February Art Journal Page-Catching Stars

Happy weekend friends! We’ve had some great sunshine for the last few days and it’s been really nice, but it’s very unusual for us to have these warmer temperatures for this time of the year. I will enjoy whatever it brings for sure! But in the meantime, I’ve also been enjoying time in my craft room getting creative too!

As you know, this month I’ve been sharing several art journal pages as I’ve been hosting this month’s challenge theme over at Art Journal Journey. There is still lots of time left to join in the fun with us and share your inspiration with the “LIGHT” theme and I’d love to see your take on it!

Today, I’m not only sharing my project for that, but it’s also time for our monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” February prompt of “LIGHT” (of course!):

Oh my stars! I don’t know if these guys are expecting several rainy days ahead, but they really want to be prepared for it! For my “stash smashing” I went with using some metallics. Do you have a problem hoarding those metallic things because they’re just so pretty? I am guilty! I’ve used some metallic paper to cut out the lettering, I’ve used some metallic watercolor that I avoid using so I don’t run out and those star sequins I have so many in every metallic color!

For the background: I’ve used a 5.5″x8.5″ piece of Canson watercolor paper with the pre-punched holes at the top using my Zutter machine. I’ve pulled out my watercolors and used shades of blues, but also dark turquoise and dark violet. I’ve used the metallic copper watercolor to splatter over the background for those distant stars. I also added a very light touch of this metallic watercolor on the top highlight areas of the critters, around the wheelbarrow, the net, the lantern and the star with the mouse. (Sometimes it’s hard to capture all of the shine on a project, but this thing is very shinny and sparkly!)

But before I put all of the details on the images, I took a black marker and drew in a ladder to reach up towards the clouds so Mr. Fox could climb up to the clouds and catch his star. I then took a grass border die and die cut a strip in black for the bottom.

All of the stamped critters and clouds came from Lawn Fawn sets. I stamped, colored and die cut them to arrange my scene. Some of images are popped up with foam tape for dimension. As you can see, I’ve added tons and tons of metallic copper sequin stars filling the wheelbarrow, dropping from the sky and even the little bunny is holding his star.

Lastly, I die cut the metallic copper letters, backed them with black cardstock and popped it with foam tape over the page and printed off the quote on the computer and cut them in strips to arrange on the scene.

This was lots of fun to do as I was able to use up some of that hoarded metallic stash! Hope you’ve enjoyed it and gotten some inspiration from it.

Thanks so much for stopping by and enjoy your weekend!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – LIGHT/KEEPING IT LIGHT
Stamping Sensations – Animals/Birds/Creatures/Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – #272 Anything Goes

October AJ Page-Thriller Mix

Hello friends! Halloween is very near! 💀 I have been working on a few Halloween cards and will be posting those as soon as I know they’ve been received. But today’s project is about Halloween in mixed media art journal form! I do enjoy crafting Halloween!

Very excited to be doing the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” October prompt of “MIX” (mix colors together from any media):

For this month’s prompt, MIX, I have to say that I love to mix up colors to see what they look like. I have SO many bottles of watercolor and of course watercolor is fun to mix up…so I went with that for my background.

For the background: Hard to tell, but I’ve used eight different colors of watercolor that was applied to a pre-punched 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold press paper. I also used a circle stencil to apply some white ink over it for a bokeh effect. I also stamped some random words and gears. (Stamperia and Tim Holtz) I also took some of the green watercolor used in the background for a few splatters.

Showing my age here but does anyone remember the Micheal Jackson “Thriller”?! It’s perfect for Halloween! I thought I needed to add a title to my page to represent the Halloween theme and this song came to my mind! 😆

I found some cool lettering that I used my Cricut machine to cut them out with in both gold metallic (also cut gears with) and some dark grey cardstock. I glued them together with a slight off-set so the gold shows through. I also used some Nuvo Glow in the Dark liquid drops around the edges of the letters. I wanted to make it really “goopy” so I heated it up with my heat gun so that it bubbled.

The bottom of the page has the really cool Steampunk skull image that came from an Etsy store. I used another image of it to fussy cut the hat and then popped it up over the image on the paper. If you look at the center bottom of his hat, I added a gear with a clear drop in the center of it.

I’ve also added a talk sticker and rub-on from Tim Holtz. I added a couple more metal gears from my stash to go with the gold cut out ones. Lastly, I’ve taken some silver metallic wax and went around the edges of the page and slightly over top of the skull’s hat.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today! I sure had fun putting it together! Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – In Gear
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media #98
Try it On Tuesday – Halloween
Two Old Bats Halloween – Anything Goes Halloween
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Spooky!

June AJ Page-Metal Train

Hello again! I hope that you are enjoying your start to Summer or at least enjoying the month of June as we come to a close with it. We are hoping to get some much-needed rain the next few days, but I see there has been some very strange weather happening everywhere lately. So whatever your area, hoping it’s good for you.

It’s time for the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she will have some wonderful inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” June prompt of “METAL”:

How about you?! Do you have lots of metal things in your stash? I have several different things, but this time I wanted to concentrate on my large bag of metal gears along with some older things from my stash. With the gears in mind, I decided that a steampunk theme would be something I could do. So I pulled out my Stamperia Aviator themed papers and saw this cool steampunk train to use.

For the Background: I used my usual 6″ x 9″ 140# Canson paper with the pre-punched holes at the top and painted it with some Periwinkle and Turquoise colored paints. I splattered some dots over it with silver metallic paint and then went around the edges with some soft black sponged over it. The wording strip at the top was printed on my computer and it says: “Not all those that wonder are lost” repeated. I also printed out the “9 3/4” from my computer and cut it out with a circle die and layered some copper metallic cardstock behind it. (If I saw a train platform with 9 3/4 on it, I’m sure I would want to take it! Maybe I need a trip to Universal Studios!)

The train along with the “Vintage Travel” badge and compass were fussy cut out from the Stamperia papers. I used a metal clip from my stash to combine the badge and compass together and used foam tape to attach it to the page. I also used some foam tape to attach the cut-out train after adding a metal brad to the front wheel.

I wanted to share a closer look at the bottom of the page to explain what I did. Using some black cardstock, I used the Lisa Horton Mechanical Rivets embossing folder over it. I used some Finnibair metallic wax pastes to go over the entire panel to get this look. Before attaching it to the page, I used some large metal eyelets from my stash to attach them at each corner and then I glued some extra metal gears over top of them.

You can see how I’ve attached all of the metal gears to the train here as well. For the “steam” coming from the train, I just used a sponge and white ink.

Had some fun playing around with the metals and making faux metal as well with this one. Hope you’ve enjoyed it too! Thanks for dropping in today and see you soon!

Challenges I’d like to enter this AJ page in:

Art Journal Journey – All About Numbers
Country View – Vintage
Creative Artiste – Anything Mixed Media
Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes (no cards)
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Pick a Number
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes Using Paper

Snowflakes for {Cupcake Inspirations}

Hello friends! Happy Monday! Hope that you’ve had a wonderful weekend and are ready for Christmas to come! This Friday will be Christmas Day and I’m happy to have everything finished and ready to deliver the cookies and presents to family and enjoy the time with my husband. Hoping that next year will be looking much different too! Are you ready for Christmas or just ready for the year to be finished? 😉

Today is the start of a new challenge over at {Cupcake Inspirations} with the theme of “SNOWFLAKES“! The only difference for this challenge is that it is only lasting for ONE week instead of the noraml 2 weeks. Also, this will be my final post as a design team member for them as well. I have really enjoyed being apart of this team as what’s better with crafting than with a cupcake inspired theme, right?!🧁😋 So I’m sure I’ll be inspired to play along with the challenges in the future as I have been! Hope you’ve enjoyed my creations for this challenge. Here is my “snowflake” cupcake inspired project for today:

I thought it would be appropriate to create a New Year’s themed card for this challenge as I don’t really need to make any more Christmas cards, but sometimes I forget to send out a Christmas card to someone and don’t realize it until later, so that’s when a New Year’s card can come in handy! LOL!

I absolutely LOVE the fabulous slimline dies that Whimsy Stamps has! Such a huge selection of them and I spotted this gorgeous Elegant Snowflakes and Border die and thought it would make some really incredible slimline style cards no matter what color scheme you have in mind! I knew that I first wanted to try it out with some metallic mirror cardstock, and I was also inspired by these gorgeous Gilded Holiday papers from Whimsy Stamps with the snowflakes in gold and black colors. It looked elegant like the die, so I pulled out a strip to fit across the top, but because it’s 6 x 6, it didn’t fit, but I decided to piece the strip together anyway and I don’t really think you can tell that much until you look up closely to know that it’s there.

So, I then layered the gold metallic die cut piece right underneath the strip that was attached to a 3.5 x 8.5 black cardstock layer. There are also a couple of extra snowflake dies included with that border die, so I used them layered together (one in gold and another in black cardstock) on the right side of the slimline design.

To create the sentiment on the card, I used the Whimsy Stamps Happy Sayings Clear Stamp Set and gold heat embossed it along the bottom of the black card panel. I also took the Whimsy Stamps Happy Large Word die and die cut it out in black cardstock several times to layer together for thickness. Before attaching it to the card, I used a gold ink pad and brushed around the edges with it as well as the entire black card front panel before attaching all together. I then layered it over a white top folding slimline card base.

Here’s a closer view of the gold metallic die along with the gold heat embossed sentiment as well as the gold inked edges around the design. I’ve also decided to add some gold Drip Drops from Taylored Expressions in the center of some of the snowflakes as well as a couple of black sequins that I filled the centers with some gold Stickles with.

Of course I think it looks so much more elegant, shinny and sparkly in person as it’s hard to photograph and be able to capture all of the lighting that you see when you’re holding it in your hands!

Hopefully by sharing a few different angled photos, you’re able to see some of these details in this card design.

Please be sure to stop by the {Cupake Inspirations} Challenge blog and come join us with your “snowflake” creations this week and check out the inspiration from the design team whle you’re there! REMEMBER: You have only ONE WEEK to enter! Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Thanks for stopping by today and I’ll be seeing you soon with another post soon!

Challenges:

A Bit More Time to Craft – #130 Anything Goes
QKR Stampede – #410 Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday – WWC302 Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday – Anything Goes
Creative Knockouts – #381 Anything Goes
Crafty Catz – #532 Anything Goes optional: Anything New (new die!)
Allsorts – Sparkle and Shine

Lavina Christmas

Happy Friday friends! As my “Countdown to Christmas” continues, today I’m bringing you a card I’ve made using some “new to me” stamps!

Vicki-LavinaChristmas

I’ve been very intrigued with seeing some of my blog friends out there using these very magical silhouette style stamps and loving what they’ve come up using them! So I decided to make a purchase or two or so of these and have a play! 🙂

I’ve used the Christmas Eve and the Stars 2 Miniature Lavina World stamps for my card design here. I’ve stamped the images out over some white cardstock with a Navy ink and then used some blue distress ink to sponge around the edges with.

For the layering of this card, I’ve used the Spellbinders “Chantilly Paper Lace” die along with some of my regular oval shaped dies. I’ve also used an older Die-Versions “Believe” die cut for the sentiment. That along with the large background panel were cut from some Silver Mirror cardstock.

The oval layers in the background were matted with some Silver Glitterstock along with some Navy cardstock which is also what was used for the card base. I’ve added a silver metallic ribbon bow at the top. I based the size of my card with the die cut so it is more of a 4″ x 6″ sized card rather than a standard A2 size.

Here’s a closer view of the image where you can see that I’ve added some Stickles “Star Dust” glitter in certain areas on the tree as well as the star on top.

I also covered the bottom of the image panel with a glue pen and then sprinkled on some dazzling diamonds glitter to give the appearance of snow on the ground.

Vicki-LavinaChristmas-flat

This isn’t my usual “coloring in” cute style that you’re used to seeing from me, but I really enjoyed putting this one together and playing with my new stamps! I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I’ll see you again soon!

Challenges:

Lavina World Challenge – Anything Goes + NO digital
Sparkles – Add Glitter & Sparkle
Jan’s Digi Stamps – Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday – WWS252 Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday– Anything Goes
Creative Knockouts– Anything Goes
The Paper Girls – Holiday Lights (Fairies lighting the tree!)

‘Create’ Steampunk Mixed Media Canvas

Hello friends! Happy Saturday!

Oh I had so much FUN playing around with all of the really cool “Steampunk” products! Today, I’m sharing this mixed media canvas project that I made:

Vicki-BM-SteampunkCanvas

This was so much fun to just get “messy” and enjoy a different creative process other than making a card! If you’ve been around my blog for a while, then you’ve probably seen me share a different project from time to time. Sometimes I just like to ‘change gears’! Hahaha!

So I had this old 8″ x 10″ canvas laying around and thought it would be cool to take several chipboard pieces I had and make something. I started off by taking some wooden letters from my stash and gluing those on. I then took a stencil (gears) and randomly added embossing paste through it over the canvas. Once dried, I then painted over everything with some black gesso.

I’ve used several metallic paints from my stash and using my “finger tool” I went over all of the textured areas of the canvas and along the edges. I also used the paints to paint over the Chipboard Gear Background which was randomly cut out with my scissors and glued randomly over the canvas. At first I was thinking it was weird to mix the different color metallic together, but then thought that steampunk can sort of be like that anyway.

Vicki-BM-SteampunkCanvas3

What’s hard to capture in a photo is that Gilded Sparkle embossing powder over the wings! It’s stunning IRL! I’ve heat embossed the Chipboard Wings with it and then I heat embossed the Chipboard Key with the EP. I went around the edges of it with some silver metallic paint so that it showed up better against the black background.

For the image, I stamped the hat with black Ink onto an already cut out white Cardstock from the Steampunk Cut file. I colored it up with several different Aqua Pigments and sponged around the edges of it with some brown ink. I also took some Copper metallic paint and went around the edges too. I took the heat embossed wings along with that hat image and splattered them with some black paint as well.

The wings were attached onto the canvas with some black foam tape and then I curled the ends of them that are hanging off the edges. I attached the heat embossed key in the center of the wings and then added the colored image over top.

Vicki-BM-SteampunkCanvas1

For a little bit more texture on the canvas, I decided to take the EP to randomly heat emboss areas that were sprayed with water. The water was just so that the powder had something to stick to and then once heat set, I added more until I was happy with it. I like the look of the embossing where the spray marks are.

Vicki-BM-SteampunkCanvs4

Lastly, to finish it off, I’ve used the metal gears, ribbon (tied in bow over top of the key), gold pearls (painted in copper metallic paint), and sequins – as well as another gear (attached in the center of the ribbon bow) and a clock button (painted with black and metallic paints) from my stash that was all glued on. I also added some silver glitter to the center of each sequins.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my “Steampunk Mixed Media Canvas” today and were inspired in some way.

Thanks for dropping by! I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Crafty Gals Corner – Emboss It
Creative Moments – Anything Goes
A Inky Mess – Anything Goes Mixed Media
More Mixed Media – Anything Goes (optional bright colors)
A Bit More Time to Craft – Anything Goes

Steampunk Style

Hello friends! Welcome to the weekend! Hope you’re all doing well and have some fun plans! I have some happy craft time planned while hubby works overtime! 🙂

I am SO excited as yesterday afternoon I had time to play and I couldn’t wait to make something to share today with you:

Vicki-BM-SteampunkBox

This was something a bit different for me as I don’t believe that I have ever gone in a “steampunk” direction before with my cardmaking, but I had so much fun putting the different metallic, sparkle and shimmer on this!

I started out with a white cardstock base A2 sized and top folding. I took a piece of masking paper and used a circle die to cut out an area. I used the negative of that piece to go over the entire front of the card base. I then took a Stencil along with the sample size glitter glaze from the kit and spread it over the circle opening on the card base. (Set it aside to dry.)

I then took some paper from the kit and used the embossing folder from the kit to get the texture and then sponged one some white Ink to bring out the texture. I also used a circle die cut a bit larger than the circle on the card base to make a frame with it. I attached the silver ribbon from the kit around the bottom of it and then attached the panel over the white card base.

Lastly, I colored the hot air balloon image from the stamp set with not only the Aqua Pigment, but also some other metallic Aqua Pigments like Penny and Brass! The roses were colored as well. There is a cut file for this stamp set, but I decided to just fussy cut around it this time. I popped it up over the card with foam tape. I then took some of the sequins from the kit and attached it randomly to the design.

The photo doesn’t do the sparkle and shimmer justice.

Here’s a closer look at the hot air balloon image along with the pretty sparkle from the Glitter Glaze. I like the different color metallic to play with!

Vicki-BM-SteampunkBox-flat

I hope you’ve enjoyed my card today. I had lots of fun playing around with it and I know that I’m not done yet! I have more ideas floating around in my head that I’d like to try, so stay tuned!

Thanks so much for dropping in today! I appreciate each of you very much and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges I’d like to enter this card for: