Distress Inks, Tags and What's New in the Garden

This week Linda at Studio L3 has set us a challenge to use Distress Ink. No problem for me then, because if I were cast away on a desert island and was allowed to have only one kind of colouring medium with me, it would be my DIs ! As always, in this challenge we take our inspiration from the one and only Tim Holtz.

When I'm wrapping a gift I usually like to finish it off with a handmade tag, luggage label size, and find that these end up being kept by friends and used as bookmarks. I have a birthday present all wrapped ready to deliver tonight, so have made a tag which also fits in with this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show a Tag challenge.

The tag was cut with the Tim die and coloured both sides with Faded Jeans using a blending tool. I ran it through the Big Shot with damask effect, buttons and zigzag stitching embossing folders and then coloured the raised parts with a Fired Brick pad. The roses are made with papers from Tim's Vintage Shabby pad, some smeared with Fired Brick and others left as is. The dress form and butterfly are covered with UTEE. The white satin ribbon has been coloured with Fired Brick.

In the garden this morning I was delighted to find the first of the lilies in flower, and these are one of my all-time favourites, the Regale, so I'm looking forward to going out there in the cool of the evening when their perfume will fill the air.

Another attraction in the garden these days is mum and one-week-old chicks. So difficult to get a decent photo as, when they're not hiding under mum to keep warm, they're darting about while she fusses, and each photo attempt ends up spoilt with at least one fluffy blur.

Here she has just found a tasty morsel and has excitedly called her little ones, so all we can see is bottoms as they search for those yummy crumbs.

Grungy Monday 9

The latest challenge from our much loved Grungy Monday guru, Linda at Studio L3 is Tim's Shabby Chic technique which he shows us here on his blog in one of his Christmas tag tutorials.

Yesterday I was at the Craft Barn Extravaganza enjoying seeing techniques and products used by 24 demonstrators, and I am sure that no one will be surprised to hear that I dropped by the shop afterwards and succumbed to temptation. One of my purchases was a couple of bottles of Americana acrylic paint. I hadn't tried that brand before, but liked the rusty effect achieved on a bisque box in one of the demos. So I used the Burnt Umber as my background colour for my GM piece. It doesn't have such a creamy consistency as some acrylics, but worked fine here. The stamps are all Tim's, and the other acrylics are Kaisercolour - Antique White and Sea Breeze. The tissue tape is coloured with Ginger alcohol ink.

Today has been one of these lovely Sundays. The sort where I listen to the radio and have a leisurely bacon and egg breakfast in the morning, (forget about the bit of hoovering and cleaning I had to do) followed by an inky afternoon. And something that made the day extra special, you will see in the next photo.

The rose is gorgeous of course, but it's what's on her that made me so happy. Yes, rain. In many, many weeks, we've only had two showers of rain, and these were in the night. We've had a lot of dry, warm, even hot weather for so many weeks I've lost count. Wonderful, but not for the farms and the gardens. So I took great delight in walking around in my garden enjoying that beautiful fresh just-rained smell. This rose is one of my favourites, Golden Celebration, and she just loved her shower.

As for Constance Spry, she has scrambled up a magnolia tree, and I managed to catch her peeping down at me. I made the mistake of not cutting her back last year, so she has climbed higher than I would like. Naughty girl. However, you can still catch her intoxiating perfume as you pass. She's another of my favourites, and I can even forgive her not being a repeater, because when she is in bloom, she has a strong scent like no other.

More favourites. The rose is Magenta, and she is the colour of squashed strawberry. She is a medium sized bloom, but appears dwarfed here by the two clemmies. My mind has gone a complete blank on their names. There are also a few sweet little pink Cecile Brunner buds putting in an appearance.

And of course I had to bring a little of the beauty indoors. More favourites: roses left to right - Graham Thomas, Abraham Darby and Golden Celebration, all glorious David Austin English shrub roses, now in a vase on my kitchen table with me sticking my nose among them and breathing in deeply every five minutes. The clemmie is Etoile Violette which I love so much that I have three of them in various parts of the garden, all scrambling up trees. This poor little flower got whipped off by a gust of wind.

And a few more Etoile Violette blooms to enjoy.

Now as I write I have the door open and am enjoying the sound of more rain, and the sweet smell of nature refreshed, and am about to tuck into my roast chicken dinner.

Wednesday Stamper - Nest

This bank holiday weekend I've taken some time to catch up on ATCs, and my first theme was Nests from the Wednesday Stamper challenge.

One of my favourite ways to make ATCs is to start with a sheet of white A4 card and create a background. Here I got my Messy Mat out on the kitchen table and went to town with spray bottles of Dylusions and Adirondack inks and Cosmic Shimmer and Glimmer Mist mica sprays. The latter and unobliging light made it difficult to get a good photo.

My stamping was with Personal Impressions and Crafty Secrets stamps in archival ink. Each A4 sheet potentially gives 9 ATCs, but as you can imagine each ATC may not turn out to be as pleasing as intended. However, usually some additional stamping or colouring can transform the less successful ones, and that's all part of the fun.

Next I decided to play with my sewing related stamps in the same way. This time the background is made using the pale coloured Distress Stains and Sweet Pea and Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mists. The stamps are Tim Holtz, Crafty Individuals and Artistic Stamper.

Grungy Monday 8 - Brushless Water Colour

The Tim technique that Linda at Studio L3 has chosen for us this week is Brushless Water Colour. Now I absolutely love playing around with water colours on water colour paper whether it be with brushes or with stamps. My knowledge of technique with brushes is still fairly limited, and the results I can achieve likewise. Results with stamps are always fairly mixed. However, when I clicked on to Tim's instructions, and saw these lovely Adirondack colours, and one of my all-time favourite stamps, the Hero Arts cow parsley, I was raring to go.

I did lots of pieces using that stamp and my other Hero Arts water colour style flower stamps. Tim said that practice makes perfect, and I certainly gave myself plenty of that, with varying results. I do find water colour fairly unforgiving, and am forever splodging where I didn't mean to splodge, or being too heavy with the colour. But it's such fun, and maybe one day I'll get to the stage where I'm more often happier with the results.

I also enjoyed using the Adirondacks again. I so love my distress inks that I tend to forget about the other inks I have.

The first one I've photographed uses Tim and Hero Arts stamps.

And in the other two, the same stamps plus a Rubber Stampede delphiniums one.

Thanks, Linda, for another great challenge.

Sunday Stamper - Diamonds and Pearls

The theme this week in the Sunday Stamper challenge at Hels' Ink on my Fingers blog is Diamonds and Pearls. Decided I couldn't miss the chance to mess around with a bit of bling, but in fact the end product isn't very blingy !

The background is stamped with a mix of Vintage Lace Fresco Finish paint and Antique White acrylic paint on an Elusive Images swirly stamp as a resist against Peeled Paint and Vintage Photo Stains. This is overstamped in Vintage Photo with a Paperbag Studios diamonds and script stamp. On the dress form I used one of my favourite Paper Artsy weekend techniques - Terra stamped with the swirly stamp, then painted with Antique White, sprayed with Pearl Glimmer Mist and smeared with Inka Gold to highlight the raised parts. Then finally some small diamonds and river pearls to embellish (bought by the packet !)

Tag It On Challenge - 79

Last night at our local Stamp Club we had a challenge to use purple, script and a tag. With one of my pieces I decided to add an additional challenge - All the Write Postage from Tag It On.

Colours are Dusty Concorde and Antique Linen DIs and Purple Twilight acrylic dabber. Stamps are Artemio, Viva, Tim Holtz and Paper Artsy.

Grungy Monday 7

This week's Grungy Monday challenge at Linda's Studio L3 blog is to use Tim Holtz' Distress Ink Colour Blocking technique as demoed by Tim here.

Not something I'd seen done before or thought of doing, but I can see I will be making use of the idea in the future. When I stamped in the blocks that I made in this, my first attempt, the result made me think of tiles, so I applied some Ranger white Enamel Accents to look like grout, and then Glossy Accents over the blocks.

The tag isn't finished yet, and I want to add some embellishments, but haven't had any bright ideas yet. Will leave it on my desk in the hope that inspiration will strike.