Pretty's for Prima

I am excited and extremely humbled to have the privilege to put together this collection of my work and be considered for a position on the Design Team for Prima Marketing.

Firstly here is an altered journal I've made for my nephew and his fiancé, who are marrying later this year.  I really love doing this type of work and alter all sorts of things.

 

 

Enjoy these close-ups



 

 

 

Prima products used here are: Seashore paper, Sunrise sunset stencil, Shabby Chic Treasures - mailbox, Art basics - modelling paste, gesso, 3D matte gel, micro beads & glass beads.

 

Secondly this simple card was a pleasure to make:

 

 

 

Prima products used here are: Ledger pad paper, flower spray - ladybird, Say it in Crystals - Divine

 

Thirdly, my layout featuring another one of my nephews in his favourite pastime:

 

 

More close-ups to enjoy

 

Prima products used here are: Seashore paper & tags, woodgrain & anchors stencil, Art basics modelling paste, flowers - blue mini rose & seashore, Shabby Chic Treasures - resin birds, Junkyard Findings - Vintage Trinkets, light bulb & bottle caps, flower spray - lady bird.

 

Lastly here is my 'tag' notebook (2 oversized tags turned into a notebook:

 

 

Prima products used here are: Seashore paper, flower, Say it in Crystals - Divine.

 

Thank you for this chance to showcase some of creations to you, it has been a pleasure to put this collection together. 

Stocking for Santa to fill

Jo threw us a real curve ball for this weeks blog hop, as in our box of goodies she sent was a burlap stocking in all its naked glory just waiting to be decorated.  Oh dear, what to do ? ? ?  After thinking long and hard I had several ideas going on in my head but when I actually sat down to attempt something nothing was working . . . duh! !  So off to my local Spotlight store with the idea to buy some red & white gingham for my next idea . . . came home with a bag full of other goodies and no gingham.  This is what I ended up with after the rather shaky start.

 

 

After stripes of fabric & trims coloured the background, I then added lots of Imagine if . .  xmas chipboard pieces, along with ribbon, handmade poinsettia & gorgeous holly leaves.



 

This is the 'raw' product, which upon first sight was quite daunting.



 

Here is the stocking with the background stripes attached, now ready for the decorations.  Everything was hot glued in place - I have a burnt finger to prove it.

 

Enjoy these close ups of the decorations.

 

 The poinsettia was relatively each to make, follow the tutorial here and I found a easy to follow tutorial for the double bow on You Tube here.

This has been quite a tricky project to complete within the time frame I now have available at this busy time of year.  I can't wait to see what the other girls on the Design Team have come up with  on their stockings.  If you are following the blog hop correctly you would have started with the newsletter from Jo, worked thru the girls to Carol before me, then follow this link to go back to the Lilian who is at the top of the list.

Imagine If products used: stockings    
                                          candles
                                          frame
                                          bows
                                          gingerbread men, candy canes & santas hat
                                          mini xmas tree
                                          jandals
                                          reindeer

We hope this has really put you in the xmas mood, as there's not too many sleeps to go now.

Let's Upcycle

Time for another blog hop with Imagine if . .  and for this week Jo has left it open and has allowed us to do anything we please.  If you are following the hop correctly, you should  have come to me from Katrina's  awesome creation,

 This has been a great chance to do a bit more with my storage boxes, as I have planned to ultimately have all boxes looking pretty - yeah right ! !  I store my individual and random papers by colour and decided to paint several pizza boxes for the job, to be decorated as time permitted.  So here is my first decorated box.

 

This box obviously is for all my green paper, so I wanted everything to be differing shades of green.  I started by covering the box with scraps of green papers, then added some texture by using texture paste through several different templates, added random scraps of laces, dry wall tape, & random flowers.  These were all gesso'd, then all was coloured with various layers of green paints, Dylusions ink sprays & Lindys stamp gang sprays.  The grey Prima flowers were painted, then sprayed; the old black flourish with black felt flowers were painted, the quote was distressed then inked to match as well.  The peacock feathers add a bit more dimension and interest as well. 

 

When it was all assembled and glued down I thought it would look great with a face in the middle, so if you look carefully you will see I've inked thru one of the Imagine if . .   face stencils.  Sadly with all the texture and with the flowers already attached its hard to see, but I wasn't brave enough to use a stronger colour incase it didn't look good.

 

Here is how it now looks back on the shelf with the other plain boxes, you can see why I've decided to 'pretty' things up a bit.

 

Next stop on your journey through the hop is Carol where she is also touching on the subject of storage.  I hope our ideas give you inspiration to sort out your own collections.

 

 

a Stitch in Time

Is it a canvas? is it a book? . . . No . . . its a sewing kit.
For this weeks Imagine if . .     post I've been busy putting all the pieces together and created a wee surprise out of Jo's hollow book.

 

 

 
 
 
                           

  

 

 

I struggled at first for inspiration on this project, but once the ideas came I was away laughing.  After all these pieces were sorted, the fun began.

  

 

First the cover was created, using some sticky back canvas as the hinge.



 

Then I attached lots of die cuts (recognize these Ngaere??), used several stencils with texture paste, then painted it all with several colours with Lumiere paints.



 

All the embellishments were then mostly hot glued in place before getting a coat of gesso to seal them all.



 

Most of the bigger embellishments then received a coat of a very dark purple (yes scary I know) just to give them a solid base, then several layers of different colours were added until I was happy with the end results. 

Products used were: Lumiere Metallic Acrylic - Pearl Turquoise & Grape

                                 Folk Art Acrylic Paint - Heather

                                 Lindy's Stamp Gang - Starburst, Azure Sea Asters

                                 Viva Décor Inka Gold - Platinum

                                  Rub'n'buff - Gold leaf

 

I created the 'page' effect by adding book paper and scraps of lace between the chipboard 'pages'.

 

Enjoy more closeups of the embellishments.

 

 

Lots of Imagine if . .  products have been used in this, from lettering, random chipboard, felt flowers, stencils, quote from quote sheet, words.  All these products are available from the website and now can be found in several shops around New Zealand along with their very own new shop in Morrinsville.

 

Thanks for visiting, I hope my work inspires you to go forth and create something similar.

 

 

Jan IAR Challenge

Here is my entry for the latest fabulous challenge site I have found.  I Am Roses is running monthly challenges, with the enticing prize for the winner of their gorgeous flowers.  This month they are asking for projects with 'White Flowers'.  Not too hard I thought.  Their only criteria is that you must use at least 2 of their products . . . again, not too hard. 

This is my entry - an altered mousetrap covered with beautiful flowers.  You'll see below I've actually used 3 different types of white flowers.  All these mousetraps have actually been made for a swap with the girls at NZ Paperchase.  What a fun idea!

I started by pulling off all the 'excess' bits, then painted the whole thing with gesso.  Once dry I covered them with netting, then glued some trim around the outside edge.  This was then all given a coat of Lumiere paints . . . beautiful. . . . but then what to do ? ? ?

Firstly I was going to get carried away with some collage, but that wasn't going to work how I saw it in my head in such a small space.  Then I was going to go down the '70's way of thinking with big bright flowers, arrows and the such like, but then I came across this IAR challenge . . . yay decision made! 
I've placed Daisy's, cherry blossoms and rosebuds on top of random leaves, then under the 'trap' I've glued a small Spellbinders Shapeabilities 'Wrought Iron' fence die cut.  The wording is up on foam dots and has been finished with Crackle Accents.

This has been such a fun challenge to be in, now I can't wait to get my swapped mousetraps from the other ladies. Now my next big decision is to pick which one to keep for myself (I think it might have to be the terracotta & blue . . . I love this combination).
Fingers crossed for me at IAR. 

Altered chippies

The weather has been unseasonably wet the last few days, so its been great to get my teeth into a bit of serious crafting.  I have been wanting to make some new xmas decorations for some time now, so this was a great chance to get stuck in.

 

Recently I bought a set of plain chipboard xmas decorations from Spotlight.  They were actually quite nice and  could have gone on the tree as they were . . . but NO . . . I couldn't help myself . . .

 

 

I tried to use as many mediums, techniques and embellishments that I could.  I had real fun.

Day One: I used gesso, paint, PVA, texture paste, stickles

Day Two: Alcohol ink, more stickles, crackle paint, glossy accents, ink, stamps, ribbon, hessian, feathers, music paper, lace, charms, pearls, buttons, string, glitter, trim

 

 

This has been real fun, now its time to get the xmas tree out I suppose.  But no, this year we are having the whole family here for xmas day, so I'm planning on putting up a REAL tree for a change.  I'll get onto that job later next week I think.

 

I will be sharing these with the lovely ladies at Artfullcrafts where one of their challenges this month is 'Xmas Decorations'.  Come on over and be wowed by the other wonderful creations.

 

Also a big thank you to Roberta from Scrapping Everyday Miracles with an invite to come and participate in their challenges.

 

Thank you for visiting, I hope these will inspire you to make some for yourself.

 

Candy Station swap

I made this 'Candy Station' aka 'pretty box of lollies' in a swap for Paula at Artistic Creationz.  The brief was to decorate a box no bigger than 6" x 6" x 2", and to use a spring theme.

 

Sadly nothing I tried came out looking like spring, but I love how its turned out anyhow.  I've used lots of hand made flowers here again, with pearls, laces and trims to finish it all.

 

The goodies inside are all homemade:  Russian Fudge, Hokey Pokey and Candied Figs, yummy.  Now I can't wait to see what Paula has made for me.