Wall art Christmas presents

Now the pressies have been given, I can share :-)

The brief was 'flowers and blue', 'unicorns' and 'cats'.  I found some dies in the Hobbycraft sale, 'Intricut' which I had not seen before, but they had a unicorn and a cat (and a couple of others...!) so it was worth a try :-) The packaging states that they may need a shim - there is no 'may' about it, they do!  Three passes through the machine and finally I had my cat and unicorn.  The background papers are from Craft Creations and the white box frames are from The Range.
A word here about Stick It die cutting adhesive sheets - I loved this product when it came out three years ago, but it seems to have some real quality issues now - I used it because the dies are so intricate, but they wouldn't stick to the background paper. I had to run over the back with Herma repo adhesive, the Stick It did at least stabilise the die-cuts so that the Herma didn't distort them, but I am very disappointed, this was exactly what it is supposed to be used for, but it just didn't work.  I'm sure it was stickier when it was first released.
The flowers are done with an SU stamp and matching punch.  Each one has three separate layers, so that was 27 flowers stamped, punched and coloured!!  Not counting the test ones LOL.  The centres are pale green Card Candi.  I had a devil of a job getting the grid right, but it came out OK in the end!  The frame is a Ribba from Ikea, it's a 9" box frame, my intended 8" frame was just too small to get the 3 x 3 grid.

Stamped wall art

Last weekend, on my craft day with Sy, I was messing about with distress inks.  There had been a DI class at the Littlegreen retreat and I wanted to try out using the round blending foam tool rather than my usual ink duster brushes.  Well, I failed miserably, I am too heavy handed for the blending foam!  I made two backgrounds then reverted back to my brushes for the other two.

You may notice that there are only three..... the fourth one was going well until the final over-stamping, then it all went horribly wrong.  The DI colours I used were Seedless Preserves, Peacock feathers and Iced Spruce.
The balloon image is from Clarity Stamps, the steampunk swirly is from Stampendous.  Sentiments - well, I am not sure what the first one is, I have had it so many years!  The second one is from Visible Image and the third from Woodware.
I also played around with texture paste and gesso on the second and third pieces respectively.
They were supposed to go in some 6" box frames which I have, but it looked completely wrong having such a flat piece in a box frame and also I didn't have enough cardstock to make four mats .... so I bought three 5" black frames from Amazon and they are perfect.
Here they are all framed up:

I am so pleased with these.  They are to go on a narrow vertical wall space and I am now wondering whether five would look better than three..... LOL.

Pin-spiration: Circle wall art

A few months ago, Sy showed me Pinterest and I have spent many many hours a bit of time browsing through the  many boards and pinning ideas for cards and other craft projects.  I decided that I should probably stop Pinning and start actually doing something with the ideas! 

Ok, I haven't stopped Pinning, but I have done my first completely Pin-spired project.  A few days ago, I blogged the decorated caddy for my work colleague here, and I did intend to hand it over on Monday.  But I thought I would also make her a surprise piece of wall art, which I started at the weekend crop, but didn't finish in time for Monday.  The original Pin is here, and this is my version of it:

Close up of some detail:

It was very easy to do, at the crop I brushed paint in three colours (two oranges, one yellow) randomly over a 12 x 12 sheet of white card, making sure that there were brush marks and random bits.  Then I used a Paperartsy splotches stamp and stamped/embossed in gold randomly over the whole sheet.  Then it was just a matter of punching circles which had really good bits of pattern on them.

I stuck 12 circles down on a piece of 10x8" card in as neat a grid as I could manage - thank goodness for my centering ruler! - and I think it looks fabulous.  I am definitely going to make more of these in different colours.

But I must be honest ...... this is my second painted sheet of card - the first one went horribly wrong!  I stamped a background pattern in white ink and dried with a heat gun before adding the gold embossed splotches.  It turned out to be not so dried as I had thought and the background pattern picked up the gold embossing powder as well!  Far too much gold for how I wanted the finished item to look ...... so I cut it into pieces and it will appear on a card soon :-)

This afternoon I handed over both the caddy and the artwork to my colleague and she absolutely loved them - what a relief :-)

Steampunk wall art

I haven't blogged since mid July ..... where did August and September go??  A severe lack of mojo combined with (or perhaps because of?) pressure at work meant that I made hardly anything during that time.  Some half completed pages at crops, some half finished cards.... but no real inclination to finish anything.  I have managed to cross stitch for 10 - 15 minutes every day, sitting in my car before work, which has resulted in a couple of finished pieces, more on those tomorrow :-)

The steampunk piece below is a class kit which I started at the Merly Impressions retreat, back in June.  The original class item was this frame, covered with flowers ..... so not really my thing LOL.  I brought it back home with the paper (Kaisercraft, not sure which range) attached to the separate pieces and that's how it stayed for, ahem, a couple of months.  Finally I bit the bullet and put the pieces together, painted the mini frame, found a nice quote from this site, added the keys, the crystals and the other metal bits.  It still needed a little more, so I made an interrupted border from silver nailheads.

Here it is in its final position:

I am very pleased with it :-)  also I have made a great discovery - Cosmic Shimmer glue will stick metal to metal, now that is something which will prove very useful in future!