Artful Days x 2

Hi everyone,

I'm back again tonight to show you three more projects that I was able to make with the contents of the July Goodie box! The contents are so varied and so scrummy that my head was literally bursting with ideas of what to make. If you are a card maker, scrapbooker or just enjoy using a variety of media in your projects then you will LOVE this Goodie box. Julie is a very talented, creative artist herself , using high quality products in her own creations. So it's no surprise that the boxes she's producing are full of top quality, currently trending, products: including Prima and Tim Holtz. I urge you to give them a try. I guarantee you'll be hooked! They would also make excellent birthday/Christmas gifts for crafty friends!
So here are a couple of cards and a mini wall hanging that were made solely using the contents of this month's box. Having said that, by adding your own stash you will be able to create even more projects and make the contents go even further!

More details of the products I used from the box contents and how I made these can be found on Julie's blog HERE.

I  would love some feedback either on here or on Julie's blog to give us an idea of what your thoughts are about this new venture! Suggestions for box contents or projects would be very appreciated! Thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate it! 

Artful Days Goodie Boxes

Hi everyone,

I'm so excited to be able to tell you all about my new adventure. Well, it's really Julie Bell's adventure but I'm lucky enough to be able to share her new journey. Julie has recently set up a wonderful website: www.artfuldays.co.uk - and has been very busy over the last few months setting up, researching, and gathering the most wonderful supplies in order to produce monthly Goodie boxes, available from this website. The boxes contain all sorts of products that can be used for card making, scrapbooking and mixed media projects. I was so excited about this new venture that I emailed Julie and asked to get on board when she put out a request for a design team. How lucky was I when she very kindly accepted my request? But it got even better because a short while later I received the first Goodie box to 'play' with in order to produce some projects. The packaging is beautiful! Well, you wouldn't expect any different from Julie Bell would you?

Now, I haven't counted all the items you get in each box but I can assure you there are loads!! I've made 4 projects so far and honestly have hardly touched the contents! There is definitely a month's supply of goodies to play with here! Everything is top grade, top quality and very enticing. I really don't know how Julie does it for this price. Unbelievably, you get all of this for £21.99 and that includes postage. Each box follows a specific theme. The July box theme, which I received ( I'm pretty sure you can 'back order'), is 'Vintage Family'. My favourite items are the Tim Holtz 'Found Relatives' photo cards. You get a very generous serving so I had lots to play with. As you'll see from my projects, I couldn't leave them alone. Oh and if you haven't tried Tim Holtz Distress markers yet, buy this box: you get one included in the most delicious Aged Mahogany colour! See, everything has been thought about in such detail - even the Distress pen colour matches the theme! I love it. 

Tonight I'm posting the first project I made with the delicious contents of this box. But, if you go HERE you will be able to see my step by step process of how I put it together.

I tried very hard to only use the contents of the box but relented to add just one extra item: a mini Ranger Vintage Photo mini distress ink pad. But you honestly don't need this as you'll see from my other projects. You get everything you need to make a lot of projects. The Distress pen is perfect for added colour, edging, doodling and even splattering! One of my favourite steps was to splatter the gessoed background with the Distress pen which I scribbled across my craft sheet first before puddling it with added water. Then I used a thin paint brush to flick the delicious pink ink across the background. 

I even used some of Julie's gorgeous packaging for texture on this. I would love you to pop over to Julie's Artful days blog HERE to see how I put this project together. I will be back on Thursday evening to show you the other three projects I've made so far. If you feel you deserve a monthly gift of crafting Goodies,  look no further. Shoot over to Julie's blog and start ordering. You are well in time for the August box! 

Summer#3UP Hot Picks and Crayons

Hi everyone!

How excited was I to be chosen (randomly) to take part in this particular #3UP Summertime challenge: even more excited to be generously given 3 sets of pre-loved, Hot Picks stamp sets together with a selection of portfolio crayons and Crayola Twistables. I decided to create a layout on a 10" x 10" piece of grey board and a 4" x4" mini box frame. I wanted to select stamps from all three sets and to use a combination of Portfolios, Twistables and Gelatos.

All three types of crayons are great to work with and I had great fun playing with all of them to see what they can do. All blend well and mix well with water and different media. However, the Portfolios and Gelatos offer a much wider selection of colours and the Gelatos include metallic crayons too. Delicious. I took lots of process photos for this project so, if you are willing to stick with me, grab a coffee and copious biscuits and let's get started. I prepared the board and box frame.

Choosing a variety of portfolios in analogous colours, I blended them across a piece of white PaperArtsy Tissuestock to cover the textured box frame.

This was then torn into strips to cover the box frame and the aperture which was then glued on. 

I sealed this with DecoArt matte medium. 

I wanted to use the poppy head from HP1606EZ as a key feature on the layout. I decided to increase its size by layering it up several times to attach to the corner of the frame. I used the same portfolios I'd used for the frame only this time I blended them with water to turn them into sprays. I did this by rubbing each crayon across the bottom of a small glass dish, added water then decanted them into mini spray bottles. The secret is not to add too much water! Like this: 

These colours were then sprayed across a couple of sheets of PaperArtsy Smoothy card (240gsm).

...and stamped with the poppy head and black archival ink. 

These were cut out and sealed with Fresco satin glaze. They were then layered up and glued to form a larger poppy head flower and sprayed with a sparkle varnish.

Now for the prepared Grey board background. I use this same technique to turn similar colour Gelatos into sprays. Before spraying, however, I stamped and embossed (in white) the poppy head several times across the board to act as a resist to the Gelatos. Once I had done this I sprayed the Gelatos across the background, allowing the colours to mix and merge, drip and puddle around the stencilled texture. Delicious and great fun. Once dry, I rubbed a couple of the metallic Gelatos through a few Tim Holtz stencils.

I stamped various stamps from the three sets across a sheet of PA Tissuestock and tore around some of these before adhering them to the background with matte medium.

Here's a close up of those colours settling in and around the texture paste. 

Now to use those gorgeous butterflies from sets: HP1301EZ and HP1507EZ! I decided to use the Crayola Twistables for these. Although they have a limited colour range they fortunately had the perfect colour combo for this spread. 

This time I dry blended the colours across PA card stock and Tissue Stock. I sealed the colours with PA satin glaze which helped them to merge further, then stamped all four sizes of butterflies onto both substrates. These were cut out, layered up and micro beads added along the body sections. I also added antennae to the largest butterfly. After adhering the box frame onto the board, I was able to place the butterflies into position, adhering the largest one to the opposite corner of the box frame to the poppy flower head.  

Now it was a case of adding text and embellishments to complete the final stages. The words were taken from set: HP1301EZ. I used various die cuts I had in my stash - I love that Prim poppy die! I coloured some Golden bead gel and rubbed that around the edge of the grey board frame, and glued some micro beads spilling out of the box frame. 

Finally, I added some beads and doodled around them and there it was: in all it's glory! I've loved making this. It sits proudly on its easel on my bookcase in the dining room and makes me smile each time I look at it. And I'm hooked on using crayons! Here are the delicious stamp sets Leandra sent me for this challenge:

 I congratulate any of you who managed to stay with me through the entire blog post but don't blame any of you who just looked at the photos. Hopefully, they were sufficient. I was lucky enough to be paired up this evening with the very talented Donna Ragdoll and Nikki Killinger. You can see their projects here. 

Thanks Leandra and Darcy for this lovely opportunity. I've had a ball!