Best foot forward for Happy Daze

As the new month has arrived so has a new challenge over on the HAPPY DAZE BLOG.
The title is MARCH to your own tune so the challenge is to make anything music related, and I really wanted to use these gorgeous Artistic Outpost Songbird stamps.

I decided the best way to March to your own tune was in a pretty pair of shoes, so my old scuffed dancing shoes got a cute vintage makeover instead of heading to the bin :D
This is how they started - poor things :-(I started by randomly covering the sections with TH tissue tape with the music notes on until the areas I wanted were covered. I trimmed away any excess and tucked some sections over the edge.
Once I was happy with them I gave them a few coats of Claudines multi matte medium making sure that all the edges were sealed and smoothed down.
The really fab thing is once dry the tape is now waterproof.

I glued on lace and trim and then smeared on distress stickles in faded denim - I love doing this as any unwanted gluey bits are hidden as well as adding a pretty shimmer and touch of colour :D

Next I made my little frames from Pardo clay using my own mould. Once baked it was a little darker than I wanted so I coloured them with Heirloom gold perfect pearls.

I wanted to use Claudines canvas but couldn't get my image to stamp clearly as it was very detailed, so I stamped on to white tissue paper, coloured with watered down distress ink and then glued it on to the canvas with the matte medium.
I made sure it was really well burnished so that you could see the canvas texture and again this si now waterproof.

Because I used the tissue paper I was also able to reverse my image simply by using the reverse side of the stamped image, once glued you can't see any difference as the paper becomes virtually transparent.

I stuck it on to a piece of grungepaper then glued them on to my frames, then attached them to my shoes with jump rings (I made holes in my shoes with a cropadile)
I added gems and ribbon to finish them off.

I love them, they really suit my vintage style and if I scuff them again I can just add more tape :D

Hugs'n'snogs,
Julie xx

Parisian flight for Happy Daze

This week for Happy Daze I decided to decorate one of these fabby WOODEN SHRINES with one of my all time favourites - Crackle :D In particular Viva Decor Croco which has to be the best crackle medium ever!!!

I started by painting the shrine with white acrylic paint and when dry spritzed it with cosmic shimmer mist .
I added some dimension with artists spackle using the Prima Eiffel tower mask from the Parisian set.
When dry I replaced the mask and spritzed again with the cosmic shimmer so that the masked area remained white.

I stamped my images from the Artistic Outpost Paris Exposition stamp set on to white tissue paper with black archival ink and roughly cut out the images and glued in to place with Claudines matte medium. You can't see the tissue when its dry so you don't see the edges.

I gave it all another spritz with a darker cosmic shimmer and dried it off with my heatgun.
I then added the croco roughly with a palette knife, making sure I caught my textured area, then dried it off with my heatgun. I repeated this until the whole piece was coated.
I the used Alcohol inks to add detail to some of my images and to tint the tower and the edges.

I tied a piece of ribbon around one side of the bottom of the shrine and tucked in a little stamped ticket.I love crackle mediums but Croco is my absolute fave, if you haven't tried it you really must :D
The colours are so rich and the lustre is so sparkly and pretty :D
Now then, have you been following the new releases that have just been launched at CHA???
There are some pretty amazing things coming our way soon, and these are two of my faves :D
Vintaj Patinas
Tim Holtz Distress ink pens

AND a little dicky bird tells me that these will be heading to Happy Daze :D

Hugs'n'snogs,
Julie xx

From Paris with love....

I begged Moira at the trade show in February to buy these cute little bags and it took some convincing let me tell you LOL :D

I have been meaning to do something with it for ages but it has been playing hide and seek with me for a while, but I finally caught it :D

I used Claudine Hellmuth studio paints watered down in a mini mister to colour the bag to start with as it was very white!!

I stamped Artistic Outpost Paris Exposition stamps and Glitz stamp on to tissue paper with Archival ink and tore around the images before gluing them down with Claudines multi matte medium.

I built up the colour with different colours of the watered down paint drying in between each colour. The amazing thing about these paints is they are waterproof when dry.
I applied some of the archival ink with a sponge to distress the edges a bit then gave it two generous coats of the matte medium.

When dry I added distress stickles randomly with my finger then when dry glued on the lace with the matte medium (its not completely dry in the pic sorry!!!)

I added a Zazi flower and madrigal flower which I only had in white, so I spritzed it with the pink paint :D

I'm really pleased with the finished bag and will definitely be using it :D

Moira has some fab offers on the site at the moment so head on over to grab yours :D

Hugs'n'snogs,
Julie xx

Beach hut basking for Happy Daze

The current challenge at Happy Daze is "oh I do like to be beside the seaside..." and what do you find beside the seaside??? Colourful beach huts so I decided to get a little bit creative with one of these cute mini birdhouses, Artistic Outpost "Beyond the sea" stamps and some Tim Holtz ideaology :D

I removed the dowel perch and then cut pieces of lightly striped pattern paper, stamped them with coffee archival ink and distressed them with a combo of Frayed Burlap and Fired Brick distress ink pads.

I glued a TH metal corner to the top of the house and the glued the paper in place with a little bit of glossy accents covering the holes, its fabby for glueing paper to this kind of project as it dries quickly.

I made the door by taking a lollipop stick that came with some rub-ons and cut it to the height I wanted with my TH scissors I then cut the three pieces length ways to make it look like old wood.
I coloured them with TH Broken China distress stain and when dry glued them to a smaller piece of paper.
When dry I glued them to the front of the house and coloured the base of the bird house with wild honey distress stain.
I didn't have any sand so I added some distress embossing powders (unmelted) inside my bottle before tying it to the house with garden twine.
To complete the project I added more seaside themed charms and Timmy embellies :D

The houses are so cute and could be used for so much more than just a cute birdhouse - I'm thinking little new home gifts, gingerbread houses, or something cute and Alice themed :D

Here's a few more pics of my ickle beach house :D

If you want to be in with a chance of winning a £15 voucher with free P&P in our August "Oh I do like to be beside the Seaside" challenge you can enter in one of 3 ways:

• Blog your entry and use the Linky widget in the Blog post HERE
• Load to the Happy Daze Facebook Page
• Sent a pic by email to info@happy-daze.net

Closing date is midnight 31 August.

Thanks for looking,
Hugs'n'snogs,
Julie xx