The Runaway Train....

You can tell I work at a nursery school, can't you?!
This is a little project that I made for the Crafty Individuals Music Challenge and I couldn't think of another song title to link it into the theme!

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Let's get inky!

Well, soon! This month's Inky Fingers Club session is on Wednesday 27 May and we're working with Stampbord.
We're going to be looking at different ways of colouring and embellishing, etching in highlights and how to incorporate the tiles into a larger project. Here's a sneak peek:

If you'd like to come along then contact The Craft Barn. Although it's called a club, you don't have to have been before, you can just choose the club sessions that you fancy having a go at. As long as there are places, you can book.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

The Silvery Moon Step by Step...

I was asked by Jean at Crafty Individuals if I could explain how I made this card in detail:

So here goes - I'm warning you this has lots of pics and is a warts and all explanation!

I used the following stamps CI-423 Build a Spring Flower Garden: 

which is the latest grass/flower set. I stamped onto glossy white card and used the Kaleidacolor inkpad Vineyard (if you haven't got that you could always substitute Distress inkpads in similar colours).

Get everything ready including a piece of  paper torn roughly to make a hill mask and a mask for the moon:

Lay down one half of the mask and brayer greens and brown:

Mask bottom hills and mask for top hill:

 

 and brayer in purples:

Using cotton wool, sponge grey/purple and green onto sky:

Sponge more colour onto other layers:

Define edges of hills using ink on a cotton bud:

Remove moon mask:

 and sponge grey/purple lightly onto moon to take off white edge:

Take the larger stamp: 

and, keeping to the purple colours, ink it up:

stamp a couple of times:

next add the bell stamp in purple:

add some more solid leaves in greens:

then some open leaves in the blue/green:

Don't forget the stems can be bent different ways to suit the collage:

Then add in this open flower (don't know what it is!) in purple:

Then try not to swear as you realize you've got ink from the edge of the block onto your moon! 

 This happened because I'm putting the stamp onto the inkpad so I can just ink up in my colour stripes. Anywhere else and I could have covered it up but it was just too obvious there so I had to quickly brayer up another background. I then added in some of the delicate grasses in green to fill in the gaps and arch over the top:

After that it's a case of adding some embossed flowers to act as a focal point. I've positioned them diagonally opposite the moon and have used some WOW embossing powders in similar colours to the background (Lapis Cobalt Aurura and Lilac Black):

  If the stem isn't quite long enough, draw it in with a VersaMark pen and emboss:

And here is the finished card - well almost. The text is printed on the computer in Impact Label font and then just cut out and stuck on.

When I'm building up these flower pictures, I usually break down the sets roughly into the following:

The main images tend to be the larger/taller ones. the solid images are great for adding weight at the bottom of the picture.

Crafty Individuals have got lots of different sets of flowers/grasses that can all be built up in the same way. Once you get going it's very addictive!

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Fantastic Florals (and birds!)

Had a great Inky Fingers Club (every last Wednesday of the month) at The Craft Barn on Wednesday transforming some white cotton bags using stamping and TAP paper. Here's the first lot of  bags (I'll show the rest when I get the pics):

They're all using the same Lin Brown stamps but everyone's added their own creativity - fantastic!
If you want to see how we made them, I'm demoing the techniques up there tomorrow so come along and have a look. Lindsay Mason and Neil Walker will also be there showcasing some mixed media projects.

Thanks for looking!

Helen