Imagination Crafts Tutorial 2nd March 2015.

Hello again blog friends.

Today I am back as promised with a taster of my tutorial project for the
Imagination Crafts Blog.

Please pop over to the Imagination Crafts  blog to see my full project & exactly how I made it.
You may also like to purchase some of the Imagination Crafts products that I used which you can find & order here
along with lots of other fab crafting goodies.

Thanks for stopping by, your time & comments are as always, much appreciated.

Amy x  

Imagination Crafts Inspiration project. 1st February 2015

Good morning crafter's. I hope you are all having a good & relaxing weekend?.

Today we are up at the NEC in Birmingham for the Spring Fair. 

This is the trade fair for the gift trade & we will be ordering lots of lovely new goodies for our shop Out Of The Blue.

It's a great opportunity to spot new trends for the coming year & see what are going to be popular themes in gifts, homeware & the greetings & card sectors.

It's a huge show & covers pretty much all of the halls at the exhibition centre so comfy shoes & coffee pitstops are a definite must!.

We'll be up there for a couple of days so we're hoping snow doesn't affect our journeys too much.

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post featuring the mirror I altered for my DT tutorial over on the Imagination Crafts blog.

Thankyou for taking the time to pop over & leave me a comment there too, it was much appreciated.

Anyway, here's my project for today

As it's the 1st of the month it's my DT Inspiration project for Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog.
It's also the card I made for my Mum for her birthday.
I used purple & turquoise card distressed around the edges.

The stamps are from the Imagination Crafts decoupage stamp range & I used the Dragonfly set.
This is a beautiful range of stamps perfect for layering.
Here I have stamped & heat embossed the design in white detail embossing powder onto vellum & coloured the back of the vellum with inks.

I stamped the design again & coloured just the dragonflies & then cut them out. These were then stuck I'm place on top of the original design.

I added some stamping around the edge of the purple card & finished with some stickles glitter glue & pearl gems.

I decorated the inside too.

Hope you are inspired to join in with the challenge.
The theme every month is anything goes & there's a great prize up for grabs.
Please also check out all the other design team projects over on the blog.

See you again soon

Amy x 

Imagination Crafts Inspirational Project - Altered notebook, birds on a branch

Hello all, it's the 15th of the month so that means it's time to share with you another inspirational project for the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog.
Please pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the design team have created & to join in with the challenge.
The theme is always anything goes & there is a prize to be won too!.

This post may be a bit picture heavy so you have been warned!.

I had a couple of blank, plain brown notebooks that had been waiting for me to do something with.
I decided to alter one of them & here's how I did it:

I gave the notebook a coat of white gesso as a base.

Next I cut & embossed a piece of blue card to fit the front cover. It didn't have to be blue, it was just what I had to hand at the time.

I then used the Imagination Crafts Birds On A Branch stencil with some silver texture paste.

Once dry I then stuck the embossed layer & the bird design panel onto the front of the notebook & painted over the top with anotger coat of gesso & heated it with a heat tool which made the texture paste bubble slightly with the heat.

I then began to blend some blueberry ice & gooseberry fool inkadink inks from the brights set over the note book.
Then I added water & dried it off with my heat tool.
I loved this effect!.

The next step was to blend some distress inks to add an aged effect & then I replaced the stencil & added black soot distress ink to make the birds stand out a bit more followed by some treasure gold gilding wax.

I die cut some flowers with my tattered floral dies & added gilding wax & micro beads to the centres to tone in with my colour scheme.

I decorated the back cover & the inside covers to match attaching ribbon between the layers to tie the book together.

So, that's it!. Thanks for staying til the end!.

I'll be back again soon with the first project of 2015 for our Out Of The Blue Workshops that start this week.

Amy x 

Cool Christmas

Well I hope you've all been enjoying the festivities over the past week?.

It's been a busy time in the shop as you would expect at this time of year & we worked right up until 4 on Christmas Eve.

 So, its been really lovely to have a few days off & enjoy some time with family & friends before we started back today ready for our Winter Sale.

I'm sharing the Christmas card I made for my sister & her boyfriend. She's got a thing about Polar bears & when I saw this stamp from Woodware I just had to have it to make their card.

I cut a circle for the moon & a wavy strip for the snowy hills from cardboard & used these as masks around which I blended distress inks to form the sky background.

I left these in place & then placed the stars stencil from Imagination crafts over the top & spread diamond Sparkle medium also from Imagination crafts through the stencil.

Once dry, I stamped the Cool Christmas sentiment from the Woodware stamp set in the bottom right corner & added my Polar bears that had been coloured with a paintbrush & distress inks.

I created the border by stamping stars with perfect medium & then heat embossed with white detail embossing powder onto navy card.

To finish I added a bow made with ribbon & bakers twine, a pearl button & some crystal stickles glitter glue.

Hope you all have a great New Year & I wish you all a very happy 2015!.

See you again soon

Amy x 

Imagination Crafts tutorial sneaky peek!

Hi all, hope you had a good weekend?.

I'm finally feeling a bit more festive, just as well with the big day only a few days away now!.
Still lots of dashing about to do but I'm ticking things off my list daily.


Today I'm showing a sneaky peek of my first tutorial project for the Imagination Crafts blog.

Please pop on over to see what I made & the full tutorial.
It would be lovely if you could leave a moment too! :-)

Thanks for looking

Amy x 

Imagination Crafts Inspiration. Sparkle & Shine.

Welcome back, today it's time for me to share another inspiration project with you for Imagination Crafts.

Every month there is a new challenge over on the Imagination Crafts Challenge blog with an 'anything goes' theme.
Please pop on over & check out all the other Design team inspiration projects & it would be great if you joined in with the challenge too.

My card today was made using the Tile Petal stencil.
I secured the stencil to a piece of white card stock & used a Pigma Micron fine liner pen to draw around the stencil.
I then filled in the design with the same pens creating my own kind of Zentangle within the spaces.
I drew round just the flower petals on another piece of card, zentangled within them & cut them out.
I then covered the whole design & the separate petals with double sided clear adhesive sheet & applied cosmic shimmer glitter jewels all over. This created a super sparkly effect & makes the surface all twinkly!.

I shaped the separate petals & glued them over the top of the original petals to add a bit of dimension to my card.

I then finished with some black flat backed pearls in the centre of the flower plus some frosted white gems around the outside too.

That's it for today. Hope I've inspired you to join in the challenge.

Back again soon.

Amy x 

Imagination Crafts Design Team Inspiration. Poppy fields

Hi all, I'm back today with my first design team post for Imagination Crafts.
Every month there is a new challenge over on the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog with a great prize to spend in the  Imagination Crafts shop.
 So me & the rest of the design team have created some projects to hopefully inspire you to hop over & join in with the challenge.

For my inspirational project I've created a card using the Dragonfly & Poppies stencil & Inkadinks in Brights.

I attached the stencil to some white card & drew around the design with a pigma micron black fineliner pen to create an outline.
I then squeezed out small amounts of the red, yellow, orange & green inkadinks & watered them down to use as water colours to paint the dragonflies & poppies as above & used Distress Inks to blend in the background of the sky & field.
I then replaced the stencil & applied clear texture paste through it using a palette knife.
I removed the stencil & applied clear microbeads while the texture paste was still wet.

Once the texture paste has dried to clear, the colours of the inkadinks show through whilst the microbeads add texture & a lovely subtle sparkle.

I didn't really think that any more was needed to finish my card as there is quite a lot going on, so I just matted & layered my design onto red, black & then green card stock before fixing it to my white card blank.

 Make sure you pop over to the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog to check out the fab creations by the rest of the design team & join in yourself.

Thanks again for stopping by.
 As always your comments are much appreciated & I'd also like to say a big Welcome to my newest followers, its great to have you here :-) .

Amy x 

Fabulous Forty!

Well, I must apologise for being abscent for a little while.

 But I think I have good reason, I've been celebrating my 40th birthday!. 

I've had a few days away here & there over the last week or so with family & friends & have been treated to some yummy meals out & gorgeous gifts. 

My best friend from school also celebrated her 40th birthday & my card today is the one that I made for her.

I cut the 40 with my cricut machine out of pale blue card. I then colour washed the numbers with some Lilac heaven & Blueberry ice Inkadinks that I received in the post along with lots of other gorgeous goodies from Imagination Crafts.

I've really enjoyed working with these inks & I'm looking forward to sharing some more projects that I've made using them as part of my new Design Team role for Imagination Crafts.

I also created my background with the two colours of inks & then spritzed the numbers & background with watered down mica powders to add shimmer. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't pick this up very well.

I then used Heartfelt Creations Sun Kissed Fleur Swirls stamps & stamped it randomly over the background with Dusty Concorde distress ink. Once dry,  I removed some of the colour from the centre of the flowers by brushing with water & then blotting with kitchen paper.

After trimming the background to fit my card blank, I stamped & cut more flowers from the offcuts, shaped them & added some turquoise micro beads to the centres.

My sentiment is also from Imagination Crafts.

I used all the same colours for the inside of the card plus a Phill Martin sentiment stamp to finish.

I hope you like the finished card.

Thanks for stopping by, I'll be back again soon.

Amy x 

Exciting times!

Hello my friends, welcome back & welcome to my new followers too!.

Well, I have some exciting news to share with you today.

I recently saw that Imagination Crafts were looking for DT members & I decided to try my luck & apply.
Imagine my delight when I was offered one of the positions!!
So, as of the 1st December myself & the other design team members will be showcasing products from Imagination Crafts & bringing you some inspiring projects.
 I do hope you'll keep stopping by to see what we come up with.

So today I thought it appropriate to show you a card I have made using Imagination Crafts products.

I stamped the Decoupage Stamp Sets - Owls Border twice & coloured with promarkers.
I cut away the background in the middle of the design ready for my own created background to show through.
I then cut out the little owl & decoupaged it onto the main coloured image with 3d foam.
I die cut a silver scalloped frame for my owl image using a spellbinder.
Next I created my background by scraping diamond Sparkle Medium through the Random Stars background stencil.
Once dry I then added my owl image with 3d foam to give depth.

Finally, I matted & layered this onto vintage silver card to match the frame around my owls & then again onto navy card edged with blue dimensional paint dots.

Before I go I thought I would share some pics of the cake & other bits & bobs I made for my daughter's birthday this week.

She turned 5 & like most 5 year olds she is completely obsessed with all things to do with the Disney film Frozen.

So that was the theme of the party which we hosted for 20 children.

 Unfortunately, Daisy got chicken pox a couple of days before her birthday but after a trip to the doctor we were given the OK to go ahead with the party.

I'm pleased to report that the chicken pox seem to be on their way out,  just in time for her to go back to school!.

Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon.

Amy x