Gucci the Fish! Scrapbooking Inspiration...

Over the Christmas Break I had a couple of lovely evenings all to myself to hole up at the craft desk and get creating!

I had a lovely photo of one of my fishies called Gucci. (Yes...my fish have names!!) Perfect opportunity to do myself a scrapbook page using the Art Deco stamps! Since her name is Gucci, I wanted to do a "glamourous" page for her, and here it is:

Really pleased with how it came out! The art deco image is stamped in black Tim Holtz ink, which is one of the few inks which won't smudge or run with promarkers. I've now got myself some of the clip-on fine nibs for my promarkers, which if you don't have them, I highly recommend! We have them in stock for 99p each.

Just a couple of tips on the nibs, you'll probably find you only need one since they can swap between colours easily. The only colour you might want a separate nib for is red, since red does tend to stain the nibs a bit. I have only found that with the colour "Cardinal" though, so it might just be my pen! When you clip the nib to a new colour, just scribble on a scrap of paper first. For example when I swapped from silver to gold colouring this image, I put the nib onto the gold pen second. When you scribble, you get a silver line, then a dirty browny goldy one, then it goes gold.
The other thing I found is the lids aren't interchangeable! The fine nib lid will damage a normal promarker nib if you get them mixed up. I've got a white marker pen in the shop which I used to put a little white X on my fine nib lid, so if you're buying one, feel free to ask us to put a white X on yours too!

Here's a closer look at the Art Deco Lady:

The little feather is from a larger feather, I just snipped it to size and glued it in place with a gluepen. The glitter is glitz it glitter glue and the gems are from the smaller of the Anita's gemstone wheels.

And this is the other Art Deco stamp I was playing with...

Gorgeous, aren't they? I can't get over how clear the images come out. They're such good quality stamps, beautifully defined when you see them done. Is now a good time to admit that I really couldn't choose...so I gave in and got all 3...

 Managed to get a few other scrapbook pages done over christmas too! Here's Sam the fish:

The fish bowl is done on the shop's Cricut (shh! Don't tell anyone I borrowed it!) and the border around the image is Mica Flakes. The big fish sticker up the top there hasn't come out too well in the photo I'm afraid, but take my word for it, it looks lovely in real life! It's all coloured with a gluepen and then filled in using Mica Powders. But the bit I'm most proud of is the tag:

The pocketwatch is one of the freebies on the current issue of the docrafts magazine. I've stamped it in distress ink, squirted it with water, then glossed it with the Anita's 3D gloss. (Rummage through the Distress Ink Tutorial for how to do this technique) The little brown dots are DIY Card Candies which have also been glossed.
The other freebie on the magazine is a fabulous old fashioned globe stamp...which is gorgeous! That's a homemade tag stuck onto a cream A6 card blank:

And to finish off, some embarrassing baby photos!

All those flowers are cut out on the bigshot using the XCut Petal Posy nesting die:

And here's a genuine Polaroid photo from the 80s!

So proud of those little flowers! They're cut out from mulberry paper (that really fine handmade stuff you can buy) and then curled up. The green DMC embroidery thread is then wrapped around them and the whole thing glued down. I stitched the stems and the leaves by drawing lines with a pencil, then poking holes with a pokey tool and stitching through the card in backstitch.

So what did everyone else make over Christmas? Hope you all found some time to sit down and enjoy a good crafting session!