IndigoBlu in Bloom

Hello to you and thanks for stopping by. You may have seen that Kay Halliwell-sutton from IndigoBlu was on Hochanda today show casing her beautiful floral stamps and the fluttering birds, bees and dragonflies. If you didnt get to see her live shows then check them out on Hochanda.com. First show was at 10am with Leonie Pujol and the 2pm show with  Matt Macnamara. (These links are only good for two weeks).

Being on the TV sample making team for IndigoBlu im lucky enough to have these stamps sent to me to experiment with and I have had so much fun creating different things from cards to mixed media pieces.

Here are the samples I create for these show's, lots of fussy cutting and I also put some of my paint pours to good use.

This card was made using the 'Spring Meadow' stamp at the top of the card with a few extra butterflies cut out from the 'Nature III', sitting on one of the word plates from the stamp set 'Happiness'. The colours used on the card were from the Luscious Powder range.

I wanted to keep this card simple to show off the beautiful Orchids so stamped in black ink and used clear embossing powder to create a resist when I coloured the blooms in with Pink Luscious. Once dry I fussy cut the image, cut out some slender leaves and set everything into a little wooden flowerpot painted with the porcelain Luscious powder.

For this sample I wanted to use the Orchids again to decorate the shoes I cut out using a Sizzix die as I thought it went well with a sentiment from the 'Meadow Flowers' stamp set. 'Stroll through a meadow, breathing in the sunshine & believe in miracles'

The wooden base was painted with Black Gee-Soo-good and a layer of the IndigoBlu Watercolour card was stamped on with the flowers and herbs from the same 'Meadow Flowers' stamp set.

The shoes were kept simple, as well as the stamped images all finished off with little touches of Bisque Liquid Pearls.

I love the colours that came out on the Paint Pour I used for the background to these beautiful flowers from the stamp set 'Peony' and I used Coral and Orange Luscious Powders to give these flowers a lovely shine. 

The orange was also mixed into some super slap it on which I put through the 'Scrip' stencil over the flowers to add a little texture, then cut and dry embossed so leaves and added linen thread under the flowers.

Now I really love this New Humming Bird Stencil by IndigoBlu and hope that Kay follows it up with a Hummingbird stamp. (I'm sure you will know why I love this so much)! I used this stencil in a slightly different way as I drew around the hummingbird lines. I then used a Tombow Glue Pen to add patterns. Once the glue was dry I used Tombow Brush Pens and Blender pen to add colour to the differnt sections of the bird over the glue which acted as a resist so you get a interesting patterns emerging.

I then masked off the Humminbird and using a wet wipe put some blue Gelatos through the IndigoBlu Dottie stencil and finished the card off with some green pearl dots. The sentiment was stamped and black embossed onto vellum.

For this piece I used another of my paint pour mini canvases and picked out the blue in it by painting Rice Paper with Blue Luscious, stamping about 10 of the 'Peony' heads in Stazon blue ink onto the rice paper and cutting each flower out and layering them up to create a dimensional flower.

I added the sentiment 'You are Bloomin Marvelous' from the stamp set 'Meadow Flowers'

This next piece I created was using a base from a toy that rocks and I thought it might be fun to add the 'Butterfly#2' and the 'Giant Dragonfly' on wires to make them look as if they were fluttering and hovering above the flowers. Unfortunatly the camera didnt like the shine that was coming of the painted pieces as I used the Luscious Powders again so it hasn't captured all the detail that are in the stamped images.

I stamped, coloured and cut out the Peony and leaf images from the 'Marigold and Peony' stamp set and added them around the sides and the top of the rocking base, filling the top with some paper flowers from my stash.  

The Giant Dragonflies had some silver glitter added to their wings and different coloured gems were added to the bodies.

I wanted to use my Tombow Brush pens again so I stamped out the beautiful floral collage from the stamp set 'Nature III' and enjoyed colouring it in so much decided to stamp and colour in more images and turned them into a Stepper Box Card.

Each draw was decorated with parts of the images I coloured as well as single images inside each box base.

Hope you have enjoyed taking a look and some of these samples inspire you. 
If you would like to see some more of these fantastic stamps then please check out Julie Atkinson's blog. 
Be ready to be amazed!

Happy Crafting,

Sue xx

I Love IndigoBlu

                                                                     So, why the title,

Let me tell you......... 

I am absolutely over the moon to have been asked to be part of the IndigoBlu Family and i'm really excited to show you my very first Inspiration piece as part of the Challenge Design Team.

    I will also be on the Publication Team with my first project being submitted in July so I will keep you updated with news about that.

 It's going to be very exciting time ahead for me playing, umm, creating with more of the products from the quintessentially English rubber stamp company and i'm so looking forward to being part of a team of very talented ladies, learning from them and sharing with you.

So now onto the important part of this post, sharing my very first Inspiration piece as part of the Challenge Design Team.

June Challenge - Brown & Teal

Check out the challenge using the link here, and join us by entering one of your own creations. 

Did you know there are stamp sets to be won?

For this challenge I thought I would do a bit of up-cycling. I had an empty chocolate box waiting to be used so thought I would change it into a notelet holder, and make a few matching notelets.

From an empty chocolate box to a Notelet Gift Box. 
Here is how I created it!

Out came the stamp set Floral Fantasy,  Paints, Hot Coco, Townhouse Teal both matte paints and Kingfisher Blue which is a metallic paint and also the Mega Flakes Chocolate box,  now I had to use those didn't I!!!

I wanted to have a bit of fun with the paints so I watered them down slightly and used a tennis ball to make splats onto the card.

            

Once the paint was dry I cut down one piece of card (I decorated two for this project) to fit the chocolate box lid, bottom and sides of the box.

I then used the Mandala stamp from the Floral Fantasy stamp set on the cut out pieces, first of all embossing the stamped image, adding brown and teal paint to certain areas of the design then going back over image with Flitter Glu and Chocolate box Mega Flakes.

Before sticking down the panels with Glossy Slap it on, I painted the box with Hot Coco paint, and I had also found some small wooden blocks in my stash so painted those as well after giving them a coat of white GeeSoo Good along with some metal flowers I was going to use on the lid of the box.

               

I felt the 'Feet' were a bit flat looking so I used some double sided sticky tape to add some strips of Mega flakes to them.

 I then stamped and cut out some butterflies, adding wire antennae to the underside of them. 

On the 2nd piece of background card, I cut it up, to make fronts for the notelets adding a butterfly, copper cotton and a small sentiment.

                   

The inside panels for the box were painted with Kingfisher metallic paint and I glued a small butterfly to the base, as a small surprise when the notelets are removed.

I also covered the entire box with the Gloss Slap it On to protect it a little more.

The top of the box was finished off with a sentiment from the stamp set along with a butterfly I cut out and some metal flowers which I painted.

I hope what I have created here has given you some ideas for yourself and inspired you to enter the blog challenge yourself. 

If you have any questions please get in touch and I will do my best to answer them.

Here are a few more close up photo's of the Notelets.

Have Fun and Happy Crafting,

Sue xx

 Each of the notelets have a different look to then due to the ball splatter pattern I made using the paints.

Spring is in the air- IndigoBlu Inspiration Piece

 Hello to you all,

I have been so lucky to have been picked again to create an inspirational piece for the new challenge over at IndigoBlu. Thank you soooo much Design Team xx
Here is a link to the IndigoBlu Blog so you can check out all those gorgeous inspiration pieces created by the Design Team, last months winner and the top 3 winners.
 Find the Link Here

I hope you will find projects to inspire you to make something similar or to use the ideas on cards, canvas or home decor.

And if you do, why not challenge yourself, enter this months Blog Challenge!

So without further ado here is my Inspiration for Spring is in the air.

The first thing was thinking about spring and I took my inspiration from the garden. I have a Forsythia bush in the garden which has burst into glorious yellow flowers. Also the tree blossoms have come out and everywhere is looking so fresh and green.

Of course I created something that has been quite hard to photograph so I have quite a few photos to share.

Here is my finished Inspiration piece. More photos showing what the lampshade looks like all the way around at the end of this post

I started off with a plain white paper lampshade. Because of the shape and the surface of the shade I stamped images with green Stazon Ink onto tissue paper and used Slap-it-on to stick them to the lampshade.

Once the images had dried out I used three colours of diluted paint in spray bottles to add spring colours. 

I sprayed the lampshade outside, hanging it on the line and as the paint dripped and collected along the wire outline I used a piece of kitchen paper to absorb the excess paint as I didn't want to leave dark lines. At this stage, you need to handle the lampshade very carefully as its made of tissue paper and could rip when wet with the paint.

Out of the Wild Meadow set I used the large wild grass set to stamp the images onto tissue paper for the base of the lampshade and used the butterfly stamp but stamped that image onto thick parchment paper

Out of the above 'Live, Laugh, Love' set I used two of the flower blossoms stamps on tissue paper

Once the blossom images were stamped out using a brown Stazon ink I used Lemon Meringue paint diluted, then once dry I cut the blossoms out. To pick out details on the blossoms I added green ink and mica powder

I wanted the butterflies to look a little translucent so I painted some thick parchment paper with diluted paints

Once the butterfly images were stamped and cut out I added more detail using different shades of colour to highlight the butterflies. I also stamped out some small dragonflies from the set 'Live, Laugh, Love' 

All cut out, glittered, painted and ready to be attached to the now painted lampshade

Tiny white flowers were added around the shade

Centers of the flowers were created using tiny beads

Thanks for stopping by today.
Happy Crafting, Sue xx