Watercolor Mini Album Calss

Bec brought this lovely swap back from the USA convention... Some extremely industrious demonstrator had been very generous and swapped a whole mini Brag book..... When i saw the beautiful project I wanted to CASE it.. and then when I said to the Paper Angels that I was going to case it they asked me to write down all the measurements so they could case it also... so being a diligent Angel.. I did just that... And I have learned how to attach the PDF for all to use... So if you like the project please feel free to download the PDF...  xxxooo

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0OdJbEhJ3YQS0JYZUg0NWh2RFk/edit?usp=sharing

Mini Album - On Film Die Cuts

How Awesome are the on Film Die Cuts?? (Product # 132969 $49.95)

I really wanted to create a mini album using envelopes.. The best thing about envelopes being the base of the album is that you instantly have pockets for your hidden tags and journaling... We had so much fun with this project.. and I love that the photo frames are like a Polaroid photo... If you glue down the bottom end only you can slip in the photos at any time...I can't wait to put my photos into my project!!!






Here is what the pages and the inserts look like...

Mixed Media Framed Art

Did you know that you can use your stamps to stamp into Fimo or Sculpty clay?... (it's a clay that you can mold and shape, then bake in the oven for 15mins to set hard...) It's fantastic to play with and see what you can do... With these box frames we made the art backing by ripping DSP in strips and sticking it on a piece of card stock.  We stuck all the bits down with Crystal Effects... and coated anything we wanted to be lacquered with Crystal Effects as well... Then we stamped a greeting ("Go in the direction of your dreams") and put that in the center of the artwork...We used gold ink on the stamp to highlight the words.. (It stays there when you bake it.) We also used the ships log stamp from "The Open Sea" Stamp set to make the corners. We daubered the ships log corners with Shimmer paint to give it the antique look... We each made a face and decorated it with reinker died ribbon and we used several bits of metal pieces to decorate further.. I think the result is kind of a Steam Punk Aztec looking wall art masterpiece... This was a great class and shows that your stamps can be used for so many more things than Just Stamping!!!

Watercolour and Bleach Stamping Canvas

I love Watercolouring and Bleaching.... But mixing them together is AMAZING!!!
This was an Angel Ave Class last year.. We took a large piece of Watercolour paper and our inks and Aqua painter pens... Once you have coloured your page you can then take some stamps and Bleach Stamp... Once it is dry you can then cover your canvas.... And to finish it off you can then get the matching coloured card stock and add some lovely little  embellishments on the canvas...










Here are the ladies pages. They chose their own colours & chose slightly different ways to paint them..

And here is the finished paintings on the canvas....... Have a play it is FUN...

Foil Art Frame

I was so impressed with Master 10's finished work of art that it was one of those pieces you just have to frame and put on the wall... Master 10  had to used chalk pastels on black card to draw his own interpretation of a Picasso portrait of himself..
Because the Art was so AMAZING... I wanted the frame to be special.. it had to match his FANTASTIC Picasso self portrait....

After a few days of contemplation I came up with the idea of pressed foiling.... This is where you take a piece of foil (either aluminum food wrap on card stock for thickness or a foil BBQ tray) and you put them through the Big Shot with an embossing folder.... (It reminds me a little of the Old Queenslander homes that used to have the Pressed tin walls and roof... So beautiful..... )

I liked that idea but I wanted a little colour in it...  So I invented a way to have our Stampin' Up! water colour inks and an isocol alcohol mix stay on the panels... You will see the process and results below in this pictured tutorial...  Enjoy.. xxoo

1. Take your card stock and a length of aluminum foil

2. Wrap the foil around the card stock

3. Tape it on back

 4. Place foil covered card stock in your desired embossing folder and run through your Big Shot.

 

5. Cover the embossed foil/card with PVA glue

  6. Allow glue to totally dry

7. Mix some Isocol rubbing alcohol with some re-inkers in a spritz bottle...

8. Change colours

 9. Add more

10. Allow to dry

Finally here is the finished product.. It's not a very good photo.. but the real thing looks quite good...

Have fun foiling it up!!! 

BORBAL.... Christmas Decorations

How nice would it be to make your own Christmas decorations every year?... what a cool family time project to do!!!!I'm sure that making them would cost less then buying new ones every year!!! and you would get EXACTLY what you would want!!!

We made these three lovely different Ornaments last year in an Angel Ave class... It was great fun...

The red one is made with Over head transparencies.. or offcuts from laminating that didn't have a picture in them.. ( I went to Office works to get a few things laminated and asked them not to trim them neat... I trimmed them when I got home and kept the offcuts for such a project...)
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN
1.Cut out your desired shapes (flowers) with the Big Shot....
2.Spritz them all generously (If you mix your re-inkers with rubbing alcohol {I used Isicole} you can make a permanent paint solution that will stay on plastic... and you can add a little champagne shimmer paint if you like.... you will need to experiment with colours..  We found blue did not work as well... Not sure why it must be some kind of chemical science thing)
3.Dry them with the Heat tool... and get them quite hot so that you can shape them.. because they are plastic they will keep their shape... (and laminate is great for that)
4.Arrange them and join them together with a brad
5.Adhere a ribbon and card board circle peice for the hanfigin loop...
6.Finish off with a little glitter glue and you have a lovely new ornament to go on your tree...

The Black and white one was simply using a polystyrene ball, some pins and lots of lovely die cut snow flakes... I think this one is simply soooooooooooo Elegant!!! I's love a whole tree full of these!!!

And the last one is based on the lovely ornament that was on the front of the Sept 2012 - Jan 2013 Holiday Catalogue... I just loved it and had to make it....you need stamps, die cuts, silicone mat, hot glue gun, inks, ribbons and maybe some bling for this one...

The lovely Catherine made these ones...

Baby Brag Booklet

Have you ever wanted to give a LOVELY present and found that money was just too tight??? Well... my focus this year was making Christmas special and beautiful without the price tag...
 

This little baby Brag booklet was inspired by a Stampin' Up! instructional video I watched with a cool technique I used with an embossing folder, brayer adn ink pad...  (click for link Here) And would you believe that it may have only cost about $5 to $8 to make??? but if you are like me and already have all the card stock, stamps inks, embellishments and ribbon... well it costs nothing more than a little time... :)... that makes me very HAPPY!!!

I wanted the journaling to be hidden as I (like many) do not like my hand writing... I think it spoils the BEAUTIFUL page... sooooo the BEST solution is make a pocket and a tag to pull out with plenty of room to journal... so you will have the best of both worlds... personal hand written journaling that will not interfere with the page.... I do believe it is important to have some hand written things from our loved ones as it is a part of them... who they were when they have passed on... so please if you do feel like me and do not like your writing.. DON'T do all your journaling with the computer or symply just not journal at all... Write the story down... and do it in your own hand every now adn then... Your children and grand children (and so on) will be very grateful!!!

I hope this inspires you to make BEAUTIFUL handmade gifts... That cost only time and that capture a little of the "YOU" essence... (in creation and in hand writing... ;P )

Enjoy

Mixed Media Art and Stamping

I love that you can use your stamps for so much more than "JUST STAMPING"!!!
Did you know that you can use fimo or scalpty (oven baked clay) to stamp into and use that as an embellishment on your projects??? We did it for this class...

The top left corner and bottom right corners are stamped with the ships log stamp from "The Open Sea" 123032 C Stamp Set and the inspirational greetings stamp... "Go confidently in the Direction of your Dreams" (from the Word Play stamp set -120651 C)
1. First you kneed the clay to make it nice and warm so that you do not have to push into the clay too hard...
2. You roll it out.. or flatten with hands etc ... to desired shape or size...
3. Then you stamp.... note.... you can use Versa Mark to coat the stamp if you like it prevents the clay sticking too much to your stamp.
4. Then you gently peal the clay away from stamp..
And there's your embellishment all ready to bake for 10- 15 mins in the oven... And you have a FANTASTIC original embellishment...

(I added a little something different to make the greeting words stand out a little more when I taught my ladies because I was not satisfied that the words were clear enough... I got them to coat the stamp in Gold pigment ink and that worked a treat.. and bakes in just fine...)

While we waited for the clay to cook we decorated the backing for the art work.. We took some old pieces of DSP (from the scrap draw) and tore it all up into strips... then we distressed it a little and glued it onto a card base to put in the frame... We then daubered some ink around it... (if you wanted to you could add some more stamping to the background... you could use some paint.. you could spritz... really the creativity options are endless...)

Also we took a length of  ribbon and used the re-inkers to dye it our desired colours... (This was an interesting experiment in its self.... it can get very messy!!! and... it can also not work out very well... The good thing to know though is you can always wash (Most) of the ink out and start again if you really don't like it...)

We then cut some of the ribbon in half.... and pulled some threads out to give the fringed look...

Once our clay was cooled we were able to adhere it to our backing with crystal effects...
We also use some broken pieces of jewellery and interesting bits and pieces to our art to add interest.. all bits were adhered with Crystal effects... (This is a great thing to do with that favorite earring that you only have one of or the broken jewellery you have stored in your jewellery box... While the Crystal Effects takes a little while to dry it holds really well and it is TOTALLY clear... )

We had loads of fun creating and playing... It was cool to see the individuality in each work of art...

Here's some of my ladies and their Mixed Media Art work...
The lovely Marj...

Beautiful little Miss Mia and Mummy's work of art... Michelle

Catherine and her awesome effort!!!

I hope you enjoy playing with lots of bits and pieces... Its fun to experiment!!!