Opus Gluei Challenge #123. Tweet, Chirrup and Trill.

It is my challenge this fortnight on the Opus Gluei challenge blog.

One of my favourite themes is all things Birdie so let rip with your Bird art this coming fortnight.
 
I drew a birdhouse template and cut it out of chipboard and covered it with Tim Holtz papers. I then paper pieced a couple of adorable birds to live in the birdhouse. 
These birds are chipboard shapes from Twiddlebitz but when they arrived they were far smaller than I thought they would be so had to redraw them bigger to fit my grand plan (Ahem). 
Now I drew them freehand but if my brain cell had been around the front I would have realised that I could have scanned them and printed them out bigger and it would have been much easier. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing is it not? It always puts me in such a jolly mood...

Click on the pictures to make them bigger, you will be glad to know that the second picture blows up nice and big.

Onto my baby birds, my dear little chickies... 
C'mon Ladies -enjoy the new poobahs!
 

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Opus Gluei Challenge #122. Take a picture it will last longer.

The lovely Kirsten over at Opus Gluei has given the following prompt to get our creative juices flowing "Take a picture it will last longer."

Now I can't say that I use photographs much at all in my art but I often make pictures so I set out to make a picture that would fake the look of fabric in a photograph (WTF)  even I can't follow the very convoluted way I have tried to meet this prompt, when I was creating it all made perfect sense to me but in the cold light of day today who knows what I was thinking...my brain cell was not round the front but MIA.

So this fake fabric background that is made of paper but looks like a picture replica of a photograph of fabric..... is a tenuous entry at best for this prompt, but hey I've felt quite poorly this last week and this was my best shot.

Oh but doesn't Gooseneck's dear little face make you smile nestled in that flower?

 

Then I made another similar card, but it's very boring.

I took white card, Do Craft's V & A stamp set called V & A quilts- cornfield, and stamped in versamark ink and heat embossed with clear fine detail powder. Used cut and dry to apply Evergreen Bough and Festive Berries Distress inks to make the background.

I coloured a few of the flowers with Cosmic Shimmer Watercolours for a little bit of shiny.
Made a 3D flower using red card and Marianne design die cutting set of flower shapes glued together with white PVA and 3D decoupage glue.
Gooseneck's face from Stampotique.
A spellbinders die for the tag and metallic red card candi.
The sentiment on the second card is a Personal Impressions stamp.

I'm sure anything you make for this challenge will make far more sense than mine.
If you want to see a very clever take on the challenge go see what Electra has made as her brain cell is round the front and isn't budging from pole position.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Opus Gluei Challenge #121. Out with the Old and In with the New.

Firstly may I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Deena over at Opus Gluei has been very clever with her challenge title and theme because it is basically a free for all challenge just use some old stash or some new stash or a mixture of both and create something!
How clever is that?
I love clever play on words so Deena is off to a roaring start in 2012 and I hope the same is true for you.

I thought I would make something useful for this time of year so I made 6 identical Thank you cards and then I made another 3 identical general cards using a seahorse stamp from Chocolate Baroque.
My new stuff is the yellow sequins and the 3 and 3/4 inch square shaped blank cards from Craftworkcards, the rest is from my stash.

 

I have used some of my favourite inks, Brilliance Pearlescent Inks, I have use the tricolour pads in Peacock, Twilight and Aurora.
I used the background stamp from Penny Black Slapstick called Paisley Swirls but I think it looks great as stylized sea.
The flourish is from Inkadinkado called Sketchy Flourishes.
The Many Thanks sentiment is from Hero Arts Sending Smiles messages.
The With Love sentiment is from Papermania Hampstead Collection, Icon and sentiments.
The Dress form is a 3inch Woodware Punch Dress 2.

I've also used standard sized sequins which I think give a better balance of size on these small cards rather than using Card Candi which is bigger.
Here is a size comparison photo. See what you think.

For the Pinafore dress card.
I drew a pinafore template to fit the card blank on white card and coloured with distress inks using Rangers cut n' dry foam.
Spritzed with silver mica mixed with water in a mini mister.
The background stamp is from Chocolate Baroque and has been coloured with distress inks, the little Teeny Weeny stamps used on the Pinafore are also Chocolate Baroque stamps called Curiosities and Teeny Weeny Meadow.

I coloured Icing Sugar Card Candi (white) with Versamagic chalk inks to get an accurate match in colour.
Did you know you can colour Card Candi with your inks?
It makes the Icing Sugar white pack endlessly versatile.
Inks I have successfully used to colour the Candi are Distress Inks (dye ink), Versamagic (chalk ink), and Brilliance (pigment ink).
I use small 3D foam pads which are 2mm thick to stick my Card Candi on with.
The brand I use is Stick It! code number STI 4100. Very cheap and work well.

Happy Creating in 2012!
Gini
xx