Feature Artist - Earth Day - Welcome Jenny

Hello Everyone!

Anne here, I am so thrilled to introduce you to our Feature Artist for April, the lady who was the winner of my 'Ring out the Old' challenge in January.  Please give a huge welcome to the super talented Jenny of Pushing the Right Buttons !

Jenny is one of those fabulous artists whose work and style is instantly recognisable, she is so clever with design, layers and textures.  Whether it is a card or a large canvas Jenny's attention to detail is exceptional.  Jenny has some fantastic tutorials on her blog, HERE, that are definitely worth visiting - she loves to share her experiments and new techniques.  Every time I visit Jenny's blog I learn something new!

Jenny's project for us today really showcases her style and also the thought that she puts into each and every project she does.  Can you tell, I am a big fan!

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Hi everyone! My name is Jenny Marples from 'Pushing The Right Buttons' and I'm thrilled to have been asked to be a Feature Artist here at Anything But Cute. Being lucky enough to count several members of the Design Team as good friends and 'colleagues' it's a real honour to join them for this month's challenge.

As a mixed media designer, educator and demonstrator I love getting the opportunity to share tips, techniques and ideas wherever possible. I am proud to be Design Team lead/member for several companies/blogs, to have appeared on a number of online tv shows and to have had my work published in craft magazines on a regular basis. Behind the scenes I am lucky enough to be married to my best friend and be mum to three wonderful sons (oh, and one rather large daft dog). Being creative is a big part of my life and I hope some of that passion rubs off others along the way - we all need to 'share the love' in our own way!

When the theme 'Earth Day' was mentioned I went off in search of inspiration and was hit with a multitude of logos featuring the planet and branches. This is my interpretation of that logo with the addition of butterflies to symbolise the beauty and delicacy of the natural world.

It was also an opportunity to experiment further with the new Distress Crayons; here are some suggestions for using them on your backgrounds. I started with some Tissue Wrap and a die cut globe stuck down and covered with a thin coat of gesso this time. You could easily use some patterned paper instead and by cutting the main image from black card you will help it to stand out more.

Having scribbled blue and green Distress Crayons on top I blended them together with my finger. If you find they are not blending easily add more colour and you'll find they glide together.

The great thing about these crayons is that they are water reactive, so having spritzed the entire background with water I was able to dab off some of the colour with a tissue. To be really eco-friendly you can save this and use it in another project!

To finish the background I blended some of the Black Soot Distress Crayon around the edges with my finger again and rubbed the Picket Fence version over the globe die cut. And it was all mounted on a piece of MDF board painted black.

To finish the piece I added a die cut branch covered with muslin, lace flowers, buttons, paper flowers and a coat of Antique Linen Distress Paint.

The die cut butterflies were also coloured with Distress Crayons and I added a little Ground Espresso Distress Ink over the top to provide some shadow contrast.

Hopefully you will now feel even more inspired to create your own Earth Day project and share it here at Anything But Cute. I really enjoyed working with this theme and would like to thank Pamellia and the Design Team for inviting me to be a Feature Artist this month.

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Wow, how impressive is that!  Jenny's attention to detail just shines through in this gorgeous project!  Thank you Jenny, from the whole team for joining us here at Anything But Cute.

I hope you will feel encouraged to join in Samra's Earth Day Challenge, if you have not already done so.

You have until the 4th of May to play - and you will find all the challenge details as well as lots of inspiration from the brilliant Anything But Cute design team by clicking on the challenge link.

Happy Crafting
Anne

Winners - Challenge #11 Crazy For Colour

Hi, Branka here with the winners of the 'Crazy For Colour' challenge. Thank you so much for all the fantastic vibrant entries and I am amazed at how many beautiful and colourful projects we received! Oh, it was extremely difficult for me to pick just one winner and a runner-up but after a long going back and forth here is my winner

WINNER - #55 - Kris

A stunning abstract piece of art with such rich textures and a fantastic explosion of colours! Awesome layering and a fabulous use of art stones and cotton pieces! This glorious project has stolen my heart!

Congratulations Kris!  Pamellia will be in touch by email to send you a personalized winner's badge and to provide details about being our Feature Artist for the next challenge.

And now for the Runner-Up




RUNNER-UP - # 22 - Joi@RR

Fabulous colourful and bold piece brilliantly put together. Amazing crackle effect and awesome whimsical flowers! This project really adds sunshine to ones day!

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Now let's have a look at our DT favourites:




Anne's Favourite - #55 Kris

I was completely and utterly blown away by the wonderful textures Kris created and the colours are sensational, on this bold and beautiful piece of art.

Cec's Favourite - #55 Kris

I couldn't help choosing this as my favourite as well.  The colours are bold and bright but the texture is over-the-top fabulous.  When I saw this my first thought was a coral bed in some sea somewhere exotic and I immediately wanted to go there and look at it from a glass bottomed boat - no scuba diving for me.

Niki's Favourite - #69-Rina

Rina's design has all the lovely colors of the rainbow and each color is so vibrant and fun. I adore this design and the splitz and splatters she created on her background. The bonus are the gorgeous colors of the flowers and the little butterflies fluttering around. Amazing and gorgeous design! Carpe Diem!

Pamellia's Favourites -

38. zosiurkowa muma

This piece grabbed my eye the minute I saw it! All the gorgeous textures, amazing dimension and vibrant spring greens topped off with lots of pink flowers!! What's not to love!

 87. Gail Lett

I am just blown away with this vibrant card!! These colours just explode off the page and there is so much interest packed into just one layer, how could I resist! Stunning work Gail!

Samra's Favourite - #95 Elena Vinogradova

Gorgeous design in bright colors. The white doily against the neon bricks is what caught my eye and stole my heart! Elena has amazing style and grace in her work.

Sara Emily's Favourites

#90 Marty Fishman

Look at all these wonderful colors,  not only on the birds but on those wonderful backgrounds!  And what made this project extra special is the love that went into it, as Marty prepared this for her daughter.  I always love it when something is made especially for a loved one!

Here I go breaking the rules again, but I truly could not pick between Marty's and another's colorful projects so my favorite is both of them!

#97-Amanda Pink

I mean!  Look at those amazing colors! Wow, Amanda!  You took that hippie era look right out of my head and executed it beautifully! I love the bold colors with the black silhouettes shaded with white. Rock on, Amanda!

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Honourable Mentions!

This was probably the hardest month yet for us to choose our honourable mentions! There were just so many projects we loved! You really made it hard for us to narrow it down! Inspirational work from all of you!

2. Lozzy                  6. Deborah                  8. Ingrid B                  17. Corinne R

        

27. Maya                 30. MiSchra                 44. maria f                  91. Lee-Anne

      

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A huge congratulation everyone! Thank you so much to everyone who played along with us last month and don't forget to grab your badges! You earned them!!

There is still plenty of time to enter  Samra's current challenge 'Earth Day'! We can't wait to see what you come up with this time!

Hugs to all, from the 'Anything But Cute' Design Team

Challenge #12 - April - Earth Day

Hello Everyone!

Samra  here, hosting my last challenge here at Anything But Cute as a member of Design Team. Thank you all who took part in our last month's challenge! It was a pleasure to see all the gorgeous entries. Don't forget to check back with us next Tuesday when Branka and the team announce the winners of the Crazy For Colors challenge. Now on to this month's theme.

Inspiration for this theme came from the fact that April 22nd is celebrated as Earth Day, and I wanted our team to take part in the celebration by putting together Earth Day theme challenge.

EARTH DAY

Create a mixed media project inspired by this mood board and the beauty of our planet. Please tell us what inspired you. Entries for this challenge can be echo friendly, or even recycled/upcycled items; or depiction of the sea, mountain, river, forest, flowery meadow…let’s celebrate our planet!

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It's Sara Emily here, and I'm excited to introduce our talented Guest Designer for April!  She was the winner of my February challenge "Grungy Love". Please welcome Nikki Acton of Addicted to Art!

Nikki has a distinct simplistic style that I adore! But even though her projects appear "clean and simple", she puts so much into them with her perfectly executed techniques. What I wouldn't do to be a butterfly on her art room wall! Without further ado, here is the super talented Nikki and her gorgeous canvas! Check out all her techniques!

Hi everyone - I am Nikki from Addicted to Art. Many thanks to Pamellia and the ABC team for welcoming me as a Guest Designer today.

I live in Hampshire in the UK. I have been crafting and blogging for just over two years. I joined a new gym, started playing badminton again, made some new friends and one of them was a crafter. I visited her house, saw her craft room and scrapbooks and the rest is history! My own craft is eclectic, from simple cards to grungy mixed media projects. I am a big Tim Holtz fan but also love bright, bold abstract art and lots in between. 

Around the time I received the guest invitation I was visiting Brenda Brown (Bumblebees and Butterflies) who lives locally and she was creating a project using the Tim Holtz globe thinlits die at the time. I don't own it, but she kindly cut one for me as it seemed perfect for this theme. I decided to celebrate the beauty of our planet with my canvas but used a crackle effect on the surface to reflect the fragility of the world in which we live.

The cracked surface was created with PaperArtsy crackle medium.

My butterflies (Tim Holtz butterfly duo) were coloured with oil pastels and PaperArtsy fresco paint. There are more details of these techniques over on my blog today. 

I hope you like my creation. 

Nikki - Addicted to Art

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And now for some inspiration from the talented Anything But Cute design team!

It is with a sad heart that we tell you the news that this will be the last challenge that Cec and Samra join us as Design Team members. It has been such an honour to work behind the scenes with these ladies. They are so talented and have been an inspiration to everyone, they will really be missed by all of us! We wish both of you the best of luck in all that life and crafting has to bring you! Hugs, the entire Anything But Cute team!

Cec - CW Card Creations

I have gone into the rain forest for my Earth Day offering.  This little canvas has a background created with card stock die cuts covered with paints along with some stenciling.  I have added elements created from crafter's clay, altered greenery from the dollar store and even dirt made from beads and texture paste.

Samra - Paper Talk with Samra

I created a house in a flowery meadow  next to a deep blue lake under the starry sky. As you can probably tell, I was inspired by the blue flowers and the house at the base of a mountain. There was a quite a bit of texture, recycling and painting involved in creating this card for my co-worker who is going to retire in a year and move to another state to a house by the lake.

Anne - Redanne

I just love Samra's challenge theme, I was really inspired by the gorgeous colours in the mood board. It was perfect for me as I absolutely adore seahorses, they are an endangered species where we live.  I had lots of fun with some Fiber Paste, lots of paint and a real starfish to create an underwater scene.

Branka - Vintage Handmade

I was so inspired by Samra's beautiful mood board and especially by those awesome blue and green tones to create a mixed media mini canvas. I used gauze, art stones, modeling paste, Dylusions inks and some lace. 

Niki - Pawsitively Creative Crafts

I was so inspired by Samra's lovely mood board and used the blue tones, the earthy feel, the grass and the butterfly. Found objects, tinted modeling paste, and stamps made this design come alive.The eggs are made from polymer clay and painted a robins blue to compliment the mood board. Happy crafting and Carpe Diem!

Pamellia - My Little Craft Things

I just love Samra's mood board and I was completely drawn in by these neon earth colours! I drew inspiration from the foliage, the flowers and the gorgeous bird. I also was inspired by Samra's project. I love the natural foliage she included! My "Big World" canvas is going on the wall beside my bird-watching window!

Sara Emily - sarascloset

I just loved Samra's mood board, and I was inspired by the beautiful colors, butterfly, flowers, mushroom,  mossy looking fields, and the overall sense of nature combined with fantasy. Even Samra's words inspired me to use recycled materials.  I used over 20 of my mixed media products including, but not limited to paints, sprays, inks, pastes, and other mediums to create my tree stump. I hope you'll pop by my blog for lots of close ups and a step out of how this was made. There's even a little surprise! 

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I hope the inspiration from our team's creations and the mood board gives you plenty of creative juices to make a project for this challenge . Please hop over to the team blogs to see more photos and get some details on how these projects were made. And don't forget to leave some bloggy love while you're there.

I hope that we have inspired you to celebrate planet Earth with us this month. The winner will receive the honour of being our Feature Artist for an upcoming challenge!

JUST A REMINDER THAT WE DO NOT ALLOW BACKLINKING. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER PROJECTS INTO OUR CHALLENGE THAT WERE POSTED ON YOUR BLOG PRIOR TO TODAY. THANK YOU!

Challenge runs until May 4th - we can't wait to see what you come up with! Happy Crafting from the entire team and thanks for visiting Anything But Cute!

An InLinkz Link-up

Spotlight Artist - Anne - Add Sewing to your Project

Hello everyone, Anne here, I would like to share with you a few sewing projects and also some hints and tips that I find useful when sewing craft projects.  My samples mainly incorporate machine sewing as I find that the quickest and easiest method of adding interest to a project.  However, faux stitching (with a pen) or hand stitching can also be very effective.

You do not need an 'all singing and dancing' expensive machine to get good results, even the cheapest little sewing machines from the craft store will work fine as long as you are not trying to sew through too many layers.

Firstly, there are a couple of things to remember when stitching with card or paper (I have put my tips into bullet points, throughout the post, for easy reference).

• Machine stitching onto paper or card will blunt your needle!  I keep one needle separately for use with paper and card.
• Take your time!  Stitching on paper leaves holes, so if you do go wrong you will be left with an unwanted hole.
• Always stitch on the 'right side of your paper/card - holes from the back look like the paper has been punctured and trust me, it is not a good look.

My first project is a simple one.  I took some watercolour paper and put a wash of turquoise watercolour ink across one section and when dry, I added some washi tape for interest.  I die cut some hearts from card and decided where I would like them to bit.  I used a bit of washi tape to hold the edges of the hearts and machine stitched down the middle of the hearts.  This could be used as a card topper with the addition of some words.

You can leave the stitching messy as I have done, or you could pass the thread through to the back for a neater look.  If you are going to pass the thread through, just leave a nice long length of thread, so that you can thread it onto a sewing needle and pass it through one of the holes you have already created.

• Use a larger stitch length when stitching onto paper or card, too small a stitch may rip the paper/card.  You can see below, my craft sewing machine has just a few basic stitches, I used the 'C' stitch, which is the middle sized stitch, but a larger one would work equally well. 

• Never use pins to hold things in place for stitching - you will not be able to get rid of the holes and that will spoil the look of your project.

You can stitch by hand onto your project, it will take a little longer but it looks just as effective.  On the example below I decided where I wanted my heart, held it in place with washi tape and used a pokey tool on a mat to make the holes.  You could stitch direct onto the card but poking the holes through first makes it much easier to control the spacing of the stitches.

I tend not to use a back stitch when I sew onto paper/card, I used a running stitch (bottom left) going from one end to the other and then a running stitch on the way back (top right) to fill in the gaps. This method looks very neat as you can see in the picture (bottom right).

For my next project I took some book pages, coloured them with ink and then drew out some quirky houses, along with a couple of doors.  Book pages are very thin, so I usually coat them with a a layer of clear Gesso - this gives the book pages a bit of 'body' and makes them easier to handle, for stitching.

After creating a mixed media background, using ink, paint, stencils, rub-ons and some washi tape, I laid the houses where I wanted them and held them with a little washi tape.  

I stitched around the houses with black cotton but you could use white or another light colour so that the stitching will be more prominent.

• Don't be tempted to use sticky tape on the back of something that you will be sewing over, it will make your needle very sticky and it will affect the way your machine works (ask me how I know this!!).

My next project includes both card and fabric.

I started by drawing a beach hut onto cream canvas fabric and used a watercolour pencil to draw in and colour some stripes.  I also did the door in the same way.  I find it much easier to draw out the elements onto canvas/fabric and then machine stitch the edges BEFORE cutting them out.  This helps to prevent the edges from fraying too much when you cut out the elements to add to your project.

I cut two more pieces of fabric to create some 'sand dunes' and then stitched these to the tag base.

I stitched the beach hut in place, going all around the edges and then did the same with the door.  Several rows of stitching adds interest to your project.  I added some coloured gauze at the bottom to represent the sea.   This photo shows me placing the pieces onto the tag.

If you are adding gauze or any other flimsy type of fabric, just remember to stitch slowly across it, gently pushing it under the needle as you go.

• You may get a build up of lint in your machine, when using card/paper - just check from time to time and using the little lint brush that comes with most machines, clean this out of the compartment where the bobbin sits, if you see that there is a build up of lint.

My next project uses sewing onto a cotton canvas base to create a simple picture.  I started by sketching out in pencil, where I wanted the hills, houses and trees to be.  I stitched all the lines in black cotton to make them stand out.  I coloured the little houses with watercolour pencils to make them stand out more.  I have not decided yet whether to watercolour the rest of the picture or possibly add some embroidery.

Finally, this is a project from a year ago, I just added a little machine stitching to the heart but I think it makes the heart stand out beautifully.

I hope you may feel inspired to get your machine out and add some simple stitching to a project, I think it can add a lot of interest to projects, it does not need to be fancy, a few stitches even by hand can make such a difference.

If you have any questions, please do leave them in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them for you.

Our current challenge - Crazy for Colour  is being hosted by the lovely Branka.  If you have not joined in yet we hope that you will, there is still plenty of time left!

Thanks so much for your visit to Anything But Cute today!