Tuesday 28 April 2015

A Crafty Family ...

A couple of weeks ago we went to one of my favourite places, Morwellham Quay.  

If you who have ever watched Edwardian Farm on BBC2 you may know that this is where the series was filmed.   The Quay lies on the River Tamar and whilst it is now part of a World Heritage site it was once a working Port, village and Copper Mine which were all very important to the economy of the South West and particularly the Tamar Valley.  

On the day that we went there were lots of craft stalls all demonstrating traditional crafts and offering their wares for sale.  One particular stall was offering workshops for children making things from natural materials and a glue gun.  There were lots of children making animals and fairy gardens/houses etc.  My youngest, Amy could not wait to get stuck in and this is what she created all by herself.  


 Meet Rosie, her new pet dog!  

Rosie is made completely from small branches/twigs (pre cut by an adult), bits of moss, small dried flowers and any other little bits that you would find when out on a walk in the woods.  She does have a little leather collar and her eyes are actually dried beans (very clever!)

Amy had a lovely time making Rosie and the lady who was running the workshops asked if she could take a photograph for her Facebook page so as you can imagine Amy was very pleased with herself.



 I was so impressed with the final result that Amy and I have decided that we are going to make more of these this Christmas and turn them into reindeer to hang on the Christmas Tree!

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On to today's project using the Oh Happy Day and the Petals & Stems stamp sets from Avery Elle.




This card uses the flowers from both sets of stamps to create a beautiful bouquet of flowers perfect in size for a C6 card.




I started by positioning the flowers into a 'bunch' on a large acrylic block (if you do not have a block large enough then you can of course use a smaller block and stamp several times).

I used the same colours as in the previous project to ink the flowers as I think that this stamp set works so well with bright, Spring/Summer colours  (If you would like to see the colours used again see the list at the bottom of this post).  I mixed some of the colours on the flowers by stamping a darker colour over a lighter one for no other reason than I think that it looks pretty!




Once the stamps had been inked with the fluid chalk ink I stamped this onto a C6 white card.  You will notice that I have 2 'scratches/stripes' on the large flower, this was actually where I was not paying attention and did not notice that I had imprinted the side of the ink pad case onto the stamp - it really does not matter though as this will be covered later so no need to stamp again!)




At the same time as stamping the image on the card I reinked the three larger flowers, stamped onto spare cardstock and cut out. They can then be put to one side for the moment.




To create the stems of the bouquet I scribbled at little green Distress Marker onto the side of the acrylic block and with a clean wet paintbrush picked up a little of the colour to paint some stems onto the flowers (you do not have to try and create a stem for each flower.  If you do the design may come very crowded and unbalanced - just a suggestion of stems is fine!)




The small leaf stamp from the set was then stamped around the bottom of the bouquet with the Olive Chalk ink pad several times.  I also stamped another leaf onto scrap card and trimmed out to sit over the sentiment (see further down the post).  Again the stamped leaf can be set aside for the moment. 



With foam pads I added the three cut out flowers to the card positioning them over their stamped images on the base card.  

I stamped a sentiment from the stamp set with Charcoal chalk ink, trimmed and positioned onto the card with foam pads.  This is where the leaf design that I stamped onto spare card earlier is used.  I placed a piece of foam pad towards the top of the leaf and positioned it so that it half sat over the sentiment and half off it (supported by the foam).




I wanted this card to sparkle and so added a little Diamond Glitter Glue to the flowers.



 On the final card I also added some 3mm Glitter Domes for a touch of even more sparkle.  As the card is so simple to look at I think that the glitter glue and glitter domes work well with the flat colour of the chalk...




...and here from this side shot you can hopefully see the 3D effect of the bouquet.




The stitched effect that you can see at the bottom of the sentiment and around the edge of the card was created with a pencil.

List of Fluid Chalk cats eyes used:



 Well this post has been a little longer than I planned today but I hope you have enjoyed reading about our crafty activities and we'll be back with more to share soon.

Hope the sun keeps shinning where ever you are!

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