Better late than never.

Hello Blogland, I hope you are all well! Well I don't know why I bother making New Year resolutions, I always break them. I apologise for being a bad blogger, but as the title says, "Better late than never". Recovery from an operation and  ill heath keep getting in the way. I hinted with in my last post that I was thinking about designing my own digi's, well I have. I have designed them to be multi purpose and appeal to every crafter, weather you are a Tangler or into mixed media, I hope they will ignite some inspiration.

To help launch my first range and to spread the word, I'm looking for people to join the design team. The details of how to apply will be at the end of the post.

So to get your creative juices flowing, here are some inspiration created by two of the design team and also by a couple of my friends. So here we go!

 My Very good friend Erin, has a Boston terrier called scooter and asked if I could custom my dog digi for her, so that the dogs ears were pointed at the top, to look like Scooter. I was glad to. Erin is in many of swaps with various groups on social media sites, I don't know how Erin has the time, I must ask for lessons, but I digress. Erin had to create and ATC for one of the swaps and decided to make a kinetic ATC, using the customised digi. Erin coloured the digi with Copics and designed the kinetic parts to make digi Scooter jump when the tab is pulled. I love this idea and also the colours that Erin used. To see more of Erin's creations click here.

The next two creations are by a mother and daughter team. Tina and Megan Cox. Yes you're right, it is Tina Cox from the telly. You might not know that Tina, as well has being a parchment guru, Tina is also a whiz with a micron pen. I sent Tina a couple of the early versions of the digis and asked her to to tangle away. I was simply blown away when I got the samples back. I wish I could tangle, I've tried but, it looks like doodles, but not constructed doodles. I won't keep you waiting any longer. Here are Tina and Megan's creations. Tina's Sample is the digi with the hat and Megan injected the digi with colour. Speechless simply speechless.

Now for my Design teams marvellous creations. In no particular order, I've always wanted to say that, Diane. Diane's creations show how the digi's can be used traditionally for card making, but that doesn't do justice to her work at all. The colours of the backgrounds and how the images are coloured, make the images pop. I am so happy with the way Diane as interpreted the images and so honoured to have Diane on the design team. Here we go, three creations from the marvellous Diane. You can see more of her work on Facebook.

What can I say about Christine, to do justice to her work. Well it is all excellent. Christine is a multi skilled crafter with fingers in many of a crafty pie. Christine's blog is simply inspirational, with creations from paper craft to fabric craft. Again I'm at a loss where Christine finds the time, but I am glad she has. Christine's sample is a genre that I have just dipped my toe into, grunge. Christine's creation shows again another way to use the digi stamps. Christine's choice of colours and her tangle work, turn the image into a grunge master piece and I just hope I can master the messy world of grunge as well as Christine had. Shall we have a look see at Christine''s creation. Oh go on then, here we go!! You can see more of Christine's superb creations here

So that just leave me and my creations. After showing the design teams creations, mine are pale in comparison, but I did try. I wanted to show how the images can be used for digital and hybrid crafting, by using the same composition. All my designs can be taken into digital crafting programs, like Serif and My Craft Studio, so they can be edited to suit your own crafty needs. I used one of Daisy Trails Steam Punk Digi kits to create both versions of the Bon Voyage card. The first one was designed totally in Craft Artist and printed out folded and presto, a card finished, ideal for when you are in need of a quick card. On the flip side the Hybrid card I used Craft artist to print out the elements of the first card out, several time and also printed out a backing paper again from the same digi kit. I was gifted a 72 Spectrum Noir marker set from my dad, as a get well soon gift, when I came home after a over night stay in hospital, and I love them and want to master them, off on a tangent again sorry. I printed and cut out the elements. I used the pens to colour my digi images. I used iced and brown greys, true blues, pale pinks and for the heart I used the darkest bright pink. I decoupaged the banner and the outside columns of the Tajish Mahal and used Collal glue gel to raise them. For the dogs lead to match the metallic lead of the first card, I used, wait for it, a gold plated chain. There we go, two cards using the same composition, using the same images.

I am trying to figure out out to convert the images into Silhouette cutting files, so they can be easily cut out, but I'm not having much look at the moment, but I will keep trying.

DT Call out.

So if you were inspired by the samples and would like to join the design team and work with these images and the images to come and like thinking outside the box, please send an email to: me . Please include the following:

1. Name:

2. Email:

3. Blog or website address:

4. Links to any on-line galleries you may have:

5. Three items, cards, or layouts{one to be using a digital image}Your entries don't have to be new, but must be your crafting style.

6. Details of any current or past design teams you are or have been involved with

7. Please tell us a brief intro about what yourself, what you like about crafting and what you find exciting about crafting. 

General Requirements

• You will need to be able to commit to posting two projects a month using the images and back linking to my blog
• To be able to post and join in with the monthly Challenge blog.

• To be able to comment on the entries of the Challenge blog

You'll also need to be ready to have some FUN and enjoy your Craft's!!!

Having a active Facebook account would be good, but not necessary, because they will be a Design team Facebook group. 

Closing date for entries is Saturday 12 April 2014

I look forward to receiving your entries. Good look folks. 

Ian xx

All Rise for Ella Bella The Grunge Princess.

Happy New Year Blogg Land. I hope you all had a good Christmas New Year.I don't usually make resolutions, because I always break them in the first few day. But this year I have made three and I will keep to them, because they all revolve round my passion, Craft. They are to try a different style of craft, design my own range of Digi Stamps and blogg more. So tick, tick, tick. So far, so good. This card is the different style of crafting. I have always loved Hels Sheridan's style of crafting, and I wanted to give it a go, which I did, but with no success. Well that was before I got some expert advice and things started to fall into place. So I decided to make a background for a card using the new technique, Grunge!

I had an idea for a card using two of my favourite IndigoBlu stamps, Ella Bella and Floral Swirl. You can find these stamps and all of the amazing IndigoBlu range here. I wanted to incorporate my new love of Grunge, but it had to be pretty, because the stamp warranted it. I tried the wrinkle free technique, all full tutorial to come this week so watch this space, but all the results were too grungy. so I decided to do the direct ink technique, again tutorial to come. I laid four colours of Tim Holtz Distress Inks on white card a little at a time. the colours I used were Worn lipstick, Seedless Preserves, Mustard Seed and Barn Door. The good thing about this technique is that id I has done another background it would be completely different. I used cut and dry foam to lay the ink down, until I was happy with it. I then stamped the Floral Swirl stamp with Seedless Preserves, in the top left and bottom right corners to leave a very subtle faint impression. I them stamp Ella Bella as the focal image in Walnut Stain, directly onto the background. I then went round the edges with Walnut Stain to age it. I didn't have any brown card to mount lay it on so I used a piece of white card and inked the edges with Walnut Stain. I used the Walnut stain edged card to mat onto gold mirror card and laid the grunge topper onto both and them glued it onto a 5.5 by 5.5 inch card blank.

I looked at the card and wondered what I could embellish it with, after a lot of humming and arring I decided that all it need was some small Aurora Borealis gems. I placed three of the gems at the top left and bottom right of the card. There we have it my take on pretty grunge. I hope you like it.

Ian xx

I have entered my card into the IndigoBlu Challenge Blogg. You can find the challenge here