Friends

With it being the last day of Frosty Festivities I went back and looked for things I might not normally do myself. I found a few to use on a layout which I could tie in with this weeks UKS challenge.
The challenge is to....
Use 5 or more paper/card layers
Use 3 or more washi tapes
Use 10 or more small embellishments

I framed a photo with beads as suggested HERE, the photo was a little bit too small so I extended the top with white paper which I then could cover with the beads (inspired by THESE)
Other areas of inspiration from Jennifers event were.....
Stencil all over the background of a layout or project
Make your wood veneers extra sparkly with gilding flakes or glitter
Heat emboss the edge of stickers, or paper, die-cuts, etc
Use glitter through a stencil
Mix up different colours of embossing powder - A blend of gold & gold sparkle embossing powder.

I would like to say a huge thank you to Jennifer for holding Frosty Festivities, I've had great fun entering the competitions, seeing what you've made and joining in. As you can see, I got heaps of inspiration from it.

Relish the Moment.

The inspiration I got from Frosty Festivities helped me with last weeks UK Scrappers challenge.
The challenge was to include.....
* Ribbon/twine/string/raffia
* Rectangle(s)
* 1 photo
* Stamping and/or embossing

I started off with a large rectangle aperture in the red paper, showing some of the yellow dotty paper having taken inspiration from Jennifers Giant Aperture christmas layout. It was missing ... something ... once I'd finished so I cut out a kind if wave from the aperture .... is this still classed as an aperture?

I also took inspiration from the prompts...
"Put three bits of ribbon/string together to tie around a project""Use a play-on-words phrase""Use contrasting patterns next to each other (eg geometric and floral)"& "Put a phrase on top of a photo"

These are definitely not patterns I'd normally put together but they do go. & with space on the photo detracting from the main subject (Zack eating a hot dog) this became the perfect space to fill with a title.

Altered Baubles

Good afternoon folks, I've had a lovely time crafting this week, dabbling in different mediums, allowing myself to be lead by the inspiration Ive found at Frosty Festivities.

Jennifer altered a bauble by painting an owl on it, now my painting skills are somewhat limited but I have been wanting to alter a bauble for some time. Inspired by Riikkas post using broken jewellery & found objects I went rooting through my scraps, christmas decorations & broken jewellery tub.

Plain, cheap read baubles covered in black netting with red bats on (not that you can tell they're bats like this), some ribbon, black chains & beads and some red flowers. I really need to get some more red flowers so I can create some more as I really do like them.

I also found some clear baubles I'd had for a while & thought they'd make perfect little snow scenes, a miniature version of Jennifers Scene box frames. A couple of broken wooden christmas decorations would work perfectly.

I added little dots of glue on the back half of the bauble & covered in glitter, rather hard to see them in this photo. I then covered the base in Snow-tex, a product I'd bought the first time I went to Hobbycrafts at the NEC & has sat in my cupboard ever since



This little lady had broken wings so I cut a couple of petals off a paper flower and covered them in gold gilding flakes before gluing them on, along with a silver thread.
I covered the inside of the bauble with glitter glue with the thought it would look like it was snowing. I then attached gold stars to more silver thread and left everything to dry

Once dry I could stick the string to the bauble making to stars & angel appear to be floating (almost)

Any one for candy canes?

The last pair of earrings I made were these ones....

Jennifer mentioning fimo in her Frosty Festivity inspiration prompts reminded me of the ones I made last year, but sadly one had broken, so this year I made another set & improved on them.

Rather than straight candy sticks I curved them at the top to make candy canes. I also had special looped screws I could put in the corks rather than wrapping wire round, much more of a smooth finish

Icicle Earrings

At Frosty Festivities Jennifer created a layout with icicles she made, this made me think how nice icicles would be as earrings, though the real things probably wouldnt.

So I made these beaded ones.

The part of the weekend I wanted to get the most inspiration from was Riikka Kovasin's mixed media trees. I'm not very good at seeing something that I would normally throw away as something else, but I went to the Recycling box to give it a go. I saw a plastic bottle & remembered seeing something about using similar containers as shrinky dinks & how the plastic can be manipulated.

TING! Light bulb moment!

Twisted plastic icicle earrings made out of a section of pop bottle :D

Christmas Earrings

As many of my regular readers know, I love making my own Christmas earrings and have more than enough for a different pair for each day in December, and yet I still like to make more. Yesterday Jennifers posts on her Frosty Festivities event spurred me to get cracking on this years. Jennifer herself is a Jewellery maker.

So today I'll be showing you 3 posts with the 3 stages I went through.

I started off thinking "Robins", which lead to "Robin Red Breast"

These are wooden robins with red felt on the back which shows through the gap to give them a red breast. The large ones are dangly earrings whereas the smaller ones are studs.
I made 2 pairs of the dangly robins, one for myself & one to gift to a stranger who finds them on black friday ... to learn more about this and the artists joining in check out the facebook page HERE, maybe you'd like to join in yourself.

I then started thinking about the prompt given for using a flower on top of a Christmas tree...

I attached the flowers & the stars to stud earrings, they can be worn with or without the christmas trees which just slide on & off the earring, I can chop & change them so they are both seasonal & can be worn at any time.

While looking at my supplies I also came up with....

Each of these pairs of earrings can be made for you & bought for £1.50p each plus a one off payment, regardless of how many you buy, of 50p to cover p&p. Just get in touch with me at blackangel (at) blueyonder (dot) co (dot) uk

Each block of words in red leads to Jennifer Grace Creates, Frosty Festivities where I've taken inspiration.

Creative Zone

What always impresses me about Jennifers work & events such as her latest, frosty festivities, she always manages to think outside the box, so I decided to try & add this thought to my scrapbook page, to think outside the photo.

In this case I tried to extend the photo, first by mounting it on paper of a similar colour.

I wasnt happy with it so got my paints out and went over with this. I sponged with greens and blue, then stippled with gold and browns to try & match the autumn leaves.

Jennifer had started with a monochrome page and felt it needed a pop of colour. I decided to do the opposite with this page. The paint being the pop of colour and I wanted the embellishments and title to be monochrome. I layered up embellishments, and a journalling block. Adding also buttons, beads brads & even a shaped paperclip.

I think this technique really draws your eye to the photo, not my usual style but I rather like it.

RAU Cirencester

I've had this photo (taken by the talented Julie) printed for almost 2 months now but kept putting it down, not sure what to do with it. I liked the technique Jennifer used in her frosty festivities of misting, stencilling & stamping so thought I'd try that as I had a brick stencil. First I misted in yellow, then blocked off some of the mask so there would be space to journal & misted this in brown. Finally I added a "You are here" stamp in brown. I wanted it to be seen but not to stand out to much.

I mounted it onto blue, a splash of colour against the brown, and then mounted again on a sheet of brick wall patterned paper. I also added a blue title. There was something missing, the page was too plain, I needed something to join all the mounts together and soften the line below the photo.
Brown ruffled lace seemed the perfect addition. soft and somewhat opaque.

Snowball fight in Summer

Last weekend Jennifer held her second Frosty Festivities Event on her blog. I love her events as not only are full of inspiration & tutorial but its also all for free!

I made the above layout using several posts for inspiration.
I initially decided to use Elf as my movie inspiration (mentioned in THIS post), and wanted to use it with my summer snowball photos. Jennifer suggested starting with a title (post HERE) so I googled for some buddy the elf snowball quotes & came up with the one I used.

Though I could fit photos on a single layout I went with a double having read THIS post, and began looking for both christmassy & summery papers & embellishments. Having found some christmas wood patterned paper covered in dots which reminded me of snowballs, I cut it into strips (from THIS post) this gave it a look of planks of a fence or a sledge.

The title didnt really make sense without buddy though so I found an image of him & printed it out fairly large (20cms tall) finding inspiration from THIS & THIS post.

The page needed a bit more texture so I added half pearls, buttons & wrapped bakers twine around a photo (inspiration from HERE). I had some old wooden butterflies that I wanted to use but the colour of the wood clashed with the wooden paper panels so I took on THIS suggestion & painted them white.

I finished off by adding the PL cards, & journalling before sticking everything down