Christmas Table Centrepiece

IndigoBlu challenge 34 - Winter Blues

As the lucky winner of last months' fabulous prize of my choice of IndigoBlu stamps, I have been asked to produce a mid-term inspirational project. I decided to make a candle centrepiece for our Christmas table to go into our dining room which is blue.

I have had a white pearl candle for ages waiting for me to pluck up the courage to "have a go". This is that challenge!

I used the beautfiful snowflake lace stamp from IndigoBlu with teal blue stazon ink on the tissue. I stamped the gorgeous poinsetia stamp onto white card and used WOW silver sparkle EP to repeat stamps. These were painted with watered down teal blue English Cottage acrylic paint, again from IndigoBlu. 

After having painted the stand with silver Cottage Garden acrylic paint, I then decided to use winter dawn gilding flakes on the top.

The poinsetia were layered up and then they were all stuck down onto white card circle cut to fit around the candle, together with white muslin, foliage, silver glitter and small clear beads, all from my stash. This stops it all falling apart when the arrangement is moved.

I added lace, again from my stash to the top of the candle, stuck on with red liner tape (this will be removed before the candle is lit), and gems were added randomly to some of the snowflakes around the candle. 

I hope you can get a better idea from the following photos.

The base, which started out black, really is silver now although it looks rather dark here. Two coats of paint were applied.

I am really pleased with this. I hope you like it too and feel inspired to make something using "Winter Blues". You might just be the lucky winner of some IndigoBlu stamps.

Bye for now.

Wanda

IndigoBlu challenge 34 - Winter Blues

Here is a link to the IndigoBlu current challenge - Winter Blues

http://indigoblublogchallenge.blogspot.com/2015/11/challenge-34-winter-blues.html

I was fortunate to be selected at random to win a prize from a recent IndigoBlu challenge. The prize was my own choice from their extensive stamp range. Another benefit is that I was asked to provide a project as inspiration for the new challenge starting today - Winter Blues. I decided my project would be for Christmas. The colours would be just right to decorate a small tree for my dining room, recently decorated in blues.

I chose to decorate Christmas MDF shapes purchased from IndigoBlu. Firstly I primed both sides of the shapes with white gesso. Then I painted them with IndigoBlu cottage paints in pantry white, grandma's teacup and park lane.  I also used the paints in Snow White, and sleeping beauty for over stamping.

The stamps I used are Snow Globe, Twinkle Star and Snowflake Lace.

I also used texture paste, glitter, gems and ribbon from my stash.

I have decorated both sides of each shape so if they spin round on the tree they will look the same.

I hope my project inspires you to take part in this challenge.


Bye for now, Wanda

Polymer Clay Frame

Here is the project I completed on day one of the recent retreat I attended at Indigo Blu. What a fab, action packed, weekend it was! I thoroughly enjoyed doing this. Instruction from Kay was great as were the goody bags we all received. The staff there are all so friendly and helpful.

I waited until I got home to arrange all the pieces and stick them down. I even made a few extra at home to get the balance I wanted.

If ever you get the opportunity to play with polymer clay I urge you to give it a go.

In a few days I will post the project from day two onto my blog. Until then,bye for now.

Wanda

Indigo Blu challenge 33 - Time Flies

I was delighted to be the winner of the last challenge and to receive my fabulous prize from IndigoBlu.

Above is my entry for the current challenge - Time Flies.

I have used the Take the Time  and Butterfly Collector stamp plates, both from Indigo Blu. I have also used an mdf blank and a sheet of paper from a 6 x 6 paper pad.

I applied a coat of gesso to the mdf blank. Once this was dry I adhered the paper, to which I appled a coat of water down gesso. I sponged round the edges with copper paint. Once this was dry I adhered the elements. The butterflies are stamped onto clear "Clearly for Art" acetate sing stazon ink. I coloured onto the back of the butterflies with gold and copper paint befure cutting out, heating and shaping. The "F", lace and clock faces are from my stash.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Bye for now, Wanda

Yay! I was winner of the latest challenge at IndigoBlu! Now I need to put my thinking cap on to come up with something for the current challenge which is "Time Flies". It runs from Today until 20th November.

IndigoBlu challenge 32 - Autumn Days

Here is my entry for the current IndigoBlu challenge, Autumn Days. It has been way too long since I wast posted on my poor neglected blog, but life just got in the way. Anyway, enough of that, back to my entry.

I used a 6" x 6" mdf purchased at a recent IndogoBlu open day as my base. After gessoing I adhered a sheet of gorgeous paper from the Belle Epoche paperstack. Mind you, once I had appled lashings of IndigoBlu paint in red, gold and copper, then layers of stencilling, it was all but impossible to see the lovely paper underneath. I edged the mdf with the lovely chocolate box mega flakes. Aren't these new stencils fabulous? I gentle brushed over the raised areas with gold paint to make them stand out even more.

I them stampled out the beautiful poppy image several times using black archival ink. I coloured these in with both red acrylic paints, then highlighted with spectrum noir pencils before fussy cutting the layers. I tipped the edged of the layers with the red pencil before building up my display using gel adhesive. Then I adhered it all to the plaque using the same glue.

I still feel ot needs something else but everything I have tried just doesn't look quite right, so I have left it as is.

I hope you like it and welcome your comments.

Wanda xx

IndigoBlu Challenge 21 - Magical Masking

I was lucky enough last month to be selected in the top 3 of the IndigoBlu challenge. I was asked to create a piece of work as inspiration for this current challenge, Magical Masking.

This is the card I have created for my inspiration piece.
This card used the dinky flutterby and the flourish for the Music Hall stamp plate. The saying "Just to say..." is from the Bloomin Great stamp plate.

The butterflies and greeting are stamped using brilliance inks - pearlescent sky blue and pearlescent purple. the masked off background behind the butterflies is coloured with spun sugar distress ink, the flourish is also stamped with spun sugar before the masks were removed from the butterflies.

I mounted the panel onto blue then onto pink cardstock, then added a bit of bling.

I'm loving the small round TH blending tools!

I also created another card using the dinky butterfly stamp and couldn't decide at first which to use as my inspitation piece, but, in the end opted for the card above. You decide if  I made the right choice.


Here is the second card I created and this one took a lot longer than the first to do  -

This is card number two.

I stamped the first butterfly as the focal point and masked it off. then I stamped the others in turn, masking them off as I went along. They are inked with salty ocean and mowed lawn distress pens. I then stamped the script stamp on the background using old paper distress ink. Once this was done, I removed the masks from the butterflies.


I inked the edges of the card with salty ocean distress ink using the mini ink blending tool. I then mounted the panel onto green cardstock.

I then stamped the butterfly onto heat resistent acetate using blue hawii and cactus green stazon inks. Dried it with my heat gun then cut out. I shaped the wings, adhered glmour dust, angel whispers, to the reverse, then stuck just the body of the butterfly over the body of my main image.

I stamped the sentiment, "If you truly love nature...." from the Nature 1 stamp plate onto spare card, cut it into two and inked the edges with salty ocean distress ink before adhering it to the card as shown.

Once the glue had dried, I added a bit of bling to the body of the acetate butterfly and onto the card.

Well, did I make the right choice? Over to you, what do you think? The first is clean and simple, the second far more busy and time consuming.

Your comments are always welcomed, and thanks for dropping by.

Wanda