Phoenix Inspirations

...I decided to make something for ME. I make loads of cards and papercraft items and more often than not they end up being sold or used for family and friends. So as I said this is for me My diary/organiser has disintergrated in my handbag and all my pages have got ripped and dogeared. So I have made a new one. I painstakingly printed off various pages - ('cos I have customised it for my own personal needs), and made dividers. The covers are made of grungepaper coloured with Tim Holtz distress inks - Tattered Rose and Brushed Corduroy. I then sort of used a technique I saw recently on Wendy Vecchi's  blog where she colours her grungepaper flowers white before colouring them with ink - I used white acrylic paint instead of a white ink pad. So after colouring the flowers white I used some Stampin' Up ink pads to colour them, I then stamped over them with various stamps from my stash. As you can see I attached the flowers with jumbo brads - I thought that if I just glue...

...........THE Wendy Vecchi. For those of you not familiar with THE Wendy Vecchi - please click here  - this link will transport you quite effortlessly over to the blog of the lady herself. Take a look - it's quite breathtaking. So on to my poor imitation This is for this week's challenge over on the Simon Says Stamp & Show  blog. The challenge is to create a piece of art in the style of (THE) Wendy Vecchi. Now unfortunatly I don't yet own any of her stamps so I had to improvise. I used chipboard for the base, an old wooden cotton reel (I know spooly things are what's proper - but they were out of stock) grungepaper flowers and a few bits of bling. The foliage was cut on my Cuttlebug. Oh and the butterflies were punched out of grungepaper with a Stampin' Up punch. I also used a S'U stamp (Flight of the Butterfly) to put the polka dots on the flowers and butterflies. All were coloured with Tim Holtz Distress Inks and spritzed with mica powders. Thanks for...