Gingersnaps Art Exchange

Over on the Yahoo Group Gingersnaps it's time for a new swap, I really enjoyed last month's challenge Scraplings and Paintchips and received some lovely artwork - thank you to Laura, Joanne, Krisha, and Jack these are the pieces I received



This month's challenge is to make four 4x4 toppers which must include some stamping







Hope you like them and that whoever gets them does, I can't wait to receive mine but it will be a while as the swap doesn't take place till the 15th November.

CCC17 - Fragment Charms

Good moring fellow bloggers,

Time to post my latest Compendium of Curriosities challenge, this week's techique is using Tim's fragment charms, well I didn't have any so there were two options - miss the challenge or go shopping, guess which one I choose!

My lovely Hubby took me out for a day to Skipton in North Yorkshire to visit the Stampman and Samuel Taylors and I wasn't disappointed. Even got to meet a fellow crafter who I've "spoken" to online that works in one of the shops. He didn't even complain about my spending, although I don't think he could quite believe how little I got for my money!



As you can see I made sure I got my charms for the challenge, the Sizzix die I have been wanting for a while but was out of stock everywhere so was pleased to find that.

Anyway back to the challenge, there is only one thing to do with charms and that's make a charm bracelet, I used Tim Holtz Vintage Shabby papers in pink and various charms, beads and chain from my stash.



Hope you all have a great weekend.

Vintage Book

A few weeks ago I popped round to a crafting friend's (Viv of Viv's Visual's) to collect some stamps she was selling, whenever I go she has always made something amazing and I come home loaded up with bits and pieces and ideas to try out.

Well this is one of them, an altered book come treasure box

from this



to this



I picked the ancient book up on a market stall, I loved all the detail, it was a shame to cover it, but it does still show, pulled all the pages out and made a box to fit inside.



I painted it with gesso, acrylic paints in cream and metallic gold. The papers are from the Tim Holtz "Lost and Found" stack covered in Modgepodge to seal it, the image is a free download from Craft Stamper. I have no idea why this turned out pink but I love it. I printed it onto a transparency sheet then used the transfer technique on to a piece of Calico. Finally added the embellishments.

They aren't the best photo's as my photography is rubbish but I'm really pleased with how this one turned out.

I'm going to enter it into my first altered art challenge over at Cindy Adkin's Whimsical Musings for her Creative Spirit Challenge

Distress tags inspired my Leonie Pujol - in the flesh!

On Monday, I was on my way to the supermarket and had to pass the craft shop, I wasn't going to go as I'd been to the Leigh Craft Show on Sunday, but something drew me in, lol. As I walked through the door I recognised a voice - no other than Leonie Pujol off Create and Craft, she was setting up to do a demo! Turned out to be demoing my favourite Distress Inks and having completed my set of inks on Sunday I was really pleased.

Not had chance to go to anything like that before as I've always had my little girl with me but she was at preschool for the day, so I made the most, abandonded the food shopping and sat and watched for two hours. I had to drag myself away.

She is such a lovely friendly lady, had a laugh and chat with everyone made some lovely samples, said how much she is enjoying it on Create and Craft, so different to the "other" side, lol.

Anyway, here's some tags I made using a few of Leonies for inspiration

CCC16 - Wrinkle Free Distress

It's Tim time again over at Studio L3, except this time we get an extra week as lots of the lucky followers are livin it up with Sir Tim himself on a cruise ship, how green am I?

Anyway back to the challenge, this week it's wrinkle free distress which can be found on page 33 of the Compendium of Curiosities.

I used Dusty Concord, Tumbled Glass and Milled Lavender distress inks, stamped the Penny Black "Burst of Stars" in Dusty Concord and and again in Distress embossing ink and covered in Plum Perfect Pearls to add a fantastic shimmer to the tag.



I love how the centre of the flower hit the blue splodge perfectly.

CCC15 - Agate on Grunge

Hi folks,

Well it's a quick post with this weeks Compendium of Curiosities challenge, I've been trying to do this all week along with an order of 15 cards and can't get my head round any of it for some reason.

Linda over at Studio L3 has challenged us to do something with Agate on Grunge which can be found on page 53 of the book.

This isn't one of my favourite tags but I'm running out of time so hope you like it.

Labour of love - Memory Box

I spent the weekend making something really different.

Last week at the car boot I bought two of these lovely boxes, I knew they'd be perfect for putting stuff in but wasn't sure I was brave enough to alter them. Anyway thanks to Bowlingbelle who suggested I turn them into Memory boxes that is what I spent my weekend doing and loved it.



I sanded the box down and gave it an undercoat of Gesso, then added layers of pink and purple acrylic paint with baby wipes inside and out, apprently this helps give a distressed look. Next I took some of my favourite Kay & Co papers and tore them sticking them down with Claudine Hellmuth's multi medium (I only had the gloss one and I say had because I've now used it all!), then gave it a coat over the top to seal it. The letters were cut with Cuttlebug alphabet and again sealed with the multi medium.



I didn't like the grooved edges once they were painted as they looked too rough and weren't very easy to sand down so I made some panels and again used the multi medium and Kay & Co papers to cover the side. Added some corners on the lid as a bit of a feature.



Finally, I added the dregs of my Tim Holtz Rock Candy Crackle Paint and inked with Old Paper distress ink and added some embellishments. I just love the TH lock and keys and this was the perfect project to put them on as it means I get to keep them!



I hope you like my box as much as I enjoyed making it. I'm going to keep some of my childrens little treasures in this one and make another to keep all my bits or altered art in.

Thanks for looking and thank you to Viv for the inspiration and advice on making it.