It's All Clear Now - Stampendous and Clear Scraps Blog Hop

Welcome to the Big Blog Hop Finale!

Let me introduce you to our hosts today - Stampendous! and Clear Scraps! Woot woot! :-)

Yes, this week both design teams have been playing together creating beautiful and original projects - if you missed the previous posts be sure to check them out. You really don't want to miss all this creativity that's been shared this week!

Monday 

Tuesday

Wednesday 

Thursday

My first contribution this week was this shabby chic Mother's Day card that I shared on Monday. But, in case you missed it, yesterday I also shared a Father's Day card which was my DT make for Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L.

When I started working on my DT assignment I was surrounded by lots of delicious Stampendous and Clear Scraps goodies so I HAD to throw them all in the mix :). My card features a really cool technique with gold leafing on acrylic sheets - if you'd like to find out more, hop over here to see my full tutorial.

And since we're having a blog hop, of course we also have prizes! We have three prize packages up for grabs and each will include our Cling Jumbo Filigree Stamp Set, a Jumbo Perfectly Clear Acrylic Handle, PLUS a Clear Scraps Mixable Album and some extra acrylic accents (NB. the winner must have a US shipping address).

But there's also a little (or not so little ?) surprise for Aussie crafters! The Stencil Specialists, one of our Australian Wholesale Distributors, is going to offer a prize to one Australian fan every time we have a giveaway for US players! For the Clear Scraps Blog Hop week, The Stencil Specialists are offering: a Stampendous Stamp, A Dreamweaver Stencil (LL size customer choice), A Silicone Mould, A Tub of White Ultra Light Paper Clay and 3 packs of Adhesive Gems. WOW… what a fantastic prize package!

Here's what you need to do to be in with a chance of winning. Visit all the participating blogs throughout the week and leave some love to let us know you've visited. The more love you share, the higher your chance to win. And most importantly - prepare yourself to be totally inspired!

 

And now it's time to show you my humble offering for today's hop - a CAS card! I know! Me and CAS don't usually play together (I confess, I am a devoted follower of 'more is more' approach lol). But this time I just wanted to keep the design fairly simple to showcase this fabulous Jumbo Parrot stamp set. This card is soon going to fly to my big brother for his upcoming birthday. We have a bit of a family 'story' involving parrots so I couldn't resist the possibility to use this theme for my brother's card :).  

My card is quite media-licious as I used a lot of different mediums (is it just me thinking that the word 'media' somehow doesn't sound right...?).

I started off by stamping my lovely birdie onto Authentique Nomad paper (Adventure collection) and coloured it with Inktense pencils. The colours I used are Bright Blue, Hooker's Green, Dark Aquamarine, Poppy Red, Sepia Ink, Cadmium Yellow, Golden Yellow, Tan and Iris Blue. After colouring I fussy cut the image.

To create my card I used one of the acrylic sheets from the Mixable Lovely 5.75 x 7 Album which I secured to the card's base with Adhesive Sheets. To create the 'colourful jungle' background I added lots of splatters using DecoArts acrylic paints (Bright Green, Red Alert, Bright Yellow, Ocean Blue as well and white and black).

Once the paint was dry I stamped the Grunge Birthday sentiment with Jet Black StazOn. For the background I used BoBunny Sweet Life -Inspire paper which I stamped with Emerald City StazOn Mini and also splatted with paints.

That's all from me and I hope you enjoyed it :). Here is the list of the inspirational makes that await you today:

Stampendous Blog

Kristine Reynolds

Amy Hurley-Purdie

Lea Kimmel

Pam Hornschu

Wendy Price

Janelle Stollfus

Asia King

Tenia Nelson

Jamie Martin

Clear Scraps Blog

Thank you so much for stopping by and for all your wonderful comments! Don't forget to also check my Mother's Day and Father's Day cards for more ideas on using your stamps and acrylic sheets. And if you've enjoyed my offerings, how about signing up to follow my blog so you can see what's I'm up to in the future? :)

Have a fantastic and creative weekend!

Big crafty hugs




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Artful Christmas - Art Anthology And Stampendous Blog Hop Finale

Festive greetings to all! :) I hope you are well my friends and are enjoying getting ready for Christmas!

But Christmas preparations aside, this week the Design Teams at Stampendous and Art Anthology have been playing together to create beautiful items with rubber stamping and paints. Oh boy, what an amazing week it's been so far -  if you've missed all the wonderful projects be sure to check them all out.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday 
Thursday

And today it's our big blog hop finale! Along with the inspiration we have prepared some awesome prizes packages for the 'happy hoppers'. Here is what you could win:

Each of the three prize packages will consist of:
Stampendous Creative Palette Monoprinting Plate
$20 Stampendous Gift Card
6 X 9 Art Anthology Stencil
1 - Colorations Spray
1 - Dimensional Paint
1 - Dimesional Crystal

To be in with a chance of winning hop along the participating blogs and leave some love. The more comments you leave, the higher your chance of to win (NB. the winner must have a US shipping address).

And here is my inspiration for today. A bit of a change from my Tuesday's vintage mixed media Santa card, don't you think? Today I have a trio of CAS (clean and simple) Christmas cards with spray paints, Frantage and stamps. Uhmmm... delicious!

I created the backgrounds by spraying Art Anthology Heart Color Spray onto white card. Then I sprayed pools of paint onto my craft mat and used them to ink my Stampendous Jumbo Snowflake Trio stamps. BTW. Did you know that the Snowflake Trio stamps coordinate with the new Snowflake Die Set? Pretty cool if you ask me! :) 

So I repeatedly stamped my snowflakes over the sprayed background and I moped any leftover colour with my handy cheese cloth, which just happened to make its way onto my cards! :) 

I trimmed the background panels to fit my A5 size card blanks and I sprinkled some Frantage Shabby White Embossing Enamel in the centres and heated the powders from underneath.

Once the powders were melted, I again inked my snowflake stamp with the Heart Color Spray to have them ready for the next step. Next I remelted the embossing powders with a heat tool and quickly stamped the inky snowflake impression into the hot enamel. I let it rest for 2 seconds then lifted the stamp up to reveal an amazing textured impression in the enamel. This is such a cool technique - I absolutely love it!

Finally, I adhered the backgrounds to the card bases with Creative Photo Corners in White and Crafty Power Tape. I added some sentiments stamped with Black Archival ink (Believe Christmas, Rare And Wonderful, Christmas Air) and some 3D Foam Snowflakes sprinkled with Crystal Micro Glitter.

OK, ready to do some hopping? Here's who's playing today:

Stampendous Blog

Jamie Martin

Kristine Reynolds

Lea Kimmel

Asia King (you are here)

Janelle Stollfus

Pam Hornschu

Wendy Price

Amy Hurley-Purdie

Tenia Nelson

Art Anthology Blog

Thank you for stopping by today and for all your lovely comments. 

Big crafty hugs




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Itching to etch - Stampendous playing with Armour

Hello Friends!
Oh what a fun week this is going to be! During these next few days all Stampendous gals will be playing with Stampendous stamps and Armour Etch Glass cream to create some really funky home decor items.

Yes, I know. When I first heard about this product team up I thought I was really going to struggle with ideas and that it was going to be super hard.

How wrong was I?! Glass etching is not at all difficult. OK, it might  take a bit of practice to get the perfect results. But who says that crafting has to be perfect? I believe crafting should be fun :) and today I hope to show you how fun it is to use your stamps to create truly unique glass designs.

For my today's project I decided to upcycle some juice bottles as additional storage for my embellishments. I already have an assortment of little jars with yellow, red and blue tinted tops so I decided to try to tint my bottles to match the rest of my 'glassware' collection.

OK, here we go. First you will need: clean glass bottles, Beacon's Fast Finish medium, selection of inks, some old containers/tins (one for each colour) and paper towels.

Mix a small amount of Fast Finish with your inks/mists in the container.

Pour your mixture into the bottle.

Put the bottle cap back on, ensuring to screw it on tightly. Gently swirl the ink inside the bottle covering the entire surface. Pour the excess ink back into you mixing container. 

Next, stand the bottle up side down onto the paper towel. Allow about 30 mins for the ink to run down and repeat the swirling part if you want the colour to be more intense.

Tint the remaining bottles the same way. Leave to dry overnight (NB. some tutorials advise to bake your glassware to heat set the colour medium. I am not intending to use these as fresh flowers vases so I skipped this step).

I also used a clear plastic tray for my mixing and drying to protect my work area.

Now, the really exciting part!

Swipe your bottle with antistatic embossing buddy. Ink up your stamp with embossing ink (any colour). Stamp onto the bottle and heat emboss with embossing powder (any colour). The stamping will become your mask.

I used the ornate frame from the Perfectly Clear Chandelier set), Vintage Lowercase alphas and Black Detail  embossing powder.

Next cut a stencil with a Nestabilities die from a contact paper. Adhere to the bottle and secure the edges with masking tape to protect the areas you don't want to etch. 

I didn't have contact paper so I used a thin acetate with repositional adhesive instead. Not ideal as the etching cream can seep underneath the stencil if it's not secured enough. This is where we get to the part where ART does not have to be perfect :).

Next cover the area to be etched with a generous amount of Armour Etch cream. Make sure to wear protective gloves as the cream is highly corrosive. Ideally you want to do this step in a well ventilated area with an easy access to a sink. Leave the cream on for at least 2 minutes (I left mine for 5 mins).

When the time is up, take your bottles to the sink and rinse the cream off thoroughly. You will also see that the embossing will start to peel off - just rub it all off gently. Dry your glass thoroughly and here's the final result:

Be sure to stop by Stampendous blog to see what other creative uses for the Stampendous stamps and Armour Etch cream the girls have come up with. I can't wait to see them myself! Oh and don't forget to leave comments - the more the merrier - because as always there are fabulous prizes to be won. The winners need to have a US mailing address so make sure to let us know if you have one, in case it's not obvious from your blog profile :).

And here are some helpful links for you.

Playing on Monday:
Kristine Reynolds

Playing on Tuesday:
Stampendous blog
Asia King (that's me!)
Janelle Stollfus
Etch Talk

Playing on Wednesday:
Stampendous blog
Cyndi Bundy
Lea Kimmel
Tobi Crawford
Etch Talk

Playing on Thursday:
Stampendous blog
Rhea Weigand
Etch Talk

Friday - please come back here for the big fabby blog hop!

Thank you so much for stopping by today and I would love to hear what you think of my first attempt to glass etching :)

Big hugs

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Favourite Five Christmas Cards of 2012 blog candy

 Hello Friends! 

I hope you all had a lovely, peaceful and magical Christmas and that Santa found you without any problems lol ;). Did you get (m)any crafty prassies? :). I got some lovely stamps and beautiful crafty books.

Just wanted to let you know about this fabulous candy on Debby's blog. To be in a chance of winning you need to share your fave five Christmas cards you've made in 2012 :).


So here are my choices:

If you'd like to browse through my various Christmas makes, click here.

And if you fancy more of the sweet candy, hop over to my Blog Candy Cauldron and take your pick!

Are you ready to celebrate the beginning of the New Year? What are your plans for waving the 2012 goodbye?

Big hugs

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Season's Greetings for boys and girls :)

For all the crafty Girls and Boys our there! A quick message from me:

The cards above are my final pre-Christmas CAS Stampendous inspiration for you. They are featuring the lovely Shaved Ice background and the great sentiment from the Cling Jumbo Holly Season Set. 

And now I would just like to share these few words, for a peaceful and magical Christmas for you and your loved ones...




Big (Seasonal) hugs

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More CAS Christmas inspiration

Hello, it's me again! I thought I would pop in and share some more CAS inspiration for Christmas cards. I Still have so many to make that I am really starting to panic now lol ;). Well, here are some more examples of quick makes with a background made using the Stampendous Shaved Ice (my favourite product for Xmas makes ever!). I shared this technique in the post here.

The stamps (all from Stampendous) I used are:
Kiddo Snow Globe SSC1148 (UK crafters click here)
Cling Jumbo Holly Season Set CRS5023 (UK crafters click here)
Tis The Season SSC1147 (UK crafters click here)

Other materials:
Craft, pink, white and blue cardstock
White vellum
Ribbons, buttons and Stampendous crushed glass glitter 

Don't forget there is still time to enter our monthly CAS Christmas challenge at Stampendous! Make sure to join us (click on the Kitty Button below) and who knows, you might be the lucky Christmas winner!


Have a lovely crafty weekend and thank you so much for visiting!

Big hugs



I would also like to enter the following challenges:
Happy Daze Design Team December - In the bleak Midwinter
Make It Monday #119 - Anything goes
Simon Says Stamp - What's your favourite
Cards Galore December - Christmas
Cardabilities #65 - Sketch
Cupcake Craftroom December - Christmas
Whimsy Stamps Inspiration Challenge Dec #54 - Festive Anything Goes
Pretty Little Ribbon Shop #17 - Christmas
Really Reasonable Ribbon #62 - Anything goes
Sparkles Monthly Challenges #39 - Anything goes
Sparkles Christmas Challenges #23 - Button or a Bow
The Cupboard Trilogy #6 - Frosty winter
Unique Crafters December - Anything Christmas

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I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

(...) Upon the sunlit waters
a whiteness sparkles and glows
like magical fairy dust
it shines like a whitest snow. 

White lights are illuminating
the gorgeous Christmas tree
with white dove ornaments
the stand out so beautifully. (...)
                       (Shanon Norman)


As promised here's the idea I had for using the lovely, deliciously sparkly Shaved Ice flakes. As this month the Stampendous gals are playing with Clean And Simple Christmas designs, I was really excited with this technique. It is so easy and quick that it is just perfect for making Christmas cards in bulk ;).

I started by covering a panel of white card with a generous layer of tacky glue. Then I sprinkled it with Shaved Ice, let it set for a minute and then tapped off the excess. Look at all that sparkle!

For my card I used the sentiment from the Tis The Season clear stamp set and the ornate flourishes are from the Excelsis Deo set. The background panel was inked with distress inks and stamped with the snow flakes from the Kiddo Snow Globe set. I added some snowflake embossed cardstock and a snowflake cut with Marianne's Design die (which I also covered with Shaved Ice). 

Then a few finishing touches with ribbons and gems and my card was ready. The picture really doesn't do it justice but the background just glows - I can't stop looking at it!

There are more CAS makes to come so watch this space! And thank you so much for all your lovely comments - they always make me so happy!

Have a lovely and creative week!

Big hugs



Challenges for this card:
The Stamp Man December - In the Bleak Midwinter
The Pan Pastel UK #48 - Song or Carol Title (I'm dreaming of a white Christmas)
The Happy Daze DT Blog December - In the Deep Midwinter
Just Us Girls #166 - Embossing
Simon Says Stamp - Snowflakes
The Play Date Cafe #160 - Colour Challenge

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CAS weekend experiment...

I wanted to try a CAS card again, you know me, me & CAS do not normally play together lol ;). Well, I saw this new challenge at Stampotique and thought, why not???! 

So there you have it! My newest weekend experiment...

Have a lovely weekend!
Joanna x

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