scifi month continues or aye aye, thats still no moon!

Olo...

With international yarn bombing day less than a month away - 11 June 15 don't cha know - I thought it was time I got my act in gear,

My crocheting seems to have picked up the pace a bit since I started with my monsters around Feb. and since then I've done a couple of sci-fi related items.

The latest of which is my Death Star cushion

Left: First death star pre Kaboom right: second half built effect DS, on either side of the cushion.

 As much fun you can have with 2 balls of metallic silver wool from the £1 shop, (I probably would have used less if didn't double up so it doesn't end up holey,) this pattern, a 4.5mm hook and a few hours.

I also made my first crocheted surprise gift for a friend who had seen this dude on fb and fell in love, this pattern was from here

and finally as a birthday pressie how about the beautiful baymax from big hero 6. I challenge anyone to watch it and not cry. 

As I've been having so much fun I have 3 mini crochets to give away, a Marvin (from HHGTTG) head, a Baymax head, and a teeny tiny baby death star like this one:

all you have to do is leave a comment here or on our FB page for a chance to win. 

And talking of winning it seems like everyone has forgotten about the chance to win real craft vouchers from either Art from the Heart or Country View Crafts.  Meaning you've an even better chance of winning :)  

We honestly couldn't make it any easier, any project with any thing remotely not real, is in with a chance, show us your myths, monsters, or magical beasts, space, superheros and everything in between before midnight on the 25th May.

Talking of mythical beasts, I'm taking part in a tunnel book and themed mine around the Discworld.

This is how it looked setting off

the cover isn't as detailed as it should be but I was worried it might get damaged a bit as it circles the country so I plan to finish it off on its return.

as you can see lurking at the back of the book is an eye, I wanted it to be a bit like a dragon so I dragged out my new favourite stamp (creative expressions), flooded it with a couple of layers of gesso and left it to dry for a couple of days.  Once it had well and truly dried I gently peeled it off the stamp, and was left with a sheet of flexible embellishment, hopefully resembling dragon scales.

I added a bit paynes grey acrylic, dusted heavily with mica, painted some varigated blue gold leaf to create the shine in the eye, added a cabachon and fabric for an eyelid and voila:

I wonder what stamps you have that would make fabulous gesso embellishments?

pop back next week to see what else we've been up to and thanks for looking

Jas x

An Ininkz Link-up

21 - Halloween Mini Book

Good morning one and all, I was asked by the lovely ladies here on The Weird Scissors if I fancied doing a blog post for them during the month of October with a Halloween theme.  I was absolutely over the moon to be asked, so it was thinking caps on and what could I do.  Now in the past I've been known to make altered art, art journalling and mixed media, but the year of 2014 has been pretty much wall to wall scrapbooking with the odd mini book thrown in for good measure.   So I thought a Halloween inspired mini book - ready for Halloween festivities.

Now, earlier on in the year I was asked by the lovely Jen over on Wear Crafts to 'design' a mini book for National Scrapbook day.  So this particular mini book is based on that.  It is my own design and  if you fancy having a go yourself there is a downloadable PDF from a post I did on my own blog earlier in the year with lots of photos of step by steps so you can create your own.  If you fancy having a go - then click here for the post with the PDF instructions - I promise you it's really easy and doesn't use mammoth amounts of items.

This is the mini book from the top, I changed the original instructions slightly as I was being extra frugal with these gorgeous pages.  If you want to know more about these papers then I'll mention them later on!  I inked the edge of the book using a black soot distress ink and cut the paper to size rather than wrapping it around the front and back of the book as it were.

Inside I had lots of fun decorating the pages.  The book is a blend of pages and pockets!

Up close you can see how I've used some of the fabulous 'elements' of these gorgeous gorgeous papers!

Even down to tiny details

The next few photos are samples of the pages and pocket contents, I used versamark and a couple of Halloween stamps on black cardstock for the pocket inserts which are just offcuts of the card from the mini book with rounded corners. 

On some of the pages I used other elements to make the book more cohesive, on this page the letters 'een' (from the word 'Halloween') appeared on the left hand side and I covered this with the words Full Moon which I matted on black cardstock.

I added some little cut out 'monsters' and words

I have to say the full sheet of these ghostly characters were cute, but they got cuter (if that was possible), when I started cutting them out.

Adding the odd word

Leaving some as just the papers

So if you like what you see, have a go, if you have already got some unused Halloween papers 'lurking' that you've been meaning to 'use up' then grab them now, download the PDF and get making, the book is 4 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock, 6 sheets of double sided papers, an offcut of card for the spine and a little bit of grey board.

If you want to get your hands on these specific papers, I'm reliably informed by Jen that she actually has some left (which amazes me as they are so cute, they are also double sided, so don't forget to double click to see the other side as it were and at 50p per sheet a bargain to boot!) - check out the link here

Now just to show you the final bit of 'versatility' of these papers - I had some scraps left and managed to create myself this 12 x 12 page using a sheet of white card stock, some existing masks and stamps I'd got, strips of the paper and that little cute ghostly figure!

Thank you ever so much for popping by today and thank you to the lovely Weird Scissor girls for inviting me along, catch you later

Virginia