Handmade Beads

Here are 4 of the beads I made yesterday whilst having a craft day at my dear friend Lynnette's house. Boy did we make some fab stuff !! We used the Ranger Melt Pot for all our crafting during the day and had a whale of a time.

The beads are made using the technique perfected by Leandra Franich (the owner of Paper Artsy in the U.K.) which uses a paper wrapped bead centre on a head pin which is multiple dipped into molten Clear UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel). Inclusions are then trapped between the succesive coats of UTEE. Rather than go over the instructions here again click HERE to see them on her blog.

I used copper coloured head pins this time and various inclusions to add extra zing to the beads.



The bead above has its centre made with stripey paper and has gold flake inclusions.

This bead centre has a small all over flower stamped on a pale pink background with Versafine onyx black. This time some fine blue craftwire was wrapped round during dipping.

This last bead was made with a centre of red glitter paper and the craftwire this time was red also.

Hope you like them :-)

Pin It

Sunday Challenge No 11

This is my UK Stampers Sunday Challenge No 11, whose theme was to use a store credit card as the base. I gave the card (WH Smith giftcard) a thick coat of randomly applied beige acrylic paint and allowed to dry. I followed this with a stripe of slate grey acrylic paint dragged over the surface with the edge of a piece of scrap card picking up the high spots of the previous coat of beige. I then brushed the background with gold calligraphy ink.

I then used an ISC stamp from the pear plate and stamped in iris Stazon directly over the background. I then used a See D's letter P stamp and again stamped top right with iris Stazon. I then threaded six round gold beads onto gold wire and bent over the ends to secure, bending the wire to form a corner. This was stuck in place with adhesive as shown. The edges of the card were finished with purple Colorbox chalk ink.

Hope you like it :-)

Pin It

Asian Summer ATC

I seem to be doing a load of ATC's lately. This one uses an Asian collage wood mounted rubber stamp from Inkadinkado (93073 . N). On the main panel I used this very stamp and Versafine onyx black ink on plain white card. The colours were added using Lyra Aquacolour water soluble crayons in green, pink and orange. These were added direct to the card in the areas requiring colour and worked and blended in using a waterbrush. When dry Glossy Accents was added to the central motive and allowed to dry overnight. The back of the panel was painted with two coats of Jacquard Lumiere metallic green acrylic paint and this was then allowed to dry. Then the edges of the panel were finished with wisteria Colobox chalk ink. The bottom left corner of the panel was folded over to reveal the metallic green and this was stuck down with glossy accents. I then added an oriental style bead again stuck down with Glossy Accents as shown.

A 2.5 x 3.5 inch ATC was cut from hammer finish lilac card on the rotary trimmer and this was stamped with a Lavinia leaf trail polymer stamp in olympic green Versafine. The panel was adhered at an angle, with double sided adhesive, to the textured side of the ATC which was finished again with wisteria Colorbox chalk ink.

This ATC was so easy to make..........I often think simple is most effective. Hope you like it :)

Pin It

Double Altered Slide Mailer

Here is a slide mailer I have recently done as a swap on UK Stampers Forum

I have used a number of stamps to complete the project, a couple of flourishes, a 4 face stamp, a pensive lady, eyes stamps and a couple of sentiments ( follow your heart & discover). All have been stamped in black stazon except the discover sentiment which is in sepia Versafine ink. The background colour was made by direct to paper technique using a dark brown Whispers dye inkpad. Some hand colouring was done to enhance the black outline stamped images. The slides were done by backing them with the stamped eyes images given a spray with iridescent pink spray before attaching to the back of the slide with adhesive metal tape which was scraped with a piercing tool to provide texture.

Finally, the fibres were added and a tag with my details. Some of the fibres were embellished with hand made plastic beads.

Hope you like it !!

Pin It