Friday, 1 August 2014

We're into August and a new challenge...

Hello everyone, welcome to August's new challenge!

Regulars amongst you will know that each month one of our amazing Design Team Members chooses our theme. This month it is the turn of Butterfly (aka Alison) and she's chosen a terrific topic, sure to be a hit with many of you, it's...........


We're looking for entries that focus upon the written word. Your project may be based upon a stamped saying, a proverb, an old adage, a piece of poetry, whatever grabs you. What the challenge is NOT about is sentiments for greetings cards.

As usual, we will be visually serenading you throughout the whole month (every other day in fact) with a view to encouraging, motivating and inspiring you to get out your crafty goodies, make a project (or three) and join in!  >;o)  At the end of the month we will randomly select a winner (using random.org) who will receive the princely prize of a £20 shop voucher from our fabulous sponsor, Country View Crafts.  Alison willl also be choosing her Top 3 favourites and her Special Mention who will all win blog badges and the chance to be a guest DT with us the following month.

Please remember to follow the rules because entries that don't comply cannot be selected as a winner.

Heading up our catwalk of beautiful projects this month is our guest, winner of last month's challenge, Dragonllew (Jenny)...



Hi I'm Jenny aka Dragonllew from Bournemouth I'm married to Mark and have 3 gorgeous children who keep me very busy . In my spare time I love to craft and having been crafting for as long as I can remember, for the last few years my passion has been card making. My favourite crafting item has to be my pro markers, I love colouring up stamps with them.


I decided to alter a plain Kraft notebook for this months challenge. Because of the size of the book my normal 6 x 6 papers were too small so I had to dig through my rather old stack of 12 x 12 papers where I found these old Fancy Pants papers which I used to create the base layers. I coloured up my favourite digi stamp at the moment with my beloved pro markers adding some glossy accents to make his glasses pop. I printed the quote directly on to the patterned paper and attached it using a paper clip.


And now for the projects from our permanent DTM's...


I've created a simple tag with words at the heart of it.  I started with one of the spare tags I created when I was playing with the Tim Holtz June tag technique.  And if the words are going to take centre stage they deserve a touch of glossy embossing too!




I had lots of fun creating this shabby word piece. Stamping, die cutting, lots of ink and various techniques all went together to make it. For those of you looking for more details, my step x step is HERE.


Great theme for a challenge :) Always love to use words and quotes on  things I make.  I had left the first pages of my little moleskine journal clear but decided now was the time to fill them! Seemed like the perfect quote for the opening pages......


....pop over to my blog to see how it evolved. Donna xx 



I have decorated a wooden plaque with acrylic paints, I am planning to cover all the door panels in the house with my decorated wooden plaques this is No 4.
You can get full details of how this was made from my Blog.



I love words, they often act as the springboard for my ideas and so I was thrilled when I saw we had this as a challenge. I took my moleskin journal and roughly drew some houses in pencil and then wrote, by hand, everything home means to me around the houses. Then I coloured the houses in with Portfolio Pastels. I painted the background with watered down paint and revealed some of the writing in areas by wiping them with a baby wipe. I live at number 4 so I stamped a heart on that roof. I love these pages, as much for the personal message in the background as well as for the lovely bright houses in the foreground! There is more detail on my blog.



For our wonderful theme this month I have chosen the written word and the lost art of letter writing for the theme of my tag.  After creating my background using Vintage Photo and Evergreen Bough I kept the embellishments quite simple.  There are more details on my blog.



I went bright, beautiful and JOFY stamps for my first project. With paints, stencils and embossing paste to the Bg; Yellow is such a joyful colour. My words for this thought provoking statement were all cut using my cricut machine. More details on my Blog.


Journalling was never something that I thought I would be interested in. How wrong could I be ! Words are the perfect embellishment for journal pages and for the ones I'm sharing today I've been lucky enough to play with the fab new Colour Bloom sprays ! For the details hop over to my blog .



I love all things wordy and playing with words always brings to mind my collection of gorgeous wordy stamps, so what better way to play with words than to create a mini album to hold some of my favourite words to live by . For all the details and what's inside please pop across to inkypinkycraft .



We support and encourage crafting of all genres here from contemporary to vintage, from CAS to shabby chic and grunge, from card making, scrapping, tag art, journalling, altered art and home decor. Our individual posts commence on Sunday and will feature every alternate day throughout the month. We try and bring you DT makes that cover as much of the spectrum as possible - all we'd like now is for you to get crafting and join in!  >:o)

Have a wonderful August!

Chris and the team xxx



Tuesday, 29 July 2014

A reflection of Paula's art...

Today we have our last post for this month and it's a guest spotlight from the talented Paula Whittaker of Just For One Day who won a Top 3 blog badge back in May. Paula is sharing her make with us to show how she used her stencils to create this stunning piece of altered art...



"Hi….my name is Paula, and I started cardmaking in February 2004 as I wanted to make a special card for my aunt - I haven’t really looked back since. I love stamping, working with colour and the CAS (clean and simple) style."



"I was thrilled to have made the Top 3 in Mays Challenge and was delighted to have been asked to join in with this months Challenge of “Stencil It”. I began with an Ikea mirror, the first thing I did was used the Cargo stencil by Tim Holtz to stencil through some PaperArtsy Grunge Paste. Once the paste was dry, I used a grey paint to cover the whole frame, paste and all. I tried using some PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze next but it didn’t really work, not sure why though! My next paint was a PaperArtsy Fresco one called ‘Beach Hut’. I then stenciled the wording using Memento black ink (it just happened to be close to hand!) I then dry brushed white paint over top, then a little bit of grey.

Thank you so much for letting me take part in this months challenge and sharing my project with you all."



Clean and smart, elegant, beautiful and so, so effective Paula, this is GORGEOUS - thank you!

This brings us to the end of our posts for July but you still have another couple of days to enter and have the chance of winning the £20 shop voucher donated by our fabulous sponsor, Country View Crafts!

Don't forget we also have our 'Magpie Surprise' competition running too which is open to anyone to enter (HERE).

Enjoy the last few days of July, we'll be back on August 1st with another theme to challenge you. We hope to see you then!

Chris and the team xxx

Sunday, 27 July 2014

Sue B's moment in time...

We did warn you that there were still more stunning projects to come and we weren't telling fibs! This glorious make from our talented Sue B is a wowser of a project and who wouldn't want to pull this out of an envelope......?



"Embossing paste applied through various stencils to create dimension and texture, and then coloured up extensively! Step by step over on my Blog."



The colour work and stencilling on this project is awesome Sue, it's a work of art - thank you!

We have one more project to show you and you certainly won't want to miss it so please pop back on Tuesday when we will be featuring another guest spotlight to complete the month's posts.

Chris and the team xxx

Friday, 25 July 2014

Gabrielle always shines!

With the end of the challenge drawing near we still have several projects to show you. The old adage of saving the best until last may well be true because we have some beautiful projects to end the month with. We intend to get the last ickle bitsy tiny drop of creativity from you as we can to entice you to enter this month. >;o)

Leading the end charge is Gabrielle who has created this beautiful tag for you...



"My second project for our Stencil It challenge is a tag. I have added layers with stencils in the background as well as the foreground and I even stencilled the sentiment! That's dedication! I have recently discovered bright colours and this pink pops off the page but is tempered by the shots of blue for balance. If you would like to see how I made the tag, there are more details on my blog! Gabrielle x"



A stunning tag Gabrielle, gorgeous colours and great use of stencils. What a fab way to remind us that we can even use our stencils for our sentiments - thank you!

We hope you're nearing completion of your project because we keep our challenges open right until 5 minutes to midnight on the last day of the month! Please keep them coming.

On Sunday Sue B will be with us to show you her second DT piece for the month - please don't miss it!

Chris and the team xxx

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

Katy's in the garden today!

As promised, we have another guest spotlight for you today and this time it's from Katy Leitch of POSTCARDS from the attic. Katy is our May DTMSM winner and she is sharing her use of stencils with us with a beautiful card...



"I’ve been papercrafting for about nine years now and my love for it (and ability to shop for stash!) doesn’t diminish. I am totally nuts about stamping and my fave all time product is Distress Inks – I use them on almost everything (including in this card). I live in the Midlands with my beloved dog and almost as beloved husband."



"I love the vintage style and soft colours and so I stayed in my comfort zone for this challenge. I used stencils in a couple of different ways to create a layered background. As well as adding detail with traditional stencilling, I used Tim Holtz’s monoprinting technique using the Latticework stencil, then replaced the cleaned stencil and filled the gaps in the print with a very light touch of Treasure Gold to add shimmer to my card. I love layers and I finished the card with a stamped layered tag."



A beautiful card Katy, thank you - some terrific stencilling work here and gorgeous colour blending too!

We're now into the last week of our challenge and, although we've shown you many ways to use your stencils, we have more exciting projects to show you right 'til the end. So please pop back and visit on Friday when Gabrielle will be strutting her stuff.

Enjoy your crafting everyone!

Chris and the team xxx

Monday, 21 July 2014

Donna has her own style!

Yet again we have something very different for you. Donna has gone very contemporary today with this fabulous colourful tag combining Stampotique imagery with her stencils...




"A fun little tag using some That Special Touch masks with distress inks and some clear texture paste through a bit of punchinella.  All the details are on my blog. Donna xx"



We don't want to worry you but we have just 10 days left to the end of the month. If you're quick you can get at least another entry in if not two! >;O)

We hope you've also taken part in our special Magpie Surprise Draw to win our goodies? If not, you can find it HERE.

We'll be featuring another guest post on Wednesday, don't miss it!

Chris and the team xxx

Saturday, 19 July 2014

Chris is being a good time girl!

I'm a huge fan of texture and layering and stencilling is such a useful tool in achieving these. Here is my second make for the challenge, a shabby card...



"This time I have used texture paste with my stencil and left it completely uncoloured to gve this splat effect as a layer to my card. Details of the what and the how can be found on my blog. xxx"



Variety is the spice of life, so we're told and you can certainly spice anything up with stencils! We're over half way through our challenge so we hope that you're busy beavering away getting your projects completed and ready to enter..........?

On Monday Donna will be here with something else to show you so please pop back and take a look.

Chris and the team xxx

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Have you tried stencil stamping?

My second sample for the Stencil It challenge is a tag with stencil stamping.


Create your background. I used the wrinkle free technique with distress inks and then blended some antique linen in the gaps.
Using pumice stone DI I blended through the numbers stencil and then stamped through it as well.





I added some latticework and chevron framework die, a photo from the ephemera pack, a stamped nib and chit chat words.


The small pieces within the latticework framework were cut from different fabrics and textures, hessian, cork, felt and patterned paper.


Then some shabby ribbon and a tag label complete the look.


Have you entered the challenge yet? If you haven’t there is still plenty of time, so pop over to the Challenge post to check out the details.


Have fun.

hugs Brenda xxx