Kiddies Week kicks off!

Hello, its Karen here starting the KIDDIES WEEK for you.  I have used the lovely Fairy Castle Chalkboard to make a clock for a little girls room.

Its a good size for a wall and I know my 6yr old niece will love it!!!!  I painted the base with Fresco paints and stamped some swirls lightly as well as adding some some lightly stencilled flowers at the bottom.  The top section was smothered with texture paste.  When that was dry I painted it with more Fresco and added a clear glitter paint to add a bit of sparkle.  I painted 12 mini flowers to put the numbers on.  (the numbers have been stamped and cut out & stuck onto the flowers)  A hole in the centre of the base was made for the clock mechanism and a pretty paper circle was added.  The same paper was used to make flags for the turrets.  PLEASE NOTE - this castle DOES NOT COME WITH A CLOCK MECHANISM but they are easy to get hold of and pretty inexpensive.

Here are the pieces as they come...

Now if you have a little boy there is an option for him too :-D  There is also a Train Chalkboard which would look fabulous as a clock...

Take care out there xxx

Frame it week......

After a few months of of stress with re-locating and getting organised I have finally managed to sit down and create something.  

I wanted to do put up some wall art in my new craft room and when I had a good sort out I came across lots of the Gothic Arch layered frames lying around.  I think I had taken them to demo at some point and these were the ones that weren't used.

Anyway, I set about decorating some of them to hang on the wall.  I have used Paperartsy paints and some of Jofy's stamps that are just gorgeous.

I created my own backgrounds with paint and stamps and just had a thoroughly good time :)

A spring card opening onto... Ice Creams!

Hellooo! Coco here today, I'm sharing with you an humorous card inspired by the spring and sunny weather we have had throughout this month (at least in France). My card opens on a small frame of....ice creams. Yum!... :D On the front panel we have four old ladies who are eyeing through the opening of the chocolate & ice cream man ...:D I used a humorous stamp by Art Impressions and old patterned papers that make me think to spring and sweets. I took a lot of pleasure to play with the new release Tando Minis - Ice Creams to decorate the inside. 

On the front panel, I had fun with my Ink Splatters mask to create festive and colorful splatters, looking like fireworks... With a small  foam pad I covered the holes with white paint first and then colored them using watercolor Derwent Inktense pencils and a water brush. I also used the Burning Rubber mask in the same way, to create a ground for my ladies.

My ladies are stamped on smooth stamping paper and heat embossed with fine black powder before fussy cut. Derwent Inktense pencils were also used to colour all my images, heat embossed in Clear at the end and glued in place with Glossy Accents. 

My card opens up to... Four ice creams, YUM-YUM!!!!

At top of the left side I have added a bunting strip from my Bunting Small Scalloped pack of 4. I painted it with acrylic paints (I used translucent PA paints: Zesty Zinc + Pumpkin Soup) and also put a bit of glitter stickles in lime green on the edges, then I stamped the word 'spring'.
I used my new Stitches Group mask to draw an irregular border line with Olive distress marker and outlined the edges with a brown pen. 

And here are the ice creams!!! To fit to the theme this week, I glued them on a small board with rounded edges from my pack of Mixed Media Boards. The size of mine is 80 mm x 116 mm, but they exist in two sizes. It's a great product, we can do and imagine many things with it!

To decorate my frame and my ice creams, I did the following:

For the frame, I first gesso-ed it (and also the ice creams elements) slightly. Once dry, I reused my Ink Splatters mask and coated the board with opaque yellow saffron paint over it (PA Haystack), then I applied a coat of translucent yellow paint (Zesty Zinc) on the whole board. I set my stencil at the same place again and added a bit of Claret (another translucent paint) over the splatters. A second coat (very rapid with the leftovers) of Zesty Zinc was applied at the end to enforce the shine of the board, and I also glued on the edges a bit of Lime Green Glitter Stickles.   

For the ice creams, I played with several acrylic chalk paints and inks to colour them. I used PA Vanilla, Rose, Limelight, Chocolate Pudding, Orchid, Lilac and Eggplant, and a tiny drop of Dylusions Bubblegum Pink ink (the great flashy pink colour!) and Fresh Lime over Limelight (giving this yummy shiny Green). For the final touch I also added a bit of Glam Pink Stickles and 3D brown paint to create small chocolate chips. Slightly sanded the brown strips also to finish... 

You probably don't have all these paints, but you can easily adapt and use any paint or ink you have in your stash... 

New Releases:

Other Tando supplies: 

Hope this card has put a smile on your face haha! Have a great day! Hugs Coco xx

"Forget Art - Put your trust in Ice-Cream" (Charles Baxter, the Feast of Love)

last few days

There is still some time to join us with our Monthly Challenge over on our challenge blog - don't forget there is some lovely Tando goodies up for grabs for one lucky player….see you there.

How can we frame Spring? Easy way with Tando

Hello my dear crafty friends!
Irit is here and this is my Frame project. I know, it's my favorite Printers tray again, but it is a frame after all. This time it's a pastel spring colors project and I used Tando lovely stencil inside the window too. I used one of Tando basic shapes as my frame backing and both were inked with Ranger distress ink to this lovely spring color.
The mask was used with heavy molding paste and then inked with a mix of inks over.

And those are the products I used for this project

Frame it….

A new week and a new theme and this week our theme is:-

FRAME IT..

Tando creative have a fantastic range of frames - to kick start the week I'm (Carol) using this "love frame with stand"

This frame is still a "WIP" as my niece gets married this year and I intend to add a montage of photos from the day in the middle for her….the frame comes with a blank base plate (which I painted black), then a solid cut out (the heart shapes were painted red and the outer edges black - the hearts then had hearts stencilled over the top with a deeper red - you can just make this out on the top heart), then the top piece is the cut out edges for the hearts (painted black) - I then added red treasure gold to all the edges to finish it off.  The frame was treated in the same way.

We have some great pieces all week, so do pop on back….

Same but different week...

ends today and what a great week we have had! 

Today its my (Carol) turn to show you what I created with my grass flexi strips…. I always think that if  a "flexi" piece goes around a circle then its truly flexi and very versatile - so with that in mind here is my piece:-

My base is a large, unused, cheese box…the flexi strips went around the edge, as you can see, very easily……

I lifted the edges slightly to allow the lid to close easier….

If you would like further details on my cheese box, please visit my blog.

We all really hope that we've given you some inspiration with these flexi strips…..please check out the suppliers lists at the top….

Thank You for joining us this week - don't forget to pop back tomorrow when we start another themed week.

Same but Different... A funny AJ page and its tutorial!

Helloooo, it's my turn (Coco) to show you what I've made with the new 'Flexistrips - Grass' product...
This new product is thinner than chipboard but thicker than card, and also very flexible so it can easily be used on 3D projects, like Karen showed you beautifully just before me this week! Today, I chose to put it simply as a gorgeous embellishment on an Art Journal page, it is a quite funny page, hope will will like it as much as me... I have also a tutorial for you on this piece, click on the first image below for the link.

Apart the Flexistrips - Grass product into focus, I used several Tando's masks and chipboards on this project. I had a great fun to play with all my Tando goodies, they are really perfect to create and embellish AJ pages...  This page forms a charming combination with a previous page on the left side of my Journal, it was a bit fairy-tale page, you will have an insight into it at the end also... Hope this style of whimsical AJ pages will make you smile and inspire you! :D 

My background is made using various Panpastels as a base for other mediums, acrylic paint here and there and a bit of metallic gilding wax on the leaves and the edges... All my textured leaves are created with my new Tando mask 'Long Flourish', this one is so BEAUTIFUL!! The three different leaves you can create with it are really gorgeous. I also played with the new released mask 'Bullseye' (another new great one!!) for the central image, combined to a Stampotique stamp having by chance similar design. I was a bit inspired by the English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" everyone knows I think... even in France haha!  

Here are some photos, but you will find all the details, photos and needed supplies enclosed within the how-to file I made for you, to download a PDF with full instructions, click on the picture below.

I show you the two pages of my Art Journal together...

I used the following new Releases:

Flexistrips - Grass

Mask - Bullseye

Mask - Long Flourish

Others products:

Squirrel Woodland Set

Grab bad of Clouds

Andy Skinner's Mask/Stencil - Accessorise

Thanks for stopping by today, this really was a great week! Hope you have appreciated all the pieces we have showed you throughout the week in different styles to inspire you... have a wonderful week-end! HUGS Coco xxx

Same but Different - more!!!

Helloooo lovely bloggers!  Every now and then the powers that be over at Tando Creative ask us all to work with the same product.  This time we are working with a very recently introduced type and that is Flexistrips.  These are 12inches long and are, as the name suggests, very flexible so that they can be stuck around corners etc.  The are scored along the long edge too so that they can be folded easily to make them stand up. Great for using with our our 3D products. At the moment there is a choice of Fencing or Grass.  We have been given the grass version.  Here is what I did with mine...  I have made a trinket tray...

The base is a heart shape and I glued the strip around, cutting & folding the bottom as required.  I added some small beads around the inside to 'pretty' up the join and some ribbon round the outside to finish it off.  It actually looks far better in real life than the picture!  Here are pics of how the pieces come...

Thank you for looking, HUGS, KAREN xxx

March challenge - week 3

Its Wednesday again, pop on over to the Challenge blog and see who's tempting you with their piece this week… see you there.

Grass Flexistrip as a base

It's my turn today to show you another way of using the new ~{Grass Flexistrips}~ which are thinner than the chipboard, but thicker than card. I have made a card:

I trimmed the strip down, painted it with acrylic paint and then when it was dry, added texture paste through the circles part of the ~{Tree and Leaves 3 Part Mask}~. Once this was dry I added some white pen to liven it up. I then added ink to the edges of the strip, turned it upside down and used it as a base for some stamps to stand on.

There's a background ink spray circle and I've used ~{Mini Balloons}~ to finish off. These are painted with acrylic paint, inked edges and Glossy Accent-ed.

I made a matching gift tag too ............

............... and another card. These have used one strip from the pack. It comes with 2 pieces so very good value for money ;) I ran out of balloons so had to use a stamp for the second card.

Kaz xxx

Same but different week: Grass Flexistrip

Hello my dear crafty friends! Irit is here today and I am going to show you my take of our Same, but different week. During this week our design team is going to show you our take of new released Grass flexistrip.
Those strips are really versatile- you can use them for layouts and cards, but as they are flexible, you can use them for 3d projects or to arrange them in 3d way as I did in my new totally Tando wall deco.

I altered this medium size kitchen wooden board to be this fancy nature scene using Tando masks and chipboards. First I made this wood grain background with a big wood grain stamp and then heat embossed it with numerous embossing powders and misted with brown and golden mists. Then I made the sun, clouds and landscape using Tando City Skyline mask and molding paste and heat embossed them over with shiny powders. All chipboard pieces from mini lines and the Grass flexistrip  were painted with Gelatos and heat embossed with clear embossing and coloured powders too. The grass strip- part of it- was bended as it's totally flexible piece.

And those are the products I used for this project

See you next week with more Tando inspiration! Come back this week to see what other DT  members made with our new released Grass flexistrip.
Irit

A couple of cards using several Tando masks

Good morning! It's my turn (Coco) to show you something... But before, did you see the lovely makes with some new releases that my teammates have showed here this week? For me, you will have to wait a few days more to see something else with the new products, I have several things in progress but not yet finished. So today, I have some cards made by stamping and stenciling several wonderful masks, not new but as much pleasing to me as on the first day of use... and very resistant. I have still other brands' masks bought before I integrate the team, they are really much less robust!

To do all my backgrounds I used a bit crazy technique that I really love. I simply used up the watercolour paper I was stamping on for other projects. I saw one day a great piece by Helen Chilton done this way, and I was very impressed. I just added a few stenciled images, playing with my Tando masks and inks (you can make out Dylusions Vibrant Turquoise e.g. on the next one... I also played with various Distress Ink pads and my Picked Fence stain to produce large splatters, and then also Brilliance dew drops applied directly here and there, this is so fun to make and I love the effect!). My backgrounds were done some time ago, so I can't give you more details on the process, but I remember that I applied a coat of white acrylic paint (PA Snowflake) a bit diluted at some stage to smooth the colors... I also used white and black markers on some areas.

On this first card you can see Kaz Boughton's 'Dotted Star' and Andy Skinner's 'Burning Rubber' in the background, and Andy's 'Doll face' on the foreground. I was not able to find this latter product into the shop to link it, maybe it is out of stock or has been withdrawn from sale I'm sorry.
I'm very happy with this one because I also played with my new Silks Acrylic Glaze paints for the first time!! I have not many of them of course so far, but those colours I have were perfect to highlight my face. I used Vavoom Red, Stargazer, Fire Opal and Pomegranate.

On the next cards, I played with my JOFY stamps collection for stamping, and with my masks  'Dotted Star', 'Burning Rubber' and  'Code Breaker'. 

Products I used:
 

Also, Andy Skinner Doll Face

Hope you like... I also hope you're enjoying some sunshine wherever you are. Here in France we have a sunny springlike time, my garden is in flowers! Hugs, Coco xx