Red, White & Blue!

I was really pleased to try hosting a swap on UKS for the first time. I've resurrected the card swap and for July chose the theme red, white and blue. Cards could be made with a free reign within this theme. One thing I love about being host is you get to see every card that's been made and they are all gorgeous! I will take a piccy of them all once I've received every one but for now here's the 5 cards I made for the swap.

I had some trouble when trying to adjust the colour of the photos, the program I used turned a couple blue and refused to undo it but hopefully you get the jist :)

I used mainly Stampin' Up! products - Cherry Cobbler, Island Indigo, Temptin Turquoise, Real Red, Whisper White cardstock, ribbons and inks. The gorgeous background stamp is SU as is the sentiment and I used a large wheel stamp for the strip under the sentiment. The lovely flowers are the one and only Petaloo and are one of my favourite things to use on a card.

Looking forward to setting up the August swap... what will the theme be? I shall keep you guessing for now.

Grimm Fairytales

After participating in an Alice ATC Book swap hosted by the fab Rebecca and receiving the most amazing box back full of goodies alongside a book of ATCs made by Rebecca, I couldn't wait to join in the UKS Grimm Fairytale ATC Book Swap. In fact I joined all 3 groups!

As my fairytales I chose The Raven, Rapunzel and the Frog Prince, and made 10 of each ATC.

The Raven:

I used the Octopode image of The Raven and coloured it in using promarkers. The moon is a Clarity stamp which I LOVE! Again coloured with promarkers. I then used dusty concord distress ink and paris dusk momento with some cut n dry foam to create the sky. I created the title on Craft Artist.

Rapunzel:

For Rapunzel, once again I turned to the Octopode Factory and Lily Chivers fab images! I was determined to give her baby pink hair instead of the traditional blond! I cut the ATC with my Tim Holtz die using Stampin' Up!'s gorgeous Tempting Turquoise card then stamped it with Tempting Turquoise ink using a gorgeous new Christy Tomlinson stamp from part of the She Art collection. The castle is part of a Paper Artsy stamp. I created the title using Craft Artist and cut each letter out individually then attached with tiny foam pads. 80 letters with 80 foam pads takes some patience I can tell you! I gave Rapunzel's "aura" different colours on each ATC it just so happens I photographed the lime green experiment that makes her look radioactive lol.

  

The Frog Prince:

Finally I decided on The Frog Prince. My friend lent me the entire illustrated works of Grimm's fairytales, The Frog Prince was the first tale. And it gave me an excuse to buy another set of Dylusions stamps for the fabulous frog's head with a crown on. Not to sound repetitive but I did use octopode images again... I bought the prince and princess... and cut off the prince's head to make room for froggy. I created the colourful backgrounds with a Dylusions leaf stamp and promarkers. The leaves are a mix of Forest Green, Grass and Lime Green and the sky is Sky Blue. I coloured half the prince and princesses in purple and the other half in blue then attached princess and frog prince with foam pads and glued little frogs from Dawn Inskip peeking out around the place. Finally I scanned the Frog Prince story, resized it, cut out the title for the front and then used the first paragraph or so as part of my sign in on the back.

I don't envy the work Rebecca has to put into making all those books but I know it will be so worth it when we get them back.

Alice ATCs

Another Swap at UKScrappers. Alice in Wonderland ATCs. Make 5 and receive 5 different ones back. I picked up a book of images and papers at a craft show based on alice in wonderland last year and so decided to use them and add text which I purchased from Dawn Inskip's website. The digi kits were called "Beyond Wonderland 1 & 2" which has come in handy a few times and is also interesting and fun to read.

Here's the finished ATCs:

"Rule 42"

"Two of Hearts"

 "We're all mad here"

"Half Mad"

 "7 of Spades"

The images have been stuck on with foam pads so they stand out in real life. I'm looking forward to recinvg 5 different ones back. The standard of work on UKScrappers is really amazing so Im sure to get something fab back!!!

Steampunk art

As part of the "From the Ashes Art Journal CJ" on UKScrappers I've created two CJ pages for Chrissie whose fab theme was steampunk, ladies and grunge. Here's my take on it:

"Open Your Wings"

"The Hands of Time"

To attach the watch parts I used glossy accents then threw the parts on top of it - I love how they stick at all different angles. For "Open Your wings" I used a quote I really like and for "The Hands of Time" I couldn't find one I liked so I just wrote what I was thinking at the time.

Hope Chrissie likes them :)

Siân xx