All bleached out....

Thanks to all the ladies who came to my class at the Craft Barn on Saturday. I really enjoyed it and, boy, did they work hard!
Here are a few pics of them in action:

And here are some of the cards they made:

You know what I like? They've all chosen the colours they like and done their own take on the stamped collages.
Liz also spent ages perfecting the second embossing sandwich for me - thanks Liz!

My next class is on Saturday 16 June and is called 'Show and Tell'. We're going to be making a variety of cards and ATCs using the new Lynne Perrella stamps, Distress Stains and a pull tab mechanism:

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Blog, blog blogging!

Yes, I've changed it again! Although I liked the different photo things you could do, it was driving me mad that none of the blog lists etc were visible and people kept saying they couldn't find anything. So, for the moment, after another 3 hours fiddling about with it,  I've gone to this ultra simple layout, which, although a bit bland, at least has everything on view!

Meanwhile I was up at the Craft Barn yesterday and picked up some stuff I'm going to be demoing at their mega Extravaganza at the end of June. On the Saturday I'm going to be doing stuff with Faber-Castell oil pastels, Dylusions sprays and these fabulous circus stamps from Oxford Impressions. I say 'stuff' 'cos I haven't made any of it yet!

I've just been trying out the pastels with stencils:

Very early days yet though!

Meanwhile next weekend, Saturday 19 May, I'm teaching my Men and Bleach class. This promises to be fun and uses lots of techniques: masking, bleaching, double embossing etc. so if you want to come along there are still a couple of places left here.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Alice in full technicolour!

This is a project I made ages ago for publication (one of my madder ones, I might add!) and when I sent it in they couldn't use it 'cos they already had a project using Alice stamps (that'll teach me to check before hand!) It now hangs right near my computer and I thought I'd blog it on this grey day. (I don't think I've blogged it before - if I have, apologies!)

It's made out of cut up envelopes - you know, the sort with windows in, usually with the dreaded bank statements or whatever. I thought this was a much better use! I've coloured the windows with alcohol inks and stamped on the paper behind then added stuff on top. All the text is cut from envelopes as well:

The back looks like this:

Don't look too closely at the stitching - it took me ages - years even - to work out that that was to do with the bobbin tension (didn't know the bobbin had a tension!). Knew I should have gone on that 'know your sewing machine class'.

When put together it hangs as a rather wacky mobile:

The lovely Alice stamps are by Stamp Attack The wonderful background stamp on the back is by Chocolate Baroque.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

June Craft Stamper

June Craft Stamper is out tomorrow:

There's lots of great articles in it with all sorts of techniques. My article uses Oxford Impressions stamps (available from the Craft Barn) and Portfolio oil pastels (available from PaperArtsy) and is aimed at projects for men:

Thanks for looking!

Helen

New Blog layout!

I'm going mad here - after another 4 hours fiddling around, have decided to keep the Dynamic view even though it annoys me 'cos you can't see all the text (lists, places to visit etc).
It's very good for the pics though - if you go onto the Sidebar on the left you can try out all the different formats but it will always default to this setting.
If you hover over the black box on the right it will bring up the various lists etc.

I'll keep it this way for as ling as I can bear it!

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Dancing Tag and a new look blog!

(Click on post to see it all!)

Don't laugh! I was playing around with the new blogger stuff and of course pressed the wrong button and lost my other template altogether! To be fair I was getting a bit fed up with it and actually quite like the look of this new dynamic stuff, but I'll have to see if it does what I want it to.
You seem to be able to view the same post in all sorts of formats - I like the Magazine view and am going to try to set it to come up as that, but don't hold your breath, it'll probably decide to do something completely different!
I don't know about you, but it takes me hours to sort out anything like this and I'm starting to go boggle eyed so it'll just have to do for now!

Anyway am going to post a pic of a tag I made using the Dance Card stamp from Crafty Individuals CI-346:

I had the sewing machine out, so have added stitching, MME papers, ribbon and lace.

Thanks for looking!

Helen

Would you care to dance?

Here's a card I made with one of the new Crafty Individuals stamps CI-346, which is absolutely gorgeous (the stamp, not the card!):

I've stamped it onto some Kaleidacoloured card (I think Bouquet, but not entirely sure) and used Prima Almanac paper in the background with some gold painted tissue paper. Oh, and some pearl headed pins top right.

Thanks for looking!

Helen