Upcycled Can

This month, I've been up-cycling various objects that would otherwise go into the bin, or the recycling bin.  Bottles, boxes, some plastic cartons and also tin cans.

For this challenge, I wanted to incorporate my up-cycling phase...so here you have my little can for those handy bits and bobs you craft with....scissors, palette knife, brushes, pens, etc...

I have used stamps from the Pomp and Pageantry A5 set.
I added the florish to black card with Flitterglu, then added Sheffield Steel Mega Flake.
I stamped the Big Ben image onto white card, used 'pageantry' only from the wording below. Added some Glossy Accents to Big Ben to give it a little k-pow! Added beads from my stash to spell "POMP" in the little circles.
Both are edged with the Sheffield Steel mega flake.

For the can itself, after a good clean and removal of the label, I used my "Slap it On" to stick pages from an old dictionary on, randomly, by ripping and decoupaging on. I rolled my dried can onto my inked up Crackleglaze Background A6 stamp.

The top and bottom of the can have been Flitterglu'd and Sheffield Steel Mega Flake applied.

A piece of black ribbon was wrapped around and then tied into a bow, and then I added a further piece of silver ribbon, this just the bow tied to the black bow, to give it more dimension. Stuck on my toppers, and the can is complete!

(I also used some silver spray paint on the inside, just to seal it - this I did at the beginning).

I hope you like, and I hope you are inspired to get upcycling and finding interesting things to do with bits of rubbish!

Happy crafting,

Maxine

Little black book

Good day fellow bloggers! It's been a while since my last post! I've quite a few unfinished blog posts that I must continue with, however, as requested, I am adding photos of my little mini book I made with all IndigoBlu stamps, which I thought would be nice to have on my demonstration table for people to look at.

Little cover page!

Firstly, the book itself was something I saw on the docraft site, and it was either Clare Curd, or Sheila Halliwell, I think, who demo'd on on a little video. I've had a quick peek and cannot find it, but this is going back about 3/4 years and they've got a new look site now. The basics are - take a 12x12 sheet of card or thick paper (preferably double sided) and then score at every 3 inches. Fold each score and use a bone score/fold tool (I do not have one, so I either use my scissor handles, a ruler, or an acrylic block, whichever is closest!)... 3 simple cuts are then made.  I have drawn a little illustration to hopefully make this clear - it's not to the correct size - as 12x12" would be a little large to have on screen! Score and fold on the dashed lines, then cut on the red lines. Concertina fold from one of the bottom corners (of the illustration) and you end up with a little booklet - look online for many very good tutorials on this technique!

A quick sketch of how to fold and cut.

So, here are the pictures of the inside of my book, stamped with IndigoBlu stamps, using black Memento, and using IndigoBlu Mega Flake on the cover. I hope you like it!

Coloured this stamp with Distress Inks and stuck into book.

Cool little pocket, with love stamps.

A little pocket and some Glossy Accents on the watch.

Love the birds, I went a bit mad with them!

With an More than Words stamp!

Look who's in the door!

A little pocket for holding bits!

From the Nature set - love the ink blot butterfly!

I love this More than Words stamp!

A little door!

The back page!

A little clever use of glue and you can create little pockets and doors! It's lots of fun, the only problem with it is deciding what to use to make it!!

Have fun and I hope you enjoyed my little book - to those of you who asked, I hope this is what you were hoping for!

All the best,
Peace & harmony,
Maxine x

Indian Summer IndigoBlu Blog Challenge

Hello fellow crafty bloggers!

I'm very excited to add my piece as an inspiration for you, to the IndigoBlu 'Indian Summer' themed blog challenge. I do hope that you will like what I've done.

Today I've used stamps from the following IndigoBlu stamp range:
Wild Meadow (dandelion clocks)
Grand Tour II (wording)
Crackleglaze Background
Honeycomb Background

I have used IndigoBlu Mega-flake 'Autumn Blaze', IndigoBlu English Cottage Artists Acrylic Paint 'Goldfinger' and of course IndigoBlu Flitterglu.

I started with the background, which I cut to fit the card (5x7") and applied the flake around the edges. This is with the Honeycomb Background stamp - I love the distress-ed-ness of it!

The topper was made by stamping the dandelion clocks from the Wild Meadow stamp set, using a black archival ink. Once dry, I coloured up with distress inks - Peeled Paint, Tumbled Glass, Rusty Hinge, Worn Lipstick, Barn Door, Mustard Seed and Walnut Stain were all used to get the effect. I over stamped, once all dry, using the Crackleglaze Background stamp with Peeled Paint, randomly stamped around. I finished by using the IndigoBlu Paper Distresser, to rough and distress!

Next, the sentiment was stamped onto the IndigoBlu white stamp card with archival ink, from the Grand Tour II set. I inked the edges with Barn Door distress ink, and added a tiny bit of various colours from the inks used on the top (just by using what was left on the cut-n-dry sponge).

I stuck it all together! Added some little gems - I only have a few colours left, I'd rather have had red gems, but the closest I had was pink.

Lastly, as I wanted to add a little more to it, I applied the love 'Goldfinger' metallic paint using a toothbrush and 'flicked' it cause the splatter effect that I hope you can see in my close up picture. It kinda messy's it up without being too messy (if that makes any sense).

 I hope you feel encouraged to try the IndigoBlu blog challenge for a chance to win something fabulous! All the instructions on how to enter are there, it's all very simple, after all, I can do it, so it must be!

Good luck and thank you for visiting my blog.

Peace & Harmony,
Maxine

Mannequin

I thought I would share with you my beautiful mannequin, lovingly decorated with IndigoBlu products! The mannequin itself is from IndigoBlu, and she will be appearing at all my demos - she may get a makeover in time, although I will probably get myself a couple more, as she was such fun to do! I used Flitterglu on the bottle top, let it sit for a good while until tacky (it does need to be left a little longer as it's metal), then applied the Mega-flake.

I know I do tend to wax lyrical about IndigoBlu - however, I do so love the products which is why I am so delighted to be working for them as a demonstrator!!!

In other news, last week was the open day at IndigoBlu HQ and it was a fantastic day! All the ladies did amazing demonstrations, they are all such a talented bunch, and my head is full of wonder things that I want to do - and my car full of even more wonderful goodies that I just had to buy!!!

I admit, I did 'hide' my bag when I got home!!! Silly really, as the amount I spent will be seen on our bank statement.... I'm most especially excited by the purchase of the Ice Resin (Susan Kenart Kazmer), as demo'd by the fabulous Nikki Killinger (check out her blog here).

Other demonstrations were from Clare Horner (visit her blog here) who did some fantastic journal demos and will also be doing journal workshops. Jenny Marples (visit her blog here) did some amazing card making demos using all the great IndigoBlu products, Nicki Marell was demoing crochet techniques (sorry, don't know her blog!) and of course, Kay Halliwell-Sutton (visit the IndigoBlu blog here) did amazing things as one would expect! So yes, a great day!


Well, that's it for today, my daughter requires my attention...not to mention the cats, guinea pigs, chickens and now a jackdaw, who has taken up residence in my greenhouse!

Peace & Harmony to all!
Maxine xx

IndigoBlu team with ICE Resin on a Blog Hop!!

There are quite a lot of exciting things going on at IndigoBlu:

• Open Day on 31st August
• New Blog Challenge - Indian Summer
• Blog Hop with IndigoBlu and ICE Resin

Yes, that's right, you did read that correctly....blog hop! So click the link to get involved! All you have to do is visit the blog and link through to the blog for that day, make a comment, and have yourself in with a chance to win a prize!  The Blog Hop runs for 3 days, starting today. Enjoy your journey!

I hope to see some of you on the open day, when I shall be buy myself some ICE Resin to start my own journey, combining this with my paper crafting and my jewellery making!

Peace to you all,

Maxine

Full links below:

https://www.facebook.com/events/794361353930949/
http://indigoblublogchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/challenge-19-indian-summer.html
http://www.indigoblu.com/blog/2014/08/quintessentially-christmas-blog-hop/

An IndigoBlu Christmas!

Hello bloggers! I have put together a quick little post today, to add my card to the IndigoBlu Blog Challenge! This month's entry is Christmas in July!

Completed Christmas card

Working with IndigoBlu's new range of Christmas stamps I have created the following card:

Stamps used are:
Snowflake Lace (background)
Winter Wonderland (topper)
Merry Christmas Circle - dinkie (sentiment)

I started out with a piece of IndigoBlu white stamping card, and inked up using Distress Inks (chipped sapphire, tumbled glass, peeled paint), which I sprinkled and spritzed with water in the 'sky' area.

After fully drying, I very generously inked up the Winter Wonderland stamp using jet black Stazon. I left this to one side to fully dry. Later, I swiped FlitterGlu along the edges with my Phat Foam and added Mega Flake - Yorkshire Dales - which I gently 'scoochied' to give a fine line 'frame'.

Winter Wonderland stamp

I took a 5x7"card blank and cut some black card to fit. Onto this black card (IndigoBlu Coal Black Stamping card), I used my Snowflake Lace stamp to add FlitterGlu and Mega Flake to. The detail is amazing, and it's a shame that you can't see it that clearly in my photo, but I hope the close up shows how good it looks.

Close up detail of Snowflake Lace

The last bit of stamping was done on some old card stock I had laying around, onto the shiny side I stamped the Dinkie Merry Christmas Circle, using Jet Black Stazon. This I left to dry thorough, as the card was really very shiny. Once dry, I die cut using a Spellbinders Ironwork Motifs die. I inked the edges very gently with a combination of the same inks used on the topper.

Dinkie Merry Christmas Circle sentiment

I sprayed the topper and sentiment with Iridescent Spray and Sparkle, then simply assembled the card, also adding some ribbon and little gems.

I'm not overly happy with my bow - but as I applied it with the Flitterglu, that bow's not coming off!!!

I hope you like my little card,
Peace to all!

"Far in the East....

Boadicea, standing loftily charioted..." (Tennyson)

All stamped with IndigoBlu Boadicea A5 stamp set

Well, I am in East Anglia here, the fenlands of Cambridgeshire, bordering Suffolk!

I've chosen to work with this stamp set as it's such a beautiful image of Boadicea and I was drawn by that Celtic part of me.

I started out with an 8"square piece of Kraft card. I chose the border from the A5 Boadicea stamp set, to 'stamp up' IndigoBlu Flitterglu all around the edges, which I them covered with Yorkshire Dales Mega Flake.  I also edged this and a 6"square of IndigoBlu black stamping card with Flitterglu and Mega flake.

I cut a 4 3/4" square of IndigoBlu white stamping card and stamped Boudicea in the middle using black Archival Ink (Ranger). I inked around using Distress Inks Peeled Paint, and also a little Walnut Stain. I distressed further by adding a few blobs of water and dabbing, then finally spritzing with a little more water. This had a very interesting effect on my archival ink and I will further experiment with other inks and paper/card, however, using this archival ink on the IndigoBlu stamping card, caused the ink to raise slightly, which left it with a very slight embossed effect, which I rather liked.  I coloured in the image using distress inks and a water brush. I love the way the distress ink gives a muted colouring in look. Finally, I added a 'sketchy' border (which matched the wording stamps used next)

I stamped up a wording from the Boudicea set, cut and inked up with distress ink. I spritzed these to give the wording the 'raised' effect I mentioned earlier.... I'm really not sure if this is an actual technique used, but I did come across this quite coincidentally, and I thought it worth mentioning!

Antique bronze wire roses (pre-glued!)

Lastly, inspired by the rose in the main image, I made myself 3 roses out of antique bronze wire, with a few little swirls. These I stuck down using a glue gun.

Overall, this looks like an image that has been framed, however it is quite flat, apart from the roses. This could be used as a wall hanging, or stuck to a card as a topper - if I was to put this in the post, I would not add the roses, although they are not overly heavy.

I do hope you like this and I welcome any comments or questions! I may recreate this one for a demo piece and try some different colourways....the frame in black would be very dramatic! However, this piece was needing a far less prominent frame, and gives a lovely aged effect (I hope!)

Peace to all!