Charmed, Enchanted, Bewitched

After going for a couple of drinks at our local for a friend's birthday, I came home to find that a handful of their uniquely shaped beermats had ended up in my pocket! A very odd occurance but hey, now they're here I may as well alter them.

So here is my project for the Darkness Inspiration challenge- Bewitched.

First I spent the better part of an hour trying to get the top layer off of the darned beermat (the others I have peel off easily; not so with this one - in fact there is still a little bit left under where the image is!)

I coloured the background Forest Moss DI (see! a new colour at last!) and then edged it in Faded Jeans. Then I took another torn out book page, coloured it with Weathered Wood (my other new DI) and stuck it down, trimming around the beermat and edging again with Faded Jeans.

Next I stamped out the Tim Holtz ticket block stamp, this time leaving it in tact rather than cutting them apart, to use as another background - tinting it with Weathered Wood (my new fave!) and then using a cottonbud to add Forest Moss around the edges of the tickets; again sticking it down then trimming it down.

The image is one of the gorgeous ching-chou kuik images, made by Sweet Pea stamps and bought from Crafts and Me. I coloured her with watercolour pencils then painstakingly cut out a mask from sticky notes and coloured the background with Weathered Wood, Faded Jeans and Forest Moss.

I used my brass stencils to do the wording with my brown Indian ink marker, using the same ink colours; added an eyelet and a strip of lace(ish) ribbon, some silver gems and finally a bit of silver glitter.

This piece is also being entered into the following challenges:
Crafts and Me - sparkle (the gems and glitter)
Crafty Pad - ribbon (the strip bowed at the top)
Fab'n'Funky - no designer paper
Crafty Creations - make your own backing paper (I did mine with a stamp, book page and planty of Distress Ink!)
and finally, Lexi's Creations - animals (her two adorable kittens)

Take care and happy crafting

Charli xx

First Altered Beermat

I have sat here since the end of the Easter holidays with a nice pile of circular beermats in front of me, waiting (and waiting, and waiting) to be altered.

Finally I got around to having a little play with one. I was relieved that the top layer of paper (the bit with the advertising on) peeled away neatly, leaving me with a blank canvas.

I have been drooling over all of Hels' beermats over at Ink on My Fingers, so it seemed only fitting that I would enter my first attempt into the Sunday Stamper's big special challenge to celebrate 100 weeks. The theme was FREE, under the song title of Free as a Bird (so I added a little bird to mine). Take a look as there is some SERIOUS candy to be won!!


This was nice and simple to do. I covered the base with Antique Linen DI, a bit of torn book page coloured with Worn Lipstick DI, a distressed paper flower and stamped elements all coloured with the same DIs plus a hint of Tea Dye DI too.


I loved making the masks for the various colours on the Cute Companion and completely love the tickets; they are one of Tim Holtz's stamps and come all joined together in a block but I very patiently cut them all down and went to work with the DIs!


The finishing touch was a gold eyelet and a strip of old-looking lacy stuff (from a bag of lace from the charity shop) which has allowed me to hang it on my notice board.

Will need to do more beermats now! (well I do have 29 left in my pile!!)


Take care and happy crafting

Charli xx