Monday 30 January 2012

Stamped Candle

This weekend saw me try something new with images created from stamping. I have seen candles that have stamped images set onto them on other people’s blogs and I have wanted to try it for ages. It looks fiddly, and to be honest it is a bit, but I think that effort is well worth it when you see the results you get. One of my closest friends sadly lost her sister to cancer last September and today would have been her sisters birthday. I know my friend is going to find today very difficult and I wanted to make her a small gift to let her know I was thinking of her and her family.
Jeannette loves her candles and also loves anything with sentiment behind it so I knew this would mean a lot to her. I gave her the gift yesterday and she said she would light it for a little while today.
I used a Crafty Individuals angel stamp, its CI-086. It is a beautiful image and on the pillar at the side of the angels is says ‘Hear the beating of their golden wings and the sound of music in your heart’. On the back the word stamp came from a set I have from Papermania. I embellished the candle with some flowers sprayed with perfect pearls mist and some gorgeous cotton cream lace. I use this lot in my projects I always think it makes them look so vintage.






You stamp your chosen image onto tissue paper, colour it if you wish (I used water colour pencils to keep it very pale), cut it out leaving a very small boarder around the image and then place that image onto your candle. Then you wrap this tightly with wax paper, (I didn’t have any of this so I used baking paper. It’s not ideal for this project as it’s a brown colour and difficult to see your image underneath it!! However it did work.) You then gently use your heat tool to go over where the image is underneath the paper and slowly the wax from the candle absorbs the tissue paper with the image on it!! It’s like magic.
Just a few things to note if you try this project out for yourself:
The tissue paper seemed to have a different texture on each side! I didn’t notice until I tried to stamp the image and on one side the ink went a little blotchy, I tried again on the other side and it was perfect.
My water colour pencils have never been used and tore the paper, so I re stamped the image to start again and softened the points of the pencils on some scrap card stock before using again.
You need to be very careful not to overheat the image on the candle or the candle melts!! Just be patient and keep checking and re-heating.
I would like to enter this project into the Stamp Man Challenge, this challenge is all about embelshing your projects. See the challenge here:

Thank you for coming over for a peep
Hugs
Sharon xx

Friday 27 January 2012

Another napkin folded card xx

Hi there
Well get me, back to blog land again and within the same month! Over on Gingersnap Creations they are holding a challenge ‘glorious green’.
A friend asked me to make her a card for her niece after seeing the last one I made. She loved the butterfly image on the square card so much I incorporated it into this napkin fold design card. This is only the second time I have used the stamp and in the space of a week lol. I used pale green papers on my card and before it was embellished I thought they looked too plain and dowdy!!









I then worried when I had finished it that I had gone over the top with all those pearls, flowers, lace and perfect pearls mist. However when she opened the tissue paper that I had wrapped it in I needn’t have worried she absolutely loved it, phew.
The pale green papers are from My Mind’s Eye ‘wild asparagus’ range.  All the edges were distressed with distress inks. I stamped the image twice and then cut out the butterfly on the second image. I used ‘bundled sage’ and ‘Victorian velvet’ distress inks to watercolour the image, let this dry, covered the coloured bits of wing with glossy accents  and then attached this on top of the original image.
I sprayed the flowers with perfect pearls mist, and the tiny butterflies were a happy accident. I had sprayed some beige card with the same pearls mist and it saturated the card!!! In my panic I grabbed some kitchen roll and blotted the mist . . . and hey presto it left an imprint into the card and made it looked textured. I was rather pleased with that one, and I have saved the bit of card left over. I am sure it will come in handy for something. Don’t you just love it when things like that happen? Hope you like it too.
Thank you for coming over and having a peep. Hope you manage to stay warm this weekend; it’s so cold here today.
Happy crafting
Sharon xxx




Thursday 19 January 2012

Butterfly Card

Hello there

Well it has been far too long since I have personally blogged,  but I have been keeping my eye on all the blogs I follow. Crafting mojo left my house for quite a while and I have missed making things and getting dirty fingers from all those inks and stuff. So I thought I would try and have a go at another craft challenge. My car had to go into the garage all day today, so perfect time to get all the bits and bobs out and make something.


The Fashionable Stamping challenge can be found if you click on the link bellow

http://fashionablestampingchallenges.cottagecrafts.ie/?p=2104

I first saw over the challenge over on Paula's blog at http://ephemerasattic.blogspot.com/  , she makes some stunning creations.

Challenge 13 is Butterflies or Bugs and the only rules as far as I can tell is you must use a stamp (no digis) in your creation. Its my first time entering fashionable stamping so here is my entry




I'm not sure what the stamp is, as I bought it when one of my crafting friends was selling off some of her huge stash.
I stamped it twice and then cut the butterfly out of one of the images. I coloured it with distress inks and then added glossy accents to the coloured bits. The background paper is from Making Memories and is 'Noir Floral Butterfly', you can see the reverse of the butterfly paper on the bottom of the card. It's a gorgeous paper and I used in in the project before last that I posted on here lol.
Some lace and maybe one too many flowers and there you have it, my butterfly or bugs challenge entry.
Thank you so much for coming over and having a peep, hopefully this has kick started the creative flow I have been missing
Sharon xxx