Chalk vignette

A few weeks ago, I tried out the chalk dragging technique described by Wendy on the TandaStamps forum - thanks for sharing, Wendy! Last night, I had an idea for adapting it to make vignettes. This is probably as old as the hills and I'm the last to catch on but I thought I'd share, just in case I've managed to come up with something that someone might find useful!



I stamped the flower group with green dye-based ink and chalked over the heads in various shades of purplish-pink and added dots to the centres with a copper gel pen. I cut an oval hole in a piece of scrap paper (I used an acrylic tearing template thing and cut round it with a scalpel) and added a reasonably generous amount of chalk to the edge of the hole with my finger. Then I just centred the oval cutout over the flower image and dragged the chalk in towards the centre to make a soft coloured 'frame'.

The card's finished just by matting the stamped image onto burgundy cardstock and adding organza ribbon and a stamped sentiment on a card circle. I added a line of copper gel pen around to add a bit more definition between the light and dark elements.

Beaded snowflakes

Last year, I thought it would be nice to make beaded snowflakes as little Christmas gifts. Sadly, I had this thought on approximately December 22nd and since I don't do beads, I didn't have any of the things needed to achieve such a thing! So I promptly forgot about it. This year, I've had the thought a bit earlier so here are a few of the early efforts:





These are really very simple, no tools needed or anything. The large one is made with 2.5" corsage pins and the smaller ones with long dressmaking pins (1.5"). There's a decent size pearlised end on each sort of pin so that's the bead stopper at one end.

I've threaded an assortment of beads onto the pins - crystal clear/matte/crackle/AB in shapes from seed bead and bugle to druks (4mm, 6mm and 8mm), angel wings (8mm and 14mm), flower cups and faceted rounds. Just thread up six pins with the same arrangement of beads. I left about 1cm of pin with no beads on.

The sizes you want sort of depend on the length of the 'legs' I guess. For example, none of the round beads on the smaller flakes are bigger than 6mm but the 8mm beads look fine on the bigger decoration.

For the next step: tackle a fisherman :)

I've used 12mm cork balls for the centres. They're more usually sold to carp fishermen but I can assure you that no carp were harmed in the making of these decorations - lol! I've used a couple of layers of pearlised white acrylic paint over the cork and then just stuck the pins in to make the flake shape. I made a template first in Word so I could line the pins up along the spokes and get the angles right while sticking them into the cork.

A bit of invisible thread tied round the top of one pin made a hanger and voila: a snowflake!

Update: if you want more detailed instructions for these, Caroline has published my step-by-step guide on the Bubbly Funk website here: www.bubblyfunk.co.uk/article_info.php?articles_id=32

Tagged!

I've been tagged by Patsy with the Bumper Card thing that's doing the rounds. It's quite a nice one so I'll play along and risk my reputation as a tag-stopper!



Details are here

I'm going to send a 'Hello' card to my aunty (who I don't really see these days) and I'm tagging

Sheila - does fantastic things with rubber stamps and likes a bit of mess with her crafting. Good on you, Sheila!

Gillian - fabulously creative and with an eclectic style all her own.

Wendy - another lady who knows her way around a stamp or two and is developing an addiction to Cuttlebug embossing plates!

Adele - makes some beautiful things despite having very little time to craft.

Hazel - seems to have a boundless supply of energy and creativity and manages to make lovely cards even when her health is not quite all it could be.

Play along if you can, girls (sorry if you've been tagged already - just consider it a compliment to your creativity!).