Spring is in the air- IndigoBlu Inspiration Piece

 Hello to you all,

I have been so lucky to have been picked again to create an inspirational piece for the new challenge over at IndigoBlu. Thank you soooo much Design Team xx
Here is a link to the IndigoBlu Blog so you can check out all those gorgeous inspiration pieces created by the Design Team, last months winner and the top 3 winners.
 Find the Link Here

I hope you will find projects to inspire you to make something similar or to use the ideas on cards, canvas or home decor.

And if you do, why not challenge yourself, enter this months Blog Challenge!

So without further ado here is my Inspiration for Spring is in the air.

The first thing was thinking about spring and I took my inspiration from the garden. I have a Forsythia bush in the garden which has burst into glorious yellow flowers. Also the tree blossoms have come out and everywhere is looking so fresh and green.

Of course I created something that has been quite hard to photograph so I have quite a few photos to share.

Here is my finished Inspiration piece. More photos showing what the lampshade looks like all the way around at the end of this post

I started off with a plain white paper lampshade. Because of the shape and the surface of the shade I stamped images with green Stazon Ink onto tissue paper and used Slap-it-on to stick them to the lampshade.

Once the images had dried out I used three colours of diluted paint in spray bottles to add spring colours. 

I sprayed the lampshade outside, hanging it on the line and as the paint dripped and collected along the wire outline I used a piece of kitchen paper to absorb the excess paint as I didn't want to leave dark lines. At this stage, you need to handle the lampshade very carefully as its made of tissue paper and could rip when wet with the paint.

Out of the Wild Meadow set I used the large wild grass set to stamp the images onto tissue paper for the base of the lampshade and used the butterfly stamp but stamped that image onto thick parchment paper

Out of the above 'Live, Laugh, Love' set I used two of the flower blossoms stamps on tissue paper

Once the blossom images were stamped out using a brown Stazon ink I used Lemon Meringue paint diluted, then once dry I cut the blossoms out. To pick out details on the blossoms I added green ink and mica powder

I wanted the butterflies to look a little translucent so I painted some thick parchment paper with diluted paints

Once the butterfly images were stamped and cut out I added more detail using different shades of colour to highlight the butterflies. I also stamped out some small dragonflies from the set 'Live, Laugh, Love' 

All cut out, glittered, painted and ready to be attached to the now painted lampshade

Tiny white flowers were added around the shade

Centers of the flowers were created using tiny beads

Thanks for stopping by today.
Happy Crafting, Sue xx

Off The Edge - An IndigoBlu Challenge

Hello and Welcome back to my blog! 

I decided to take up the Challenge from IndigoBlu to create something "Off The Edge"!

Using some of the IndigoBlu paints was a must for me this time round as I love the versatility of them so I started off with various colours and a round sponge to create a background on a 12"x12" piece of card stock and covered it in multi coloured circles!

Once the background was created I cut the card up into four sections so I could make 4 cards and decide which one I would submit for the challenge!

I wasn't happy with the way the fourth card turned out, so ended up with three cards!

I decided to submit the Stylised Flowers for the "Off the Edge" Challenge. This is how I put the card together!

The image was stamped onto one of the painted panels and then I cut around two of the flower images to bring the image Off the Edge!

The flower heads were given the Mega Flake treatment using large flakes of Lancashire Rose flakes picking our the rose colour, then I used Gin & Tonic and picked out some of the green coloured flakes!

I then mounted the flower panel onto black card!

A piece of white card was folded in half and I cut off a length down the right hand side of the front face of the card and stamped a sentiment (from the Hocus Pocas stamp set) with Black Stazon, then using FlitterGlu to stamp the image of  Dandelions (from the Wild Meadow stamp set) slightly coming off the edge of the card! I covered the image Gin and Tonic flakes!

Thank you for stopping by today! Visit again soon. 

Happy Crafting, Sue xx

IndigoBlu - Indian Summer

Welcome!
Here I go again! How about you, do you like a  challenge?

So I looked up the meaning of an Indian Summer and read that it is a heatwave in Autumn! So I had lots of ideas floating around in my head, including images of India and all the bright colours they use and after looking through my IndigoBlu stamps and paints and having a few failed attempts this is what I came up with! (Thoughts please)!

I really love the image of the lady picking flowers in the garden so felt drawn to her for this challenge!
Here is what I did to put the card together!

The stamp sets I used for this card were 'Live, Love, Laugh', Mr Darcy and Collecting Flowers by IndigoBlu!
The first step was to stamp out the images, colour them in, and for this I used a water pen then cut out the shapes!















I then stamped over the flowers again with brown ink to tone the colour down a little and went around the outside of the images with a dauber and ink!!

I went on to stamp out my main image and went over it with embossing paste to try and give it some texture! I stamped into the paste with one of the flowers. The idea was to create clouds!

Once the paste was left to dry overnight I then brought in some Distress Inks to colour the background!

Before the ink dried completely I used a baby wipe to take away some colour from the flowers to create the clouds!

I then decided to use some of the Mega-Flakes! With a small paintbrush I added details to the flowers with FlitterGlu! Then I covered the glue with the flakes and used the Scoochy Sponge to bring out the details!

I wasn't happy with the way the sentiment looked so I die cut two circles! A black base circle and a white slightly smaller circle with the sentiment stamped onto it!

I used my Sizzix machine to cut out the circles from Spellbinders!

I layered up the circles and glued them in place covering the other stamped sentiment!














The flowers were then arrange around the stamped images using Pinflair glue!

I decided the flowers need a little lift so I used some glitter in the center of each flower!

I had such a lot of fun creating this card! Why not play along too!
Happy Crafting,
Sue xx