Crackle week over at Tando Creative Ltd.

Hi everyone,

It's crackle week over at Tando Creative this week, and it's my turn to share a make with you.  Hop across there to get the details on how I made this tag.  It didn't turn out quite as planned but that's how art goes sometimes.

Hope you all stay safe. xxx

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xxx

'Dark' - Featuring Andy Skinner's New Creative Expressions Products

Morning all,

I've been a bit busy of late, lots of projects going on at the same time, and painting and decorating at home too.  Hope you are all ok out there.

I have a blog post over on Andy's blog today, hope you can hop across and join us to find out more.  It's using his new products for Creative Expressions, some lovely new paints and a fab Structure Paste, along with his brilliant stamps.

Kind wishes,

Nikki
xxx

Tando Creative - Same but Different Week

Hi all,

Join me over on the Tando Creative Blog today to find out more about their fab Layering Stencils. x

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xxx


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Mixed Up Magazine Blog post.

Morning all,

Today you can join me over on the Mixed Up Magazine blog, sharing 'I'm only Human' with you.  Hope you can pop across and check out how I made it.

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xx

A new technique - Mixed Media Acrylic with DecoArt Chalk Crackle.

Morning all,

I had a brilliant weekend at Dare 2 Create this weekend gone, with Andy Skinner and Tracy Weinzapfel Stratton, and the fab Tando Creative Ltd.  It has taken a couple of days to recover!  I was demonstrating on the Saturday evening, and I had some ideas floating in the grey matter, to try a crackle on the back of an acrylic piece. Bearing in mind painting on acrylic works backwards, it took some working out, and hope that it wouldn't crackle all the layers.

Here is a full tutorial, and pictures of some of the pieces I have made since.

The Acrylic has a protective layer both sides.  I remove just one side to work on, and leave the other for protection on my work surface.  Stamp an image on to the acrylic using Carbon Black Fluid Media Acrylic. You do have to be careful not to let the stamp slip, but the bonus with acrylic is that you can wipe off any mistakes while still wet. Spread the paint thinly on your craft mat to stamp with.

Choose a paint colour, and colour in behind the heart, (always on the same side as your stamping), going over the black stamping as well (this will still show through in places).

When dry, colour in the missing parts of the heart, I used Venetian gold here.  You could colour the whole heart in, some of the gold would still show through the first layer of magenta.

Cover the whole heart in a layer of black, this seals the front colours, and stops light getting through further.  It also makes the black stamping clearer from the front.

Next, splatter some slightly watered down colour all over the acrylic.  You can use one or more colours.  Dry between applications so they don't make mud!

Apply the Crackle Medium to the acrylic.  I went around the edge of the heart, but you can go right over, it won't crackle normal acrylic, or what's underneath it, just what you put on top.  This crackle only works with the chalk paints.

Once completely dry, paint over with your chosen colour of chalk paint and let dry.

The final step is to paint behind the cracks in a contrasting colour.  

Then it's time for the final reveal, just peel back the acrylic from the other side and admire your artwork.

As you can see, I'm slightly hooked.  The best part is peeling away the protective cover and seeing what's beneath.

Hope it inspires you to have a go.

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xxx

Products Used:

Tando Creative Acrylic Cubbie Pieces/Media boards.
Andy Skinner/Stampendous/Laurel Burch Stamps.
DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics.
DecoArt Chalk Crackle.
DecoArt Chalk paints.
DecoArt Dazzling Metallics.

Proud Guest at A Vintage Journey - Going Round in Circles

Hi all,

So proud to have been asked to contribute over at A Vintage Journey, it's my first time as a Guest there, and I couldn't be happier!  The theme this month is 'Going Round in Circles', and I went 'small' for this one!

The matchbox was treated inside, and on the top, with DecoArt Media Crackle paste.  Once dry I painted in Media fluid acrylics in Prussian blue hue, and Quinacridone gold, using a wash of each colour, and letting one dry in area's before adding the other.  This gave a distressed old look.

I stamped the postmark and stain stamps in raw umber paint.  And dripped more quinacridone gold down the sides of the box.

The crackle and antiquing process was repeated onto a simple piece of card, to use in the circular necklace.

I cut the card to fit my circle bezel, glued and sealed with matte medium.  I stamped the Toxic word in raw umber onto a piece of card, and aged with quin gold.  Some cogs were added and glued in place, and then resin was added to dome in the bezel.

Inside of the matchbox and underneath were also aged, and the necklace fits perfectly to give as a gift.

I so enjoyed making this and following the theme, don't forget to check out the rest of the projects over on A Vintage Journey's blog.

Best Wishes,

Nikki

xxx

Products used:

DecoArt Media:

Media Crackle Paint

Media Fluid Acrylics - prussian blue hue, quinacridone gold, raw umber.

Stampendous/Andy Skinner Stamps - Toxic, Shabby

IndigoBlu - Diamond Resin

Matchbox, bezel, chain & cogs from stash.

Craft Stamper January Challenge - Take A Stamp

Morning everyone,

Today is Craft Stamper Magazine's new challenge day, and for January it's simply 'Take a Stamp'.

Our sponsor this month is Rubber Dance Stamps:

The stamp set on offer is also featured on the cover of the February edition of the magazine, so you can see it in action! Our random winner will win this lovely set.

We also choose a Design winner, who gets publication in Craft Stamper Magazine, a GDT slot for an upcoming challenge, and a winners profile.The winners profile is a stand alone blog post, showcasing the style and work of the winner.

You can read the guidelines over on the main blog along with the challenge HERE.
My inspiration for you today is a tag, with a lovely swirled background and gold stamping.

I first put modelling paste through the Fleur medallion stencil onto a Tando tag, then painted with DecoArt's Americana chalky paint in Legacy.  Decor Crackle was painted over the top, and after that the top layer was Lace chalky paint, which crackles beautifully.  Over this I laid a wash of prussion blue hue, raw umber and quinacridone gold media paints.  Down the left hand side I stamped the text from Andy Skinner's 'Curiosity' stamp set, in Venetian Gold. 

I gave the Tando heart the same treatment, but in coastal waters multi surface paint, again with the decor crackle, then lace chalk paint on the top.  Over this I stamped from the Steampunk set in Venetian gold, and then the numbers from a stamp in the shabby set, in prussian blue hue. 

The tiny heart was painted in coastal waters, and stamped with the crackle stamp from the toxic set, again in the gold.

The wings were painted gold and all elements glued together, and a pretty ribbon added, stamped with Totally Tracy Texture stamp, to add the little dots. 

Hope you like it, hop across to the main Challenge to see lots more inspiration!  

Kindest Regards,

Nikki.

xx

Products used:

Andy Skinner Stamps: Curiosity, Toxic, Shabby, Steampunk.

DecoArt Products:

DecoArt Media fluid acrylics: Prussian Blue Hue, Raw Umber, Quinacridone Gold. Media Modelling Paste.

DecoArt Dazzling Metallics: Venetian Gold.

DecoArt Multi-surface Acrylics - Coastal Waters.

DecoArt 2oz Chalk paints - Legacy, Lace.

Fleur Medallion Stencil.

DecoArt & Hochanda shows and Happy New Year..

Morning all,

I hope your New Year has started well, there has been a bit of sadness over the last month and even into this year for a few people I know, so thoughts are with those less fortunate as well.

I just wanted to share some of my makes from the Hochanda show's on Monday.  I had a brilliant time with the fab new 2oz chalk paints from DecoArt, and the multi-surface, Dazzling Metallics and GlamourDust paints!  Like a kid in a sweet shop.  Not forgetting the lovely new Tando pack made up for me!

So this little media board gave me a new technique, as I'd already stencilled it with DecoArt's Scribbles stencil, and left it to one side a while ago.  I painted it with the 'restore' chalk paint, (they all come in new 2oz bottles for crafting now!) and then added the chalk crackle.  When I came to put the top coat on, I noticed that the crackle followed some of the stencilling, and gave a really cool effect.
 

I then crackled the Tando heart, using Lace and Romance chalk paints, and painted and stamped the smaller heart in opposite colours.  The wings are painted in Dazzling Metallics Venetian Gold, and the edges of the board dabbed with it on my fingers.  

This little daisy tag was similar, the crackle followed the stencil, and cracked more between the daisy's than on top!   I repainted the daisy's in separate colours, multi-surface coastal waters and chalk cherish. 

And then I did a sparkling canvas, although it's not so clear from the picture!  I crackle painted a canvas a while ago, and didn't have a purpose for it at that stage.  When I got the tv samples through, I knew immediately that it needed the Dandelion!  I painted roughly, leaving patches, with Serene chalk paint, over the crackle.  I then added the daisy stencil in legacy chalk paint, and put Neon Blue Glamour dust paint in the centres of the dandelion heads.  I stamped with Andy's scratches stamp (Toxic Set) in places,distressed the panel slightly with paynes grey, made it look chipped all around the edges with paint on my fingers, and then coated the whole canvas in Ice Crystal Glamour dust, for a very subtle, gorgeous glitter effect.

I hope you like these, I had fun making them!  I will try and share some more soon.

Best Wishes,

Nikki

xx

Products Used:

DecoArt - 

Stencils - Scribble, Daisy Chain, Dandelion

20z Chalk paints - restore, legacy, serene, lace, romance, cherish, Americana Decor Crackle medium.

Multi-surface - Coastal Waters

Dazzling Metallics - Venetian Gold

DecoArt Media - Paynes Grey, Crackle paint.

GlamourDust Paint - Neon Blue, Ice Crystal

(A lot of these available in the UK from Tando Creative)

Stamps - Andy Skinner Toxic Set

Tando Creative - media boards, hearts, wings, tags.

Craft Stamper August TIMI Challenge Reminder - 'Stencilling & Masking'

Hi all,

Today is Craft Stamper Take it, Make it Challenge reminder day, and our theme is 'Take a Technique' this month.  So the technique we have given you is 'Masking and stencilling'.

My inspiration contains stencilling today, and lots of it!  

I started by painting a 12 x 12 canvas board in DecoArtMedia paints, Hansa Yellow Medium, Cobalt Teal Hue and Primary Magenta, all mixed a little with Tinting Base to give me lighter shades.  On top of the base, I used a stencil with distressed elements, and stencilled the three colours neat, through parts of the stencil on co-ordinating base colours.  These are the sequin waste dots, pink lid rings, stripes etc.  

I then sprayed the canvas to tone down the base colours, with DecoArt Media's 'Media Mister', in White shimmer.  This gave the lovely splats and toned down the background.  
More stencilling with Andy Skinner's stencils commenced, I used the 'Industrial Elements' stencil.  

I added circles with Tinting base and a Sharpie pen lid, and then stamped Andy Skinner's crackle stamp from the Toxic stamp set in Versafine black.  I added Tracy Weinzapfel Stratton's gorgeous dots from her Totally Tracy Textures stamp set, both in ink and Tinting Base, and then edged the canvas with my fingers and DecoArt Media's Quinacridone Magenta, and added lines with the edge of an old credit card in the same colour, and a few smudges with my finger.

My trusty Acrylic Sharpie pen then came in to squiggle in a few of the circles from the first stencil, and add dots on top of some of the black stamping.  

I added some lines of washi tape on top of each other, and used one for the fab Whimsy Girl   stamp by our very own Trish Latimer (available in her Etsy Store).  I stamped her on card and watercoloured her with the same palette of DecoArtMedia acrylics as in the background, mixing a little yellow, pink and tinting base for the face, neck and arms. 

A few more white dots with my Acrylic Sharpie, attached her to the canvas and gave her some grounding with a little Payne's Grey watered down. 

To finish, I took an IndigoBlu sentiment from 'Floral Fantasy' stamp set, heat embossed and cut out, and edged with a gold Sharpie pen.  I also pencilled around the words on one side and bottom to ground them more.  

Hope you like her :)  

Our wonderful sponsor of the random prize this month is the gorgeous Gio, with her own range of stencils:

You can see all the Design Team's work, and the prizes on offer, along with the guidelines and how to enter, over on the Challenge Blog.

Hope you can join us!

Best Wishes,

Nikki

xxx

Craft Stamper July TIMI Challenge Reminder - Take a Stamp

Hi everyone,

It's Take It, Make It, challenge reminder time over at Craft Stamper, and the theme this month is 'Take a Stamp'.

We have two prizes on offer, as always. The first is the Sponsor Prize, and the winner of this will be randomly chosen from all the eligible entries of the challenge. To make sure your project is eligible to win, make sure you have followed our challenge guidelines.

PLEASE REMEMBER: We only want to see ONE project in each individual blog post entry (a set counts as more than one), and you MUST link back to Craft Stamper Magazine in your post. 

This month's sponsor prize to our random winner is: Calico Craft Parts, and the fab prize is 3 aperture ATB kits, 4 beach/nautical mini shape sheets, seashell frame ATC blank, nautical shrine kit. They arrive flat packed, you have to assemble them yourself, it's very easy.

As always, we will also have a Design Winner this month.

This winner is chosen by our DT, who all vote for their favourite design from all of the entries. This winner will have their winning project published in Craft Stamper Magazine, (with a 2 page spread of their very own!), they will have a GDT slot for an upcoming challenge, and will also feature in their very own Winners Profile blog post!

My inspiration for you is a little bracelet I made from the lovely new Indigoblu stamp, Dinkie Rose, bought out for their 5th birthday.  I simply stamped onto shrink plastic, cut each rose out, and coloured with Marshmallow and Lemon Meringue paints, watered down. 

I punched holes in each with a cropodile before shrinking the plastic one at a time with my heat gun, and used an acrylic block to make sure they were flat on my heat mat.

A jump ring was attached to each, then attached to a bracelet chain.  Some freshwater pearls were added on headpins.

I made a simple pair of earrings to match, think this is a really summery set!  

So don't forget to join in over on the Craft Stamper blog, we'd love to see your entries!  It can be any kind of artwork/make, as long as you have used rubber stamping on it. 

Have fun!

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xxx

Craft Stamper TIMI Challenge April 2016 - Spring Flowers

Good morning everyone,

Today is the start of the new challenge over at Craft Stamper Magazine.

Our sponsor this month is Traplet themselves, where you can get your very own copies of Craft Stamper Magazine.

We have a HUGE prize for you this month, this is truly awesome and well worth entering for!  The winner will receive ALL SIX Kate Crane Art Journalling DVD's!!

I so wish I could enter!!

I do have some inspiration for you though, as do my teamie's over at the Challenge, so come and join in the fun.

Our brief this month was 'Spring Flowers', and I love the yellow and green of this time of year, so decided to make a tag using these colours.

My background was created on a lovely Tando tag, with Decoart Media fluid acrylics, in hansa yellow light, primary yellow and blue green light.  I added some texture paste through Indigoblu's Laurel Leave's stencil, and coated with hansa yellow light, which gave them the yellow tone but they still blended in to the background.

I then stamped in primary yellow with Andy Skinner's Toxic stamp set, using the peeled paint/crackle stamp.  On top of that I stamped in blue green light with Paper Artsy's Eclectica 18 by Emma Godfrey stamp, using the small circles.  I then used Indigoblu's script stamp from Tasty Textures, and first and second gen stamped all over in Stazon Cactus Green.  To finish I used Andy's other stamp from the toxic set, scratches, and stamped in Stazon Emerald City all around the edges and a few across the tag.

The flower's from Paper Artsy were stamped several times in different sizes onto a masterboard which was sprayed with Decoart primary yellow decoart mister, turquoise shimmer mister, yellow shimmer mister, and ...... Over the top I stamped with the tasty textures script in Emerald City stazon.  I cut the flowers out and layered them up.

I painted the stems in black, and doodled round them in white acrylic Sharpie.  I added some white dots to the flower centres, and doodled round the sentiment (also Paper Artsy).

Here is the tag all finished.

Hope you like it, we'd love it if you joined us over on the Craft Stamper challenge to see the DT's amazing work, and join in of course!

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xx

Hope - an Art doll.

Evening peeps,

Today I'm sharing a creation I made for a challenge, and because I had this large cotton reel hanging around the house for the last five years..  I knew she would be an art doll, but it's taken until now for me to see how she would come to life.

The spark of inspiration came from the Andy Skinner/Tracy Weinzapfel collaborative Dare to Create challenge, called 'Skinzapfel', that they are doing in their respective facebook groups this month.  (Click on links on names to find groups).

The challenge was to create something a little bit Andy, a little bit Tracy.  So Hope was born.  Except of course there is a little bit of my brain in there too, hence the weirdness..

The body is a cotton reel, and the head a little silver plated photo frame from a cracker.  Both were treated to Andy Skinner's rust treatment, using Decoart Media paints and texture pastes.  The chain around her neck was done in the same way.  I used sand texture paste around the frame and the base of the cotton reel, which also had it's own texture to add to the rust feeling.  Her little 'arms' are Tando tree branches that come with the little birdies!  They too got the rust treatment.  This is the pic I shared a couple of days ago as a teaser, so you can see how she turned out now.

Her face is a print of one of my original paintings, and I just touched up her lipstick and gave her a coat of ultra matte varnish.  The flower's are from a masterboard I created in 'Tracy' colours, using Decoart mister's and media acrylics.  The little bird is a Tando Creative bird, and is sprayed in misters, and stamped in primary yellow with Andy's Toxic stamp set, the peeled paint/crackle effect.  The heart is also Tracy style, for the wing.

She has huge heart wings, which I glued dictionary paper to a metal frame, painted in pyrolle red, and coated in Decoart crackle glaze.  I didn't like the crackle effect at this point, it was too shiny.  I tried to antique it with the white antiquing cream, and again, didn't like my result.  So I repainted in pyrolle red, which led to a much more muted effect, and then antiqued with the black antiquing cream, which gave a nice grungy feel to her red heart wings.  (And those cracks are awesome!).  It's protected with a coat of ultra matte varnish.

The reason for calling her Hope, was that from all that rust, things can still grow.  So she has a little stem climbing up her body, painted in white gesso first, then Green gold.  It's doodled around in black micron pen.

The bird brings colour, as do the flowers in her hair.

I hope you like her, she posed a few problems for me but I'm happy with the outcome, and I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process, especially as it was so many ideas that have been bunched up in my head a while..

Right, I'm off to do some more rusting....  not personally of course...

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xx