Fairy summery review

I have something a bit different to share today. It is time for another Sweet November Stamps review ahead of an adorable clear stamp release that will be out next weekend. I have used the Fairy hair stamps from last years release and sublimated my copic coloured image to make a coaster!

I did this by first colouring my chosen fairy and fussy cutting around her so there was no white outline.

I used the following copics to colour this pretty fairy:

Skin: E33, E11, E00

Hair: RV66, RV55, RV63

Top: G09, YG05

Skirt: Y11

Wings: B02, B00

Butterflies and ladybird: Y38, Y15

Next I scanned her into my computer. 

NOTE: I added glossy accents to her wings and the lady bird before I scanned her...DO NOT do that. Learn from my mistakes. The glossy accents even though I had left it for a couple of days to dry did stick to the window of my scanner! I was originally just going to use her for a card or I would not have added the glossy accents and thankfully they have come off of the scanner but don't give yourself that extra work lol. 

Then I found a nice cloudy sky background and some pretty daisy flowers on creative fabrica and went to work putting them all together a way I liked in photoshop. I got 9cm sublimation coasters so I set my images to be in a 9.5cm square just to make sure the image went all the way to the edges of the coaster.

Next step is printing the new square image out on my sublimation printer and then using my Cricut heat press to sublimate the coaster (cook the ink into surface the coaster). For these coasters I set the heat to 200 and pressed them for 50 seconds.

I am very happy with this result and also I did check with the lovely ladies at Sweet November Stamps first to confirm I was allowed to use their images in this way. This may be different for other companies so please always check with them first if you are going to do this kind of project.

I now have a load of ideas for other projects so watch this space :D

If you would like me to do more about sublimating just let me know and I can go into more detail/ do my posts and videos about it.

Be sure to check back on my blog later for a sneak peek of the new clear stamp release that will be available next weekend (17th June 2023).

I am entering this coaster for the following challenges:

Crafty Fingers - Anything Goes

LeighSB Designs - Anything Goes

Patties creations - Anything Goes

Paper dragonfly creative - Anything Flies

Creative Inspirations - Anything Goes

Ellibelle's crafty Wednesday - Anything Goes

Little red wagon - Things that fly

Crafty Addicts - Anything Goes

Unicorn challenge - Fantasy

Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my blog.

Huge hugs

Amy xx

A day playing with glass :D

I had an amazing day on Monday spending a whole day (6 hours) with the very lovely Nicky of creative glass fusion learning who to put together glass for glass fusing. I had a completely blank canvas and could let my imagination and creativity flow.

There were lots of examples to get inspiration from. I decided to make coasters and try out a variety of different techniques. 

I had a go using wire and foil, cutting some glass, frit and some kind of glass balls. I need to wait a couple of weeks for them to all go in the kiln and then I can see what the finished articles will look like but for now this is what they looked like before firing....

I was really inspired by the way the wire examples looked that Nicky had. They were flowers but there was something about the way the lines looked that made me think of fish fins. There is no better fish in my mind to show off fins and to be able to use any colours than Siamese fighting fish. So I have tried to make the kind of out line of the body and fins from the wire and then cover in frit that blends several colours. I made the second coaster without the wire to see what difference the wire makes to the finished design and I used the glass beads/ balls in the corners. 

Third I made a floral scene using some strands of glass for the stems and various sizes of frit and more of the glass beads to make some abstract petals.

Lastly I stayed with the abstract idea and used a couple of colours of metal foil cut into rough leaf shapes to make a back ground. I also used a kind of blue glass as the back piece for this one rather than the clear glass I had used on all the others. Then I topped that with strips of white glass to look kind of like silver birch trunks and topped it with a mix of a couple of colours and sizes of frit.

I really hope these look as nice as they did in my imagination. It is hard to tell as the colours will change in the kiln and the colours should all mix more and show through each other to varying degrees. I will keep you updated :)