Gecko Galz - Sheherazade

Welcome friends!

This month's theme at Gecko Galz is Sheherazade...

What is Sheherazade...better yet, who is she - Sheherazade is a legendary Persian queen and the central storyteller in "One Thousand and One Nights" (also known as "Arabian Nights"). The story revolves around the Sultan Shahryar, who, after discovering his first wife's infidelity, decides to marry a new woman each night and have her executed the following morning. To break this cycle and save herself, Sheherazade volunteers to marry the Sultan. She then begins telling him captivating stories each night, leaving each one on a cliffhanger, so the Sultan delays her execution to hear the end of the story. This continues for 1,001 nights, and by the end, the Sultan has fallen in love with Sheherazade and spares her life. 

Well, now that you know a little bit about her let's take a look at what I have created...

I started off with a couple regal looking ATC's that have a middle eastern flair to them. The ATC's were both embossed with gold embossing power (one with fine and the other regular ep) and then decorated with lovely gemstones. Each of the ladies was added to the ATC with foam tape to pop her off and give the ATC a bit of added depth.

Gecko Galz Collage Sheets - One Thousand and One Nights ATC, Sheherazade 

My next creation is this lovely three panel screen. 

Gecko Galz Collage Sheets - Sheherazade, Taj Mahal Paper Pack (retired)

For my next project I made this triptych - I went with a pretty purple tapestry and added gemstones and pearl dots to add a touch of elegance. She is pop-dotted to give a bit more dimension to the scene.

Gecko Galz Collage Sheets - Sheherazade, Namaste Paper Pack

I had an idea to make a magic lantern and this is how it came out! It started life as a white metal glass paneled lantern. I knew I wanted a right gold, bejeweled lantern so I painted it with metallic paint and applied the lovely blue gems.  I printed my images on plain copy paper and turned the images into "vellum" with a bit of baby oil. Next each image was fitted to the inside of the glass panels. A strand of fairy lights and you have a magic lantern!!

Gecko Galz - Collage Sheets - Sheherazade

Finally I have come to my favorite project for this months theme....This canvas plaque is 8x8 black with gold painted trim. I was lucky enough to find these two bits of vintage trim that were leftover bits from ??? They both ended up being exactly the right size like it was meant to be. (It pays to be a crafty pack rat!!!) I finished it off with a bit of gold cord for the hanger and a few black and gold tassels for a bit of extra movement and shine. I absolutely love how this plaque turned out and I hope you do too!

Gecko Galz Collage Sheets - Sheherazade, One Thousand and One Nights ATC

Crafts Galore Encore Challenge

 Happy August 1st...

My, where has the year gone? It's already August... it seems like this year has flown by in the blink of the eye.

Well the first of the month starts another fun new challenge at Crafts Galore Encore Challenge. Our theme is always Anything Goes and this month our sponsor is All Dressd Up Stamps.

I was lucky enough to be able to use this darling little kitty wreath - Christmas Kitty. My first creation is this fun rockin' round card...

I had so much fun coloring this image that I made a 2nd project - a fun gift bag!

Be sure to check out the blog for more design team inspiration.  If you create something this month be sure to pop it into the challenge - you might just be one of our lucky winners!

Share your art :) We love it!!

Mermaid Christmas & Pool Party ATC's

 Hello Friends...

Final projects from the  July challenges at Gecko Galz..

First up is my pool party ATC's...

I used some fun acetate with blue glittery waves as the foundation! I wish you could see the beautiful sparkle they have.

AND...

you all know how much I love mermaids well this month's Christmas challenge image is a mermaid decorating her christmas tree!!  This is what I did with it....

I took it and made a 3D canvas hanging from it.  I printed it out 3x - one for the background, the 2nd for the tree and the third layer is the mermaid.  I added loads of real shells to the tree and beach and she is hanging a real star fish on the top.

I also used a bit of glitter glue to add sparkle to the tree, Dresden trim around the edges and a bit of pretty fancy to the bottom. You can see how I hung it in the photo below.

Challenge Time

 I had some time this weekend to play with a few of the challenge images on the Gecko Galz blog challenges and here is what I created...

Card Challenge...

Fantasy Challenge

Gothic Challenge...

Steampunk Challenge...

Tag Challenge... 

The pelican riding the turtle is a free collage image at some point.

I thought it went well with the tag.

There are a few more challenges to go...hopefully I will have time to complete them sometime this week or next weekend. If you have a bit of free crafting time hop on over to the blog, Gecko Galz, grab the free images and give it a go! You might just be a lucky winner :)

Conjurer of Dreams - Woodland Wildlife

Hello Friends!

It's my day to share my creations for  Conjurer of Dreams and this month our theme is Woodland Wildlife!

I started off by making a few cards..

My first uses this lovely owl and tranquil lake scene...hence Tranquil Beauty :)

My next card incorporates the stag which was a free image on the blog with the Forest Path background. 

My final card used an image from Beaver Dam that I paired with a bunch of candles I die-cut. 

For my final project I made this darling little Woodland Wildlife accordion tag album. I used images from many different sets with the base of it being Forest Animal Tags

I fussy cut some of the baby animals (bears, fox, wolves) and added them here and there on some of the tags. I thought this might be a fun design to write a little note to someone (a few words on each tag). Hmmm not sure to whom yet but it should be in the mail soon!

Hope you've enjoyed our little trip to the woods...

Have a lovely day friends!

Star Maidens & Christmas in July!

 Hello my ink stained friends! Today I am fortunate to share my makes for this month's theme at Gecko Galz.... Star Maidens!!

I had such fun with this theme - so many ideas came to mind, I had a hard time narrowing it down.

So to kick things off I created this fun round wall art piece. I painted the background using a variety of metallic paints then flicked on a bit of white paint to help create my night sky. The main image is from the Star Maiden collage sheet set which I printed and fussy cut to fit my very large 13" sky. 

My next project is this lovely Star Maiden door hanger. A bit of embossing to make her pop.

My next Star Maiden is this canvas piece. She is just so lovely I really wanted to make a colorful background to frame her. Added a few air dry clay embellishments to enforce the "star" aspect.

Up-cycled Gift Boxes...Originally these boxes were filled with sheets of washi stickers...well, you know how it goes - the boxes were just too nice to throw away so I decided to turn them into some pretty Starry Maiden gift boxes. 

Finally I have a pair of cards I made using various bits and bobs from my stash.  The top card is very me...blue, sparkles, shimmer but I was really stretching myself with the bottom card.  I very rarely work with oranges and yellows (well aside from Halloween) so this was out of my galactic comfort zone....hope you like it.

I hope you have enjoyed my projects for July but don't go yet...

This month Gecko Galz is celebrating Christmas in July!!

We are giving away an full collage sheet on every Design Team post this month instead of the usual single collage image. I am so excited for you to head over to the Gecko Galz blog and snag today's Christmas present...

The Girl Next Door!

I simply adore this collage sheet because you know how much I love retro, sassy ladies.  Here are a few projects I made with this sheet...

Be sure to pop on over to the blog to collect this and every free Christmas in July collage sheet this month!! Happy Crafting my friends...stay inky!!

Crafts Galore - Fred She Said...

 

Hello friends! New month, new Anything Goes challenge at Crafts Galore!!  If you create anything during the month of July be sure to pop it onto the blog and you could be the lucky winner!

This month the design team is playing with images from Fred She Said. I am tickled to say I was able to choose the lovely Hollyhocks image for this challenge and here is what I made...

I printed an arrangement of the different hollyhock images from the set onto a piece of watercolor paper. I then colored them using a combination of Prisma colored pencils, watercolor paints (background) and added some highlights with a marker. I then popped a bit of fence diecuts and sentiment. 

Be sure to stop over at Fred She Said to see all of their lovely digis and remember if you make anything during the month of July to add it to the list...you can't win if you don't enter!

Conjurer of Dreams - Retro Ladies!!

 Hello Friends!

Today is my day to share my creations over at Conjurer of Dreams.

The theme was anything goes so I chose to work with all the fun retro ladies.

Bookmarks - Retro Pilots, Retro Mechanic, Retro Stewardess

A small journal made using Retro Beauty.

Guest Check Tags using Retro Diner Waitress.

And finally a set of sassy cards made using Retro Homemaker. 

June Challenge Gecko Galz

 Hello friends...I hope you have had a lovely week so far.

Today I wanted to share what I have created for this month's image challenges over at Gecko Galz blog. As I have mentioned in the past each month Gecko Galz hosts several challenges on their blog where they give you a collage image and you create something with it.

Yesterday I shared my Fantasy creation and here are the remainder...

Card Challenge - Isn't she lovely...

Christmas Challenge - this is such a jolly Santa - I wanted to do something special for him. The card background die was in the sticker deal I got a few weeks ago. It was time consuming to color it but oh so worth it.

ATC Challenge - Oh My...you know how I love cows - and highlanders no less!! I had such fun making these. Lots of layers - papers, inks, embossing, metallic flakes, so much fun!!

Steampunk Challenge - OMG I loved this image. A Steampunk Owl plaque...  He didn't have a tail in the original image BUT I had printed off 2 - one for the body and a second so I could give him dimension by cutting and adding his face over the first image with foam tape. I had the rest of the body left over from the second print so I die-cut feathers to create a tail!!  I used the cool looking stick to cover the seam.

Gothic Challenge....ALWAYS a favorite of mine!! I trimmed away the background for this image and used tons of fun stickers to create an entire story around him.  This is a journal page in my Goth/Halloween junk journal.

Finally Gecko Galz also hosts a tag challenge on their business page on Facebook. This is June's image.... He's amazing looking don't you think?  Found the perfect quote for him.

Hope you all have an amazing weekend...

take care and stay inky :)

Stained Glass Fantasy - Mixed Media Canvas

 Each month Gecko Galz hosts several image challenges on their blog.

Well, I've been playing with the Fantasy challenge image and oh my...have I had some fun! This is what I created....

Oh my gosh, told you I had fun... this is layers and layers of various mediums.

So to start off with she had such a lovely stained glass look to her which reminded me I had a Stained Glass 3D Liquid Lead from DecoArt. 

I went over her wings, dress and halo with the faux leading and let it dry.

I then painted inside each little cell with Twinkling H2O paints. If you've never seen them before they are a lovely mica paint cake that you just add water and paint. It's wonderful stuff. Adds such a lovely shimmer.

The next step might sound crazy but it really amplified the colors and texture. I used "Vintage" Creative Medium  - it's a lovely sepia toned medium that dries translucent yielding a lovely vintage hue. I used it on the dress by painting it on adding thicker and thinner layers to give it depth and "movement".

I used a clear glossy dimensional medium for the wings and halo to give them a glass like look. 

I wish you could see it in person as the texture created by these various mediums is amazing.

Finally I added some glitter glue to her collar, added some diamonds around her halo and I used mulberry flowers for her ruffled collar!! I folded the flowers in half and glued them on - it worked perfectly - it was exactly the look I wanted!

I added this image to a black canvas with a bit of gold leafing around the edges.

I tell you I love it when you start off just messing around and the project turns out even better than you had hoped for. It makes it that much more fun.

Have a great day friends!!