Craft A Scene March 31st - Farm/Western scene 1

This is the first week of the April challenge over at Craft A Scene  where the theme this month is to produce a Farm Scene or Western Scene, whichever fits your homeland best.  As I am English, the farm was my choice to begin with, and this set of stamps is from Sheena Douglas.  There were other stamps in the set, but I felt I did not need any more.  If I have any criticism of this set, it is that they are rubber stamps so you cannot see exactly where you are positioning, and also that they are quite large which means a large card.

I do not use sticky rubber cushioning on any of my stamps.  I totally detest the stuff and spent ages removing any that I had put on.  All I do is to spray the back of each stamp with Crafters Companion Stick and Spray, a repositional adhesive, and then put the stamp on the rocker block or acrylic block, and then put the paper or card on an upside down mouse mat to give the cushioning needed to get a good impression. 

My mask positioning was not the best (my fault, a bit careless and lazy as I did not want to start again) and I did end up with a halo effect initially, but I was able to use a pencil just to continue the lines and join things up properly, and things seemed to come together again.   I also used the pencils to draw in the birds as and where I needed them.

The Barn Owl is not truly a daytime bird, but they do come out at dawn and dusk to hunt so I thought a little poetic licence could be allowed, especially as it is such a beautiful bird.  The other thing that is probably not truly correct these days is seeing cows and sheep in the same field, which we did see when I was young.  The cows ate the longer grass while the sheep nibbled the shorter bits, leaving the ground in good condition.

All the colouring was my usual Derwent watercolour pencils, with extra shading with the Graphite pencils in suitable places, trying to give some idea of where the sun might be.  I added water in some places but not everywhere.

I hope you are all going to join us and put together your own scene.  Apart from keeping to the theme, the only other rules are to make a scene with a background and foreground.  If you can draw, then draw your own, use stamps, or do a decoupage and it must be a completed project of some kind.  It is up to you.  Colouring is also optional, just shade it in if you do not want colour.  When you have completed your project, just upload it on to your blog, and then link it over at Craft A Scene.  If you do not have your own blog, you will find a link there to send your picture to Nancy by email, who will then post it for you.  Come on, join us and have fun.

WOYWW - 94

Barbara Gray - Flower stamp

Four different techniques

This is actually my desk on Monday night as I finished off the four cards needed for Tuesday, all to be hand delivered, thank goodness.  Four cards with four different techniques.  If you are short of time, just look at the pictures and read the captions. 

From left to right, the first was a new set from Barbara Gray (Clarity Stamps).  I stamped the main image with vintage photo distress ink, then stamped it again on to a large post it note.  This I used as a mask, first to mask the whole thing apart from the circle in the middle, which allowed me to use two of the smaller stamps in the set to create the design in the O.  Then I removed that mask, put the O back in position and used my brayer and Cloudy Blue and Juniper to give a soft colour in the background of the main part of the card.  I used my precious Derwent water colour pencils to colour in the flowers in the centre.  The 65 was done by writing the numbers with a Quickie glue pen, allowing it to dry for about 12 hours, and then rubbing Martha Stewart glitter into it, and brushing the excess off with a soft paint brush.  After matting and layering, I edged the whole card with gold Krylon.

Embroidery design - printed and water coloured

The second was one of my old embroidery designs, printed on supersmooth card, coloured in with water colour pens and pencils.  I am happy with the lady and the rose bushes but the grass needs to be improved.  More practice needed on that.  Again the edges were done with the gold Krylon, which, in my opinion, looks better on fancy edged card than on the plain edges.

Barbara Gray - feather stamp

The next one is a technique I have been playing with for a couple of weeks.  The stamped image is scanned onto the computer, resized and the colour changed to suit (my stock of ink pads is limited), then printed on to parchment.  Following a technique I saw Barbara demonstrate, the feather and the writing were then embossed from behind to create highlights.  The card was a pearlescent white card, printed all over with resized scans of the stamp.  I used small coppery brads to mount the parchment on to dark brown card (Papermill) and then glued to the main card with Pinflair glue gel.

Home printed disc faces

I discovered after buying my new printer that in addition to printing on thicker cardstock, it has the attachment to print on CD's and DVD's.  These are two programmes I have just taken off the overfull DVD recorder, one with Barbara Gray and one with Sheena Douglas.  I normally just scribble on the discs, but it is nicer to have pretty pictures on.

Seriously messy desk

This is my desk on Tuesday night while I am still in the middle of a Diamond Wedding card (hidden under the glitters to weight the glue down to make it stick.  Hopefully it will be stuck and dry by the morning.  Even my cup is messy, well empty anyway, and it has been there for at least two days.

One of our goldfinches eating the niger seed

I did manage a few minutes peering out of the window of my craft room, and this is what I saw.  We have a small flock of goldfinches, but they are at the limit of my camers lens.  They scoff the niger seed like it is going out of fashion, but they are such pretty birds.

I hope you enjoyed a wander round my messy home, and now perhaps you would like to visit more beautiful desks by going to Julia's blog at  
http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/

PS Sorry I did not manage to get round to everyone this week.  I did try, honest, but other things do keep getting in the way, and I like to read what everyone has said properly and give a good comment.  If I missed you this week, I hope I will get to you this time round.  By the way, there may be a PPS if the Diamond Wedding card finally gets its glue properly set and ready to go.  Watch this space.