Twelve Tags of 2015 ~ July

With only a few days left of the month of July, I've taken a quick break from domestic tasks, to post my tag for Tim's Twelve Tags of 2015 challenge. It may be July and the height of summer but it's more like autumn here in the UK, with far too many grey and rainy days ! Come on Sunshine do your thing ! Sorry to digress but you know how much us Brits like to talk about the weather ! Back to The tag, which is yet another great idea from Tim. You can see his fabulous 'Independence Day' inspired tag, with this link. As It's now far from that date, I decided to go with a different interpretation using the lovely Flower Garden stamp set. After stamping and colouring my chosen flowers, I realised that  they wouldn't fit on my no.8 tag, so had to cut a larger one from manila card. I thought I was being fairly original until I had a look through all the wonderful entries for this month and spied a gorgeous tag by Diana over at Missusgmoments .Well, you know what they say 'great minds think alike ! One of my favourite elements of Tim's tag this month, is the fabulous stripy ribbon such a cool technique ! I made an extra long piece so that I could make a nice big bow. So that's it for now, back to a few more chores. Thanks for yet another great tag Tim ! x

Happy Holidays ~ New Challenge at Stamps and Stencils

Hi everybody ! It's my turn to host the July challenge over on  the Stamps and Stencils blog. I've chosen the theme of 'Happy Holidays' and  I look forward to seeing as many different interpretations as you happy crafters can come up with ! Just remember to use some stamping and stenciling. Full details and challenge rules can be found over on the Stamps and Stencils blog.
I've made a  photo album, to house an assortment of my old holiday snaps. The album is made of chipboard and I constructed it by following a plan from one of my craft books called 'Interactive Mini Scrapbooks by Kathy Orta Files. I had to give it a mixed media twist by adding this Finabair inspired canvas and card cover. I started by stenciling a piece of gessoed canvas with embossing paste.

I then applied Distress Paints and once they were dry, I sprayed on Dylusions Sprays in various blues and greens.

While this was drying, I turned my attention to a couple of panels I wanted to mount on the cover.

I applied gesso to a couple of pieces of kraft card, and stenciled them with embossing paste. I then selected some shells, which were gathered on various holidays and secured them to one of the panels using a hot glue gun.

I used more Dylusions Sprays to add colour and finished off by highlighting the shells with Silks Paints. Once everything was completely dry, and the interior of my album was finished, I adhered the canvas to the album using Liquitex heavy bodied matte gel. I also used this to secure the card  panels to the front panels. I love the fastening, which I cribbed from the book. It's a mini bulldog clip,  attached to a swivel clip, with a piece of chain secured to back of the book, through an eyelet with a jump ring attached to the chain to prevent it from pulling through. (leave me a comment if you want to know how to do this ) You may be wondering about what's going on inside, curious ? well here are a few pics......

I scanned a few of my favourite holiday photos and used Craft Artist, to give them a sepia finish.

 

I used the gorgeous papers from Tim's Correspondence, paper stash.

As a finishing touch, I added some stamping to the tags and bits and pieces inside the album. I'm really quite pleased with the finished results. I had a lot of fun making the album and one of the joys was sorting through some of my old photos. They certainly do bring back lovely memories of some very Happy Holidays ! x