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

Chapter 2 Tim Holtz dies

Hi Brenda here with two Spring cards using two of the new Tim Holtz dies.

Thinlits - Feathered Friends.

Bigz - Baggage Claim.

For the process steps and photos showing how I made these cards please pop across to 

Bumblebees and Butterflies where there all the details can be found including a new way to use acrylic paints for the background of the first card.

hugs Brenda xxx

Zini’s Storage box

Hi there, Celia here with another storage box for our Paperartsy mini stamps. This time it’s the gorgeously quirky Zini minis from Elanazinski Art.
I started with two coats of DecoArt chalk paint in Everlasting. Then I chose three bright Paperartsy Fresco Finish colours and monoprinted with paper, then stencils to get a Zinski-esque background.

I chose 5 of the Zini minis, including two from the newest release (ZN43 and ZN44) and ZN08, ZN19 and ZN38.

 I stamped these onto some white card with Versafine Clair in Nocturne, which is new favourite black pigment ink. Then I coloured them with Promarkers and cut them out.

 I arranged them onto the box and glued them down with DecoArt Decou-Page, with a couple of coats on top so they would be nice and durable. Then finished off with a coat of DecoArt mat varnish.

And here it is sitting proudly on the shelf:

Thanks for stopping by,

Celia x

Wow embossing powders

Hi there, Celia here!

After much anticipation the Wow Embossing Powders are finally in the house! Of course I picked Seth Apter’s colours to try out. He has also brought out a natty little bottle of embossing ‘gloop’ with a brush, which brings all sorts of opportunities for experimentation.

For my tag, I first put down a quick base of Paperartsy chalk paints in Waterfall and Green Patina. Then I used the lighter embossing powder colours from the Cosmic pack with Seth’s Paperartsy minis EM55 and EM56. Against the aqua background they make a lovely subtle background. I used mini EM45 with the Etched Platinum, which is a gorgeous grungy silver. I stamped the main image with mini EM52 and the Crusty Copper, again gorgeously grungy. I used the Embossing Brush around the edges - it’s great for making random blobs or brush strokes. I used the Crusty Copper and the Weathered Gold around the edge.
There are so many embossing powders around now, but this new range from Wow has lovely mixes of colours. They are shiny without being too blingy, and have a great texture to them. It’s hard to say which is my favourite colour. If pushed, I’d say all of them!

Thanks for stopping by,

Celia x

Izink

Two of my favourite things in a bottle - Seth Apter and purple! I’m very lucky to have a sneaky preview of this brand new ink from Aladine, who have developed a new range of acrylic inks with Seth. It has a new delivery system, so instead of the usual dropper it has a brush, in what looks suspiciously like a nail varnish bottle! After my little play, I have to say it is very effective. The ink is a lot thicker than, say, Amsterdam, so you can gloop it on thick or water it down with a spray bottle.

For my quick play, I made a background on some watercolour paper with a selection of Seth’s mini stamps from Paperartsy. (here)

Then I applied the ink in as many different ways as I could think:
Splodged on thick with a palette knife
Wiped with a baby wipe
Dotted with the brush
Lines with the brush
Watered down and painted with a paint brush
Spattered
Dobbed on then quickly pour on embossing powder. It dries quickly! You get some lovely bubbling effects if you slightly over heat it.
Make a dot, spritz it then pull the centre out with a needle.
Stamp with it - paint onto craft mat and dip stamp in. Wash stamp quickly!
Use the brush to roughly edge the paper.

I’m sure there are many more ways to use this amazing product, but I filled up my piece of paper! It will be available from about mid February.

Thanks for stopping by,

Celia x