WOW! I'm so excited to share with you the news that my recent entry for the Craft Stamper magazine made the front cover.  This is such a privilege.  If you haven't read the Craft Stamper yet, i urge you to do so as this is the number one stamping and mixed media magazine.  There is always lots of inspiration from the design team, reader submissions and tutorials too.  www.craftstamper.com for subscriptions and further details.

I have used mostly Powertex products to produce this canvas and the embellishments on it.  Also some air dry clay for the mermaid's tail and the seahorses.  The ammonites are made with powertex and stone art, together with a stencil and Easy Structure.  Once everything had been attached, it was painted with ivory powertex.

The finished canvas shows all the lovely texture and colour.  Bisters were used to add the background colour, wiping back with a baby wipe until i was happy with the colour.  Then the fun bit was adding further colour to specific areas with power colour mixed with a small amount of varnish using a dry brushing technique.

Here are a few close ups showing the texture, seahorses and mermaid's tail.  The close up of the ammonite texture was kindly sent to me by the photographers at Craft Stamper.

When I started out with a blank canvas, i wasn't sure in which direction I was going to go, other than it was going to have a seahorse or two.  Once I had decided to use Powertex products, this just evolved as I went along.
​I'm pleased with the result and had such a lot of fun making this.  I hope you like it too and would love to hear your views.
​Join me again soon on my next creative adventure......

Hi and welcome to my first ever blog post!  Well, I've jumped in and decided to join the blogging world and hope to learn the ropes as I go along.  

​To start, i thought i'd share with you a couple of pictures of some box cards that i made a little while ago.  I think this is such a lovely style of card and the fact that they fold down flat in the post is a bonus.  I started by drawing myself a template and once i'd worked it all out and made sure it worked, i cut and folded the final piece of card ready to decorate.

​I stamped and coloured panels and attached them to the card, then put the card together and stamped, cut and coloured the images to stick inside the box.  All the images and panels were coloured with my favourite distress inks.
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For this one, i again decided to add panels instead of stamping directly onto the card base.  This is useful if you want to add water to the images and background as it doesn't buckle the actual card base. It also helps to add extra stability to the box. The images of the seahorses, seaweed and fish on the inside were stamped on acetate this time and coloured with alcohol markers. Being transparent, it gave it a nice watery effect.

I chose sea and beach themed stamps for these boxes as it's my absolute favourite theme.  The stamps I've used are from sets from Crafty Individuals and Sheena.
Ok, that's it for now folks, hope you've enjoyed having a look at my new blog and it's inspired you to get crafting too.
​Thanks for looking, join me again soon....