It's a bugs life at Tuesday Taggers this Week

The challenge this week at Tuesday Taggers is "Bugs" and is being sponsored by The Craft Barn.
For my pendant I had decided to use an image of a scarab beetle printed onto acetate and then gilded on the reverse, however when I did this the image lost definition and could not be used on it's own, however it has made a fabulous background for my butterflies and Bee.


The metal Butterfly and Bee are charms from my stash, the printed butterfly is from a crafty individuals image pad and I have used a crafty individuals postmark stamp in my collage as well. The frame and microscope glass are from the Inkssential Range by Ranger Products.

I hope you like it.

Bee xx

Tuesday Taggers Altered Art.

This weeks challenge at Tuesday Taggers was set by Lyn (AkA Blackdragon) and it was to alter something.



As I have a number of IKEA mirrors sitting around waiting to be embellished I decided to take one with me to the Beamsley Retreat (see previous post) to work on whilst I was there. Normally my altered pieces turn out fairly grungy, I am not generally a very girly sort of person, but this piece turned out rather pink and pretty !!


At the retreat I had been playing around making paper roses, and I had also been demonstrating cuttlebug techniques, so I decided to incorporate cuttlebug embossed and inked tiles and paper roses on my mirror.

I started by giving the mirror frame a thin coat of white gesso using a baby wipe, which I then coloured randomly with Victorian Velvet and Bundled Sage Distress inks using cut and dry foam.
I then over stamped with a swirl stamp using the same two colours of distress ink, before adhering my cuttlebug embossed tiles the paper rose leaves and the paper roses which I had made and coloured using spun sugar and victorian velvet distress inks. This was a fairly simple project to complete, but I am pleased with the end result, I think the pinks and green work together really well.

Bee xx

What a fabulous weekend.

I have had such a good time this weekend, at a Craft Retreat organised by two of my best crafting buddies, Janet and Michelle from the Tuesday Taggers DT.

The venue was the Beamsley Project, a converted Chapel on the A59 at Beamsley, between Harrogate and Skipton, which provides small scale residential conference/activity facilities for up to 24 people and is fully equiped to provide for people with physical disabilities. Janet and Michelle had hired the centre on a self catering basis to run their first ever Craft Retreat. Participants had travelld from as far away as Lowestoft and Edinburgh to take part in this weekend.

As well as getting together with a number of old friends, Janet, Michelle, Emma, Andy, Kate, Georgina, Averil, Cazro and Yvonne, I made new friends and acquaintances, including Margaret and Vicky, Jean and Marie, Sandra, Glynis, Lyn and Avril, these last two also being members of the Tuesday Taggers DT but this was the first time we had met in "real life". So many talented crafters and all round fabulous people, we were all soon relaxing and chatting away as if we had known each other for years.

On Friday evening after a substantial dinner, prepared by Andy, our chef for the weekend, it was back to the craft room to complete an altered notebook project that Janet had designed as an ice breaker to start the weekend, crafting and chatting carried on into the night with "the late shift" (including me) finally downing tools and heading for bed at about 01:45am.
The next morning after breakfast we all headed off to Harrogate to The Great Northern Papercraft Extravaganza at the County Show Ground, for some serious craft shopping and the opportunity to catch up with our favourite retailers, demontrators and crafting gurus ++++before returning to Beamsley with our newest buys to get on with some crafting. After Dinner on Saturday, Emma and I each held a brief techniques based workshop for those who were interested, mine was on getting more out of your cuttlebug, Emma's was on two step stamping using a stamp positioner. Both workshops were well received.

Whilst I headed to bed at a reasonable hour on Saturday "The late shift" were still crafting at 03:00am !!!

On Sunday morning we continued with our own crafting projects but also had the opportunity to explore using alcohol inks with Janet, making and packaging bath crystals as gifts with Michelle and making an easel card with Emma, as well as these prepared workshops and demos, eveyone shared their own skills and talents, including making paper roses, and painting with Twinkling H2O's, amongst other crafty techniques.

All too soon it was time to pack our crafty bags and get ready to return to the real world, but not until we had all enjoyed A traditional Sunday Dinner provided by Andy. Would we do it again? You just try and stop us.

So a huge thanks to Janet and Michelle for all the hard work the put into making the weekend such a success, and here's to next time.

Photos to be added later...

Bee xx

Tuesday Taggers "Jester or Masquerade" Challenge.

Hi Everyone.

For this week the challenge at Tuesday Taggers is to use the theme of Jesters or Masquerade Ball, the theme was chosen by Avril, a really talented member of our Design Team.


I was really excited at this choice of theme as I love everything to do with Carnival's aand Masks etc.


Just last summer my friend Kate and I had a three day break in Venice and revelled in all the Costumes and Masks we were surrounded by, taking loads of photos of Carnival Masks in Shop Windows and even watching a Mask Maker create a traditional papiermache mask.......

However when I came to make a card for this project my mind wandered from Jesters to Clowns, and I used two PaperArtsy Stamp plates to stamp images for the card. I used Tim Holtz new Distress Inks in Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge and Barn Door to give the traditional Jester's colours of Red and Yellow to my card, these new inks are just so vibrant, I love them. I then added some embossed Harlequin Diamonds to my background card, as well as using sequin scrap as a mask to provide additional texture.


The clown Images, Text and other elements were stamped onto plain white card using Archival Black Ink and then coloured with the distress inks, although some elements were left as black on white, as a contrast to the background,they were then layered up onto the base card, using some thin foam pads to provide a bit more texture.



The end result is bright and bold and a bit of fun, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Bee xx