Thursday 30 January 2014

Heart with Flowers

Another quick post today as I am off to work in the shop this afternoon & then it's straight out again to teach our next workshop featuring Zentangle & dreamweaver stencils (see previous posts).
Tonight is our second Zentangle workshop & I'm intrigued to see how tonight's group get on in comparison to our first which was on the 16th.
 Hopefully I'll remember to take some photos so I can show you.
 
 
I wanted to show you something heart related today as we are fast approaching Valentine's day, although my heart isn't red or pink.
 The shop deliveries of Valentine's cards & gifts have long been arriving & are on the shelves so I thought I'd make a few heart shaped crafty items, more of which I will post at a later date.
 
I've also been working a lot with flower stamps & dies lately so flowers had to feature in my project too.
 My daughter's name is Daisy so I always seem drawn to flowers!
 
 
I used an MDF heart from Indigoblu, primed & then painted with a pale yellow acrylic paint.
I then used a Creative Expressions mask & spread texture paste through it onto the heart.
When dry I then decided to paint over the top with the same pale yellow.
 Distress inks in mustard yellow & brushed corduroy & then bronze gilding wax were blended over the surface.
The flower stamp is from Woodware & I stamped all 3 sizes several times in sepia archival ink, cut them out, added the same distress inks & layered them up, shaping the petals to add dimension.
I then added the swirls with gold pearlised pva from Creative Expressions & flat backed pearls in the centres of the flowers. Don't look too closely, the glue is still wet!
 
 
 
The sentiment is also a stamp from Woodware which I stamped in sepia & tore around the edges & distress inked. The final touch was the gold organza ribbon to hang.
 
All these products are available to buy in my shop Out Of The Blue.
 I really enjoy creating these projects to show you & our customers what they can make using them.
 
I hope you like my project, any comments are much appreciated.
 
See you soon
 
Amy x


Saturday 25 January 2014

Mr Zentangle Owl

Morning everyone. Hope you've all had a good week & have lots of crafty plans for the weekend?. I'm hoping to have a day of crafting tomorrow & I've gathered a nice stash of crafty goodies from the shop to try & come up with some new projects for future workshops.
My card today is another Zentangle card as we have another workshop this Thursday using the Dreamweaver stencils for Zentangle.
This particular owl stencil proved to be very popular with our group last week, not surprised really, as owls still continue to be a very popular theme in both our craft & gift sections of the shop.
 
 
This was actually my first attempt at Zentangle & I quite liked the result.
Once I'd finished the owl I simply mat & layered him onto black & white card stock & patterned paper. I die cut some flowers & layered them up, punched a strip of white card with a Martha Stewart border punch, stamped the sentiment from Indigoblu & edged the black card with white pearl cosmic shimmer pva. I also added some faux stitching .
 
One of my New Year's resolutions was to enter more blog challenges, so I'm going to enter this card in 2 today.
 The first is Country View Challenges where the theme is Monochromatic
& the second is Crafty Cardmakers and more where the theme is Black & White & you can win goodies from Woodware.
Pop over & take a look, there's some fab projects on both.
 
That's it from me today, I'm off to work in the shop.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend.
See you soon
 
Amy x
 

Wednesday 22 January 2014

Celtic Knot

Morning everyone, just a quick post today as I have a busy day ahead.
 After a lovely relaxed day off yesterday spent wandering around Bath with my friend Julie & our two little girls, my day today in contrast will mainly involve appointments with reps in the shop ordering new lines & then this evening we are off to a 'show' to order our Christmas cards for this year!
I probably won't get in much before 9 this evening so as I'm back in blog mode at the moment I wanted to write this post before I head off to the shop for the day.
 
My card today is a black & white simple card that I made as a sample for our Zentangle workshop last Thursday (see previous post). It was very quick to make using a Celtic knot metal stencil from |Dreamweaver.
 
 
Once the stencil had been outlined with a fine liner, it was very quick to fill in as the spaces between each part of the knot as they were only small.
The sentiment is a Woodware stamp & the black card was punched with a Tonic Celtic border punch
I also doodled around another piece of white card to mat the main design onto & added some faux black stitching & some black gems.
 
Hope you like it?
Thanks for visiting
 
Amy x

Friday 17 January 2014

Out Of The Blue Zentangle Workshop 16th January 2014

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post!
 Things all went a bit mad as they usually do in the run up to Christmas.
 It's our busiest time of the year in the shop & there is non stop display rearranging, ordering, unpacking & pricing to be done.
 Mix that with Christmas shopping evenings, Christmas craft workshops to teach, celebrating special birthdays & trying to get my own Christmas shopping done & I was definitely ready for a nice few days over Christmas to sit down & put my feet up!.
 I had several Christmas creations photographed & ready to write posts for but just never got the chance, but never mind, they will just have to keep for this Christmas!.
That all now seems like yonks ago & we are already now mid way into January!. It really is a month that drags, but for me it normally chugs along quite nicely as we attend trade fairs for the shop & begin ordering lots of new goodies.
 Plus it marks the start of our 2014 workshops for Out Of the Blue, the first of which was last night.
We decided to ease into the New Year with a zentangle project for our ladies. It's really quite addictive once you start & I managed to get quite a few images prepared while I sat watching tv which was a great way to get my non Christmas mojo back. I'll save those for future posts.
 
Some of our ladies were a bit worried about where to begin but we used dreamweaver stencils & woodware peel off stickers as a starting point & once they got started they were well away!.
 I don't think our craft room has ever been so quiet!, everyone was zoned out & concentrating on their tangles!.
 
 Here's a few pics of their creations
 
 
 
We concentrated on monochrome & added touches of colour with ribbons & gems & everyone loved it.
 
 
 
 
 I think our ladies will be looking at their stash of dies, stencils, punches, masks & stamps differently now to see how they can zentangle with them.
 
 
 
 



 
Well, sorry for such a lengthy post, but I did have a bit of catching up to do.
I'd just like to end by welcoming my newest follower Viera, thanks for choosing to follow my creations it's nice to have you & very exciting to add you to my small list of followers!
 
See you soon
 
Amy x
 
P.S  I'll be stopping by your blogs & commenting again soon!