You may have noticed a new background to the blog? I was making Dad's Father's Day card and enjoyed it so much I wanted to make something similar for myself.

Here's Dad's card:

And here's the picture I made for myself:

The background to the main image is coloured gold with added gold leaf. The images are coloured with watercolour pencils, as is the inner mount The stamps I've used are all Chocolate Baroque: Peacock Parade, Paisley Elephant and Indian Elephant

Thanks for looking!

Hand Challenge - Joy in the Art of Creation

Glenda over at Chocolate Baroque set us a Hand challenge - anything goes. I immediately knew that I wanted to go all 3D, and decided to use rubber gloves as a mould for Plaster of Paris. There is a slight problem with this though, you get a big bulge where the palm should be:

So there was nothing for it but to carve them out!

So then I painted them (using acrylics) and added stamps from the CB Indian range. I stamped the designs onto white tissue then applied it using normal PVA. It was really fiddly (you have to cut the tissue really closely around the design - and there are a lot of elements here!) but I'm glad I persevered and I'm really pleased with the end result. I added a sentiment which says:

'There is such joy in the art of creation'

I'm looking forward to making more of these! Thanks for looking and I'll be back soon :-)

The A to Z of ATCs........ A is for ANIMATED

This year I have set myself a challenge - to work my way through the alphabet with ATCs. Now that probably sounds quite simple, right? Well, I also have to make three different ATCs for each theme. The idea is to try and find new ways of using my rubber stamps - I have some beautiful stamps which I don't seem to use much, and I hope this challenge will kick start some creativity.

So, the theme for A is Animated - the ATCs all have to 'move' in some way.

 For Fairyland Park I took inspiration from a moveable card in Craft Stamper Magazine - the fibres at the top are attached to a ticket which you pull. The boy's body folds up on itself and reveals a different image underneath.

Love Letters opens like a book, and even the scroll opens out.

Vintage is another book style, and I really like the faux leather effect. I used a dark brown embossing powder on a brown, lightly textured paper and I think it worked a treat :-) The book has six pages sewn into it.

I'll move onto B soon, but for now if anyone has any bright ideas for themes I could use for X, Y or Z I'd really appreciate it!
Thanks for looking :-)