie. Thank you so much for sharing with us

Antonis Tzanadakis Pier 9 Webinar

Happy June to you all.

Some of you may know that Antonis was due to visit Country View Crafts back in May to hold his only UK workshops in 2020.  As expected, these had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To our delight, Antonis put together two webinars, with the promise of more to come.  If you missed these webinars you can still book and enjoy them through this link.  

I have to say I was slightly sceptical at online webinars.  Having been lucky enough to attend a few workshops with Antonis in previous years I knew that. as a tutor, he is brilliant.  I always walk away inspired and with a project that I love.  So I was apprehensive that I would feel the same buzz without a face to face workshop.

But.... it didn't disappoint.

Here is my finished project:

For the first time in a very long time I got 'lost' in my crafting.

I won't say how I made this project as that wouldn't be fair to Antonis and to the students that paid for the class, however, I can point you in the direction of the products I used.

The Pier 9 webinar centred around the Stamperia Mechanical Sea World papers that Antonis designed (these are absolutely gorgeous, just don't tell him I told you so).  Even after my project I still have loads of these gorgeous papers left over for other projects.  The project was built on a MDF panel which fits the papers perfectly.

The gears and clock hands are all part of the greyboard kits that are available.

The glues that I used were a revelation to me.  I thought I knew glue and what was good.  Well, I now have new favourite glues!  The Extra Strong glue really is strong.  It held my octopus that was made from plaster really well.  The mixed media glue is amazing!  As well as being a good glue, it acts as a brilliant sealant too.  I loved using this glue.

The piping background stamp is fabulous - created great detail on my distressed panel.

I also used one of the detailed stencils that Antonis released.  There are plenty to choose from too - all would work on this project.  I used the Glossy Gel through the stencil - this gave a lovely effect of the finished project.

The tags and images were mount onto Stone paper to give them some strength.

The paints were really lovely to use - they have a good consistency and you don't need to use much.

So, there we have it!

I even broke through the fear of the final 'ageing' stage!

I totally loved the end result.

I'm looking forward to the 'Lost Worlds' webinar next.

What is great about these webinars is that you can do them in your own time.  You don't have to do them on the release day and you can pause as many times as you need.  You can also go back and watch the webinars as many times as you want.

If you fancy trying this project you can still purchase it here.  

Thanks for joining me.  

Happy crafting!

Miriam

 

A lockdown catch up with Visible Image and distress embossing glazes

Hello, it's Jane here with a better late than never catch up with the Visible Image (VI) products Susan has in stock over on the CVC website. With all the chaos happening worldwide over the last few months I did not get round to writing my usual new release post here when the most recent release launched in late February. So I thought I would have a "mix it up" Lockdown VI catch up today. Susan stocks a very wide range of the VI catalogue plus all the "new release". I have put lots of live links in this post. If you would like to buy any mentioned products just click on them. They will take you to the Country View Crafts website. If anything is out of stock, just fill in your email address and Susan will contact you when she gets them back in. Remember that any UK orders over £7.50 are FREE postage too which is win win in my books.

I hope you are all keeping well and staying safe? Most people will be staying at home and you may have even had more time to do your crafting. I hope it is bringing you some healthy distraction and enjoyment.  Some of you though may well be key workers and be busier than ever. Others like my daughter, who is a doctor, may be on the NHS front line. Thank you to you all, whether you are staying at home to keep others safe or out there helping others. We are all in this together and we will come out the other side eventually. 

OK so let's get started with my lockdown Visible Image catch up. Grab a cuppa and take a seat as this is a bit of a long post and there is a step by step of a project I made at the end too.

I thought I would start with a card to hopefully make you smile.  

 I recently made a few rainbow unicorn cards using the Visible Image Believe in unicorns set, Happy birthday sentiment and the strobes stencil. Rainbow projects are everywhere at the moment and they are so cheerful to see. I made birthday cards but with a different sentiments they could be a fitting tribute to send to a friend or family member being such a bright and happy card.
You may also notice that the unicorn looks translucent, well he is and I had my first play with the new Tim Holtz embossing glazes ( but more of those at the end of this post.)

The February Visible Image release included 6 new verse sets which are really useful. The little poem is separate from the sentiment which makes them very versatile to use. At £5.99 they are really good value too.
There are 5 other sentiments to cover all occasions including "With Sympathy",
"Thinking of you"

Thank you (shown with the Life is beautiful humming bird)

 "Happy Anniversary"

 and "Wedding"

There is also a super small "accessorize" set with these lovely accent stamps which I have used in the cars above,

including a tiny version of the gorgeous ever popular creative chaos inky flower. 

The not so new release also has 3 larger A5 sets which include 2 larger versions of existing A5 sets but they are not just a bigger version, they have new accent stamps with them.

2 of my faves are 2020 vision. (This was one I made for the recent "The eyes have it" challenge I hosted over on the Country View Craft challenge blog)

and Total chaos.

 In the 6 new A5 sets my faves include Free your imagination,

and the super cute Robot Data. I have a Design Team project coming up on 1st May on the CVC challenge site using this set but here is another card I made for my grandson's recent 3rd birthday and some matching tags.

Also "Break free"

There are 6 new stencils and one of my favourites is "Breaking glass"which you can see in my Free your imagination sample above and in a simple black and white one below.
I used it here with the awesome Night Owl set

There are lots more to check out, do have a look through the lovely stock that Susan has over on the website here.

So back to the Distress embossing glazes which I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I bought 3 colours a while back and as you saw in my rainbow card I used the Broken china to emboss my unicorn.

I have wanted to have a play using it with stencils so yesterday I did just that and I thought you might like to see my results.
There are 12 colours so far. The colours I have are Broken china, Fired brick and Cracked pistacio.

So first of all I just used embossing ink on a piece of foam and applied it through the VI Count me in stencil.

I rather liked that but then I took it one step further and added some stamping under the VI Fibres stencil. That was also interesting...the stamps are from Dare to swim

So I thought I would go for more texture so I got out my Texture Crackle paste and applied it though the same fibres stencil over some stamped text.

I sprinkled on the powders and being impatient got out my heat gun as I know that the paste will bubble and thought that might be interesting.
Pre heating....

post heating...very bubbly!

Here are all 3.

 I made one more which I decided to leave to dry overnight. 

This was crackle paste through the VI entwined butterflies stencil
In the morning I saw these gorgeous crackles.
Now the observation I will made is that less of the powder stuck to the paste when left to dry.  Once heated this was the result, still rather lovely!

I decided to make the butterfly background into a mini canvas. First I added some yellow distress inks to the background as I found the white too pale. I used stamps from the "wings of change".
I stamped and coloured the butterflies and fussy cut them out.

I also used the sentiment from the Life is beautiful set which I distressed using my tool and vintage photo distress ink.

Here is my finished canvas.

with a couple of close ups

The crackle really looks like a mosaic in real life and the butterflies sparkle vividly.

 I really had a fun day playing with the new glazes and my VI stash and needless to say I have just ordered a few more colours of the powders from Susan.

If you got all the way to the end of this post, thank you.  I think you deserve more that just a cuppa now.

I hope my post may have shone a little sunshine into your day and perhaps given you some creative inspiration too?

Take great care during these very different times we find ourselves in.

Life is indeed beautiful.

Stay safe,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Lockdown Dinosaur by Cassie Campbell

Looking for something to do - how about one of these. Sirdar Happy Cotton & Happy Chenille crochet projects. With little project books you can follow and get your inspiration

The Happy Cottons come in a variety of 50 colours or you can purchase the complete 50 in a beautiful presentation Happy box. Happy Cotton is a fabulous cotton double knitting yarn perfect for hand knit and crochet projects. It can be used to create designs for all the family from babies to adults and looks equally gorgeous in projects for the home. These each small skein of yarn is made using mercerised cotton to create a subtle sheen and incredible stitch definition, so it’s a great choice for lace knitting, cables and crochet work.

The Happy Chenille comes in 25 different colours. A velvety soft addition to our Happy amigurumi family, these irresistible little balls of Sirdar Happy Chenille will make your cute crochet characters even more adorable. As well as the sweetest pastels, you’ll discover a range of richer, deeper shades to add depth and personality to your Happy Chenille makes. What's it like to work with? The velvety fibres of Happy Chenille slide over your crochet hook for super smooth comfortable stitching. Cassie has used one of the Books to make this beautiful dinosaur

Cassie enjoyed this project so much she will be crocheting another one very soon which we will share with you but in the meantime, checkout our website so you can create your own

Here is the finished Dinosaur

Is that not just sooo cute 

Stay Safe Everyone xx

New Seth Apter stamps by PaperArtsy

Hi there, Celia here.
I had to treat myself to some of Seth’s new release stamps from PaperArtsy, because they’re GORGEOUS! The latest three are all based on New York street art and street ‘sightings’. They are very grungy and great for backgrounds and focal points.

For my piece, I have used ESA13 and ESA15 . I started off by a few bits of collage and washi tape, then a quick background of Buff and Terracotta.

Then I scraped on some Ice (Melted Butter and Whiskey Frost) and scratched into it for some texture. For even more texture, I pushed some gauze into it while it was still wet.

Then I did some stencilling with more Fresco paints. I then went in with the background stamps and the same muted colours, with a variety of inks. The Oxides in blue show up really well over the earth tones background. I also used Archival and Distress inks, in blues and the earth tones, to produce a nice varied background.

I started adding some of the circles and crosses in darker colours then added some embossing with the Wow powders (Weathered Gold from Metalz and Blue Moon from Cosmic) and also some of the Emerald Creek (Ancient Amber and Dirty Sand).

I then stamped the Journey stamp from ESA13 as my focal point and embossed it with black detail powder.

I hope you feel inspired to have a play with some stamps and stencils.
Stay safe!

Celia x