Smash booking begins .... Cultivating Optimism

I recently heard a presentation about happiness by Dr Mark Holder : the components and characteristics of what makes us happy. It was all based on psychological study, some really interesting experiments and hypothesis. Some of the elements that were discussed hit home to me, in particular that happiness is positively correlated to optimism : more self esteem, health, happiness and morale. Makes sense - right !

One of the options to boost optimism was to write about your ideal self and set obtainable goals. I think this should be extended to positive bits of our day-to-day lives and what makes us happy, what are we proud of, our thoughts, finds, meaningful quotes etc etc. I can sometimes lose sight of these in the mundane reality of day. I think I will also record some of the stuff that gets me down. In a little while I will get a clearer picture of my days and get back in touch with myself.

So here goes, my smash book .....

I bought reasonably priced Moleskine Cahiers. The paper is thin, just sketch paper, so I need to learn not to over embellish or stamp. It isn't meant to be a work of art, of wonder and ooohs and ahhhhhs. But a place for me to have fun, record some stuff and be myself.

February 2014 cards

Two lovely cards in Feb 2014, to master some crafting tools : the stamp a ma jig, which is quite the vital tool for accurate stamping; and aqua painter. Circle frames were cute with thinlit dies. Tip - DO NOT overlap dies in your big shot or other die cutting machine. You will definitely bend and possibly break the dies, but you could damage your machine too.

The first card was inspired by Chinese New Year coupled with an appropriate sounding proverb "May happiness be your destination", red and gold. I love the brushed gold washi tape and the cardstock. The popped up lanterns were stamped onto white cardstock, covered in washi tape and then punched out with a 3/4" circle punch.

The second card was a little more arty. The background was painted with an aquapainter onto water color paper with subtle colors of pigment ink. Its not a drastic coloring, but it adds ambience and depth. The dream catcher was made from a doily stamp and a frame made from circle thinlits and lightly sponged. The feathers are from the fine Feathers stamp set - I have been ogling that for ages. Finally its mine :) The feathers were lightly painted over with the aqua painter or blender pen to make them look a little more real. How cool are those candy dots for the beads. Yay. I have to thank Vicky Papaioannou for the inspiration. She did a journal page a little while ago in a similar style.

Thanks for stopping by, please leave a comment :)

SDC135 - Acetate - Icarus grounded

Corrie's challenge this week on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog was to use acetate.

Straight away I knew that I would stamp an image onto acetate and make a really cool background, which morphed into a spread in my art journal. You know how these things go ... lol

Everything in my art journal is deep and meaningful and often tells a story, its my form of sanity, or art therapy. I put things in my journal that mean a lot to me, memories, sayings, thoughts etc. The depictions may seem random, but they are grounded in meaning for me.

For this journal page my plan was to go back to ancient Greek mythology and for 'Angel boy' to become Icarus. If you recall Icarus had wings held together with wax. Regardless of warnings not to fly too close to the sun, he went anyway. Ultimately the wax melted and he fell into the sea and drowned. Literary interpretation of this myth have pointed to the consequences of personal over-ambition. I class myself as a realist, I am honest and true to myself, whilst I have dreams and ambitions, they do not exceed my ability - most of the time :)

This is the page in my Dylusions large journal : It makes me soooo happy.

The page was painted with various shades of orange acrylic paint. Its hard to capture the glow of the background sun behind Icarus, but I hope you can see here how it glows. The black frame I made is actually layered and raised with dimensionals. The wording is "Icarus grounded" and I hand wrote that and drew the stars. By that I mean he has his feet firmly placed in reality. He is not exceeding any limits, neither does he have any delusions of grandeur.

Below is a close up of the sun before everything was adhered together. To create the texture I used the mini tie die stencil by Crafters workshop and gesso. Lindys Stamp Gang Starburst sprays and Inca gold are responsible for this shimmer and glow - isn't it just wonderful - sigh ...... 

Once the acetate was on it became even shinier, these reflective properties make the sun appear even brighter. It is positively glowing.

Just to prove it is a transparency, I took a pic of the stazon stamped 'Angel Boy' image, then I colored the back with a black copic marker.

I just read on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog that my creation was chosen as one of the top three for this acetate challenge. I am so happy about that, I put my heart and soul into this page, its very personal and nice to be appreciated, especially amongst so much other amazing talent. http://stampotiquedesignerschallenge.blogspot.ca/2014/02/sdc136-monochromatic.html

Thanks for stopping by, hope you like my page :)

SDC133 - Heart in your Art

Its pretty easy to include hearts in your Stampotique art, so many wonderfully stamped heart images. I love the idea of a little critter left hanging from the heart bunting :) A really good title for this would have been 'tugging the heart strings' LOL.

Thanks for stopping by ...

SDC132 - Winged Things

I had some atc fun today with this challenge set by Arwen, entitled Winged Things.

Being a lover of fussy cutting ... (weird I know, but I can happily do it for hours), I did a little fussy cutting and surgery on a Stampotique stamped image, and I have to say I love the versatility of it. I can make those little guys do just about anything ! Tree topper is 'wing-less' and wearing Prom Queens feet ! lol

Here is my creation, a little acrylic paint, a stamp, copics, clear gelly roll pen, black soot distress ink and a fine line marker... and tadahhhhh ... my creation for this challenge :)

Thanks for stopping by :)

SDC131 #2

A card I made for a boy, I love including pink in boys cards. With a wonderful stamp like this Smile Stampotique stamp, its already 'masculine'  ;-D I actually whitened his teeth with my signo white gel pen - I though that was kind of approriate. hahaha

The inspiration for this card came from the Tim Holtz photo strip ribbon I bought today. Thanks Tim :)

This is my second star submission to the Stampotique Designers Challenge, so thought I would do something a bit different than stars in the sky.

Thanks for stopping by :)

How exciting that the card I made was picked as one of the favourites on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog http://stampotiquedesignerschallenge.blogspot.ca/2014/01/sdc132-winged-things.html — feeling awesome.

January 2014 cards

Can you believe is already 2014 - wow, time sure flies .....

With the New Year, comes the new spring Stampin' Up! catalogue, and Sale a bration starts soon....

In January, these are the cards we did at class :

The first was a bargello Valentines. I have to say that this very well maybe the brightest card I have ever made ! lol This small paper pack from SU was a surprise, the colors are so vivid, there is such a massive range of patterns, and they all work so well together.

Bargello is a quilting technique, that works beautifully with paper. The technique will be explained below. The heart shape was cut on my big shot using a thinlit die, and the 'love' was die cut in the crumb cake to show the negative image through to the real red cardstock. A little white bow to finish off and a little white doodling with a signo gel pen :) Cute eh !

 I cut thin strips of cardstock (.5 and/or .75" width) and adhered them to a 6x5.25" piece of cheap copy paper, as seen in the pic below. It is important to totally cover the copy paper with adhesive, so that every single edge of the patterned paper is securely stuck down.  Then you trim the piece so its all straight edges, turn the paper so the strips run horizontally and cut them in your paper cutter (.5 and/or .75" strips). I then had a piece of whisper white cardstock (4x5.25"), where I layed down the thin strips, staggering them to get the bargello effect, and trimmed the excess.

The second card is a punch art, shaped card. I have seen this card online so many times online, but had never made it... until now. Often this card is yellow, as in beer which is a great mans card, but this is a root beer float - I think.

The actual card base is naturals white card stock, that I cut down to make the card 5.25" x 3.75", this is so that with the bubbles and handle added, the card will still fit into a standard envelope. I used early espresso card stock and ink, sponging the bubbles lightly. They are made from the circle punches 1", .75", .5 inch and .75 scallop circle punches. The handle is cut with the large and medium oval punches. Tip :  cut your smallest oval first, then you can more easily align the larger oval over the top of the shape to make your handle. The sentiment was stamped in versamark and embossed in white embossing powder. Tip : Use the dust buddy on the area you want to emboss, so that the embossing powder doesn't stick where your fingers have touched. The three brown strips are 1" in diameter and the bottom edges are rounded with a corner rounder. I hand cut the bottom of the glass for a slightly more realistic effect. The straw is a striped paper from Christmas paper, but you can easily make it with a marker and .5" strip of card stock.

'Beloved' Stampotique ATC exchange

I facilitated an international ATC exchange in the Stampotique facebook group, it was so much fun. The anticipation of waiting for the atc I made to arrive in the UK, and waiting for the one mailed to me from Germany was by far the most exciting bit. Its so rare to get fun mail these days, just bills ...  

A big thank you to 'Dweeze' for being the centre piece of my ATC.

I used glossy card stock and did the wax paper resist technique with a Spellbinders Impressabilities - Fleur de lis stripe. I sponged the cardstock with wild honey and salty ocean distress inks.

I used Stampin' Up! card stock, cherry cobbler for the heart and it was die cut with the Sizzix heart - double small die, and embossed with a baroque embossing folder and I did some sponging in cherry cobbler, doodling in white sygno gel pen.

I printed the sentiments from my computer and embossed the random red detailing on the left of the atc.

Dweeze (such a cute little guy x) was stamped onto acetate with black Stazon, then also stamped in memento tuxedo black onto white copics paper and colored with copics (E02, E01, E000, B05, B02, 100). He was paper pieced over the stamped image. Then everything was adhered together, with the clear card stock inside the outer layers of the atc. I just LOVE how you can see through the card stock.

I have to say though, the back is my favourite. With a black sharpie marker I colored the silhouette of 'Dweeze' on the clear card stock, and wrote the atc title.

So many layers and such an adorable atc. It was great to participate in this exchange, so many wonderfully creative people in the  Stampotique facebook group - so happy I found it, its just my style. I was wandering around in cyber space looking for a home, think I found one :)

SDC131 - Shoot for the Stars

How exciting that a Stampotique order arrived at my door today .... I did the happy dance to my craft room, sat down and began to create. Have you seen all those cartoon comedic posts about doing something because someone said it will be fun, and it really isn't ? lol A lot of them are so random and really amuse me. I had this idea for Shoot for the Stars as soon as I saw this weeks star challenge, poor Dweeze, suspended there in outer space. I was really happy with how this page turned out, especially how using Stampendous embossing powders made the stars shine - I used aged copper, aged silver and shabby pink.

Thanks for visiting, hope you like it :)

There is so much detail and texture in the stars, I thought I would take a few close up pics of them in a duller light to avoid the shine and sparkle. I LOVED how this embossing powder melted, becomes fluid and moves around. I wanted to add some pink, because Dweeze is in touch with his feminine side wearing his pink coat :)

SDC129 - Happy 2014 Stampotique style

Stampotique !!!! Wowzers .... love love love

Happy 2014 everyone :)

Paper pieced Prom Queen on this Dylusions sprayed tag with stencil by crafters workshop. I made the background paper with a rubber necker stamp and distress inks. Letters die cut using pti numbers with the same home made stamped paper.

Everything outlined with white prisma pencil to make all the relevant aspects 'pop'.

Happy New Year :) Hope 2014 is a good one for you x

Designs by Ryn Artist Trading Card (ATC)

My groups latest ATC title was 'Pig Out'.  So my gorgeous origami pig stamp, from Designs by Ryn, made its debut :)

I paper pieced the pig with b&w origami paper, adding a few red dots with liquid pearls to mimic the Japanese cherry blossom and tie into the red background. I cut around the paper pieced pig leaving a thin border of card stock, which helps to distinguish the pig from the busy background.

On a foam pad I used my 8m McGill stylus, rubbing his belly in a circular motion on the back of the pig to give him some dimension, make his belly pop out a bit. I don't know if you can really see the effect in the pic below, but it is there and enhanced by using thicker pop dots in the centre of the pig to adhere him to the ATC.

I coated the pig in a thick layer of diamond glaze/ crystal effects to give him the glossy look, that turns him into a thick and sturdy embellishment. Adding something shiny/glossy to the ATC draws the eye directly to the object, in this case the pig, and makes the colours appear more vivid.

The background card stock was cut to 3.5 x 2.25" and covered in strips of various origami papers. The outside was sponged with black soot distress ink. The red strips and 'PIG OUT' title added. I made the little red tassel using red embroidery thread, my TH tiny attacher and a silver brad.

The pig out spin on this ATC is that the pig is outside of the ATC - see his head sticking over the edge, and also that he 'pigged out' and has a rounded body shape - don't we all post Christmas ? LOL

Hope you liked my ATC, thanks for visiting.

Published on Ryns blog :
http://www.designsbyryn.blogspot.ca/2014/01/customer-creation-gallery-8.html

Decembers mixed media project

We did something slightly different this month, a mixed media 5x7 canvas. The canvas came pre gessoed, so we could get straight on with stamping and spraying. 

The snowflakes and Christmas sentiment were stamped in stazon, a permanent ink since we would be spraying next. 

I made sprays using SU spray bottles, rubbing alcohol and a few drops of SU reinker, marina mist. 

Then I began to build the tree, with a variety of designer series paper and cardstock. I loved the higgeldy piggeldy look of the tree. 

For the the tree trunk, I embossed chocolate chip core dinations cardstock with the woodgrain embossing folder, cut the trunk freehand and then sanded the top layer of brown off to reveal the lighter inside of the cardstock.

The layers of paper were glued down, then white acrylic paint highlighted the tree and the outside borders of the canvas. 

Finally doodling, adding washi tape and rhinestones and an embellishment on top of the tree.

The Merry was cut from silver foil paper using the dies in the winter mini catalogue and adhered. The glue of choice was matt mod podge, as it dries practically clear and can be liberally applied with a paint brush.

Few things to remember : 

Do not use a sharpie marker on anything unless its totally dry - unless the sharpie wont work again !

The blue spray, using reinker is water soluble, so if you wet it it will run.

I use alcohol rather than water in my sprays, so they dry quicker. It is definitely smelly though.

To cut the Merry, use a piece of wax paper to get a better cut, and more easily removable from the die.

I loved doing this project with my stampers groups, I especially loved how much they enjoyed it too. Everyone was very proud of their creation and I'm sure it took pride of place amongst their Christmas decorations, as did mine :)

Thanks for stopping by x

November cards

A couple more Christmas cards for the collection .... lol

Two Christmas cards were completed at the Novembers stampers groups.

The first is using the new labels flip card die. Such an ingenious creation, I love the way the card flips from the front penguin image to the Merry sentiment. I have to say though, its very hard to capture the flip in a photograph, so I have included a few pics.

The cute little penguin is made with the owl punch.

Ingredients :
Stamp set : Snowflake Soiree
Papers : Smoky slate, whisper white, basic black, pumpkin pie, silver
glimmer paper and winter frost dsp
Ink: Pool party and black
Accessories : Owl punch, Stampin' Up! flip card die

The second card is using the beautiful pointsettia stamp in Joyful Christmas stamp set. It was stamped and embossed in white on velum, then fussy cut.

The background is using the watermark technique on crumb cake cardstock (stamping with versamark and letting it dry). The faux stitching is done with a piercing tool and essentials paper piecing pack, the 'sewing' drawn in by hand with white gel pen. What I like about using the paper piercing pack is that the lines will always be straight and the the holes the same size. When you draw them in it looks a bit wonky - suitable to my sewing style and ability ! lol

Ingredients :
Stamp set : Joyful Christmas
Papers : Whisper white, crumb cake and cherry cobbler
Ink : Versamark, cherry cobbler
Accessories : Velum, white signo gel pen, black sharpie to color centre of flower and basic rhinestones, dimensionals to pop up centre of flower.

How to get stubborn Stampin' Up! stamps to stick

I have heard various recommendations for ensuring SU stamps stick to the block. To be honest, none of them do it for me and are problematic. Anyone who has had their inked stamp fall off the block and onto their beautiful stamped image will agree I'm sure.

Other companies who make thing cling type of rubber stamps mostly do not put the image onto the back of the stamp, so avoiding this non sticking problem. But I like the sticker, it helps guide my stamping so I always mount the stamps with the sticker, and then I perform a little magic ....

The 2-way glue pen is a permanent and temporary glue. If I apply glue to a piece of paper and stick it to another, it dries and is stuck very well ... sometimes too well ! lol But, if I apply dots of the glue to a surface and allow it to air dry (for about 6-12 hours), then I get tacky glue that will stick to my block temporarily. Taaa Daaaah magic eh ! The glue stays tacky for a long time, after a year of two of use I may reapply a few dots. 

Also, do you notice that the glue is blue in the pic below ? It dries clear ... how cool is that. So, you can see where you put it. I really like this glue, I use it a lot. I have even been know to make my own glue dots ..... now theres an idea ....

Thanks for stopping by, have a great day.

Totally groovy pen holder - I made that !!!

Fed up with pens all over the place, so I spotted a similar idea to this on Pinterest. If you haven't been to pinterest, my advice don't - its totally addictive ! lol Joking - its amazing ....


I had some old plumbing pipe in the garage, cut it into 4" and 5" sections and then used duck tape to hold it all together. I have to say yay to moustache duck tape

Fun tag

Have I told anyone recently how much I love Dyan Reveley stamps ? No.... well, I do ! I loved how this tag turned out, and the sentiment is just perfect :

Worry Less canvas

I heard someone say this a while ago, "Worry less, giggle more". It has now become my new motto !

Having recently recreated my craft room, I thought I would make myself a canvas. It is actually one of the wooden box canvases. I adhered an 8x8 piece of water color paper to the front and used that for sponging, stamping, gel medium, stencilling, molding paste etc, etc. I actually prefered it to working on a canvas as it is a hard background, much easier to stamp and apply pressure to. The blanket stitch edges were done with a We are Memory Keepers sew it (I think its called, but its ink not a hole maker).

The letters are die cut from a news print paper, using a Papertrey Ink alphabet die set.

This wooden canvas now has pride of place in my craft room :)

Favourite book quote - Cloud Atlas

I read Cloud Atlas a while ago and am totally in love with the ending of that book, it is such a profound statement : we are many, but each one of us is important.

"Only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand
Your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops"

If you ever feel low or disillusioned, its good to remember that we, each of us, matter. For me, I took this quote to heart. After years of child rearing where I put everyone else first, and neglected myself resulted in negative consequences for me. I am now beginning to see the light .....

I wanted to do a page in my art journal to acknowledge this. It had to be just right .... You can relate to that type of pressure, right ? lol Then I came across the amazing water stamps from Designs by Ryn. How absolutely wonderful to use them for this page, the realism and attention to detail in these rubber stamps is just amazing. And I think the stamps did justice to the book quote and my feeling about it.

I gesso'd my pages and used Lindy's Stamp Gang starburst sprays for the background in my art journal. I don't know if the pic truly captures the gleam and beautiful colors of these sprays. When I stamped the raindrops in black memento ink, the ink stayed wet enough on the sprayed background that I was able to emboss it with clear powder. The result is a wet looking water drop - perfect - yeah !

I printed the quote from my computer, sponged and adhered it.

There is actually a slit cut above one of the lines of text on the right hand page, there is pocket where I have journalled why this quote is so important to me. It is private and I didn't want it to be written on the page, not everything is for sharing :)

I hope you like it :

October 2013 Stampers Groups Projects

I have been meaning to do this Black Magic technique with my stampers groups for a while now, but then SU went and retired their water color pencils ! Its a great technique, and you can use any soft hb pencil, or chalk etc to do it. Using white craft ink (and allowing to fully dry) essentially turns dark cardstock into white where you have stamped, enabling you to color them in. Depending on your coloring technique, the colors you use and products, it can be really vivid on the dark cardstock. We stamped the flowers using the Secret Garden stamp set, colored with watercolor pencils and added pearls to the flowers. The sentiment is from Fabulous Phrases and we used one of the banner dies from the new SU thinlets label card die. The dsp is Modern Medley. I had to use a paperclip to keep the card closed so you can see the dsp behind the card, but took another pic of it open :)

The second CAS card was all about the bling ! We used SU's illuminate glimmer stamp to stamp snowflakes from the Snowflake Soiree stamp set onto the whisper white card stock (see close up pic below). It gives a beautiful frosted, shimmery look to the snowflakes. Tip : make sure its dry before you touch it or it will smudge.

The sentiment, also from Snowflake Soiree (don't you just love when a stamp set contains images and words !!!! ) was stamped onto whisper white card  stock, then the whole piece of card stock was covered in versamark ane embossed with iridescent ice embossing folder, effectively turning it into glimmer paper. LOVE it. Its a great way to add bling and dazzle that wont come off everywhere - glitter can be problematic.

Finally we used Winter frost dsp, for layering and the envelope - which was made with the wonderful new envelope punch board, some island indigo card stock and silver 1/8 ribbon.

September 2013 Stampers Group projects

My stampers groups are underway again, I have 3 groups this year, lots of scrapbookers and card makers, so I am having to think outside the box to keep everyone happy :) Lots of techniques, tools and products that can be used for all paper crafting hobbies.

In September we did a little bit of a mixed media look with a tag :

The techniques were sponging and emboss resist.

Firstly the writing was stamped in early espresso using the En francais background stamp onto very vanilla card stock. Then when it was fully dry (make sure it is unless you will have brown words stamped in your clear versamark !!!) we used the leaf stamp from the Papaya Collage stamp set with versamark. This was then embossed with clear embossing powder. Then we sponged over the whole tag in Old Olive, Calypso Coral and Marina Mist. The ink only sticks to the card stock, the embossing resists the ink, hence the lovely very vanilla leaves you can see :) We sponged the edge of the tag with early espresso, and added very vanilla seam binding and the For You stamp from Chalk Talk stamp set. It was punched with a circle punch and we used the modern label punch and a few pearls.

A ribbon tip : When using seam binding, you can spritz it with water and crumple it up, when its dry it keeps some of that crumpled look, which I happen to like on distressed/mixed media art :)

The other project was using the Papillion Potpourri stamp set and co-ordinating punch.

I like the simplicity of this CAS card. I used I am me dsp, and rhinestones which were colored with sharpie markers to co-ordinate with the colors of the stamped and punched layered butterflies. The shape at the bottom of the card was handcut, to suit the sentiment that people chose from the Loving Thoughts stamp set. This was done by holding the two pieces of cardstock (the dsp and smaller white front) together so that the bottom edges lined up. The white piece was centred. Then we cut both together in one swift movement. When we moved the white up to the centre of the dsp, the cuts are identical. Hope that makes sense - its easy to do, but difficult to explain !

Hope you like it :)

ATC : SHE art

What a great title, I enjoyed doing this one, but have to admit I did not draw my girl ! Thank you Prima for creating the perfect sized doll stamp for my ATC ! lol

As mentioned, doll stamped with a Prima doll stamp. Then the paper piecing began... Anyone who knows me, knows how I love to fussy cut and paper piece. Weird I know ... lol

I stamped her dress, covered it in gel medium and then used my faber castell india ink big brush artist pen to add some texture and dimension to the dress in blue. Everything was paper pieced, the jacket, arms and face. It was only the hair I left and colored in. The headband I made up and cut out of glimmer paper. The background is sponged with distress ink and doodled with a white gel pen, the little brown rhinestones added and the words.

The whole point of this ATC really is, we only live one, so we may as well be fabulous ....

The other wonderful creations :

ATC : Travel

Hmmmm another thought provoking ATC title .....

I have this wonderful Hero Arts travel set for the background, which I stamped in versamark and embossed in clear powder. I distressed the edges. The Tim Holtz travel airplane stamp was stamped on clear shrink plastic and heated, reducing it to about 1/6th of its size. It is loose and makes a wonderful embellishment. I used the red and blue bakers twine for an airmail look. So a simple ATC, but very enjoyable :)

These are the other Atcs made by the talented ladies I share this 'hobby' with.

Note : The balcony ATC is actually Juliets balcony, when Romeo is serenading her. The background is made of sand - sooo cool. The maker had just been there on vacation.

ATC : Snap

My choice this month, and I decided on Snap !

 I wanted to do the card game snap, so I made my ATC on an actual playing card base, with mini cards on the front. Lots of gel medium, liquid pearls, gold embossing powder and doodling in the background.

And these are all of the ATC's for Snap :

This title resulted in such varied interpretations, cards, dressing, camera and angry birds. A good ATC title I think :)

ATC : Lucky

What an interesting ATC topic .... had to think about this one. That is one of the main things I enjoy about ATC's, it is essentially a mini work of art, you have to decide what to do based on the topic, then make the magic happen on a 2.5 x 3.5" canvas !!! I just love the challenge.

The title was 'Lucky' and we were supposed to include the Canadian penny, which is sadly being phased out.

 I did a digital print of a rainbow and added the Irish saying :

May you always walk in sunshine
May you never want for more
May Irish Angels rest their wings
Right beside your door.

Whilst the ink was still wet I added some clear embossing powder and heated it to highlight some of the colors. It only adhered to some parts, which I loved even more !

The pot was punched from a circle punch and the top punched out with the same punch, I added inca gold to the pot. The shiny penny was inserted with stickles to eminate the gold sparkle of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Finally the horsheshoe was punched and embossed with Stampers Anonymous aged embossing powder.

And here it the other ATCs for this topic : How fab ..... Love it .....

ATCs : Love Songs

I really enjoyed this ATC, it was to make an ATC from a favourite song with love in the title.

 Mine of course had to be a Beatles song 'All you need is love'.

The background was made by rubbing various colors of distress ink onto my craft sheet, spritzing with water and running the cardstock through it. I love the moody look of the sky - if you've been to Liverpool you can relate to the authenticity of the skyline ! lol.

The Liverpool skyline silhouette was cut using a cricut. I had actually made a stencil and sprayed silver with a homemade spray the black cardstock before it was cut - just to give it some texture and interest.

I covered the 2.5 x 3.5" ATC with tin foil, which I crumpled first. I wanted to created the feeling of movement in the water, added interest to the reflection of the Liverpool skyline. I used copic markers to color the water and skyline reflection.

I printed the words from my computer and adhered.

So many steps, but I love the reflective quality of this ATC, the interest and textures.

These are the four Love Songs ATC I now have. Love the girls in my ATC group, so much talent :)

Computer issues

If you are wondering why there haven't been any posts for a while, its not anything to do with me, the culprit was my pc ! grrrrr .....

The motherboard on my pc decided enough was enough and she wasn't playing any more ! So began the search for, acquisition of and set up of the new computer: A Mac no less ! So I should also add the re-education .... lol

I am still learning, but am LOVING my new computer. The Mac is very intuitive for the most part. The photo option I am still trying to figure out, especially uploading to the blog and tagging with my name, blog address etc. I still have to figure that out .... But didn't want to delay, so am uploading lots of cards, canvas, mixed media pages etc today. Enjoy :)