International Art and Soul Challenge 123

 The theme for the next four weeks, set by my team mate Maggie, is to use dies or punches. Other that, you can do whatever you want to do.

In April this year, I was very happy to take part in a workshop on spring flowers by Susan Tierney Cockburn. I've enjoyed using her dies for some years, and even have a copy of a book she wrote before there were any dies. There, she showed how to use punched shapes to make a variety of flowers which were remarkably realistic. So, for this challenge, I decided to make a floral arrangement using some of her dies old and new, along with a frame die.

I started by colouring card for the frame. I used a range of blue Distress Oxide inks, and did another sheet for the back board. The frame pieces were cut using a die from box Elizabeth Craft. I bought it quite a long time ago, and have often considered buying another similar die which would allow me to make bigger frames than this die is designed to do - up to 8in end to end. But I've always thought it would be possible to extend the Elizabeth Craft die, so that's what I did here. The frame is 11in end to end, so that I could cut it from A4 card. It took me a few attempts to get it right, and I discovered I need to use a score board rather than my usual trimmer to score the extended fold lines, but in the end, it worked well enough.

The central part of the background was stamped (again in Distress Oxide ink) using a Clarity solid frame stamp. 

That done, I cut a range of pieces for various flowers and ended up using about half of them (as usual...) The orange flowers are Kerria Japonica which were included in the April workshop. The large white flower is a Gerbera Daisy, and the cream/yellow flowers are Forsythia and also uses a Susan's Garden branch die.

And another one - this time using a Tonic hexagonal frame in shades of green, and the flowers this time are Cattleya, again from Susan's Garden.

And that's it. I've no idea what I'm going to do with the results, but I'm fairly happy with it. I think I managed to stop myself adding too much - that's my usual problem.

I do hope you can join us for this, our last challenge of 2021!

International Art and Soul Challenge 92

The challenge for this fortnight is to follow this board:

Your project has to contain three elements from the board - any line, horizontal, vertical or diagonal.

I chose to go with the middle horizontal line and made this:

I started with white card and made the frame using a die from Elizabeth Craft. Another piece of white card, and I stencilled that using stencils from Crafter's Companion and Imagination Crafts using Distress Ink and gilding wax.

The dies used to create the floral arrangement are (almost) all from Susan Tierney Cockburn's various collections. The exception is a die I bought in The Works which makes a useful piece of background with added perfect pearl dots.

I completed the frame by adding some die cuts cut using a Spellbinders die.

I do hope you can join us this time.

International Art and Soul Challenge 79

The theme for this fortnight is to use green as the main colour.

I decided to go for something that seems quite spring-like, and came up with this:

I first heard of Susan Tierney Coleman when she published a book showing how to make realistic flowers out of punched shapes. I then followed her when she turned to die cutting - first with Sizzix, then Elizabeth Craft and most recently with Tonic, and I've used mainly her dies to create the arrangement above.

I started with some card which I tinted with Distress Oxide ink in a variety of green shades. Then, I stamped a floral trio repeatedly and heat embossed.

The dies include the Japanese Fern and Galvanized Tub from Susan's most recent Tonic collection, along with Dogwood and Gerbera Daisy from the original Sizzix range. I've also used a few leafy sprigs that came from The Works. I shaded petals in a pale blush pink using Pan Pastel and added a slightly stronger colour to the edge of the dogwood petals using Promarker. To complete the flowers, I dabbed some glue on the stamens and sprinkled some magenta shaded glitter.

I do hope you can join us this time.