Ink Stains Charm Swap

A couple of months ago, the very talented Roni from Ink Stains called for interested crafters to take part in a charm swap.

I thought (just quietly) “I would so love to do this!!!”  So, I did!  Yay for me.

Being in New Zealand, we sometimes feel so removed from the “real world” of scrapping and scrap-related artists.  Well, I do anyway.  Having a little piece of art from the other side of the world is actually a really big deal.

The brief for Roni’s general charm swap was to create 5 charms the same or at least similar.  Send them off to her and receive not only 5 different charms in return but also a pin to hang them on.

These are the charms I sent off to the USA in June.

I used tiny bottles, beads and charms and re-purposed costume jewellery.  I filled each bottle with a co-ordinating glitter.  I was pretty chuffed with them to honest.

I was thrilled to bits today when I received my return charms in the letterbox!!  I admit that I squealed out loud, quickly looking around to see who might have observed me acting so strangely at the front gate, lol.

I ripped into the parcel (carefully preserving the very cool postage stamps for a future purpose) and fond the most gorgeous goodies inside.

Oh, the talent and time that has gone into the making of these is simply a treasure in itself!  Thank you so much to creators of my charms (I am wearing my pins as I type).  To have such an amazing individual piece of art jewellery give me a real buzz.

I will be in for Roni’s next charm, without a doubt.  Lets see some more followers of Ink Stains from Down-Under!

Dragons Dream TIO #122 – A Nightmare

I lieu of a dream this fortnight, we have a Nightmare over at Dragons Dream Tag It On.  Check out what the DT have done – Impressive!

The inspiration was to include: Murder of the Crows, a Blue Moon and a Chill Wind and , as usual, to include at least one “real” stamp.  I’m really going to have to invest in some scary/Halloween stamps!  It would have been so much easier.

The stone arch is a Magnolia stamp,the vine (stamped in both Archival Jet Black and Forest Moss DI).  The crow is one of  Tim Holtz ones, as are the bids flying across the Moon.  I also stamped the crow on shrink plastic to make a charm.

I’m not sure that macabre is my style but it might grow on me, lol.

Thanks for taking a peek, I always appreciate your comments.

Esther xoxo

12 Tags of 2012 – August

Time Holtz was quick off the mark this month and as I was home with my son today, I had a chance to get stuck in to it.

Typically, I did not have a single one of the products he used so I had spent quite a bit of time finding stuff to make a tag that looked similar.

To create the tag with the die-cut end I turned to my trusty Silhouette Cameo.  It took a bit of fiddling to merge two file together the way I wanted to but I got there in the end. Then I found an un-named frame stamp, that I embossed with detail black embossing powder.  The cameo stamp was a freebie with a magazine.  I was thinking they might be a bit small but they were what I had so I just got on with it.

I created an embossing diffuser using the tag file with an oval cut into it (well, 3 layers of really).  It worked quite well once I sorted out a sandwich + shim for running it through the cuttlebug.  I mixed a bit of Stormy Skies Distess Ink with Picket Fence Distress stain to wipe over the raised pattern then added some Tattered Rose.

I cut 3 different spiral roses on the Cameo, along with some leaves.  I creased the leaves in a vein sort of pattern and inked the creases with Vintage Photo.

Not entirely satisfied I had a 2nd go.  This time round I took a slightly different tact and made better use of the Silhouette Cameo.

I created the frame from a slightly modified Oval Doily and the cameo figure from a modified Print and Cut file.  This time I used the oval shape to mask the tag before stamping the text/flourish background that was then heat embossed.  I added Tattered Rose and Victorian Velvet inks to the background and edged with Peacock Feathers from the seasonal range.  I used a flower that I had already made and cut the “branches” using the leaf vein part of the spiral rose cutting file from my first tag.

 

Personally, I prefer the 2nd tag even though I forgot to add any words.  What do you think?

Cheers, Esther  xoxo

TIO #121 – Alice & The Rabbit

The challenge this fortnight at Dragons Dream Tag It On is pretty self-explanatory really.  I did have a slight panic because I just don’t have any Alice stamps and yet it is the second time I have wanted them for a challenge.  So slow to jump on the trend bandwagon sometimes and wish now I hadn’t missed the trend altogether!

Nevermind – I usually find a way round things and I managed to come up with this:

I inked the background with some of the Seasonal Distress Inks from Tim Holtz and used a Bo Bunny pocket watch stamp in Sepia Archival.  The images are actually paper doll freebies from Dover that I grabbed probably a year ago now.  The rose is another of my hot-glue creations, this time painted with nail polish.

So, thats it!  I am reasonably happy with how it turned out in the end.

Thanks for stopping by.

Esther xoxo