Monday, June 3, 2013

A Comfy Cozy Kitty, a Picture Wheel, and an Upcycled Wall Hanging

 Grab your Monday morning beverage. I hope you enjoy this Blue Fern Studios Blog Post today. Lisa here, with 3 new projects for your viewing pleasure. With the warmth of Summer around the corner, I hope June brings you much inspiration from Blue Fern Studios.

 My first Project is a 12x12 layout. This was inspired by our Sketch this month. Don't forget to join the June Sketch Challenge.




I used a cracklepaint directly on the chipboard daisies. Once the paint dried, I enhanced it further with a darker ink that bled into the cracks.


I painted the Vintage key with distress crackle paint. Once dry I hung the keys on the chain using small jump rings.

  I love the chain. The set comes with 2 pieces. I used the curved piece as shown in the sketch. I painted it wit crackle paint, and added some oval trunkets to match the shape of the chain link.

                                                                     Page Chains

Vintage Keys




This next project is a picture wheel that I created and wound some great silly pictures of my daughter mounted on a diecut filmstrip.


To keep the filmstrip wound round the reel, I tied it with some twine.


I heat embossed distress powder over the butterflies on both sides as you can see the underside when I folded the wings up for dimension. . The branch was inked with distress ink, cut apart, and tucked into the flower cluster.


 I found the Urban Words set to be so much fun, and perfect for these silly photos of my daughter as the words are integrated in her everyday language.



I opted to use the insides of the chipboard and save the other pieces for another project. Sometimes you throw away the cutout pieces, in this case I used them for this project.


 I used a distress ink with a foam applicator and rubbed it over the chipboard.

                                                                Brigitte Butterfly Set

The last project I want to share with you is little  wall hanging I created using the throwaway parts of a couple of products. The little wooden box that once held wooden shapes, and the background paper was once the packaging back of a pack of flowers.


 The gate was heat embossed with some distress powder, and I went over it twice to create a rusty old gate effect, rubbing some of the powder off after it dried.


I tucked some flowers, a tiny birds nest, and punched out butterflies into the little shadow boxes.


Here is another view of the sweet little wall hanging that now hangs in my scrap studio wall.



Thank you for visiting Blue Fern Studios today. Come back for more inspiration on how to adore your chip board. I will be back on the 3rd of each month with a new blog post and more inspiration for you.
I would like to take this opportunity to bid a fond farewell to some of the current Design Team Members that are finishing up their term this month. It was a pleasure getting to know some of you, and a pleasure working with old friends, and glad to call you all my friends. I wish you all creative joy in your journeys as Scrap Artists.
 I would like to extend a warm welcome to the new Artists commissioned to the team. I look forward to getting to know you all.
I am honored and excited to be staying on with Blue Fern Studios for another term. I look forward to finding new ways to Jazz Up the gorgeous chip board from Blue Fern Studios. Thank you Leslie and Valerie for believing in my work. xo
What A Beautiful Mess


Saturday, June 1, 2013

Our June Sketch Challenge!

Welcome back, Blue Fern Studios fans! It's a new month (can you believe it?!) and we're starting it up again with a new sketch challenge! We've also got some features and a prize winner for May coming up tomorrow- so don't stay away too long!

Let's take a look at the sketch for June, created by our very own Michele Singh:


How about some inspiration? Some of our team members have already had a play with the June sketch!





Wow! Are you ready to get started?? Well, if the inspiration wasn't enough to get you moving, how about taking a look at this month's prize!


Yes, this incredible selection of BFS chipboard could be all yours! Here is what you need to do to get yourself eligible:

1.) Feel free to interpret the sketch as you please by means of taking it as-is or flipping/turning/mirroring it to suit your needs! 

2.) You must use at least one piece of Blue Fern Studios chipboard- but you do not need to use the pieces featured in the sketch! You can find the store nearest you HERE. {Please do not use any other brand of chipboard on your project please!}

3.) Upload your project using the Inlinkz tool below by midnight EST on June 30th, 2013.

We look forward to your entries!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Fun layouts with BFS chipboards!

Hi everyone! It's me - Iris, for today's post of Blue Fern Layouts. First up is a fun layout I made about our  trip to Universal Studios. We were lucky to catch Big Bird early in the morning so we were able to take a family pic with him. The setting of this particular part of Universal Studios was like downtown city, so the lamp post went perfectly with the page. I added a picket fence too to mimick the fences and barricades surrounding the various rides and attractions.




Evening Lamp Post

Country Picket Fence

Next is a layout about our ride at "The Transformers"! I used industrial gears here to keep up with the theme of machines, robots etc...




Industrial Gears

Last one is a layout I made for the May Sketch. This time, I used the lamp post with the lattice fence to document the time my girls met Cinderella and Snow White at Disney Land....

 Evening Lamp Post

Lattice Fence

That's it for now guys! Till next month for my next (and last) batch of creations for the Blue Fern Studios Blog.

The new design team has been announced, and as sad as I may be to near the end of my term, 
I'm also very excited for the new batch of designers coming in and the ones staying on. 
They will surely inspire all of us. Congrats ladies!

All the best to Blue Fern Studios!

Hugs!
Iris





Monday, May 27, 2013

Marcasite Technique and some Tags too!

 Yea!! It’s the 27th day of the month!  And, you know why I like that day of the month so much?  It’s because it’s my assigned day  to share with our inspiring and supportive Followers what I have been working on for BFS.  I am Joyce, and I hope I can inspire you to try out this Marcasite technique to use on some of your BFS chipboard pieces.  It is really quite effective on chipboard and renders a jewel like quality.  The technique is easy to apply, and I’ve created two different pieces to share with you using the same technique.
 
Bargain Bin Journal featuring the Organic Vine Corner chipboard.

 
Close up of Marcasite Technique
 
 
 

































































 Here’s how I obtained the look of Marcasite on the chipboard above.

1)      Apply an acrylic gold metallic paint, or an metallic ink from a stamp pad, to your chipboard and let it dry.

2)      Visualize where you want to apply your Marcasite application to rest and apply either (a) a liquid pearl product, or (b) an application of glitter in small dots, or (c) add self-adhesive pearls or rhinestones on your pattern, and allow any wet product to dry thoroughly before continuing on to the next step.  I alternated an application of a liquid pearl product and a glitter dot on my first example.

3)      Use a small paint brush and dip it in a dark grey, black or vertigris colored mist and apply the mist with your paint brush all around your pearls/rhinestones/glitter dot design and set to dry.  Wipe up any excess mist that may get on to other areas of the chipboard that are not in alignment with your Marcasite design.  You may need to apply another coat for more drama because the acrylic metallic paint may produce a resistance.  If this happens, then try a watered down black acrylic paint on your paint brush instead of the colored mist.

4)      Once the mist or paint has dried, use a moistened  Q-tip to clean off the mist or paint on the pearls/rhinestones so that the radiance of the pearl/rhinestones show through.

5)      Then using your fingers, apply an ivory/gold metallic paste or paint around the edges of the Marcasite technique to bring back the radiance of the original gold metallic paint application.  This last application really shows up well in the door knocker chipboard tag featured below because there was more surface space available on that particular chipboard design.
The rest of the Organic Vine Corner  chipboard was spritz with other colors and metallic paint was applied as well.

 


An image transfer technique was used on the bargain bin journal cover and it produced a lovely worn and vintage fabric appeal.  It actually feels like fabric to.  The technique works well when using brightly colored pattern paper.  I’ve use the same technique on some of BFS gears and widget chipboard and it rendered really nice results.  You’ll see an additional example of the technique used on the chipboard on one of the tags below.  The Image Transfer technique will be posted on my personal blog this week.

 


Marcasite Technique

Embossing Technique

Image Transfer applied on first Widget
 
Here are pictures of the products I have used in this months project:

Organic Vine Corner

Ironwork Accents

Widgets

 

I hope you give the marcasite technique a try too!