French Flight

After making my pen pot the other day using  my Artistic Outpost Stamps, I realised that there were quite a few that I've not used for a while, so I closed my eyes and picked the first one my hand landed on...which turned out to be "French Flight"
Here is my Tag that I made using that set...

I do love their stamps, I have around 30 sets now and every so often I run a cross a set that's in a sale and unless I have them already I usually buy it.
So I am entering my Tag in to their April Challenge....you can find it here at.......
                                        Artistic Outpost

Loverly London

After a gorgeous sunny weekend, the weather today is dull and looks like it's about rain at any minute...so I could well be spending the day in my craft room...
I wanted to share my Pen Pot with you and also enter it in to the April Challenge over at Artistic Outpost.

I painted the pot in black acrylic paint,inside and out twice....then covered each side with some industrial design backing paper that I had in my stash.

Using some more industrial backing papers,in a light beige colour ( sorry the photo really dosen't pick the design up ) I stamped the images ( twice ) and sentiments from the "Loverly Stamp Set" by Artistic Outpost.

I trimmed one set of the images to size and distressed around the edges and adhered them to the sides of my pot.

The second set of images I lightly coloured and cut the characters out and laid them over the first stamped images on the pot...as there are only three characters I just overlaid the stamp for the side with the London sentiment.

Finally I mounted the sentiments and adhered them around the four sides...using Spray & Seal all over the pot to protect and seal the images...it also gave the pot a lovely shine, but the photo doesn't really pick that up very well.

So if you have any Artistic Outpost Stamps...why not pop over to their challenge...you can find it here....

Artistic Outpost

Fly my little songbird, fly!

I stumbled across a nice little challenge blog a couple of months ago called Things to Alter and decided over the weekend that I would enter their challenge.
I do try and enter a couple of challenges each month but recently I've not done that due to one thing or another...you know how it is when life gets in the way of crafting,lol...

The theme for the challenge is Anything Goes...with with a Twist..."Use Bird/birds in your project ( you do have to be a follower of their blog to enter )....So I created this canvas.

I used blue acrylic paint as the base colour for the canvas and wiped it back in places with a baby wipe..then dried it with my heat tool.

I used some sequin waste to add some texture to the canvas and once that was dry I daubed Pistachio green over some areas, again wiping back with a baby wipe.

I stained the bird with fossilized amber distress ink...then sprayed it and the canvas with a sealer.

I had a few little twigs in my stash,so bound them together and added some flowers and moss and adhered them to the canvas.

The sentiments are from a stamp set by Crafty Individuals and were just perfect for this project...

The canvas measures 4 inches x 4 inches.

You can find the challenge here at 

Things To Alter

Mini Art Journals

I have missed being so active in the crafting community...not by choice I might add, no, my Mojo has been a bit off recently...life outside of crafting sometimes has to take priority and it takes me a while to get back in to the swing of things again, so for my project over at Rhedd's Creative Spirit I decided to make some mini journals.

I actually enjoyed making these, especially as I recycled food packaging and some scraps of art paper and backing paper.

For the Journal covers I opened the food packaging and laid it flat,trimming off all side and bottom edges, leaving me with just the front and back of the packaging...I then glued these two pieces together. Once it was completely dry I then cut the sizes I needed for each album, 

 then created the folds for the spine, making sure they were wide enough for the inner pages.

I covered each journal with my art paper and backing paper scraps...I was delighted with the art paper as it looks like a a field leading down to the sea on one album...and on the other it looks like a field and sky...I also lined the inside of  each cover with left over scraps...the larger book I added a binding strip with a piece of leather look card.

Using new art paper, I cut strips to fold "concertina style" and added to journal, but at this stage I did not glue them in....just left them over night with the clips on.

The next day I removed the pages and painted them with acrylic paints and I also added embellishing to three of the Journal covers.

Once the paints were dry I refolded the pages and glued the first and the last pages to the inside of the front & back cover....using bull dogs clips to secure the journal pages while the glue dried.

I am so pleased with how these Mini Journals looked when they were finished...the largest being 2.5" and the smallest in 1"  they are all ready to use.

You can find the April Challenge here at 

 Rhedd's Creative Spirit

Home is Where the Heart Is...

I had a great find in my local charity shop...in a plastic bag in a box I found the four letters that spelt HOME. They were in a sorry state, like some one had tried different techniques then gave up...so for a few pennies I bought the letters.
They were just perfect for my design team project over at Altered Eclectics

 I stripped as much of the previous decor back, almost down the the bare mdf...then gave each letter a bit of sanding and a coat of black acrylic paint.
The next day I found they needed another coat,which I did,then decided once dry that I would paint two of the letters in red.

After the paint was completely dry I used a stencil to paint the diamond pattern on randomly on each letter...then left them over night to dry...the next day I sprayed each letter with spray & shine.
I found two hearts in my stash and painted those and added them to the first letter.
I am really pleased as the texture of them isn't completely smooth due to previous decor, but for me its just added to the effect as I didn't intend to make them too fancy.
                                             Do pop over to
                                          Altered Eclectics
       as they have just launched their challenge for April....