Summer Fly

I have today created a lovely project for Kuretake with the theme of Summer!

As I was creating this rather wonderful Kuretake Design Team project, I had a little song playing in my head called "Summerfly" which is a lovely song by Maura O'Connell. Has such lovely, and also quite haunting lyrics. Nonetheless, I was humming and singing as creating, which I think is a good way to craft!

Feeling inspired by the lovely colours of the paints and flowers growing in my garden, I decided to use a giant Peony stamp from IndigoBlu - seriously, it's massive! - and use the wonderful, gorgeously scrumptious Kuretake Gansai Tambi Japanese watercolour paints. I really love these paints, I can't express how much!

So I started with a sheet of watercolour pape, it's just smaller than an A4 sheet. I covered my paper with a quick swish of water to ensure the paints blended together nicely. Then, using a large brush, I  simply applied diagonally over the paper to create a rainbow effect. I left this to dry. You could also use a heat tool to dry if you wanted to.

I used a waterproof archival ink and stamped the Giant Peony and the Dragonfly stamp to my page. I wanted to add leaves to the flower, so I stamped the Giant Peony stamp onto a piece of scrap card (I only inked the edges of the stamp, this saves ink!) The impression is not what mattered for this - I wanted to make a mask, so I stamped and then cut this out. Cutting is my least favourite thing, so I put on some good music to sing along to!

Now, I wanted to attach the mask to the paper, but I wanted to remove it easily...therefore I'd like to share another great use of the ZIG Memory System 2 Way Glue Pen! I squeezed a few drops on the reverse of the cut out mask, and left it (it just needs to go clear and be tacky, but due to a hectic couple of days, I left it for 2 nights!!) As you can see in this photo, the glue comes out with a blue tint to it. Used immediately, this will stick your project down. BUT if you leave it, it goes tacky, then you have a re-positionable mask!

I popped my mask over the top of the peony and then took the leaf stamp (also from the Giant Peony set) and stamped in the desired position. Here you can see where the stamp is over the top of the flower...It doesn't look good just yet....

But, hey presto!, remove the mask and the leaves are in position and look as though they are behind the original stamped image. I then painted the image using the Gansai Tambi watercolour paints - I'm a little bit obsessed with this particular colour of red - it has a gorgeous pinkness too it!

I wanted to add some words and also to show off how fabulous this next Kuretake product is - the ZIG Emboss pen - now I'm not good calligraphy, so I simply wrote words in, what I hope, is neat writing. I have adjusted the colour hues on this photo just so you can see how the pen looks once used - it has a blue hue to it, which is basically a clear ink, it's waterbased, much like an embossing ink pad would be - but I love this because you can write or draw whatever you want for embossing! I added my embossing powder (I used some ultra-fine ones - see the 'ingredients' below) and then used the heat gun to 'melt' the embossing powder into place.

For those observant humans, you will notice that I've applied glitter to the dragon fly wings... I used the ZIG 2 way glue pen to the wings and then sprinkled a very fine glitter over the top. It's not easy to capture in a photograph (I must buy the Kuretake Wink of Stella pens... I have a feeling they will look awesome on the dragonfly wings!)

And here is the completed project!! I have also used the ZIG Millenium fine liner pen to write a few more words - in fact these are inspired by lyrics from songs. One I mentioned above...I wonder if anyone can recognise the others song I was inspired by? It's an old one!

Thank you for reading my blog. Please feel free to ask any questions. I've listed the ingredients used in this project below for you. I hope you have a play with the Kuretake pens and paints - and I hope you share your projects too!

Peace to all,
Maxine

Products used for the above project were:
Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolour paints
Kuretake ZIG 2 Way Glue Pen
Kuretake ZIG Emboss Calligraphy Pen
Kuretake ZIG Millenium pen
IndigoBlu Giant Peony A5 stamp set
IndigoBlu Dinkie Dragonfly stamp
Ranger Archival Ink Pad
DecoArt Glamour Dust (the glitter)
Cosmic Shimmer Ultrafine Embossing Powders ( various )

Flutterby Butterflies

Good morning fellow crafters, and thank you for stopping by! I am very excited to be able to offer inspiration today for the IndigoBlu Blog Challenge "Flutterby" theme. Click here to head back to the blog challenge so you can visit all the wonderful inspirational pieces we've done for you!

I have a few butterfly stamps from IndigoBlu and they are all equally beautiful - however, I had this little frame and wanted to do an ombré effect with the IndigoBlu Cottage Acrylic paints and then overlay in black - to really make it pop! I even left in my overstamp lines and I was a little heavy handed, but I do sometimes like to make it look a little handmade with a couple of human errors (because I'm not perfect!).

To start, I took the IndigoBlu Script stamp, and, using Blue Hawaii StazOn, stamped the back (it took two to fill my little piece of card, which I had pre-cut to fit into the frame. I used my heatgun to ensure the ink was complete dry/set.

The colours I have used on the background sheet of card are Postbox Red, Burning Bonfire and Banana Custard. I put some paint onto a paper palette and then sprayed with few squirts of water. I used a brush to apply to my card, over the ink - I started light and went darker and blended the paints to get the graduated effect. As I had applied water, thereby thinning the paint, plus used a brush to thinly apply, you can see the script through the paint and it really tones down that into the background.

I took the butterfly stamp from the IndigoBlu Nature 1 A5 stamp set (I love this stamp so much!) and used black StazOn - very simple, yet effective over the top of that background.

Next, the frame needed pimping up! It was a simple wooden frame, and had been painted with black IndigoBlu Gee-Sso Good. I carefully removed the frame back and glass, then ripped up some strips of regular nose tissue and coated the frame with IndigoBlu Slap-It-On. I applied the tissue so to leave it a little wrinkled - I'm not going for a smooth tissue technique here, I'm going for texture! Apply and then go over the tissue with the Slap-It-On, and encourage wrinkles, even little tears here and there. Overlap in places to really add to that texture. It will look pretty awful at this stage! Leave to dry!

My next step was to give a really good coat of the Gee-Sso Good in black. I only needed to do one coat, but you may need to touch up a couple of areas, as I know I always miss the odd bit! Leave to dry once again!

Lastly, using the IndigoBlu Metallic Cottage Acrylic Paint, in Goldfinger, dry brush, using a sort of flicking motion with a large stiff brush. The size 20 Gold Line brush (that also comes with the mannequin kit) is perfect for this! (I have about 3 or 4 of these brushes now, as they are in constant use!!) The idea here is to try to just catch the raised 'wrinkles' of the tissue paper, but however you do this will work, as it really makes that texture pop! 

And that's it! Put the frame back together and voila! One very lovely little Flutterby Butterfly piece of framed artwork! I hope you feel inspired to create your own entry for this - there is always the chance to win some amazing stamps!

Here are the links to all the 'ingredients' I used for this project, for your convenience!

IndigoBlu Gee-Sso Good

IndigoBlu Metallic Paints

Nature 1 stamp set

Script A6 stamp

Slap it On

Gold Line Brush (20)

Stazon Ink

Posie Pockets

Hello and welcome to my IndigoBlu Blog Challenge Inspirational piece!

If you have come from the IndigoBlu Blog - then click this line to go back.

Otherwise, still go have a look at all the other wonderful inspirational pieces from the IndigoBlu demonstrator team! (I can assure you, you will not be disappointed!)

In the meantime, I hope you have a nosy below and that you like what I have created - I had fun making this and I hope this will make you want to get out those papers!

The challenge this month is "A Pocketful of Posies", which got me thinking about pockets... So I made all sorts of pockets - little library card pockets, pocket shaped pockets, and settled on using a card with 2 pockets on it.

And here is the result:

A card with pockets, holding tags with flowers on!

Here you can see the pockets (I hope!)

The card was very simple to make - it is basically 2 A6 cards. I have folded both the pages, diagonally,  to create the 'pockets', added the paper (all from one 6x6 sheet of IndigoBlu paper), then glued it to the other card, just along the sides and bottom, ensuring I leave the middle and tops free for the tags to go into the pockets.

The tags

I've stamped the tags using the new Poppy stamps! I've taken from both the Giant Poppy A5 set and also the Poppycock A6. I stamped with Versafine Vintage Sepia, and coloured in with Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolours, then distressed the edges with Distress Ink Walnut Stain.

My chicken, Georgie, wondering what I'm doing

And here is my chicken - she was watching very curiously, while I took photos of the card in a big plant pot of ornamental grass (which my cat usually likes to sleep on in fact!)


I really hope you like this, I really did have lots of fun making this, I tried to make a pretty card, but I couldn't help myself, I had to grunge it up!

Peace & harmony to all,

Maxine xxx