getting in a mess!

The theme at step outside your box saturday is "Take Chances, Make Mistakes and Get Messy!!!!" and the theme at 4x4 friday is orange and yellow.

so I decided to mess about with orange and yellow acrylic paints. I then decided to have a go at an acrylic paint image transfer. I am always put off doing this as if (or in my case when) it goes wrong, it's a waste of a perfectly good image. but I decided to take the chance and make mistakes if necessary and I made this. The image is by Inka, the transfer didn't go that well (I just don't have the patience to let it dry!!) but I decided to go with it anyway, highlighting the main image with the ringer stamp, and acrylic paint. I also used a swish stamp and some collage words from Inka.

another Inka piece

I love this paradise tree image, I think it's so lovely that you could just stamp it on a card and be done with it. but I wouldn't be much of a design team member if that's all I did with it, so I've been playing. I stamped it once in sepia onto papermania vintage paper and then gold embossed it on another paper which I ripped and laid over the top. I also stamped Inka's crackle background onto another paper and embossed in gold.

Inka is just about to release some new stamps which you can see here
. Aren't they fabulous, I can't wait to get my hands on them. Don't forget you can still take advantage of the 25% discount if you mention my name before the end of the month, but you'll have to hurry, only a few days left.

bathing beauty inchie

this is one of my inchies for the bathing beauty swap, which now has a new closing date, the end of July. so plenty of time to get those inchies to me! go on!
just email me if you need my address.

My bathing beauty is the classic bathing beauty, the mermaid. I made the background with blue acrylic paint which I stamped over with white acrylic paint using and Inka swish. The letters are from a tiny studio g set. and the mermaid is from ebay and I have no idea who makes it. I painted the mermaid with watercolours, then touched up her hair and tail with perfect pearls.

*******INCHIE UPDATE********

I have two pieces of news about the inchie swap.


1)I have decided to extend the current swap to cover July as well as we haven't had many submissions yet. (In fact I haven't done mine yet- next thing on my list)

so the closing date for the bathing beauties swap is now 31st July.

2) I have decided to have a break from the inchie swap, so this swap will be the last one for now.

music birdhouse

Dans ma maison il y a... de la musique
that's the theme this week. and music made me think of singing birds and what kind of house would a bird have? well a birdhouse of course.

So I have made this birdhouse card for the challenge. The papers are Laura Ashley. and all the stamps and collage image are Inka.
I've used the ringer stamp for the hole on the front and then tried to arrange the collage so that the mai features show through the hole.

another couple of inka samples

I have made this first one for the wednesday stamper challenge this week which is "twinchies" (2"x2" squares) I used a fabric base which I sewed to a piece of card. I used an Inka collage image, and a love stamp from Inka as well.


The second piece is a card using a gorgeous tree from Inka. I did the background with distress inks, then coloured the birds with a white gel pen. I then hand drew a spiral on the card, and accented it with Inka's Dot flower stamps

a couple of quick Inka cards

I have some new Inka stamps to play with so I made a couple of quickies

This first one is actually for a forum sketch challenge, and I intend to RAK it. I love this doodled rooster stamp.


The second one is a little notelet. I love these little dickie birds that you see around alot, but I haven't bought any of the stamps, because I keep telling myself that even I, with my very limited drawing ability, can manage to draw a bird shape. so I did, but finished it off with a little inka swish for the tail. I also used an Inka music stamp for the background.

Jackie's birthday card

I made this card for Jackie's birthday, amd on a quick trawl of the challenge sites I've found it fits three of the current challenges!
1. Theme thursday, the theme is hats
2. Arty girlz, the theme is a hint of pink
3. Created by Hand, the theme is fancy paper.

The girl is Erica from Inka stamps (look! she's not holding anything, I've been guilted into giving her little arms a rest) ,the hat is also by Inka. The "fancy paper" is my favourite papermania set- retro floral. This card all came about because I wanted to play with the circle cutter I bought back in march and hadn't used. I love it!
The dress and hat are stamped onto the same papers as the background and cut out.
I think you can tell from the photo that the main card is acetate. I am starting to get the hang of photographing acetate cards!

think monday think ATC - Hands

The theme at TMTA is hands. I have one hand stamp from non-sequitur so I decided to use that.



I have also used stamps by Hero Arts and SeeDs, a skeleton leaf and some flower soft

I have decided to RAK this so I have mounted it onto a card, but it is removable if the recipient wants to put it in their ATC collection.

baby heart hanging

Rainbow Lady's Challenge this week is to use board. I have had some mountboard left over from a large project (a 3ft high gingebread man) which I have been using. I used some to make my fairy door, and I used some to make this heart. I free hand cut the heart from the mountboard and painted it with gesso. I also cut the B and painted that with blue and white.

This is for my little sister who's baby bay is now 8 days overdue!

craft stamper free stamp July 2008

I bought my copy of craft stamper this week and I thought the free stamp looked really useful, and although I'm really busy this week with no time to play I found a few minutes to make something with it.

The stamp is a frame with a flower in it. The frame is great as the aperture is an inch square perfect for housing an inchie, or as in this case an Inka inchie collage image. The flower is really pretty too, so I stamped that onto patterned paper twice and cut out. The whole thing then reminded me of a little window, so I decided to mount it onto a little house.

As I have used a face in the window I have decided to enter this into this week's Artygirlz challenge as the theme is faces.

And the winner is...

The winner of the draw (done usung a random number generator) is Melanie


Your doll will be on it's way to you shortly!

collage pendant

Deb set the forum a challenge for may to make a collage pendant, which we then swapped.
mine is made from a piece of black shrink plastic as a base. I have had a couple of sheets of this which I got in a mixed pack and couldn't think of a thing to do with it. I then watch the very talented Robert from once upon a stamp demonstrating at the harrogate craft show, and he made the most fabulous pendants from black shrink plastic, alcohol inks, utra thick embossing powder and friendly plastic. I couldn't make the friendly plastic look as good as he did so I didn't bother with that!
so what I did:

cut a random shape from black shrink plastic, dab gold paint pen onto it and then 3 colours of alcohol ink, then mixed it using the polished stone technique with blending solution. I then heated it to shrink which makes the background colours intensify.
I then cut out a collage image from Inka stamps, and added some german scrap lace. finally I embossed it with two layers of clear UTEE. I was pretty pleased with it, and glad I got round to trying out Robert's fab technique

Fairy door

I was browsing blogland the other day and I came across the concept of a fairy door. The idea of these is that they are small enough to fit on your skirting board and allow the fairy folk to come and go as they please.

well I just loved that Idea, so I suggested to my forum that we make them as a bit of a challenge.

mine is just short of six inches high.

I have photographed mine outside for artistic effect, but it is actually for indoor use. I love the idea of having them outdoors though.

mine is made from mountboard. I cut a piece of mountboard into a arch and painted it with black acrylic paint. I then painted another piece of mountboard with black and brown to create a "woodgrain" effect, and cut this into strips and mounted them on the black background.
The door knocker is a drawer pull. I've added some black card hinges, with brads.

The green trailing plant is Inka's leafy swirl stamp which I stamped and then painted over with green acrylic paint. The Wish word is also an Inka stamp on a scrap piece of the painted board.

and I finished the whole thing of with a generous application of flower soft.

I really really enjoyed making this.
I am really proud that this was published in the october 2008 issue of craft stamper magazine

The result of the may inchies

Here are the inchies from the Romantic Liaisons swap





these are by

Valerie Myers, Roberta Gill, Louise Granlund
Carol Plume, Mandy Chilvers, Carolyn Reed
Joanne Wardle, Kana Conger, Deb Freeman

here come the dolls!

My Knitted dotee style dolls are the featured project of the month on Inka's website this month. The instructions for making them are here

To celebrate this fact, I have one of these dolls up for grabs (the one second from the left)
Just leave a comment and I will randomly select a winner at 4pm BST on sunday 8th June. I will post to anywhere.

This is also a good time to take advantage of the "Design Team Sale" at Inka Stamps for the month of June ....mention my name (Joanne Wardle) and get a 25% rebate. Rebate is not available in combination with other offers or coupons, grab bags or items found on the "Vintage found items and mounting supplies" page of Inka Stamps online catalog.

June's Inchie swap : bathing beauties

This month's guest artist is Mandy.
here's her bio

I'm Mandy, I live in Derby with my two daughters Lily and Amber. I started stamping 2 years ago and discovered ATC's and since then the mail art world has exploded for me with differents projects. I am enjoying using various types of media at the moment. I recently had my first 'sale' of something I made which was exciting but scary! My fave themes are zetti, fairies (or rather people with wings and crowns!), and Alice in Wonderland. I love bright, colourful pieces of art, and love to blog hop to see what everyone else is making. You can visit my blog at: http://mandysmagicalworldofart.blogspot.com

Mandy has chosen the theme bathing beauties

and here are her gorgeous samples



remember that you can interpret this theme any way you want .

Here are a reminder of the rules of the swap



The rules are the same as always, and the inchies are still sent to me, I am still organising the swap, Mandy's's work is done!
1) Make 9 inchies, send 8 of them to me.
2) If you are in the UK enclose a SAE with a LARGE stamp.
3) if you are out of the UK, send me a small gift, or an ATC and I will cover the postage. please also send an envelope with your address on.
4) They can all be the same, or all different, whatever!!
5) they can be any media you like as long as they are 1" square.
6) there are no rules how to make them or finish them.
7) you do not need to mount them (just make sure they won't fall out of the envelope)
8) the swap is open to anyone, even if you have never made inchies before.
9) put your name on the back of each inchie
10) let me know by email, or by commenting on this thread, that you have posted your inchies, and then I will know to expect them.

closing date is now 31st July, just email me for my address if you need it.