Creative Card Making with Alison

Hello all, it's Alison here with this month's Creative Card Making post.  Regulars over at Words and Pictures will know I almost never make cards.  For some reason I find them very difficult to get going with.  But a Creative Card Making post requires a card, so here it is...

For this, I borrowed my inspiration from a tag I made in which I borrowed inspiration from one of my fellow Creative Guides, the lovely Jennie of Live the Dream.  And at three removes of inspiration, I found that it wasn't so hard to make a card after all!

I started with a pre-cut kraft card and envelope, 6x6 inches, and gave it a rough coat of gesso as a base.

Over that, I added some Idea-ology Tissue Tape and Design Tape strips and then smeared some DecoArt Crackle Paint in places.  (I know I took photos as I was going, but my camera seems to be playing up, and decided not to keep them.)

Over the dried crackle, I added dribbles of Distress Stain in Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky...

... and I smeared some Peeled Paint DI and Shabby Shutters DOxide onto my craft mat, spritzed with water, and added that to the mix too.

I chose those colours to go with the tag I cut the Tim Holtz flower out of.

This one is from the Wildflower Stems #2 set.

I'd done some wrinkle-free distressing with those colours onto the tag, and had just enough to be able to cut the strips of paper lace too.

This is one of the two designs from the Lace Thinlits set released a couple of years ago.

Most of my butterfly Design Tape had become invisible under the crackle, so I added some more of that...

... as well as some actual lace from Tim's Idea-ology Lace Trimmings.

There's a bit of script stamping done in Stormy Sky Oxide.

And I used the leftover blobs from cutting the lace to add some extra detailing.

A few ivory sequins dotted around catch the light rather nicely.

And the Idea-ology Quote Chip gives me the necessary words to finish things off.

In the end, I really like this mixed-media card.  And it's flat enough to go through the post without extra charges!

I hope that's given you some card-making inspiration.  Thanks so much for pausing in your journey with me today.  There's still plenty of time to join in with our current Book It! challenge so do come and join us.  Have fun on your crafting travels.

Alison x

A little extra musical inspiration...

Hello all!  It's Alison here, your tuneful host of this month's Words and Music challenge.  Our new itinerary means that in the third week of our challenge month we stop off for a while with the host for some extra inspiration.  It might be a tutorial for their challenge project, or a whole new creation.

I pretty much shot the bolt with my step-by-step for Under the Greenwood Tree over at Words and Pictures, so I'm here with a fresh bit of musical inspiration for you... a quick tag full of melodies and musical thoughts.

For my main project - Under the Greenwood Tree - I went for some song lyrics as the inspiration, so this time I've taken the other approach to the theme and used both music paper and some words about music on my tag.

I started by gluing down some vintage music paper onto a standard #8 tag.

I applied Versamark ink through the Tim Holtz Harlequin stencil and then a couple of coats of Seth Apter's fabulous Vintage Beeswax powder.  Just look at that glossy dimension, and the warm honey-coloured tone.  It's lovely.

I spritzed some Pumice Stone Distress Spray, followed by Broken China, and then flicked water droplets over the top, and sanded the edges for a more distressed look.

I added a wash of white paint, wiped back, and then splattered tiny droplets, and used a lid to add some circle shapes in a couple of places.

These Sizzix Coffee Marks die-cuts had been hanging around on the table for a while after being rejected from some other project, but I decided their time had come.

I stamped the quote from my PaperArtsy EAB03 Music and Silence stamp set, cut it into sections, and doodled around the edges with a fine black pen.

The wonderful Paper Doll dancer was also asking to come and dance amidst the music.

And just down by her feet, you find out who wrote those words.

I mounted the tag on some white card, just to echo all the white accents going on, and doodled some more fine black lines around the edges of the tag.

The whole thing is topped off with some Distress Ink-dyed crinkle ribbon and curly paper string.

I don't use black very much, but it was already there in the printed music, so I went with it - but to me this doesn't look very "me"... what do you think?  It's always good to experiment though, right?

I hope this has given you an extra nudge to come and get musical with us this month at A Vintage Journey.  Check out the details of the Words and Music challenge as well as the fabulous inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides and then come and join us on the journey.  We'd love to see you there.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Alison xx

Destination Inspiration - June Terminal 4

Hello all, Alison here from Words and Pictures, and I'm delighted to have arrived at Terminal 4 to share June's fourth and final Destination Inspiration project with you.

Packed in the travel bag this month we had:

Main Colour - Walnut Stain

Technique - Layering Stencil and Texture Paste

Substrate - Watercolour Paper

Product - Any Tattered Die

Three of my fellow Creative Guides have already shared their inspiration with you, keeping us all fuelled for the journey (you can see their roadmaps of inspiration again at the end of the post), and now it's my turn.  Here's what I came up with...  (I had to make this some time ago before life got busy, but I'll do my best to remember how I put it together!)

I started by cutting a large tag out of a sheet of watercolour paper, and applied texture paste through the fabulous Typo stencil before spritzing with Walnut Stain Distress Spray.  I tried to keep some whiter spaces, and places where you can really see the delicate splatter pattern from the spray.

I decided I wanted the Typo lettering to pop a little more, so I did some dry-brushing with Picket Fence Distress Paint to highlight the texture.

I'm not much of a flower-maker in the general way of things, but I know where to go when I do want to do some... my fellow Creative Guide Jennie has some amazing tutorials over at her blog Live the Dream, and I almost always go there for help when I'm using the Tattered Florals die.

I followed her Cabbage Rose design for my large flower (I've enjoyed the results in the past, and it didn't fail me this time either) and a sort of half version of the same for the smaller ones.  I did less curling of the petals on the small roses as my book pages I was using weren't really strong enough to take it.

So with all my components in place, I now had the fun of adding collage elements and embellishments to finish the whole thing off.

I used one of the brilliant Photobooth photos, and layered up paper scraps and other ephemera to frame it.

I altered my metal embellishments with alcohol ink and some Treasure Gold.  I think the clock looks pretty good peeking out from behind the roses.

I particularly like the effect on the WordBand.  I thought about applying paint to accent the lettering, but decided I rather liked how subtle the words are like this.

I like the dark Teakwood and Espresso alcohol inks contrasting with the bright gilding.

I needed something a little brighter to carry the eye on a longer journey and capture the light in places, so I grabbed some thick card off-cuts from the Frameworks Honeycomb die which were hanging around on my craft table and gave them a coat of Antique Linen Distress Paint and then one of Rock Candy Crackle Paint.

Once it was dry and cracked, I pressed the pad of my Walnut Stain Distress Stain down onto them to let the ink sink into the crackles to highlight them.

The seam binding at the top has had a close encounter with the Walnut Stain inkpad so that it tones in with the rest of the tag.

And I'm a complete spatter fiend at the moment - can't resist it!  You can see the dry-brushing and a little hint of Treasure Gold highlighting the texture here too.

So there you have it... my roadmap of inspiration to re-charge your batteries for the next stage of the journey.

 I hope you like it.

As promised, here's a recap of all the Destination Inspiration projects from this month.  I love seeing how each Creative Guide uses the same luggage from the travel bag to create such different and individual projects.

Terminal 1 - Jennie

Terminal 2 - Anne

Terminal 3 - Astrid

Terminal 4 - Alison

So there you have it - I hope your creativity is firing on all cylinders after all that.  You've still got a bit of time left to come and join in S@ndy's Celebrations challenge, so get cracking!

What will be packed in the travel bag next month?  And how will each Creative Guide use the components to fuel our onward Vintage Journey? You'll just have to come back each Monday to find out... Bon Voyage!

Alison xx