Southern Girls Challenge - Winged Things

For this month's challenge over at Southern Girls Challenge the theme is wings and things. I have created a canvas featuring an art doll and a lot of diecuts.  I love using diecuts and I love finding other ways to use them apart from card making and scrapbooking.  Here is the finished piece, it is a 10"x10" canvas.

To make the background I first crumpled up tissue paper and glued it to the canvas, When I die cut with my more intricate dies I usually use a piece of waxed paper between the die and the material I am cutting.  I hate wasting materials so I keep all of the die cut waxed paper pieces. On this project I used a Cheery Lynn Web border die and using the waxed paper pieces I glued these around the edge of the canvas. The beauty of using the waxed paper is that it resists the paints and sprays and gives a nice effect on the background. I then diecut several butterflies out of scrap card using a Cheery Lynn die.  I glued these diecut butterflies to the canvas.  I then painted over the butterflies with white gesso.

Once the gesso had dried I began spraying the canvas with various sprays.  I kept going until I got the depth of colour that I was happy with, using a baby wipe to wipe off the paint and spray on the areas where I had put the waxed paper.  You can see the effect this creates in the image below.   When the paint dried I dry brushed the raised areas with gold and then using a wet brush I highlighted areas and brushed on Perfect Pearls.  I sprayed the finished result with a fixative spray to hold the Perfect Pearls.  This gave me a shimmering background for my canvas.

I then set about creating the art doll.  Her body is made from card which I covered with a paper towel that had been used to clean up paint.  I glued waxed paper butterflies to the paper towel and then glued the paper towel to the card.  I just cut the body freehand, then I attached it to an ice cream stick that I had stamped with a script stamp.  I stamped the head and then used a Memory Box die to cut out three trees to make her "crown".  The wings are a Spellbinder butterfly die.

T then used a Cheery Lynn sunflower die to make the flowers, a Dienamics die for the leaves and ladybugs, a Couture Creations die for the roses, a Memory box die for the bumblebees, a Sizzix die for the bird and a Cheery Lynn die for the butterflies.

I then added buttons and words and the project was done. I am really pleased with how this project has turned out and I had a lot of fun making it.  

I hope you feel inspired to enter our challenge over at Southern Girls Challenge and I look forward to seeing your entries.

I am entering this project on the following challenge blogs 
Rhedd's Creative Spirit
Altered Eclectics
Left of Centre Challenges

Altered Journal - Imagine If DT Project

Here I am again with the first Imagine If DT project for 2015, using up some of the leftovers and other pieces that Jo sent us in out Design Team parcels last year.  Before I get started on the project I would like to announce that Jo at Imagine If has asked us to let everyone know that each DT member has a prize pack to giveaway, which has a value of $20.00 and consists of beach words and things.  All you have to do to be in the draw is to comment on this blog on my project and "like" the Imagine If facebook page . Good luck to everyone who enters the giveaway. It is a great prize.  Here is a picture of the prize you could win.

My project this week is a  little journal made from a recycled book and since I loved the horse with wings I made to put in the Mini album I made and I had another horse I decided to make another one for the front of the cover.

Firstly I took the pages out of the book.  

I then covered the outside with tissue paper and painted everything black.

Using the leftover chipboard pieces from the Advent Calendar I painted them black, covered them with aluminium tape,ran them through the embossing folder and glued them to the front of the book.

I then painted the horse and the circle frame black and embossed them. In the end I used a heart instead of the star pictured below.  I dry brushed them with silver paint, die cut the wings and a Tim Holtz clock, painted some keys and the chipboard word "Live" from Imagine If and assembled them on the front cover.

I also made a little charm using an Imagine If chipboard gear and a small chipboard unicorn along with some metal gears.  This was added to the spine of the journal after I sewed in the signatures.

Hope you like this little project and again good luck with the giveaway.

SGDT Challenge Jan 2015 - New Beginnings - Affirmation Journal

Welcome to the first challenge for Southern Girls  for 2015.  This first challenge is appropriately titles New Beginnings. For my project I chose to make an affirmation journal and I chose a  lovely digi stamp from  our sponser for this challenge Lacy Sunshine. The stamp is Fantail Enchantress.  To be honest I do not normally work with digital images and I have not done a lot of art journalling but one of my decisions (I won't call it a resolution) for this year is to use the images provided by our sponsers but to put my own twist on things and also to work on my art journalling  I thought making an affirmation journal from an old book is a great way to begin my journey this year and try out some new things and challenge myself.

I printed out the stamp (A5) size.  I then screwed the paper up into a tight ball because I wanted it all crumpled and distressed looking.  I then roughly (and I do mean roughly) covered the image with watercolour paint. Once that was done I inked up a book page, ripped the edges off the coloured image and glued the image to the book page.

I wanted to distress it more so I punched out the corners of the page using a hole punch and then I covered the whole image with crackle glossy accents to give it an even more aged look.

I then painted a recycled book black and glued the image to the front and added the words.  Once everything was dry I used another layer of crackle glossy accents over top of the whole thing to protect and age the cover.

Here is the finished result and I will be using this book as an affirmation Journal throughout the year to keep me inspired and focused.

thanks for checking out my blog and I hope I have inspired you to try some of the gorgeous digi stamps from the Lacy Sunshine website.  I also hope you will pop over to the Southern Girls blog and check out what the rest of the Design team have been doing and maybe enter the challenge with your creations.  

I have entered this project in to the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge.

Mini Album - Imagine If DT Project

My first DT project for the new year is a small mini album using up some of the product from my Design Team parcels from Imagine If.  To begin I made pockets out of black card with a gap on one side for the hinge and a gap on the other for a photo mat.

I distressed the paper I used to cover the pages and then glued the paper onto the pockets.  I painted black various gears, a frame and also I used left over pieces from the roof of the roundabout that I did not put on my project last year. 

I also used one of Jo's wonderful quotation sheets for this project.  The sheet I used is Dreams.

Here is the first page using a quote and a frame from Imagine If. There is room for a photo inside the frame and a there is a journalling spot at the bottom of the page.

Here is the second page without the tag insert using the roundabout roof pieces and another quote.  The labels are chalkboard labels from      

And here it is with the tag insert.

I made the tag out of black card.  Here is the front and back

and here is the inside

It folds up and I used a tab off a can of beans for the top.

For the photo mat I used one of the Imagine If painted chipboard gears for the tab on the side. Here is side one

and here is side two.

Here is the completed pocket with the photo mat inside.

For page three I used more chipboard from Imagine If. I used some left over pieces of trellis, a heart, a key and the square piece of chipboard is a leftover piece from the Advent Calendar kit,  I painted all of these black.

I then ran the square and the heart through an embossing folder.  Once embossed I dry brushed the square silver, the heart red and the key bronze.  I then assembled the pieces, added die cut wings, a diecut gear and feather and black dome.  I added flaps to both sides of the pocket and glued the assembled piece to one flap and used magnets to create a closure on the other flap.

For the next page I took some of the squares from the chipboard trellis and the little owl ad ran them through the embossing folder.  I also embossed the heart.  I painted them and then added them to the page.

For page five I used some of the little chipboard houses and some other pieces that had come in one of my DT packs.

I attached the houses to a fold out flap I created on the main pocket.

These are the chipboard pieces I used for page six.

.And here they are embossed and painted and glued to the page.

For page seen I used the chipboard horse but of course I couldn't leave it as a horse so I gave it wings, more in keeping with the dream theme. In the end I didn't end up using the banner and the heart on this page.

I attached the fence to a flap so it opens out.

For the last page I kept it really simple.

Finally I made a cover and here is the finished project.

I hope you are feeling inspired and please feel free to ask any questions about any of the pages.