Decorating the Loo!!!

Well I guess it all began with the puffer fish......he got a bit lonely until...

...he had some beautiful sea horse friends! Then my OH decided it was all a bit "girlie" so we HAD to have a shark....

...and it grew! My son wanted a diver and the squid....and I wanted some "pretty" fishies........

..so this is what my children have been doing for the last week! I am really proud as I have had little or no input and they have done the WHOLE lot on their own including the blue sea and yellow sand! The project has used all my old tins of paint from decorating our various houses and all it has cost me is 99p for a match pot of red...the only colour we didn't have! We have mixed oil-based and water-based paint; matt and gloss but so far so good! Now I think we have a jelly fish and a few shells still to come...and maybe an angler fish......

More Tags!

Yes I am still playing catch up on the Tags. I think after these two I have just 5 to catch up on! This one came to me very quickly...I have had this shattered clock face from a set of Tandastamps for Inchies and never used it. I inked up some card with distress inks and then stamped the clock onto it. Then I covered it with crackle glaze. The BG is from a piece of paper in my scraps box (!) and I inked and stamped the "t" and the words. Nice and simple!

Now F for Face was more tricky...I was tidying up my computer dump space when I found this quote. Now I have ALWAYS had freckles, along with my ginger hair and specs, so this is rather dear to my heart! BG was acrylic paint, stamped with brilliance inks and a variety of starry stamps. I added a few painted in white H2O as well.

The lady is another from Tandastamps and I added her freckles with watercolour pencils! Die cut letters from silver cardstock and voila....!

Cardboard LO!

For some while I have wanted to use these great 12" squares for a LO. They are packaging from the boxes of soap that I wrap and it seemed a waste as they were such a perfect size! This LO then became a combination of a number of things I have wanted to try; the "cheeseholing", incorporating circles and FINALLY using the grungeboard that I have had kicking about for ages! Photoes of Jasper's Soapbox Derby just seemed to lend themselves to this "chunky" feel.

I was also able to make use of this lovely spiral text (from an internet site) and found these fabby screw brads! Included in the pack were some cross-head screws too.

I was really pleased with how this turned out, even though it took ages to do all the stages! In fact the trickiest bit was peeling off the top layer of card!
Thanks for looking!

Well my CJ on UKStampers is almost at an end...boo hoo! The participant just before me was running a bit late with last months as she is selling her house so I got this one a bit late but I have sat on it too long as well. Sorry ladies, as I know we are sooo close to finishing that you are all keen to get yours home.

As the CJs go on it does get more tricky to think of something original to do with the stamp. Yet again my daughter came to the rescue and suggested a mermaid. So I stamped the whole lady and then chopped off the wings to make into a scaly tail, along with several more stamped wings.

The whole thing was then painted with H2Os, which I haven't used for aaaaages. The BG was a little bit of resist and then stamped bubbles in silver and blue. Die cut phrase to finish it off and I will be sad to see this one go as I enjoyed doing it a lot. Now just one more to go and then I will get mine home....

Well EVERYONE seems to be making these roses and I have had a few tries over the last couple of weeks too. I treated myself to the punch and off I went! My next catch-up tag letter was "U for unusual"....quite a tricky one! I was talking some ideas through with my daughter; about how in nature no colours clash etc. when all of a sudden it came to me; one of my pet hates is flowers that are not their "natural" colours! Now by that I mean daffodils should be yellow, not cream or peach; tulips should be red or white or yellow, not purple or black and roses should be red or pink or white; most DEFINATELY not blue or lilac! Sadly the B/G doesn't show up very well but it is all twinkly H2Os, stamped with more blue and lilac roses.
Now have I opened a can of worms.......?

Now this may just look like a tag to you....and don't faint, it is about 6 weeks late and it is the "Q" tag for Gail's alphabet of tags on UK Stampers. But this tag represents somewhat of a mini holy grail to me!!!!! When I first started stamping about 3 years ago now, everyone offered to show me beginners techniques, resist stamping being "one of the easiest"..Ha Ha!!! Well it has taken me all of these 3 years and many, many attempts with different stamps, inks, papers etc etc and today I finally managed it! So even tho' the tag isn't one of my greatest artistic endeavours, at least I "did" resist stamping that actually "resisted"!

Today we went to The Imperial War Museum. First stop, as ever, was the loo where they had these really cooooool mirrors...so I was strange and took a pic of Eliza in the loos!!!

We visited the Horrible History exhibition about the trenches which was fun and then went to the In Memoriam exhibition. It was a collection of artifacts, letters and photos that were really personal, from WW1 and very moving. Some very touching letters from servicemen, or boys as many were, to their parents or children; medals, windscreens from shot down planes and ID tags and pieces of shrapnel, each with a tale to tell. Finally we visited the Holocaust Story.....well it really told the tragic events of that time very bleakly and honestly with eye witnesses and items from the camps. I was in two minds whether to take my 10 yr olds in but it wasn't too graphic, just honest.
Sounds like a heavy day but they "enjoyed" it if that is the right word and want to go to see the bits we missed! I would really recommend it as we just paid extra for the Horrible History bit and the rest is free, so we will go back to see the "Childrens War" and the "Secret War" bits!
Now how to scrap these......

In this months Craft Stamper there was a diddy little box for storing all the freebie stamps in! It was tucked away in the bottom half of a page and I thought it would be a fab quick make! So last night I did it and look how cute it is!!! I have never made any sort of box before (shock!!!) so I was really chuffed how it came out! The paper is left over from my soap wrapping. It usually goes on "Wild Berry" soap but this piece was cut just a tad too small to fit the bar so I recycled it as it was soooo yummy looking! My favourite jam is blackcurrant and this year was the first I have been able to harvest any sort of quantity from my own currant bushes so it seemed even more appropriate! Thankyou for the instructions Joanne!