Ocean's View Canvas and Love Note for Memory Maze

Hi all. I know it has been a while since my last post. Sorry about that, but the first part of the year is always bedlam around here. With birthdays galore, Christmas, New Year's, Australia Day, Easter, school holidays, it is just never ending! I hope you all had an enjoyable and safe Easter break. Now I must admit that I did have some help with todays items. All of my kids love being able to come and craft with me in my craft area, but Miss 3 hasn't quite got grasp of the concept that sometimes mummy needs to do 'Mummy Only' craft. Anyway you will see what I mean a little into the post.

 

Ocean's View Canvas

 

This Ocean's View canvas does contain quite a few Memory Maze pieces so this will be quite photo heavy. I warn you in advance. The idea for this canvas actually started a while back when our DT members had a little challenge. I made these adorable little seahorses.

 

I covered the chipboard pieces in green acrylic paint, then the magic begins. After cleaning some egg shells and allowing them to dry, I have added a layer of tacky glue to the top of the chipboard pieces. The egg shells were then placed onto the top of the chipboard and then pressed down into the glue. This process will crack the shells into small pieces. Let the glue dry completely and then place drops of alcohol inks over the top. As the egg shells are porous they soak up the colour and you are left with this great mosaic like effect. I have added a layer of glossy accents over the top to finish them off.

 

So with my seahorses in hand, and a stash of other sea related chippies on board also, I set about creating a mixed media style canvas of the ocean. Here is the finished product.

 

 

And a few close-ups.

 

 

 

 

I initially set about working on the layout for the canvas. I roughly worked out the skyline, sea bed and where each of the chippies would be placed. I wanted to add a bit more dimension to the canvas so found a heap of nautical themed stencils and added some texture paste. As you can see from this next picture I turned my back for a minute and Miss 3 decided that the canvas needed a little something extra. LOL! Note to self - hide the pacer next time you go to the kitchen for a drink of water and leave Holly at the craft bench.

 

Never mind. Nothing a little gesso and some water colour paint couldn't hide.

 

 

All of the chipboard pieces were covered in a layer or two of white gesso to begin with.

 

The stars were created in the same manner to that of the seahorses above.

 

 

The sharks were just covered with dark grey ink. The anchors, beer bottle and wheel were covered in alcohol inks and then sat in salt to give a distressed look.

 

 

 The seagull and pelican were coloured with felt pens and then the white sections were covered in a layer of white glue and then some fuzzy flocking was added to the top.

 

 

It really gives a great appearance of feathers.

 

 

 

 After it was all glued down I covered the canvas in a layer of matt medium to finish it off.

 

Love Tag

 

This one is a nice, quick and easy one. To begin with I covered this leafy swirl in liquid chalk ink.

 

 

Then stamped on some of my favourite stamps.

 

 

 And finished off with a layer of star dust stickles. Add some papers and a few other embellishments and ta-da!

 

 

 

 You'll have to tune in later in the month to see how I am planning on using this for a mother's day present.

 

Until next time,

 

Keep Crafting.

 

Jodie.

Family Canvas for Memory Maze

Hi all. It’s Jodie here and I am back as promised with a canvas reveal this time. Now I did pre-warn you that it may be a little long, so if you haven’t already done so you may want to grab yourself a cuppa before you get too into it. There is plenty of Memory Maze chippies used on this one, and I used a few techniques that I haven’t tried with chippies before, but am really impressed with the way they turned out. So let’s get into it.

To begin with I started by selecting a picture that I thought would go nicely with the frame chipboard that I had (I actually had 2 that I couldn’t decide between as you will see in the following pictures). Then I searched through my Memory Maze chippies stash to find others that might work with these. After a few minutes of playing around with the layout I had one that I was quite happy with.

Selected Layout.

Option 1 photo.

Option 2 photo.

Then it was onto preparing the canvas. This would be the background of the piece so I wanted it to have some texture to it, but also match in with the theme of the piece. I initially stamped a floral image several times on the canvas and then out came my leaf stencil and modelling paste. While the modelling paste was still wet I grabbed another smaller leaf embossing plate that I had, and pressed this in to a few areas of the paste. This gave it just a bit more texture as you can see in the following pictures.

Products used to prepare the canvas base.

The texture on the canvas.

This was then allowed to dry (with some assistance from my heat gun), and a coat of gesso applied over the top. I only had a little gesso left in my container so decided to add a few drops of ink to it, to give the background a bit of base colour. This was then heated again to speed up the drying time.

Products used to cover canvas texture in a coat of gesso.



Close up of the gesso covered canvas showing the texture provided.



Then came the fun (but messy if you are anything like me) part, colouring time. I spritzed the canvas with a little water and then added drops of inks in random places over it, followed by more water and inks, a little heat and then more of the same until I had something that I was reasonably happy with.





Inks used to create colour on canvas.







Close-up of the colouring on the canvas.



I then decided to add a little more ink to the background, but this time I added it to a baby wipe first and then sponged this over the canvas randomly. It gave the ink colours a completely different look, and gave the base colours that bit extra it needed. Once this was all dried a coat of matt medium was brushed over the top to help seal it all.



Inks used to finish off the colouring process on the canvas.



Then it was time to move on to the other elements for the canvas. There was the main frame chippie, the Family sentiment, the butterfly halves, and the other word sentiments and small ornate frames that all needed preparation before being able to stick to the canvas backing. The word sentiments, ornate frames, butterfly halves and large frame were all given a coat of gesso and then covered in acrylic paint.

The Memory Maze chipboard elements after covering with gesso and acrylic paint.

The Memory Maze frame chipboard after a coat of gesso and acrylic paint.

I then concentrated on the butterfly halves, by giving them a coat of crackle accents. These were left to sit and dry while I worked on some of the other elements and after a little while you could see the little crack marks appear. This was when drops of alcohol inks were placed over the top of the crackle accents and left to soak in. Check out the effect in the pictures.

Inks used to create extra colour on butterfly sections.

Close-up of the coloured crackle effect.

They needed a little bit of lightening, so I did the same again with some liquid acrylic ink, only this time it was only left for a minute or so and then the excess sponged off.

Acrylic ink used to add additional colour to butterfly sections.

Close-up of the butterfly sections.

The smile and laugh word sentiments and the ornate frames (that had already been painted in black), were prepared in the same manner with the crackle accents and alcohol ink droplets soaking in. Here are a few close ups so you can see the effect of using this process on these pieces.

The coloured crackle effect with the black acrylic paint background.

Close-up of the coloured crackle effect on the chipboard.

With the family word sentiment I wanted it to be a bit lighter than the others, so before it was covered in crackle accents I sponged some white acrylic paint over it lightly. Then instead of adding the alcohol ink drops directly to the chippie piece, I applied them to my craft mat (which already had a spritz or 2 of water on it to help the inks react). I then turned the chippie over and left it to soak up some of the liquid colour (crackle accents side down in the ink). Be careful when lifting this as it will be very wet and fragile. I then heated it to help it dry a little (both front and back). As you can see from the close up below the difference in colours is a lot more subtle than the direct ink approach. I then covered the piece in the green liquid acrylic ink and wiped it off after a minute so that it seeped into some of the cracks.

The chipboard piece after soaking up the water and inks.

Then it was onto the main frame. I thought that this needed a bit more texture to it so decided to clear emboss a leaf stamp randomly onto the top of it before I added any more colour. The glossy sections are where the leaves have been heat embossed.

The heat embossed frame ready for some more colour.

Ink drops were then placed on a sponge and these were sponged over the frame to give it some additional colour.

The additional colour added to the frame piece.

Now it was time to start assembling all of the pieces. I decided to change up the original layout idea slightly as you can see from the pictures. I chose the main picture that I was to go with and this was cut down and glued to the back of the main frame. I also printed out some of the photos details on a spare piece of photo paper and cut these out and glued to the back of the ornate frames. I covered the front of the details sections with glossy accents. These were then glued in place on the main frame as were the butterfly halves. The sentiments were glued down to the canvas and the main frame was glued to several sheets of cardboard before being adhered to the canvas (to give it some added depth).



The End Result.

 

There you have it. Sorry about the length of the post, but there were quite a few steps involved in this one. Enjoy the rest of your day and keep creating!

Until next time.

Happy Crafting.

Jodie.

My first posts as a DT for Memory Maze

To begin with I have a Birthday card that I made for my 2^nd child who turned 7 earlier this month. It was a really quick card as I was under the pump with this one. I have used pieces of plain cardstock in black and grey for the bases of this card. Dies were used to cut the shapes out of the black and grey card and a piece of watercolour cardstock was placed behind the shield shape window (it was coloured with several alcohol inks). There were 3 Memory Maze chippies used on this card; the Happy Birthday, Crazy Kid and Best Wishes sentiments.

 

The Crazy Kid chippie was painted with light green acrylic paint and then covered with green glitter glue and glossy accents. The Happy Birthday sentiment was painted with Lumier acrylic paint in indigo, and then topped with glossy accents. Check out how much shine this can add to a chippie in the pictures.

 

On the inside of the card the Best Wishes sentiment was coloured with green alcohol ink and then covered with the green glitter glue again.

 

The edges of the grey card were all inked with brown stazon ink. Once all of the pieces were prepared they were pieced together and Hey Presto!

The second item I made for my Memory Maze post will be here tomorrow. Now I will warn you that it has quite a few steps and pictures to it, so check back in tomorrow for that one.


Until Then,

 Happy Crafting,

 Jodie.

February's Stick It Down Card Challenge

With a new month comes a new lot of challenges over at Stick It Down for card makers and scrap bookers alike. Check it out for some inspiration or to join the challenge yourself. This is the sketch given for the card challenge for this month

 

Yes being February everything pretty much revolves around Valentine's Day. I guess I'm one of the lucky one's in that I have found my match in my husband. Then again, I've got a pretty special place in my heart for 2 more 'little men'. Let's face it every mother has a special place in their hearts for their kids. Anyway, my husband isn't exactly what one would call an overly romantic or incredibly metrosexual man, he's more of your manly man, if you get what I mean. So all things pink and red, and frilly really isn't his thing. So this is what I ended up coming up with.

 

It was made on some plain white cardstock, and the coloured cardstock were some off-cuts that I had in my stock (Kaiser Craft I think). The ribbon was some white velvet that I put drops of blue and green alcohol ink on to dye it. The stamps come from Kaiser Craft and were inked in Stazon ink, which was also used to enhance the edges of the cream cardstock.

 

 

I also sprinkled some very fine glitter over the front of the card in spots as you can see from the above picture. On the inside is a simple stamp from my collection.

 

 

Although Valentine's Day is the only major event in February for most, it's NOT in our household. We find that December and the first 3 months of the year are incredibly hectic here. From school holidays and Christmas to New Year's and then lots of birthdays, it is full on. I'm sure some of you out there in blog land know what I mean.

 

Until next time,

 

Happy Crafting.

 

Jodie.

 

 

Chipboard Favourites

I hope this post finds you all well. Today I would like to show you some of my favourite pieces that involve the use of chipboard. It is such a versatile product and can be decorated in so many different ways.

Here I have used chipboard pieces from my stash to decorate a card and tag. I have coloured some dove chipboard pieces in addition to using the butterfly template (the area that is left from a piece of chipboard when your desired shape; in this case the butterflies, is pushed out). I have filled this area with modelling paste and used it to create texture on the background of the card.

For the tag I have used chipboard swirls and coloured these to match the colours on the tag image. I have also coloured a chipboard sentiment to include on the tag.

For my next project I have used chipboard pieces in conjunction with metal embellishments, paper flowers, beads and trinkets to create the silhouette of my daughter Holly. These were all covered in gesso before being coloured with inks and sprays.

For one of my more recent pieces I used the chipboard letters that spell out CHRISTMAS to decorate this wreath. I glued matching papers to each of the letters and then covered them in glossy accents to give them some shine.

My next piece will always be one of my favourites for sentimental reasons. When we got married last year our 3 children were heavily involved in the day with us. As our daughter was only just 2 at the time we wanted something special for her that she would be able to carry (and not too heavy). So I came up with the idea of a wand for our little flower girl. I handmade each of the flowers on the wand in colours to match our theming. The large flowers around the center were punched out of a sheet of chipboard. This was then soaked in water briefly, so that some of the layers could be separated. They were then dried and painted and had a hole placed in the center.

For this scrap booking challenge piece you were required to use embossing (either dry, wet or both). These chipboard pieces were perfect for highlighting some of the features on our wedding pictures. The bridge, ornate frame and letters were all coloured with ink first and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

This card has been made for my uncle who has his birthday next month. He loves being out on his boat so these chipboard pieces were perfect. I've cut the bow off a tug boat piece and painted it white, and attached it to the anchor piece which has been painted with perfect pearls. The pelican piece has been added to give the beach theme some more balance. Add a tag and 'Hey Presto'.

Now technically I did not do these pieces (although I did have to help out a bit), but I wanted to show these anyway. These are gifts that my boys gave to their teachers last year for Christmas. They are small 3D frames that the boys have added some personal touches to. They have used a chipboard heart frame, coloured it and decorated it with some paper flowers and chipboard butterflies. They also made the background image themselves with a stencil, modelling paste and spray inks.



Now I hope that this has inspired you in some way to create. 

Until next time,

Jodie.