« December 2009 | Main | February 2010 »
...inspired by Wendy Vecchi.
and here is a detail of the grungepaper roses. I made a bunch of those when I did Tim's 12 tags. I've done some out of patterned paper too and they are nice, but to tell you the truth, grungepaper is grungepaper. It's so flexible, it's just perfect. Gotta say I love 'em roses. So sophisticated :)
A couple of more pictures of my wonderful scraproom.
I ordered a new craft mat/sheet from the UK a couple of weeks ago and it came today. I'm thrilled. It's twice as big as the one from Ranger I have and it has kind of a rougher coating on the backside so it doesn't move at all - no need for tape or anything to hold it in place.
On the wall you can see the shelf that was missing last time. My hubby and Andrea put it together while I was in France. What a nice surprise when I got home.
And last weekend they worked some more. What have I done to deserve those two magnificent men?
A view from up of one of the drawers (very long and very shallow) with my Distress Inks. There's room for the new ones I've ordered. I also had to order more blending tools. And the blending tool spinner thingy. I just had to... You guys know what I'm talking about.
These are 4 out of the nine drawers. They are to be finished yet, but I was anxious to fill up the ones that were mounted. I have six filled up already and I'm waiting to have the last three.
And here is a picture of my new printer/copier/scanner...
... which I practically got for nothing when I bought my MacBook in December. It's cool and it prints very fast. And the cartridges aren't even expensive. What a great deal!
The other day I watched Tim's demo videos which you can find here, and I wanted to try right away the technique demonstrated in the Perfect Distress demo. I have to say that my first attempt was more of a Perfect Disaster but I carried on. And my perseverance paid off: I made two pretty cards and the third one (the disastrous one) turned out quite creative *wink*
The perfect pearls are used dry as opposed to the technique on my previous post where pigment inks are used together with a mixture of water and perfect pearls.
On the first card the flourish and on the second card the clock are stamped with Distress Inks and brushed with perfect pearls (heirloom gold). The tricky thing was when Tim sprayed water ON the image with the perfect pearls on in order to let the Distress Ink blend a little. I guess I wasn't paying too much attention on how FAR AWAY and how LITTLE water Tim sprayed on the image. The result on my card was that right before my eyes the pretty flourish image watered down completely: practically I had a big pool of red ink swaying on my card. I blotted it, stamped on it with black archival ink and didn't use the technique on this card, lol. It's the last card, you'll see the noticeable "water color" effect. But nonetheless, it has a blingy pearly effect on it.
On my birdie card the perfect pearls are visible IRL, on the photo much less. On the clock card only half of the clock is covered with pp because I let the Distress Ink dry too much. But I still like the card.
And last but not least: my creative pearly card :)
I made this card for my aunt.
The background is inspired by Lori who was inspired by Wendy Vecchi. I smeared on the craft sheet Adirondack Watermelon (or maybe it was Cranberry) and Tsukineko Coffee Bean pigment inks, spritzed with water and perfect pearl mixture (mixed previously in a mini mister) and put my card on top of it, not smeared, just kinda "patted", dried it with the heating tool, re-patted it in places I wanted more color, re-dried and then I stamped with Wendy's letter background stamp (like Lori) with Versafine Crimson Red - just bought it 2 weeks ago in France so I had to try it right away. It's lovely and with Versafine you get nice and crisp print. LOVED the result. I stamped on the corners some swirls with Archival INk Coffee. I added two grungepaper roses sprayed with glimmer mists, added some Prima leaves (I need more leaves!!!), some blingy swirls and then I distressed the borders with Distress Ink walnut stain using the blending tool. Then I glued the piece to a card and voilà. Well, at this point I noticed that I wanted some glitter on the roses and added some stickles on them, just smearing it with my fingers. And NOW the card was ready!
Now I'm itching to do more Pigments & Perfect Pearls backgrounds! You can easily use glimmer mists if you don't have perfect pearls but I guess then it would be called pigments & glimmer mists :)) Actually on this card I sprayed some Honey Dew glimmer mist on the pigment inks on the craft sheet other than water and perfect pearls.
I'm just feeling good so I decided to wish you all a beautiful weekend with this bouquet of yellow tulips I bought yesterday. Feeling springy!!!!
12 years today! Happy Birthday! Auguri! Onnea! Hronia pollà! Grattis!
Jan 16th challenge is up at The Studio. These are the requirements:
1. Take your alphas and alter them. Maybe you have a font you love but in the wrong colour – well change them! Show us what you can do!
2. Use a symmetrical page design – everything on one side should balance what’s on the other.
3. Use fabric of some kind on your page!
This is my take
I love to use fabric in my layouts so this challenge was right up my alley. I chose "springy" colors because I'm all projected towards spring now! I stamped on Heidi Swapp's transparent letters with black Staz-on and added two butterflies to enhance the spring theme of my layout. I had fun as the Studio's Guest Designer and I'm looking forward to doing more challenges (weekly as opposed to twice a month) at The Studio.
ScrapZimutDays was a fantastic experience, everything I had hoped for and much more thanks to Valérie and her ScrapZimut girls. A weekend full of fun, great classes, good food, lovely company and the chance to use my dormant French. The icing on the cake was to be able to share all this with my friend Elina.
Here is the group photo by Guillaume Despont
Here are some of my photos of the event.
Me and Elina, my consolidated partner in (scrap) crime :))))
Here I am with Valérie and Céline Navarro with whom we had two workshops.
Denise Laborde, a wonderful teacher and a good friend.
Some candy to give us energy in between the workshops.
Edwige with one of her cool class projects. We also made a mini album with her.
For dinner PAELLA!!!
Saturday night finished with some country dancing!!
Sweet Michou with her fantastic layout.
Julie, Elina, Helena, Sandra
Here are my finished projects.
This is a canvas we made with Céline.
This is my layout from Michou's class.
These are the two layouts I made with Denise. I still have to write the journaling.
This is the frame I made in Edwige's class.
I have yet to finish Céline's and Edwige's minialbums. The structure is done, I just have to embellish them.
The scraproom was there already and half of it was done but my hubby and my son gave me a wonderful birthday present: they built another desk and shelf units for me to store more of my stash and to have a lot more space to create!!! I'm so blessed!
The room is big and with a lot of light. It's almost square, about 3,5 m x 3,5mt (12,6 mq = 135 square feet if someone is interested!) Here are some pictures I took this morning.
Picture taken from the door.
My sewing station and to the left my computer station .
On the other wall to the left of my computer station is the layout station :) You can see my Fiskars trimmer and a light green mat on the desk. That is all the old part. To the left of the layout station is the NEW part. There will be my "tool" station where I will use the Slice, the Bind-It-All, the Paper Gator and also the Xyron. Now there are some metal boxes with Making Memories and Dabber acrylic paints. (they will go to another place as soon as it is ready). I'valways hated that I had to keep the big tools in their packages or somewhere "hidden" and that's why I didn't use them as often as I would have liked. Underneath the desk there are boxes with foam stamps and miscellaneous stuff. And underneath are all my albums (which were previously all over the house).
This is the NEW desk. Oh how I love it! It's 2,10 m long and 85cm wide.(sorry Kiki, that's where your bed was!!) It's huge and that's how I wanted it. That is my painting/inking/misting station. On top of the baskets (right along the décor strip on the wall) will go a shelf unit on top of which I will put all my inks and glimmer mists and acrylic paints. I also want to buy a large vinyl or plastic sheet to cover the top of the desk. My craft sheet looks kinda tiny in all that huge area :) Do they sell large craft sheets somewhere? Anybody?
That's my inspiration corner.
Here my hubby will build 10-12 very shallow drawers for my stamps and other "short" supplies. I want shallow drawers because in the normal size drawers the stuff just gets piled up and then you don't find anything.
ah, in the black baskets beside the desk are my punches and adhesives.
Here's an overview of the new desk unit taken from the window.
In this picture (taken from the door) you can see the drawers of a 2,5 m wide wardrobe.
I keep all my patterned papers and cardstock in the Cropper Hopper paper holders.
I do have a lot of space and a lot of stash. Now with this new space I just feel the creative juices flowing and that I'm going to be creating more and more :)))
I contemplated the idea of an island in the middle of the room where I would scrap and paint (I stand while I work) but then decided against it. I feel I have more room and I can store more items this way.
And here are my worthy carpenters:
Recent Comments