A Beautiful Mess Winner and Top 3

Howdy from Joi@RR.

You all did a SUPER FINE job of getting messy!!!  Thanks bunches for joining our 'A Beautiful Mess" challenge. Whether you made a messy looking project or just used 'messy' techniques...we were thrilled to see every inch of your 'Beautiful Mess' creative projects this month!

As most of you know, this will be our last post from OUR CREATIVE CORNER. Before I announce the winner and Top 3 for the challenge please allow me to say thank you, from my heart, to precious Laura, sweet Claudia and the DT for this incredible opportunity. You are all truly amazing.
 I came to OCC entering challenges and so well remember the thrill of winning a challenge and posting your badge to my blog.  Ultimately, becoming part of your DT was a true honor and joy. XXj.


Now it is time for Mr Random.org to do his work and pick one of your wonderful entries. This month's winner will receive goodies from:

LOST COAST DESIGNS and CARMEN'S VERANDA. 

And the winner is....

Congratulations Berni C!

Please email us via the link on the sidebar by 15th July and
we will get your voucher to you as soon as possible.

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Are you ready for the MESSY winners from our 'A Beautiful Mess' challenge? I had such a fabulous time looking at each of your truly marvelous creations.  I wanted to just find a prize for you ALL!!

Along the way... I realized the operative word for me would be 'beautiful'.  A pretty mess or a funky mess would be totally different than a beautiful mess.  So that helped with my final decisions! And here is our final Winner and Top Three!

The Challenge Winner is... 

Jenny: Pushing the Right Buttons


YEAH!! How fun!!!

Jenny "pushed the right buttons" in my heart! It's a Bodacious Summer Sunshine Extravaganza!  The rather messy, carefree background and the rather messy 'doodles' on the flowers just translated to 'A Beautiful Mess'.  And the sentiment is very special; one we all should remember :)

And as this is the final challenge I am so lucky to be able to add a few more to my Top 3 (now 6) and here they are  (in no particular order!)

Ruth: A Love To Create

I was spell bound by Ruth's background - it has helter skelter bits and pieces of everything in it!  There were splashes and splatters, dents and dobs all over it! And her flowers were stunning but the materials she used for them was very messy in appearance. One beautiful flower even had a leaf fraying!!! Just don't see how it could be much messier in such a truly beautiful way.  

Branka: Vintage Handmade

Forgive me Branka but all I know to say is that this is just: 'A Beautiful Mess'!  The vivid colors and the free spirit of this piece just made my heart feel happy.


Sara Emily: Sara's Closet

On her entry Sara said: "A bit messy, even by my loose standards". Heheheheh - I agree Sara!!! There is dimension and texture as well as crackle, embossing, glitter, micro beads. All great BUT... there is seriously nothing perfect about this creation.  And THAT is why I can say I adore it unconditionally - it's NOT PERFECT - it's a Beautiful MESS!!! 

Rupa: Together for Arts

Rupa made this lovely creation out of a cardboard box! It is lovely and it just makes me smile.  The raffia roof is darling and adds to the charm of this sweetly beautiful mess!!! 

Rachel: Arty Beginnings

Rachel is a bit new to the artsy world and somehow her little village sunrise just thrilled me. Seems to me like there is no way that messy background would work with this darling little town and it's very messy blue brick streets but to me it's just totally quaint! And I just think that abstract sunset/sunrise completely brings the entire piece together.  It just seems like  'A darling little Beautiful Mess'.

Shirly: Kishkamashka

This is Shirly's very first EVER blog post!  WOW. And look - she even included the brush that created her "beautiful mess".  The background is a modge podge of color that makes the artist pallet look just like mine - messy!!!  And those white messy lines are so fun as the border.  As an artist - this creation was splendid eye candy and definitely seemed perfect for our challenge!

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SUCH WONDERFUL FUN!  All my thanks to each one of you who submitted your truly SPLENDID creations. They were each a joy to see.


Love to you all.♥ღ¸♪♫•*♥ Joi@RR

Top Talent For Gypsy Fayre

Hi everyone! 

 Laura here to bring you the spotlight on the winner of the Gypsy Fayre Challenge

 that was hosted by Candice!

Candice selected Nate as her winner and we are so thrilled to be welcoming her as Our Creative Corner's last Top Talent!!!

  

......But before we show you Nate's wonderful creation,  let's just spend some time finding out a little bit more about this very creative lady..... 

1. Where do you live?
 
I live in France in Val d'oise and the town is called Sannois. It is a suburb 20 km from Paris and 5km from the Stade de France.

2. How long have you been crafting and what made you start crafting?
 
I started scrapbooking (not knowing that it was called that back then) by customizing my photo frames. I stuck flowers and buttons on them....until the day I discovered scrapbooking sites on the internet. This adventure set me going. I created my own blog in 2007 and it's name is"le scrap de nate"  My aim was to have a place where I could collect and share my creations.
 
3. What color inspires your creativity?
 
I react to all colours. I like to mix them and get messy with them - but when I look at my creations I notice they are dominated strongly by green. A restful colour which represents nature and serenity.
 
4. Are you a day-time or night-time crafter?

I don't have a timetable. I get inspiration at all times. For me everything can be made into crafts. A project idea just arrives and then everything happens.

5. If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?
 
I hope and wish to continue for a long time with craft projects and I hope that my inspiration will grow by learning new techniques. I also would like to have some of my creative goals and desires become reality some day. 

6. What makes you happy? 

Everything and nothing makes me happy...

I am happy when I scrap, when my thoughts and ideas find their way into my projects
I am married and happy to be a mother of two grown children (girl and boy)
I am happy with my little dachshund who fills me with joy
I am happy with the life I live
I am simply happy to be just me.
 
7. About how many hours do you spend on crafting per week?
 
Do you want to know the whole truth?...Every day, every month, the whole year - I have to dabble. I like challenges....

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 Je te remercie beaucoup, Nate! Nous sommes très fiers que tu es ici aujourd'hui en tant que notre TopTalent. C’était très agréable d’en apprendre plus de toi...... 

     Now it is time to shine the spotlight on the Top Talent creation - 

 Let's see what Nate made for us!

Quelle merveille, Nate ! - C’est incroyable et si beau ! Il a vraiment été un grand plaisir et honneur de présenter cette merveilleuse création at Our Creative Corner. Merci beaucoup d’être chez nous!

 
If you want to see more photos and details of this wonderful creation and find out how it was made, then please go along to Nate's blog and say "Hello" - I am sure she would love to see you there!

Happy Crafting!

Laura

xxxxxxx

Sponsor Spotlight No.1

Hi everyone !

Lys here, with a creation for Lost Coast Designs Sponsor Spotlight!

I chose this fabulous stamp: “Grunge Border 3”, and associated it with my Gelli Plate, to make these colourful and contrasted cards:

I used paints on the Gelli plate, and make different sheets of paper.

I wished only different shades, no designs, as the stamp is very rich yet.

Then I stamped the border with a black ink, and cut the paper, keeping both parts.  

I glued them on a bright chocolate card

And this is the first one: 

The second one:

And the last one: 

 I stamped the clock twice and cut it to stick it on 3D foam.

Et voilà!

You can still play with Joi’s Challenge and dive in her “beautiful mess”, to win the prize of our generous sponsor!

Happy crafting!

Lys

Hit the Books Winner and Top 3

Hi Everyone! 

Jennie here to thank  you all so much for running with my challenge 'Hit the Books'. 

I asked you to give those old book pages centre stage and you certainly did that. I had a great time visiting you all and enjoying your creative process. A huge thank you to all of you who entered.

Before I announce the winner and Top 3 for the challenge it is time for Mr Random.org to do his work and pick one of your wonderful entries. This month the lucky random winner wins a fabulous bundle of stamps and products from....

Crafty Individuals.

And that winner is.......Arty Beginnings!

Well done to you! Please email us via the email button on the sidebar 

and we will get your prize to you asap! 

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Now for the winners of my Hit the Books Challenge. It was a very difficult job to choose just four entries and there were so many absolutely wonderful projects and I wish you could all be winners.

And so my winner for the challenge is:

Le Scrap de Nate

Old Book Paper formed the basis of the panels in this wonderful 

piece and twisted paper was also used to add texture to the front panels. 

A stunning piece!

And now to the Top 3 (in no particular order!)

Jane

I loved the way the journal definition was used so subtly in this
 journal page as well as the old book paper creating texture and
layering in the background.

Cass

This altered children's book really caught my eye with 

pages cut away to create an amazing 3D picture.

Alice

I loved this series of ATCs with Victorian illustrations from 

an old book beautifully coloured and layered to tell 

a wonderful story.

Again many thanks to you all of you for making this a fabulous challenge!


Don't forget to join in with A Beautiful Mess this month with Joi! You could win a $20 voucher to spend at Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda!

A Beautiful Mess!

Hi everyone! Welcome back to the last challenge at Our Creative Corner...

Our wonderful Joi is running this months challenge - but before I hand over to her to tell you all the details about that, I just wanted to let you know that we will be announcing Joi's winner and Top 3 and the sponsor winner on 1st July and then OCC will be closing it's doors for the foreseeable future.

I took over as Leader at Our Creative Corner from Linda (The Funkie Junkie) in May 2013 - Being asked to do this was such a huge honour for me and it has truly been such an amazingly wonderful journey. As much as we love our craft blogging life, we all know that RL has a habit of getting in the way. For quite a while now I have been trying to not give in to the need to focus on RL, but I know that now is the right time....

I do just want to take this time to express some very much deserved gratitude -

Thank you so much...

...to Linda for having faith in me and letting me take on the leadership of OCC. Thank you for your invaluable advice, strength and wisdom and for always supporting me along the way.

...to each DT member who has given their time to OCC and devoted themselves to organizing some awesome challenges and providing amazing inspiration. Thank you for being there.

...to all the Guest Designers who have inspired everyone during our challenges. Your work was always an amazing addition to our blog and we are so very grateful.

...to our very generous Sponsors for supporting Our Creative Corner
and providing fantastic prizes.

.....and last, but by no means least....

Thank you to every person who has ever entered any of the challenges here at OCC.

Your creativity is amazing. We have been in awe of the people who enter their work for us to see and we would always have the greatest difficulty picking a winner each time. Without all of you there would have been no challenges and we were always so glad to see you here!
 

I am leaving OCC open for people to re-visit and hopefully be inspired by what they see.

In the future OCC might be back - but for now it is goodbye....

Happy crafting adventures to everyone!

Laura
 xxxxxxxxx



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Howdy from Joi@RR.

I am bringing you the June challenge at OUR CREATIVE CORNER.

 Before I introduce my challenge I would like to tell you about our Sponsor for this month

We are so excited to have Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda as our Sponsor for June.

They will be giving a lucky randomly selected winner a $20 gift certificate!

And what do you have to do to win this wonderful prize?...............

.......How about getting messy?? Can you do it with me???

Can you be free and filthy? Are you brave???

I believe YOU can do it... you can create...

A Beautiful Mess

Whether you make a messy looking project or just use 'messy' techniques...
we want to see every inch of your  'Beautiful Mess'!

So create 'A Beautiful Mess' for a chance to win some of the Sponsors fab products!

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Lets take a peek at what the fabulous team at OCC have made to inspire you today! 

Joi

Messy Products and Messy Technique... I soooo want to 'fix' this creation!!!

Can't I go back and paint some tall cacti and sweet yellow cactus flowers? 

Does the sunrise/sunset have to be so wild?  And what are those crazy red splats doing all over my canvas????  Dear me.... such a MESS! But ohhh - so much fun!!! Hope you have fun too. Xj.

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 Laura

 I decided to focus creating a beautiful card using messy 
techniques with lots of wrinkle free distress technique along
 with some Distress Stain splats and stencil splashes.  

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Jennie 

I certainly made a mess getting this journal page inked up! 

Massive amounts of Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and 

Wilted Violet Distress Ink Stains gave me purple hands for days!

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 Ana

Layers of papers, paint, texture paste and words….here and there….

without thinking a lot…

From mess on the table…to a beautiful mess on the paper…. 

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Julia

 

Layers for me too: laser printed image with paint, stencils, 

stamping and other techniques on the top. I loved this challenge so very much!

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Lys

What better than an Art-Journal spread to be freely messy?

 I played with inks and paints and found a quote to explain 

how this kind of mess can be so beautiful!

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 Trish

 
As everything I do is generally a mess, I thought I would challenge 

myself to do mess AND clean at the same time! The result? 

A CAS (sort of) card, created using a piece from a very, very messy 

painted and stamped masterboard! :)

  

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Thanks so much to the OCC team for their messy creations! They look amazing!

REMEMBER....

Bring all those inky splats, paint splashes, marker swipes, watercolor spills and perhaps broken embellishments to our MESSY challenge here at Our Creative Corner.... and enjoy yourself!

I just can't WAIT to see all your CREATIVITY sublime and leave you a comment too!

PLEASE - thrill us with 'A BEAUTIFUL MESS'. I'll be watching for you!!

Top Talent For 'Return Of The Challenge'

It's time for another Top Talent post here and I'm delighted to introduce you to the wonderful work of our worthy winner from the 'Return of the Challenge':

Jessica from Two Mad Dahlias

(don't you just love the name of Jessica's blog??!!)

Before I share Jessica's gorgeous project with you, let's find out a little more about this creative lady:

Where do you live? I live in Arizona just outside of Phoenix.  I have been here for just over 12 years. I was born and raised in Massachusetts.

What makes you smile? Lots of things make me smile- my daughter, my husband, my four goofy cats, internet memes-I am pretty easy to please!

What is your favourite style of crafting? I love crafting in all forms.  I love working with paper and being able to manipulate it with paint, ink, glue, texture paste, gel mediums, gesso, sprays, you name it and I will slap it on a piece of paper. I like to add a bit of vintage flair to all of my work by using old ephemera, beads, and knick knacks.

Name one product you couldn't live without and tell us why.  Paper.  Lots of paper.  I love paper.  I am a terrible cutter(don't ever ask me to cut a straight line) and that's a huge reason why I don't sew.  I love that I can use ripped paper, crooked paper, and tiny bits of paper to make something lovely.

What's the last stamp set you bought? I just bought the Tim Holtz Winged Things set and I used it for my project below.

Paint or ink? Or Both? Why? Both.  Layering adds so much depth to any work.  Ink and paint can make different types of layers and I love how they look separately and how they work together.

So many of Jessica's answers resonate with me that I feel as if I know her already - right down to the purchase of Jessica's latest set of stamps, one of my favourite very favourite sets, 'Winged Things' by Mr Holtz!! So totally agree with Jessica about using ink and paint to create layers and depth.

Here's Jessica's beautiful project with THAT little girl stamp that I love so much:

I am so excited my Mermaids were chosen as the winner for the Return of the Challenge.  Today I have made a multi layered canvas tag.

I started by using my gelli plate, stencils, and acrylic paint to make my background.

My focal image is from the Tim Holtz Winged Things stamp set.  The little fairy is colored using Distress Inks and Crayons.

 I made the flowers and branches using a tissue paper and collage medium technique.

I hope you enjoy my tag as much as I enjoyed making it!

Jessica, I absolutely love how you've layered this beautiful tag using so many techniques which I adore! You had me with the stamp set you used but then followed up with a Gelli print background and flowers - right up my street!! Thank you so much for sharing your art with us today and we do hope you will play along with us again. For further details showing how Jessica made this delightful piece of art, please click here to visit her blog.

If you haven't joined in with this month's challenge yet, there's still time and you can find all the details and inspiration from the DT by clicking here.

We have another Top Talent to bring you next month so don't forget to pop back on June 22nd and see the work of another talented creative.

Thanks so much for joining myself and the team today.