Claritystamp Challenge - Love

Hello there my friends, welcome to the month of

Lurve!

Or just February if you are single and loving it like me.

This months artwork was inspired by Maria Simms' "finish it Friday"

So I had a look through what I had already started but not 'finished'

I found a lovely piece of card that I had finger painted with the PaperArtsy fresco finish paints
(Clarity sell these too! HERE)

and it was in my favourite bright colours.  I added some white paint
splats and some black oil pastels for interest too.

I then found a cockerel and a chicken that I had previously coloured 

in with pencils.  These come in a fabulous stamp set which you can find
HERE

I cut them both out ready to use.

I needed something else so I had a look

around and spotted gelli print waste, from my next project.

I used this and cut out some hearts which I placed on the card.

I stamped the words from the set at the top, and then

put the rest of the pieces on.

I drew round the chicken and cockerel with a white pen 

to highlight them and round the heart with a dark pencil.

It just helps to make them pop a bit.

I hope you like my loved up fowl!

And thanks to Maria for making me finish this.

I hope I've inspired you to join in with this months challenge.

Just click HERE to find it.

Hugs

Amanda xx

Clarity Challenge - Say it with Flowers Part II

Hello bloggers, I hope you have had chance to join in with this months

Clarity Challenge, it really is worth entering.  £50.00 in vouchers is not to be sniffed at my friends.

This bright and sunshiny piece was made using the cute little daffodil stamp, which

I stamped in a row on a piece of white card.

I then coloured them with my new best friends, the kuretake watercolours.

When I had done this I decided to give it a bit of a sheen by clear embossing over

the entire piece (someone please remind me to get some new clear embossing powder that

doesn't have white bits in it!).

Next was the background, and I decided on this sunburst stencil, I use this one

quite a lot as you can get a lovely sunny look from it.

I inked through with some yellow and orange distress inks.

The panels were then layered together onto some coloured cardstock.

You can see better on this photo the shine on the panel.

It looks better in real life, honest.

Thanks for looking and please pop along to the Clarity website to check out

some of the design teams fabulous artwork.

Hugs

Amanda xx

Clarity Challenge - Say it with Flowers

Happy New Year to all, hope you are all well, and well fed!

This months theme is all about the flowers, which Clarity do rather well I think.

I love these stamps and have been looking for something to do with them

for a while.

I started off not really knowing what I was going to do, 

as usual.  

I wasn't sure what size it was going to be so started with a piece of A4 card 

and stamped a row of flowers in archival ink.

I then wet the whole page and sprinkled brushos in red and green were the

leaves and flowers are then sprayed again with water.

I got a little bit carried away with this one and don't have as many photos as I normally take.

I also used some yellow and orange brushos/colour bursts powders at the top

and more water.

By this time the card was soaked with water so I tipped it and let

it dry drippy.

I loved it!

Lost the flowers a bit though, so when it was completely dry

I overstamped with versmark and embossed in white powder.

Perfect

All that was left was to colour the flowers with some pencils

for more definition, and cut down and mount.

I got out some mirri card for this, which I haven't used for ages, but I think it 

really goes with these colours.

Thank you for reading and I hope you will join in with the Clarity Challenge this month.

Hugs

Amanda

xx

Clarity Challenge - A Christmas Story Part II

Hi bloggers, I have finally got round to blogging this winter scene card that I made.  Not that its ever going to be sent to anyone as I like it too much myself.

I started this one off by getting very painty and messy.  I blobbed some PaperArtsy fresco paints on some white card in blue and the metallic silver.  Then used my fingers to spread the paint around.

When it was dry I stamped one of the funky houses, I planned on just having one house, but thought it looked a bit lonely so decided to do a village.

Once I'd done all the stamping I coloured the houses using various polychromo pencils.  I used some distress ink around the edge and some yellow acrylic paint above the trees.

I used paint again for the star and also some stick on metallic thingies that I thought would look nice.
I also went a bit mad with glitter snow.  Hope you like.

Thanks for reading.
Hugs
Amanda 

ClarityStamp Challenge - A Christmas Story

Hello and welcome fellow crafters on a very wet and windy day in Yorkshire.

This months inspiration started off life as a plain piece of kraft card.  I don't have many Christmas stamps so I had to just use the couple that I did have.  I started off by stamping the holly stamp around the edge of the card with versamark ink and then heat embossing with white embossing powder.  I really love this effect on the kraft card.

I decided to use pencils to  colour the holly in, but half way through I regretted this decision as I spent an awful lot of time sharpening my pencils.  The kraft card was really quite rough and was blunting them rather quickly.  It looked nice when finished though.

I wasn't sure what to do at this point, so just looked at it for a couple of days.  Then I had one of those 'aha' moments whilst looking through my stencils.  I placed the winter tree stencil over the card with the obligatory moon mask too.  I used chipped sapphire and gathered twigs distress inks through the stencil with cut and dry foam, as I wanted the ink really dark.  When I removed the stencil I noticed that the ink was still really wet so thought i would put some clear embossing powder over it.  When I heated it I noticed that it had lots of white flecks in it that must have in the clear.  I must admit it looked really cool, like snowflakes.

I edged the card with more of the gathered twigs ink, but it was still lacking something, so out came the gilding wax.  I rubbed some into the moon and then around the edge of the card.  Also onto the black card that I mounted it onto.  The word and stag stamps were done in versamark ink and heat embossed with gold to match.  I really loved the overall look of this one, even my Mum likes it and she's my biggest critic! 

I do hope you have enjoyed reading my blog, it was a bit of a long one this time.  I hope you find some inspiration and can join in with the challenge.

Hugs

Amanda xx

ClarityStamp Challenge - Clean and Simple

Hello bloggers and welcome to this months blog, which is all about being clean and simple.

This is not something that comes easy to me, especially the clean part.  I always end up covered in whatever medium I am using.

This card came to me when I wasn't even thinking about it.  It just popped in, so I got on and did it straight away before I forgot.

Firstly I used various sizes of circle dies and cut out holes in a descending order.  Then got to work on the backing card.  I drew through the holes with a pencil so that I would have a bit of an idea where I was working.  Then used pink and blue distress ink to sweep across the area.

It looked a little too dark so I used a white inkpad and a scruffy brush and went across each area with this.  It gave a lovely whitewashed effect.

Next came the stamping, I always knew I wanted to use the boy stamp, but I needed more birds.  Luckily Clarity have lots of sets that have different sized birds which are really useful.

Once stamped, it was just a case of placing the holey piece on top and glueing.  I went round with the obligatory black marker to finish off.

   Eh Voila!

Thanks for reading, hope you feel inspired to give this a go.

Hugs

Amanda

Claritystamp Challenge - Stencils

Hi bloggers, I must admit this has been one of my favourite challenges as I love stencils.

I started off by using a pencil to draw through the elegant lady stencil and the mirror, I then flipped the stencil to draw in the reflection.

 Next I used coloured pencils to colour her in, I must admit this did take me quite a while.  I think I lost a few hours here!  But they were very enjoyable hours.

Once coloured I cut some masks to cover the images and places the trees stencil over the top.  

 I also used some of the snowflake stencils but I forgot to photograph that bit.

I used distress ink at first and then removed the stencils and put in some definition using pencils.  I was pleased with the overall effect.  It also shows that stencils can be used in alsorts of ways.  I think that especially with the Clarity stencils a lot of them can be used in this way, to draw round and colour in.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog.

Hugs 

Amanda