A configuration box for my daughter

My younger daughter put in a request for a "sort of steampunky" box for her bedroom in her new home. She wanted something that was a raspberry pink and silver and tael too if I could fit it in.  I had a really good time playing with this. I was so engrossed that I didn't realise that it was almost 3.30 am!

The industrial foil look of the front cover and the edging for the  inside fits perfectly for the Compendium of Curiosities challenge which is to use Tim Holtz' painted industrial technique.

You should take a look at the entries for this challenge, there are some amazing projects on there, some of them are totally mind blowing!

A wonderful life

My younger daughter has just come out of an abusive marriage and has had great courage at moving on. I am very proud of her. This tag is for her. I always think of orange as a very positive colour and the sentiments both sum up my wishes for her life. The dragonfly, like the butterflies, symbolise something beautiful coming from something ugly.

This will be entered into the Our Creative Corner blog, which has the theme of homemade flowers and home coloured ribbon. I know that the challenge last month was orange, but for the reasons above, I wanted to use the same colour again.

Pompeii

Pompeii may seem like an odd title for a post on stamping, but hopefully all will become clear.

A Vintage Journey have a challenge to create something using all the stamps in a set. I have just bought Tim Holtz' Stampeers Anonymous Classics number 7 and when I saw the challenge I thought it would be a great stamp set to use on an ATB.

I made up the box, covering the joints in Washi tape and gold Rub n Buff and then cut 5 3x3 pieces of manilla cardstock and used Rangers Dandelion archival ink to stamp the images onto the cards. On some of the sides I just used bits of a stamp and on others I used the same stamp more than once to fill the card up.

Once this was done, I added Tea Dye, Mustard Seed and Scattered Straw Distress Stains to my craft mat and spritzed with water. I pulled each card through this and dried with a heat gun.

Now this is where Pompeii comes in to it because there was something about the colour of the cards combined with the stamps that really reminded me of my trip to Pompeii last year. One of the cards looked like the cobblestones in the streets, whilst others, such as the one with a column and the one that ended up looking like wallpaper or wall paintings both reminded me of the remnants of decoration that could still be seen in some of the ruined houses.

For some reason, this made me think of the "Grand Tours" people in the past used to make around Europe and so I started to stamp things that could be related to that idea. Hence the Victorian men, who might have gone on one of the tours. Pens for writing their experiences, the compass to signify the journey and the bike a symbol of travel and transport. I used the verse "The impossible is often the untried" to show how these people were pioneers in travel etc.

This was a perfect challenge for using Tim's products and I am really happy with the way the box turned out.

Water colouring an ATB

The latest challenge at the compendium of curiosities blog was to use Tim Holtz' Distress water colouring technique. A couple of days ago I had a delivery of different papers and stamps and I decided to have a shell theme for this project, which I intend to enter into the challenge. I am also going to enter it to the That's Crafty challenge which has the theme of Beside the Sea.

I have been wanting one of the Sizzix ABT dies (that's not what they are called, but their proper name escapes me right now), but I haven't managed to track down a stockist here in the UK who have any in stock. So, I decided to make a template of my own and then cut it out on my Silhouette Cameo. I was really pleased with the results, although next time I think I will add some tags along the edges to give the cube more stability.

My box was made out of thin card and I went around the edges with some washi paper, which I then covered with a layer of patina coloured Rub and Buff. Then I covered that in an uneven layer of antique cold Rub and Buff, which I then sanded so that some of the patina colour was showing through and some areas looked as though they had been missed out.

I stamped various shell stamps in archival inks, including Watering Can, Tree Branch and Saffron onto watercolour card (sadly I didn't have any of the TIm Holtz one, so just used what was available). I then cut the shells out and used Tim's technique for the watercolour effect.

I used some paper from Prima for the background. I cut 3 inch squares of paper and put a light layer of Vintage Photo DI along the edges. These were then glued onto the ABT. I added the cut out shells and the sentiment, along with a few embellishments and "Hey Presto" here is my completed project.

I am going to enter this into the CCC 3 challenge