Through the arches... Last Guest Designer Post by Yvonne Fay

I can't believe it's almost the end of October already!  I've so enjoyed my time as Guest Designer, thank you to Emma and Jennie for giving me the opportunity, and for the great products too!  Thanks also to everyone who was kind enough to take the time to leave comments.

For my last project I thought I would do another card, something a little bit different...

London through the arches

To start, I cut the base from chipboard, the background from watercolour paper and 2 oval frames from co-ordinations paper, it then embossed the frames with a brickwork texture fade, then sanding off some of the raised areas.

Base, background and arches

sanded arches

For the background, I firstly coloured with PanPatels to create a night sky, then stamped the London scene from the London plate, masking off the top with a piece of torn paper as I didn't want a hard edge. I then stamped the fly birds from the Birds of a Feather Plate at the top.

Now, at this point I forgot to take step-by-step photos, but it's not too difficult to construct.
Score and fold the bottom of the background and stick to the base, which has been inked with distress ink and stenciled with puff paint and gilding cream.  To join the arches and background together,and to al low them to fold down to fit in an envelope I used grungeboard hinges coloured with distress ink and gelatos.

For the bunting I stamped the bunting from the London plate onto canvas with gelatos - colour the stamp with the gelatos then mist lightly with water. I cut the bunting apart, hole punched, then strung on some twine and draped around the arches.

As a wee detail, I stamped the sneakers stamp onto shrink plastic and added to the base of one of the arches along with some moss to finish off.  I hope you like my last project and I've added a few close up photos below to show some of the detail.  Thank you for looking,

Bye, Yvonne.

Hands up who loves Halloween? by Yvonne Fay

I DO!!! I'm back with my second project as Guest Designer and I just had to do a Halloween project as I had a lightbulb(or battery operated tealight) moment when I saw the papier mache hand found here and then saw a small papier mache skull at Ally Pally that was just the perfect size.

I started off by performing a craniotomy on the skull so that I could create an opening to put a battery operated tealight inside.  I then painted the skull and hand with a coat of gesso.

Once the hand was dry I painted it with  green paint and the skull with pearl paint, then added a small metal screw eye and catch to the skull. The base with some Tim Holtz tissue paper

For the lace gauntlet I used some crushed grape dylusions spray, then I stamped the splat for from the Splats and Swirls plate on to some trimming and also the bird head from the Airmail Bird Collage elements stamp set  to make the frilled cuff around the hand.

Splatted

Bird head trim

Ruffled hand

The skull is suspended from the the hand using some waxed linen thread, sort of looks like a spiders web I think.

Ruffle detail

Some finishing details added from poundshop halloween spiders and a skull. Also a Tim holtz bottle stamped with label stamp from Tim Holtz Halloween set.

I hope that you all enjoyed looking at my project as much as I enjoyed making it

Happy Halloween!

Infernal Devices by Yvonne

Hi everyone, I was so delighted to be invited to the Artistic Stamper Creative team as Guest Designer for October - and it's my birthday this month too!

I decided to create a card using the time and keys and the girl with clock, and I wanted to make it interactive so used a sizzix pop'n'cuts die to create a spinner inside.

I first cut an arch shape from card and covered with Tim Holtz kraft resist, which I then inked with metallic distress stain.  I then stamped swirls from the swirls, splats and dots set with glue and gilding flakes.

I cut the weathered clock from chipboard, then painted with black gesso, then picket fence crackle paint, then applied metallic distress stains again - my new favourite things :)

The skull is stamped onto shrink plastic, shrunk in meltpot with cleat UTEE and backed with foil tape to make it pop.

For the inside I used Tim Holtz's september technique from 12 tags of 2012.

 For the pop-up/spinner I built up layers of stamped watches, diecut cogs and mini gears

I recorded a small video clip to show the spinner action - sorry it's a bit shaky but I think you get the idea!

I hope you enjoyed looking at my first project, and I'll be back on 14th October. Look forward to reading your comments, thanks.

Yvonne