What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday 125

Well hello fellow Wednesday desk hoppers!  Glad to see you back again...and for those of you who have never visited my South African desk, WELCOME!


On my desk this week is the canvas I am busy with to use during my demonstrations of Tim and Rangers products at the various Scrapbook shops and outlets here in my home town.  I am finding that there is so much to tell people about each product that I thought it a good idea to make this canvas using each product to create its name and then (and this is still to be decided how) I will put all the attributes and applications of each product written under it...or next to it...or some flip up flaps...or something!

Then on my craft sheet is the first finished scrapbook page of my good friends wedding photos which I took of her in July.  I took over 1000 photos and now to put them together in an album is quite daunting, but at least we have a start...at one page an evening every 2 weeks or so, this is going to take us a lifetime!



Thanks to all of you who wished me well for my big demo, it went well and I had about 25 people sitting and some standing for 2 hours while I tried to cram in as much about each product as I could.  I was very humbled that so many people came and wanted to learn about Rangers products.  This photo was taken by my friend Sarina from RS&E who import Tim and Rangers products to our country.  I was so engrossed in my demo, that I clean forgot to ask someone to take photos for me!  Here I am about to use the Color Washes on an apron over some masks and stencils.

Our Desk hop host - Julia (of Stamping Ground) is showing off her beautiful sewing skills this week over in her craft room, not much of her desk to be seen as her daughter is modeling the costume Julia made her that she is going to use in some or other production, I can't remember what...(Pokemon?) but hop on over there and join in the desk hop of world wide proportions!

Don't know what happened last week, but I know there were issues on my blog when people wanted to comment, hope I have fixed that problem this week...'cos I love to hear from you!

So that's my desk this week, now I am off to peruse yours!

Bella

Demo and tag

Hello fellow bloggers!

This morning I did a demo for the big Scrapbook shop in Bellville and I was staggered at how many people came to see it! (plus minus 25, some seated and then others standing too)  I am humbled that people want to come watch me play and get inky, but so pleased that so many people are interested in the products and took 2 hours out of their day to come sit and watch and ask questions.

I realised that there is just so much to tell about each product as they are all so versatile and that 2 hours is not long enough.  Perhaps I will have to break the products down into smaller groups and do more specific demos...

There are no photos of today as I got so carried away with the demo and chatting that I clean forgot to ask someone to get a shot of the group and the display.  Someone did take on her phone and she might email it to me on Monday...

When I got home and unpacked my stuff, I got all inky all over again and created a few tags, though I have only taken photos of the one.

Although I was there to dem, I took a few min at the end to see what was new and came across these well priced stamps and bought a Santa face that has the banner at the bottom that I used in this tag and the stunning pine branches.

I used Distress Powder "peeled paint" on the pine branches over the top of Airondack "Meadow" and it worked so beautifully.  After heating this I used "faded jeans" Distress ink to cover the tag.  I then stamped the two balls with Archival "Vermillion" on scrap paper and coloured them in with Distress ink "barn door" ,covered the whole lot with clear embossing powder and heated it from below and cut the balls out and stuck them on using foam tape.  I punched holes in the tag and the ball and threaded the gold string through and tied a bow.  My hubby does not like the bows...cant tell me why...

I just inked the banner for the sentiment on the Santa stamp and then added gold smooch to the ends for some bling!

Then I took the silver angel charm and put gold alcohol ink mixative on it to change its colour and tied it to the ribbon.

That"s all for now folks!

Whats on your Workdesk Wednesday 124

I have been very busy planning and prepping and peering into the distance (wishing I had a crystal ball) over the past week as I try to imagine what my mentor and creative genius man Tim Holtz is going to conjure up for his 12 tags of Christmas this year.  The reason for my dilmma is that I am going to Johannesburg to teach them on the 17 December this year, just a mere 5 days after he will have finished them and so I need to get hold of all his new stuff that he released at CHA this year like Picket Fence Distress Stain and Snow Cap alcohol inks as well as his new dies for Sizzix and Stampers Anonomous stamps because I can only imagine that these are going to appear somewhere on his tags...we all know what we are like with new toys on our desks, I can't imagine that he is any different...  They will be the first things he reaches for.  I could be wildly wrong, but at least I will be prepared!

I have now put an extra page with a tab at the top of my blog page called Demo/Class Schedule so you can see where, when and what I am teaching till the end of December.  As I get booked by various shops and venues, I will add them to the list.

On to my desk...

Here you can see the beginnings of my preparation, 50 sheets of cardstock ready to be run through my trusty Vagabond to create all the tags for 20 people in the class.  I will get a small glimpse into Mario's world where he kits up for all of Tims classes, at least I don't have to do the huge quantities he does though!  I really admire him for all his patience and organisational skills.

You will also see that I have found 3 packs of My Minds Eye tinsel ribbon, just in case he uses it on his tags, and even if he doesn't I will!


Underneath my desk you can see the tool box I created from my Vagabonds box so I can transport all my inks and sprays etc to my demos and classes and work straight from the box at home too so I don't have to keep packing and unpacking my stuff!

OK, enough about my desk!  Go on over to Julia's desk at Stamping Ground where you can join in (or not) and look at all the other creative desks on offer for your perusal!

Whats on Your Workdesk Wednesday 123

Still on my workdesk, but on its way to the Scrapbook Shop in Durbanville this afternoon, is this sample board I have made to advertise the fact that I will be going to do a Demo there in just over a weeks time.

It has taken me a week to make all 4 of these pages, each one using different products and techniques to show how versatile the Tim Holtz and Ranger products are.  The shop owner is thrilled with it and I hope it draws lots of her customers into the shop next Saturday.

Over the next week I have to work on a wedding photo book for a friend that is to be professionally printed so there will be tons of PC time and no ink work for me, though I think I will have to find a tag or two to play with or I will start to have withdrawals!

Here they are in close up if you want to see them in more detail!  If you scroll back in my posts, you will also find more info on how I created them.

Have a great day further and if you have some time on your hands, pop on over to Julia's desk at Stamping Ground where you will find a lot more people who are sharing their workspace today for you to peruse!

Bella

Final piece of the puzzle

I have been very busy over the past week creating a set of 4 scrapbook pages that could showcase the different products from Tim Holtz and Ranger.  I will be doing 2 demos in scrapbook shops in the next few weeks and needed to get people interested in what I was going to be doing so that they would pop in and come see.

I thought I would go orange for the last one...

I used Sticky backed canvas for the lettering which I rubbed with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and sprayed with Perfect Pearl Mist - Heirloom Gold.

My base is a white pices of Bazzil card stock which I sprayed with Color Washes in Butterscotch and Sunset Orange.  I then placed a Prima plastic mask over this and overs-prayed with Red Pepper Color Wash.

I let this all dry and put a band of tissue tape across the top of the page to place my title on and then created the flowers with correlated cardboard which I gave a hefty dose of course sand paper and then inked with Spiced Marmalade and Walnut Stain Distress inks.  The leaves are silk ones that I have taken off some fake sunflower sprigs I bought at the Crazy Store.

The poppies I stamped from an ancient PSX stamp and painted the poppies in using a brush and Colour Washes

I layered the whole page up and there you have it!

Simon Says Stamp RAK

Hello there

I have been the lucky recipient of a RAK (Random Act of Kindness) from Simon Says Stamp.   On Tuesday last week I tweeted them the entry I had posted for their challenge on their blog which was Simon Says Stamp and Show:  Men Only.   The mail to South Africa was quite quick and I found them in my post box yesterday afternoon when I came home from work.  What a nice end to my week.

I won this cute set of stamps called Turtle Buddies.  They are really fun to play with.



After a few false starts to my creative endevours, like my dog finding something disgustingly smelly to roll in and had to be bathed immediately followed by my hubby asking me to nip down to the local Renault dealership to collect the wheel berings he had ordered and my dad dropping in for a cup of tea...I finally made this tag.

First I covered the tag with "Stream" Color wash and water, let that dry, then I stamped the turtle and the two sentiments from the set.

In the photo below you can see the shine of the embossing powder I added to the waves that I overstampd the background with.  After heating the embossing powder, I rubbed the whole tag with Peeled Paint Distress ink to make the waves show up better.  Then I added the ribbons and the rosette.

Blue? More like a Rainbow!

OK so yesterdays post ended with me saying I was going to play with blues today...well, I got a bit carried away and played with a rainbow and some green too.

I had such fun, I used alcohol inks on photo paper and metal foil to create the title and the flower and the clock.  I also used them on the fragments to show something different.

All in all, I used Distress Ink and Alcohol ink for this page with some Perfect Pearl mist on the dark blue sheet  With some Cobalt blue Archival ink thrown in on the stamps for good measure.

Pink Ink!

I am on a roll!  Love it when the mojo flows like this.  Well it does help that my son is at a sleep over at a friend and my hubby is away on business so I don't have to do the real life thing and make supper, tea or any other distracting chore tonight!  All I have done is play with PINK INK!

I am doing a demo at two Scrapbook shops in the next month, so I am madly preparing inspiration pieces to be on display prior to my visit to hopefully inspire people to come and learn all about Tim and Ranger's products.

This is my latest one all in pink and purple.  I know when people here in South Africa think of ink and Tim - they think grunge and brown all at the same time.  I am on a mission to change peoples perception of these products.  They come in 36 yummy colours and I am slowly building up a collection of them.  So far I have 10 colours to play with in the distress inks, colour washes and Distress stains.

Any way...I used the colour washes in the backgrounds on white Bazzil card stock, some neat and some diluted with water off my craft mat.  Cut the letters from the sprayed paper and then stamped them with Perfect medium and added Perfect pearls to get the shiny pink spots.
I sprayed my craft mat with water after I had made the papers and lay the tag in it.  I dried it, stamped the sentiment and butterflies with Pitch Black Archival ink, sis some in the perfect pearls and swiped the whole tag with clear embossing ink and poured a layer of clear embossing powder on it and heated it.  I helped it curl at the two corners and inked the backs with Distress ink black soot.

I die cut the butterfly out of some of the paper I had made earlier and put diamond stickles on the bottom layer of the wings before I put it together.

I made the flowers with two each of 4 different sizes, inked them and layered them up.  Joined them with a brad.  Crunched them together, opened them up and done!

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I used Tim's Pappillion stamp set in the background of the lighter central piece and his flourish with Pearl paint dabber on the flourish in the background of the bottom layer.

I had such fun doing this page, I am not sure it is legal!
My next one will be Blue I think..

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday 122

Hello fellow Bloggers

Wednesday seemed miles off on Monday, but here I am at the blink of an eye on What's on My workdesk Wednesday...hosted by the wonderful Julia over at Stamping Ground.  So pop on over there to join in the world wide desk hop and snoop to see what other wonderful crafters of all persuasions are doing.

Today on my desk is the project I finished at 10pm last night.  I still have the wonderfully stained inky fingers to prove it too!  I am busy with samples for an inspiration board that will be going up in a local scrap shop to show people what they can do with Tim Holtz and Rangers products.  I will be doing demos there soon and want people to be inspired to come to the morning session to learn more.

What do you think, have I created something that would make you want to come to the demo?  If you saw this would you want to know how I did it?  (assuming of course that you had no knowledge of the products and what they can do)

Please let me know if I have achieved what I set out to do...

Have a great week further...

Bella

World Card Making Day

I have been doing some demos using the Ranger products for one of the importers here in Cape Town.  This was my table this morning on World Card Making Day.

I was putting together a canvas (that you can see to the left of my table) to hold all the sample tags I have created to put up at the demos that I am doing at various shops and I realised that I seem to work mostly in oranges, reds and browns.  (The reason was simple - those are the colours I owned!)  First I had to put right the missing colours in my stash of Tim products and then I decided to make a change to the tag sample board this afternoon.

Below is my desk after mass producing a whole lot of tag backgrounds followed by all the tags I have finished thus far.

I don't think there is a Ranger product that has been left out!

 Below I have used: Stickes, Color wash, Distress ink on the clock stamp, Archival ink on the number stamp and perfect pearls for some background bling.

In this tag below I was inspired by a bag of teardrop beads that I bought on Friday and made a flower with them by gluing them down in a circle using Glossy accents and a giant brad for the centre.  The leaves are paint dabbper with pink embossing powder on it for texture and the writing stamp in the background is Archival ink.  The tag was covered in color wash with water that I sprayed on my craft mat.

The purple tag below was done with water and color wash to start with and then the butterflies from Tim's Papillion Stamp set by Stampers Anon. were done with Perfect Medium and perfect pearls and the flowers and brads added from my stash.

This tag below is purely color wash over a stencil/mask and then I used Spun Sugar Distress Stain to fill in the white left by the stencil which blended the color washes slightly into the background.

This tag was lots of fun.  First I sprayed the color wash onto the craft mat and then dabbed the tag into it.  When this was dry I added the Smile embellie and stamped the flower using the Perfect Medium so I could add Perfect pearls.  The sentiment was stamped with the clear embossing stamp pad and I used pink embossing powder on top.  I finished it off with the bling in the middle of the center flower that I got as a gift in the parcel of stuff I ordered from Simon Says Stamp.