Stained Glass Effect Tile

When I saw the Flowers Stencil I thought it looked like a piece of stained glass and I wondered how I could recreate that effect. I don't have any glass paints so I had to improvise.

I used the stencil and my Cameo to cut the black outline out of some vinyl but you could draw around it and colour it in.

Once I had that in place I coloured it in with ProMarkers. I did this on rough paper first to make sure that I had all of the stalks, leaves and flowers correct. I thought I'd found them all but looking at it now I can see a tiny bit that I've missed. Can you spot it?

When I was happy with the colouring I went over all of the sections with Glossy Accents. My hand was shaking from squeezing the bottle by the time I'd finished but was worth it as it gives it the look of glass. 

I don't believe it! I've just spotted another bit - I've missed a whole leaf out too. I was really pleased with it until I started writing this!!!!!  Oh well, it's too late to change it now.

Stencil Used

Flowers

To top it all I've just been upstairs and found my rough work - I had them coloured in on that. What am I like?

A rather annoyed with herself Lynne 

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Madeleine Gelli Print

This is my Madeleine Gelli print card. I do love black and pink together.

It's a very simple one - I created a vibrant pink Gelli print for the background and then used black acrylic paint to add her on top. 

This was another attempt but I thought there was too much pattern behind her. It looked a bit distracting to me, so I chose the top version where that area is more of a solid colour.

Before I go I thought I'd share this too. I added some Buff Titanium paint to the residue on the Gelli plate at the end of the session. I think it's my favourite Gelli print that I've done, there's just something about it that I really love. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. Suggestions welcome.  

Stencils Used

Madeleine

Leafy Swirl

Dotty Wave

Lynne

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Lily and her Chrysanthemums

Morning everyone, I thought I'd better get this written before I get struck down with another headache and can't face a computer screen (although the last one might have been self-induced). It's party week here (there are always so many functions on the last week before Christmas) and I'm getting too old for it!

Bringing things back to a more sedate level, here's a lovely serene scene of Lily in her garden. The main image is all one layer so there's lots of masking involved. I cut 4 layers of Post-its in one go for the flowers though so it wasn't too bad.

The pattern on Lily's dress is made by stamping her onto some copy paper and cutting out the part you want to stamp onto. This creates a mask that you can then stamp through. I used the Ornate Corner stamp for this to add the pattern.

Talking of the Christmas parties, I had to share these photos that I took the other night. They made me smile.

I was sat at the table when I recognised something familiar - one of my Christmas cards from last year.........

..........with this written on the back. It had a special message for our table in it. I was really touched that they'd kept it. 

Stamps Used

Chrysanthemums - Large

Small

Lily

Cottage

Trees from Lesson 21 - Remountable Winter Trees Set

If I Had a Flower

Large Ornate Corner

Must get on, shopping to do today. 

Lynne

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Santa Stop Here Card

Another Christmassy one today - my "Santa Stop Here Card'.

With the show being at the beginning of December I thought it would be a fun way to use the British Isles stamp.

The British Isles is stamped in black Archival ink to give it a lovely solid colour.

The new shapes for the Letter Box kit were stamped and masked off, along with the moon, before I brayered the sky. The snow is Shabby White Frantage embossing powder sprinkled carefully over and heated.

It was asked where the arrow is pointing to when it was on TV and I can now reveal that the answer is............... nowhere in particular. The curved arrow was cut on my Cameo and my original idea was to point it to where I live in North Yorkshire but in the end I just went for where it looked good!

I should be alright though as I have this little guy in my window. Hopefully Santa will see it.

Stamps Used

Solid British Isles 

Letter Box

Remountable Shapes

Sprucescape

Santa and His Sleigh

Lynne

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Angelina Fibres Chrysanthemum

I really enjoy reading Barbara Gray's blog every day, although when I read her post "A Stencil Breakthrough" it made me swear somewhat!  Let me explain.....

....... I've recently got quite into film and fibres and when I saw this stencil I thought it would look beautiful done in them. The question was "How?". I didn't think you'd be able to heat the stencil, like you can a stamp, so I tried to figure out how else I could do it.

Eventually I had what I thought was a brilliant idea - I spread out a load of the fibres and with an iron fused them into a sheet. I then ran that through my Grand Calibur with the stencil to emboss it. It looked pretty good but needed more definition, so then came the second part of my great idea - I covered my large Gelli plate with black acrylic paint and Slow Drying Gel Medium and used that to ink up the stencil. I placed that back on top of the embossed sheet of fibres and ran it through my Calibur again to transfer the ink. Bingo!

I was so chuffed with my idea, until a few days later when I read Barbara's blog and found out that you can use heat on the stencils!!!!!!!!!! Cue much swearing and laughing from me. So if you want to know how to do it properly read Barbara's post here.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Chrysanthemum

Remountable Happy Words Set

Lynne

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Christmas Greetings From London

Weren't the weekend's shows fab? They always go so quickly though. It's hard to believe that the next time Barbara is on it will be 2014.

This is the first of my samples that were on the shows.

It was inspired by this ATC that I'd made previously.

They were both made in the same way - by masking off the central panel before stamping the border, then colouring them in with ProMarkers.

For the card, the word "London" is made up of letters from the other sentiments in the kit e.g. the "L" and "O" come from the "Love" stamp."

For the ATC I printed out the large "O" on my computer and used the regular Letter Box stamps for the rest.

The flag on the ATC is a little pin badge that I bought on eBay.

You could also use the Welsh and Scottish sets to do something similar.

Stamps Used

Remountable Letterbox Sentiments

Letter Box Set

British Isles Outline

Remountable London Set

Remountable Christmas Set

Off to walk Maya now. When I come back I am going to start my own Christmas cards!

Lynne

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Scene Building - An English Country Garden

It's the first of December! That means the start of a new challenge on the Claritystamp Challenge Blog. The theme for this month is classic Clarity - "Scene Building".

Congratulations to the winner and top 5 of this month's "Christmas" Challenge. Quite a few of those featured beautiful scenes. I think it's something that most Clarity fans enjoy and I look forward to seeing what you all create.

This is what I've made. It uses the Cottage Scene Stencil that Barbara used on the lesson show yesterday.

I think that the secret to a good scene lies in the planning and I probably spend as long doing this as I do making it.

The first thing I do is flick though my Claritystamp Catalogue, which contains stamped images of all of the Clarity stamps that I own, and choose which ones I am going to use. The main one I picked here was the Small Swing stamp. I then chose stamps that I thought were the correct scale and would complement it.

I then start stamping them to work out where they're all going to go. This is some of my rough work from this scene (ignore the strange church on its side on the top middle one, I think I was just looking at the difference between first and second generation ink). It also shows the paper I ripped to create the hills.

I initially used the black part of the cottage but then I realised that I didn't I didn't need that for planning, I could just put the stencil on top of the paper (you can see that in the bottom middle image). As you can see I don't worry too much about technique when I'm doing this, it's just about trying to get the composition (especially the perspective) right. Just moving a stamp slightly can make a big difference. 

I made the scene, especially the sky, a lot more vibrant than I normally would as the black is quite stark. The silhouettes are all stamped in black Archival except for the weather vane which is embossed. 

On the previous versions of this, that I blogged last month, I used black acrylic paint and the Gelli plate for the black area. On yesterday's show Barbara used Black Soot Distress Ink and a make-up sponge. For this version though I cut it out of black card with my Silhouette Cameo.

Just for fun I converted the photo into black & white. I quite like that version too.

This is such a versatile stencil as you can theme the scene to suit the recipient. Jackie asked on Facebook yesterday about a golfing scene and I think it would work really well. Where we lived before here was next to a really hilly course and this scene reminds me of it. You could put the horizon a bit lower and add in some more detail in the sky - a sun, some birds, text or even a hot air balloon. The rolling hills could then be transformed into a golf course - you could add a bunker, draw in some flags and the golfer silhouette from the Remountable Sport Set. I hope that helps Jackie. 

Stamps and Stencils Used

Small Swing

Cows and Small Cockerel from the remountable Farm Set

Weather Vane - Lesson 21

Well and Lamp Post from the Remountable Village Set

Labrador from the Remountable Home Set

Church

Forest Ridge

Cottage Scene

Lynne

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