IndigoBlu August Blog Challenge - All things Bright & Beautiful

Hello there, how are you today?

I have an inspiration piece to share with you in the shape of an Easel Card. Of course I had to use the New Luscious Powders, along with a New Stamp called "Owl always love you"!

Each month IndigoBlu run a blog challenge with a different theme and the Design Team put together different projects to help Inspire you to get the most out of the stamps you may have purchase from them along with the other products they sell.

As an incentive for you to join in with the fun of the challenge they offer stamp sets as a prize for the winner, plus you are asked to be a Guest Designer.

The DT also pick 3 Top projects and these people are asked to to be a Guest Designer for the next challenge. That’s right, your work will be on the Challenge Blog alongside the Design Team!

When you win you get to choose which stamp you would like.

1: 2 Large stamp plates (A5)

or

2: 4 Small stamp plates (A6)

or

3: 1 Large and 2 small plates

There’s also the Winner’s Badge, and one for the Top 3, to display proudly on your blog. 

To enter, all you have to do is to follow the theme for the month and to use IndigoBlu stamps! Why not have a go. If you have any questions, or not sure how to enter ask away!

So back to the card above. As I mentioned earlier in the post I made a Easel card for a change as I do like to make different card folds.

. I'm not going to go too much into the making of this card but will put up a video tutorial I filmed a while ago at the end of this post.

Using white card and my die cutting machine I cut out two plain ovals along with two scalloped ovals that will be painted.

 Once I had stamped the Owl image on a plain oval and painted it with the Luscious Powders I left this to dry and made up a spray bottle containing water and Silver Luscious to spray over the image. 

The scalloped oval was painted with Lemon Meringue English Cottage Acrylic Paint and whilst wet I added some watered down Blue Luscious in strips and added splats of pink watered down Luscious. 

Before this piece was added to the Easel card I attached some double sided tape to the back and stuck down three contrasting colours of metallic thread. I added more double sided tape to the back and stuck it onto the card front.

 I then stamped out just the flower section of the stamp a few times onto a piece of spare white card, painted these flowers in the same colours as the main image, cut out and layered the large group of flowers and attached these to the base to act as a stopper. 

 Faux stitches were added to the top and bottom of the card panels and to the sentiment which I cut apart into blocks.

 Well that all for today, don't forget to check out the video below.

Happy Crafting xx

Easel Card Tutorial

Luscious Pigment Powders By IndigoBlu

Hello all,

Today I would like to introduce ways to use "Luscious" powders by IndigoBlu and if you haven't heard of them yet I urge you to watch my video as they have so many possibilities.

They are filled with rich pigments and mica which makes them so special. They also have an inbuilt binder which is activated when water is added to them or when you use them with slap-it-on, embossing paste, inks. 
TIP: The one thing I have found is that if you "Dust" the powders over your project you will need to activate the binder by spraying it lightly with water.

You could also try spraying your card first with water, sprinkle Luscious Powders over and watch the colours spread out.

I was sent six pots of this magic powder to "play" with and they are so much fun with so many uses. 
You can do so many crafty things with them and so far I have only just scratched the surface. 
The shimmer you get from these powders really make anything you make with them pop and shine.
The powders can also be added to the English Cottage Paints & Gee-Soo-Good. You won't get the shine come through but you can make some different lush colours.

I felt it was easier to make a video to show you some of the different techniques I have used so far with the Luscious powders.

Here are some examples of how I used them on different projects that I made for Kay Halliwell-Sutton's Hochanda show when the Luscious Powders were introduces a few weeks ago.

 Luscious Powders use to bring colour to this re-cycled jar. I also used the powders to paint the shrink charms I made.

 Several techniques used on this canvas. Background was stamped with VersaMark then Luscious powders dusted over the top. Luscious added to Super Thick slap it on and put through a stencil. The New "Owl always love you" stamp image was water-colored with the powders.

The "Owl" was stamped out and embossed then painted with the Luscious powders.

This tag card has been embossed with paste. Different colour powders were added before the paste was used with a stencil. More painting on the Poppy Heart.

This piece was first started by the Luscious powder being mixed with Kroma Crackle and spread around the outside of the canvas. Colours were added to ST slap-it-on and spread through a stencil. The Poppy Heart was stamped several times onto Modeling Film, painted, then the film was softened by a heat gun so that I could mold them into a flower for the center of the canvas.

Several techniques were again used on this card, can you see which ones?
Just look at the luster coming from the colours!
Come back soon, until then,
Happy Crafting xx

Christmas in August

Hello everyone,

Christmas in August seems quite strange when its warm and sunny outside but when you are designing different projects to showcase New Release Stamps and products for IndigoBlu its just something you have to do. Mind you, I have had a real buzz doing this as some of my designs have been on Hochanda, fancy that, being on TV! Well not me, but my works of art! And another good thing is that I have made a start on my own Christmas Cards.

Wednesday brought Let Leonie Loose on Hochanda (this link is only good for a week as the show is on catch-up) and she was showcasing some of the New Products & Stamps from IndigoBlu and some of my samples along with others from the DT were shown so I thought I would share some photo's with you today.

If you haven't seen any of the New stamps and products yet, you really must take a look as they are FAB, especially the Luscious powders. 
I have loved using the Luscious powder so much as its so versatile that I have put a Video together showing you some techniques. (Hoping to add it it YouTube later today after doing a bit of editing)!

I'm hoping that after you have seen these projects they will inspire you to start your Christmas Crafting. 
Have fun, 

Sue xx

This canvas was made to look like a wrapped present. This Stamp set is beautiful and is called Winterland Wood.

 I also created a matching tag

I stamped a sentiment onto the ribbon

 This card was made using the Country House Stamp. I cut the doors and masked certain part of the stamp details off so that I could make a secret garden.

I opened up the door and stamped the Deer Images in the "secret Garden"

 For this shaker card I used the Mother & Child Stamp

The images was embossed in Gold embossing powder

 The next two cards were made using images from the stamp set "Peace on Earth"

 This card was made from acetate and the Angel image was stamped and coloured onto card and cut out and attached to a silver card die cut. 

 This was a fun card to make using the Christmas puddings. The images were stamped straight onto the card and an extra one stamped on another piece of white card, coloured, cut out and mounted on foam pads. Do you like the little coin popping out of the pudding?

I found some small wooded spoons so give this one the Mega Flake treatment.


And last but not least, I put together a Christmas house using all the New Christmas stamps I have ATM! 

 The house was first given a coat of White Gee-Soo-Good then once dry painted with Goldfinger paint. Once dry I used the New Super Thick,  Slap it on through a couple of stencils on the roof and outside walls.

Unicorn Sparkles was added aound and inside the house.

Having fun with Slider Cards

Hello everyone,

I decided to create a few more sliding cards, not for any reason, just that I enjoy making them. 

(Have you tried making one yet, I find that men folk find them fascinating).

I'm not going to do a long tutorial on how to make either of these cards as you use the same technique I used on the Sliding Camera Card I shared on my blog a little while ago. I have now added that video to the end of this post!

Here is a quick video to show how these new cards work.

To start this card off I used the Tim Holtz Typewriter Die. I cut out a couple in different colours. The main typewriter was painted then I added the different colour card pieces into place and painted those to give a vintage look.

I then stamped out the sentiments, inked around the edges and rolled the top corner to each piece.

I cut out a piece of thick card for the backing of the typewriter and applied heated up several layers of gold embossing power on it, and whilst it was still hot pressed into it with several stamps to leave an embedded image.

I then went on to stamp and colour the ink-pot and quill.Glitter was then added along with gold thread and painted flowers.

                            "Enjoy Life"                                                           "Take the Time"

                                   "Plume"                                                               "Good Times"

Now for this card I used the Tim Holtz Telephone Die. 

I cut out three of the telephones using white card.
Each of the hand pieces were cut away from the main part of the telephone. Two of them were glued together to give them some extra strength, the third one was glued in place once I had attached the acetate message and cord.

I used the Raven Black Indigoblu Artist's Acrylic Paint to paint two of the telephone die cuts, the third one was kept white to fill in those little details. Some parts were painted silver.

The background was first of all inked with a brick stencil, then I used embossing paste with the clock face stencil. Once dry I stamped a boarder with one of the sound waves from the stamp set "Light & Sound Borders". A Police box image was used from the paper pack. 

The edges of the paper were distressed and inked in blue. I crumpled the paper to give it an aged look and painted over it with a watered down blue paint.

Because I wanted to create a sliding element to represent a voice coming from the telephone I stamped "Hello" onto a piece of acetate along with a small part from the sound boarder.
The card was finished off with three die cut no"9"s.

       "Lost Family - Mixed Media Paper Pad"                "Clock Face - Stencil"

                            "Word Block #1"                                        "Light and Sound Boards"

Well thats all for tonight. I hope you have enjoyed this post. Hope you come back soon.

Happy Crafting, Sue xx

One Stamp Set, Five Cards- Making the most of your stamp set!

Hello to you,

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday! Its warm and windy here in the Leigh today. 

A couple of days ago I decided I needed to set myself a couple of challenges, so this is going to be the first of a few I have come up with.
 Make a set of five cards from just one of the stamp sets I received from IndigoBlu. 
I thought it was a good way to make a start on my Christmas cards and what a a fun way it was to do it.

To start all of this off I have used the stamp set "Peace on Earth".

This stamp set has so many different images to use, I was spoilt with choice as to what to use first!

   1st Card

 I knew I wanted to use the Christmas pudding but wasn't quite sure how, so I stamped out a couple of images and laid them out in several way until I came up with an idea of a shaker card.

To make this card I used a foam circle slightly larger than the pudding image for the shaker part, using a pencil I drew around the outside of it then had a template to follow to stamp the other puddings around. Once I had done this I stamped the text image inside the circle, stuck down the foam circle, added some glitter and crystals and covered with a acetate circle. I then went around the outer part of the circle with glitter and attached a cut out image of the pudding!

2nd Card

For this card I knew I wanted to use some small frames I had made out of paper clay

so then it was just which images should I use.

I painted the frames with some of the New indigoBlu 

 Luscious Pigment Powders in Gold then sprinkled on some of the IndigoBlu Unicorn Sparkle.

As you can see from the photo I added several layers of white and black card and had black ribbon coming from each frame ending on a different layer.

3rd Card

 So for this card I used the beautiful Angel and the strip of stars

Because the size of the Angel was more fitting to a rectangle than a square shape, I cut out a panel to sit the image on. I used my dust-brushes to add two different colours of blue ink to this panel and edged it with gold. 

I then stamped the Angel image into the middle of the panel plus an extra one onto white card. I coloured and cut out this image and used foam dots to lay it over the stamped image on the card. The stars were stamped out to make a boarder around the angel. 

The panel was then mounted onto a piece of white card that had been through my die cutting machine to give it some texture. This was then mounted onto a card blank.

4th Card

 As soon as I saw the wreath stamp I knew I wanted to join a few together to make up a larger wreath and this is what I ended up with.

I stamped and cut out several images of the wreath, added gold luscious to the stars, red gems as berries and white enamel dots and of course some unicorn sparkle. 

The wreaths were set out and once glued down I wound some thin red ribbon between then.

I felt that a boarder of some sort was needed so went around the edges with..................

have you guessed?? The top of the globe!

This was then layered onto gold card then onto the white card blank.

5th Card

 I sat and pondered on this card for a while. I wasn't too sure what to do with the globe then I thought, "peace on earth" looking down from the sky...Stars and an idea had formed!

I used a whole set of Die cutting nesting stars and once cut out, I painted them with Gold Luscious (I love these powders) and added unicorn sparkle to the tips.

The layers of the stars were put back in place and on the reverse side I attached them together with a thin piece of double sided tape from the top tip of the star down to the end of the star.

The background card was embossed with gold powder using the script stamp from the set along with a circle mask I cut from copy paper.

A couple of gems were added the the card front was attached to a white card base.

So how's about you setting yourself a challenge as well? 

I have enjoyed doing this and have made a start on my Christmas card list, how cool is that!

Hope you have enjoyed reading this post. I would love for you to pop back soon to see which stamp set I will use next and to catch up with the next challenge I have set myself .

Happy Crafting,

Sue xx