Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Pale Winter Hues


Hello friends and visitors,

Whew, what a crazy couple of weeks it's been, huh?  This is the apex of the craft year and so many amazing new products have been introduced.  I am totally on information overload at this point.  First with an entire week of sneak peeks over on Tim Holtz's blog and then six days away from the shop for Creativation (CHA).  I returned home late Monday, spent most of Tuesday at the shop trying to get myself organized and back on track, then came home to my craft room and had to create something for Frilly and Funkie.  I apologize for very simple make again this time.  I sincerely hope my life settles in to a rut so I can spend more time on my paper crafting!

Hopefully you have visited us over at Frilly and Funkie and have already seen the Frilly girls' makes for this challenge.  If not, be sure to check out their inspirational art!  Suzz is our challenge host this fortnight and she wants us to create a vintage/shabby chic project using the winter hues of blue, white, silver and/or gray.  My project started with a jumbo manila tag that was coated with white gesso.  Next the Tim Holtz Birch stencil was used to stencil on silver embossing.  A small panel was created using Iced Spruce distress ink and a sentiment from the Wendy Vecchi set Blooming Art (Wendy has wonderful sentiments in EVERY set she produces).

Before I left for my CHA trip, I made up some embellishments using Prima silicone molds and paper clay.  For this project, I wanted something to offset the sentiment and grabbed a key hole embellishment from the batch of embellies I had created previously.  I quickly whitened it up with bit of Picket Fence distress paint and then went over it with a rub of Inka Gold Ice Blue which gave it an icy distressed look.

I made a very simple embellishment for the top using the Tim Holtz Sizzix Thinlits Holiday Greens to cut a evergreen branch from white card stock.  I colored the branches with Iced Spruce distress ink and a Mini Ink Blending tool and then added two mini pine cones with were brushed to white gesso for a frosty look.

That's it.  Simple (but still took me 2 hours). And I'm sorry the photo isn't up to par.  I left my camera at the shop and had to take the photo with my phone.  I'll try to get a better image up tomorrow.


Posted by Linda Coughlin, the funkie junkie at 11:12 PM 5 comments

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

New Year's Inspiration at Frilly and Funkie

                                                                         
Double click to zoom in for details.

Hello friends and visitors,

Thank you for stopping by today to view my latest craft attempt.  I'm on the Funkie team over at Frilly and Funkie now and we have been challenged to make a project to depict our new year's inspiration.  This year, I'm inspired to simplify, declutter and get organized.  So I decided to make something very clean and simple as well as quick and easy for my DT project for the challenge.

This is actually a very pretty piece, but I struggled with my photography and lighting.  I normally use a light box as I have never had any luck with natural light.  Getting a decent photo is the worst part of blogging for me.  I have a fairly decent camera and use it on automatic and manual.  I set the white balance and shoot at a variety of settings but sometimes I just can't get a decent shot.  Most of the shots of this piece came out white and gray rather than white and Iced Spruce, which is a gray-green.

The piece started with a jumbo tag sized piece of white CS.  I smeared some Iced Spruce ink on my craft sheet, misted it and did a little "wrinkle free distress" technique with it.  That wasn't quite enough color for me so I dipped a broad brush into the watery ink on my craft sheet and gave it a few swirls with the brush.

Using the Mini snowflake layering stencil, I stenciled on silver snowflakes.  Then the sentiment was stamped with Jet Black Archival (perfectly stamped and aligned using my MISTI).  I cut a couple of white snowflakes using the Paper Snowflakes, Mini Thinlits set and two loves white evergreen trees using the Woodlands Thinlits set.

For stability, I glued my card stock onto a jumbo tag and then onto a layer of chipboard.  Now it is nice and sturdy.  I will probably add a chipboard easel so I can stand it up in my craft room as a reminder to streamline and organize in the upcoming months.

Please visit our challenge at Frilly and Funkie.  I hope we have inspired you to craft with us for this challenge. All you have to do is make a vintage or shabby chic project to depict your New Year's inspiration or resolution. Our team will choose their top four picks with the winner being invited to join us in a Guest DT spot at Frilly and Funkie and the next three will receive badges to display on their blogs. Everyone who enters and follows the rules will be entered into the draw to have the chance to win a $25 spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Posted by Linda Coughlin, the funkie junkie at 9:58 AM 15 comments

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Mail Carrier Thank You


Double click any image to zoom in for details.
Hello and happy new year to all!

Thanks to a recent visitor who reminded me that it's been awhile since I posted.  I needed that nudge to get going again.

I made this tag over the holidays to give to the mail carrier who serves us at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.  She is totally awesome.  Her route brings her by our shop around 10:30 each morning and we usually have dozens more orders to get out that day.  On busy days or days that I can't make an afternoon run to the Post Office she cheerfully makes a special trip back around 4:30 in the afternoon to pick up the rest of our outgoing shipments.  She helps us get your orders to you super fast!

Please forgive the quality of the photos as they were taken with my phone as I quickly created this tag.  I got out an old Verve thank you set.  I love that it has a number of thank you sentiments and I frequently pile them all on a single card/tag.


I got out my MISTI and set up the stamps in a pleasingly random way, inked them up with Jet Black archival ink and stamped the impressions.  These are clear polymer stamps and sometimes they don't take the ink well, especially for the first or second impression.



One of the great attributes of the MISTI is that you can reink and re-stamp until you are happy with the impression.  I had to reink the stamps a third time to get a perfect impression, but no worries with MISTI.


I'm sorry, I didn't take any further photos, but the next step was to use the Tim Holtz Correspondence stamp set to stamp all sorts of mail notices randomly over the entire tag.  Wendy Vecchi's Watering Can ink was used for the mail notice stamping because I wanted them to be background and to have the Thank You's pop and not blend in with the background.  I wanted it to have a little more background so the Tim Holtz Layering Stencil Typo was stenciled using Weathered Wood distress ink.  Once I had all that done, my next step was to blend Vintage Photo DI over the entire tag and then ink the tag edges with Walnut Stain DI.

I thought the tag needed a little pop so I took a Ranger glue stick and went around the edges, then laid Prima foil over the glue, burnished it with my hand and pulled it off to give the edges a lovely gold foiling.  Unfortunately the gold doesn't show up well in the photo.

The tag was finished off with a couple of Tim Holtz Idea-ology embellishments and a wisp of dyed crinkled seam binding.  I rubbed a bit of Picket Fence distress point over the Word Band to make the sentiment stand out.

This tag was a blast to make.  It took less than an hour and our mail carrier LOVED it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!   








The products below were used to create the above tag and are available for sale at The Funkie Junkie Boutique, most are 20% off retail.


Posted by Linda Coughlin, the funkie junkie at 12:23 PM 7 comments
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