Flower Basket (by Debs)

Hello everyone, Deborah is here with her second post this month. She has created another delightful mixed media project to inspire you. 

She writes:

Hi everyone, Debs here with my second project which is called Flower Basket.

My basket I made from a die and mount board which gave me a very sturdy basket, but you could do the same technique with any form of container, such as a box or casket, any item you can put something in, or for a different look you could do something similar with a frame.

I used the crackle glaze and acrylic paint which you can buy from the website on my basket to get a vintage look. Before I assembled it I stamped leaves from Big Bold Background-Leafy Background and then used pens to add colour. Once dried I set aside for later and moved onto my flowers.

Onto a heavy smooth watercolour card I stamped a variety of flowers from Floral Perfumery, Rose Perfumery and butterflies from Butterfly Perfumery in black ink. I heat dried them to make the ink permanent and then painted with watercolour paints. Once completely dry I then added some shading with pencils to add more dimension. I then fussy cut the flowers. Some I attached to the side of the basket which I filled with tissue paper to add volume.

Others I attached to strips of heavy card to the back which enabled me to position them to the tissue paper. The butterflies I attached to long thin sticks and positioned them amongst the flowers which helped to camouflage the sticks.

I liked mine as they were but to add even more interest, you could add glitter.

Well that's the basket, join me next week for more home decor ideas, take care and hugs, Debs xx

Spring Birds (by Julie)

Hello and thanks for stopping by. The two cards I have today are both using the lovely Spring Bird stamp sets. 

I started my first card by stamping the Bold Leafy Background onto my base card and coloured with brush markers. I added some stencil detail and Old Paper Distress ink to the edges. The bird design is taken from Spring Bird Tulip, which I stamped onto water colour card, coloured with brush markers and blended with a brush dipped into water. The image was cut out with a circle die and mounted onto a larger circle die cut that I had coloured with the brush markers to match with the little bird.

My second card is stamped with Spring Bird Crocus. I die cut a circle from some copier paper to act as a mask. I placed the copier paper over the base card so that the bird design could be stamped through the hole left from the die cut. Once you have coloured the bird (I used Polychromos pencils), place the circle, that was cut earlier, over the bird so that you can stamp the Bold Leafy Background over the top and blend your Distress inks. I used the tiny little stick design from Sticks and Stones to create a border and then added spodges of white paint pen for interest.

Thank you for reading, please call back soon to catch some more Design Team inspiration.

Julie xx

Leafy Heart (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have another project to share today along romantic lines with you. I wanted to make something that might be suitable for my lovely Husband for Valentine's Day, that was a little bit different. We have been together for a very long time, and it gets harder to come up with different ideas after so many years together! He is very fond of texture, and so I decided to create a textured piece to add to the card, keeping the colours very earthy, which would appeal to his tastes.

I used a book page to stamp the Big Bold Background Leafy Background stamp, using Versamark and gold embossing powder. I then coloured the image with water based markers and a water brush. I painted a wooden heart with Brushos, and then using Ultra Thick embossing powder, I added three layers of the embossing powder over the top. I stamped part of the same image into the heart while the powder was still soft from the last heating from the heat gun, and swirled some gold mica powder over the image. Finally, I added some toning ribbon and card to complete the project.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx