Saturday, November 28, 2009

A box for my nephew Jack

My gorgeous nephew Jack is being Christened tomorrow, and I'm so honoured that I'll be his Godmother. A special present was in order, so I've created a keepsake box for his treasures. I particularly wanted to make something that wasn't babyish, although he's not quite 7 months, but I wanted something that would last. I had a box in mind, a blank about 8in square that I picked up ages ago with 4 apertures in the lid. So, after several weeks of painting and spraying and stamping, here it is......


I primed the box with gesso, then painted the whole box with blue acrylics. Once dry, I sprayed with Cosmic Shimmer Misters in Aqua Lagoon and Midnight Blue for a bit of shimmer. It gives a lovely depth to the flat acrylic colour.


 
 
His name- Jack William- and date and year of birth were stamped round the edges of the lid using a lovely See D's Ancient alphabet, really elegant lettering. I used a Stazon Midnight Blue inkpad so that it wouldn't rub off or fade.

I wanted something special for the apetures on the top, as they would be the main focus of the piece, and I toyed with each of the 4 letters of his name in the squares, but hadn' got stamps big enough. Eventually, inspiration struck when I visited the Paperartsy blog and remembered I'd bought some Ferro paints at the NEC show. These are thick paste like paints, which can be stamped into. I had a pewter colour and an antique gold. The trick seems to be to have moistened your stamp before you stamp into the Ferro, and also to have applied the right thickness- too much and it squelches and sticks to your stamp, too little and the impression isn't deep enough. A little trial and error led to the following....



Two sections are stamped with a Heidi Swapp clock stamp, the other two with a dotty background stamp and my favourite Hero Arts Old French Writing stamp.Once dry, I spritzed with more cosmic shimmers, in lots of different shades- blue, red, gold and green. Here's some close ups.





I finished off with the words Memories and Treasures on the top of the lid.  I'm really pleased with it, it has a lovely shimemr to the whole piece and the little squares are lovely to touch, very tactile. I hope Jack and his mom and dad like it as well!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

NEC- Craft shopping at its best!!!

I had a bit of a busy weekend- shopping at the potteries in Stoke with my Mom on Saturday and a fabulous trip to the craft exhibition at the NEC on Sunday with my mates Kay and Michelle. It was our second time, and we weren't as organised this time, so we didn't see everything, but I still managed to spend more than I'd intended and bought lots and lots AND LOTS of stamps!!! We met Chippa and Wordy from the Docrafts ATC forum and I managed a couple of ATC swaps with them.All in all it was great fun,but very tiring. Wanna see my new stash?



New stamps from Lavinia, Stamps Away,Paperartsy, Artistic Stamper, Heidi Swapp and lots more..... I've also bought some Croco and Ferro to try- Croco is painted on and then crackles, whilst Ferro is metallic and can be stamped into. I watched Leandra from Paperartsy demonstrating the Ferro and had to buy it and have a go. She gave me the demo piece, so I've got a bit of inspiration!!!!

So all that lovely stash to play with and I haven't had time to do much crafting!!! I grabbed an hour yesterday and came up with these....




Can't wait to play with the rest of my new stash.......