WOO HOO

Woo hoo, look what I've been playing with today! I was so impressed with Sharon's metalwork on her matchbox that I ordered some of the aluminium from LB Crafts. I already had a book about this called Metal Effects that I bought in a sale, so I thought I would have a go.

This is a motif from a Design sourcebook - and it might with hindsight have been a bit too detailed for a first attempt. I put the design over the metal and taped it all to the soft mat I was working on, then with a ball stylus traced the pattern. This is the other side to the one I was working on. Once I lifted off the pattern I found I needed to go over some of the detail - you do have to press quite hard and my arthritic fingers don't like it. Like a say, a less detailed image might have worked better!

Then working on this other side I followed the instructions in my book to paint over it with black acrylic, then rub most of it off. This produced an antiquey effect which I like a lot. I was going to leave it like this when I remembered that I had some metallic rub on which I dabbed onto the oak leaves (can you actually tell that it's oak leaves and acorns?). This gave a subtle effect, but when I had another go using a permanent marker on the acorn cups I got a beautifully vivid colour that I rather like! To finish off I folded the (sharp) edges over a 3 x 3" piece of card. This wasn't a bad result with the limited tools I had at my disposal, but I didn't want to buy anything special until I'd had a little play first .... now I guess I'll be off to buy some of the texture roller and other tools you can get!!

LITTLE ANGEL

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This little girl from a Collage Stuff sheet sort of reminds me of my grand-daughter Molly - I think it's the solemn stare. Mind you Molly will sometimes then break out into the most enormous smile, which is like the sun coming out! Not that I'm a completely besotted granny or anything ...

And don't you love this little dress too - it looks like it has a good hem for letting down (nobody seems to do that these days). She's such a poppet I absolutely had to give her little gold wings didn't I? Of course the real Molly might not be described as a little angel!

I haven't had much time in the past week, my house having been full of visiting family including some from Canada - at one stage we had 8 people staying! I snatched a very little time here and there, but let's just say I'm quite glad to have my life back ...

I used an Invoke Arts shrine stamp to back the figure, over some sumptuous paper. I'm sort of left with the feeling that I perhaps could have done more with this, but there wasn't really room.

LITTLE BIRDHOUSE

I am just crazy about birdhouses, and I've just finished this little one (barely 4" high) which fits with the Crazy Amigo butterfly theme.

I bought it for $1 while I was in Canada and even though the perch is a little crooked that only adds to it's charm for me. The eaves and perch are painted with Distress Crackle paint in frayed burlap, and you can see from the pictures what a superb fine crackle it produces. I love the stuff.




The roof is papered with a crackle effect paper by EK Success, and the front is painted with acrylic and subtly aged with green. The paper on the sides and the flowers and butterfly decorations are all taken from a Paper Whimsy digital collage sheet - lots of fiddly cutting out!

ALBUM IN A MATCHBOX

I made this little album as our weekly challenge over on the Awfully Big Art Adventure and really enjoyed doing it! It's just an ordinary matchbox, but I decided to remake the inner box in black card.

The pages of the little album and the cover of the matchbox are all made with a Paper Whimsy digital collage sheet, and I've added various faces from other PW collage sheets.

The pages are 3 x 4.5cm and are all double sided. They each have a brass eyelet in the top through which I've passed a brass bead chain to connect them, and added a ribbon tie. I wanted to add beads etc but then it wouldn't fit in the matchbox. The brass piece on the top is a random item from my stash and I honestly can't remember where it came from!!

I had so much fun making this - it was relatively quick to do and would make a lovely gift for a friend.

VINTAGE BEAUTY

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The challenge over at Mixed Media Monday was to "show us what you love to do". Well there's only one answer to that and it's vintage, preferably brownish!! It is definitely the thing I love the best, even though I am trying to add in a wider range of colours these days!

I particularly love this image from Paper Whimsy - this girl's face is so serene and calm, almost madonna-like. I always wonder who she was and whether she grew up to be as beautiful as this picture suggests. Perhaps that's why the treatment here is almost shrine like?

The background is a 7 Gypsies Paper, with lots of german scrap and a gold crown charm, plus a little tag that says "limited edition" because she is clearly one of a kind. The measuring tape is a rub-on and is sort of intended to indicate the passing (ie measuring) of time. Well I knew what I meant! I've aged the lace slightly with ink, and also used chalk inks to age the brassy gold a little.

I may have to keep this one as I'm really rather proud of it!!

PUT THE FLAGS OUT!

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I really enjoyed this challenge from Creative Wednesday to use banners. Right away I started thinking about a lady in a little house putting out the flags to welcome someone (?) home!!

The little house was made with an Invoke Arts stamp - from one of my favourite sets. The tree is Hero Arts and the grass is from Tanda stamps. The flags of course came from my scrap box, and the lady in the window is an Artchix image.

She met a handsome prince at a party and fell madly and instantly in love. Now she's waiting for him to ride down the lane to her house on his white charger and never go home again, so the flags are to welcome him. Obviously he needs to turn up soon, because she's going to another party next week ..... !

Something to CROW About!

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Created by Hand's challenge to use Crows this week captured my imagination, and has resulted in a piece quite different from my usual style! But then, that's the whole point of challenges isn't it?

The keen-eyed among you will notice that the background is one of my bleach-stamped efforts. The crow himself is a stamp by Invoke Arts, along with the small boxed bird shape. The main bird is embossed which is why he looks a bit shiny in the picture.

I added bands of black card, decorated with gold relief outliner, and computer lettering. It's fun to work outside your comfort zone (at least it is when you don't throw the results in the bin), but I so wish I could get the hang of doing layers rather than neat and tidy arrangements!! Note to self - LOOSEN UP!!

OH WOW!

Oh wow and triple WOW - just look what Fatma sent me! I saw him on her blog and having completely fallen in love cheekily asked her to swap - and she said yes!

Mr Crow as I've named him is about 7" tall and quite soft and squishy (which I love), and his beak is wonderfully shaped giving him a slightly quizzical expression! All the beads and sequins just make him even better, and I've got him hanging over my desk where I can see him.

On the other hand I keep looking at him and feeling that he looks a bit lonely and might be in need of a mate, preferably a PINK one! Now where did I put that fabric .... ?

FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN

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After all my hard work getting ready for tomorrow's launch of Big Art Adventure, I decided to just sit down and make something for my own pleasure.

So I used one of the bleach stamp backgrounds I made and my favourite turquoise shades. This lovely image is from Lunagirl.com - aren't the little fairies at her feet just brilliant! I used the Paper Artsy writing stamp to fit with this week's TMTA challenge (better late than never).

Added some black lace and a little butterfly, plus an eyelet and some fibres to finish it off. Of course I was thinking about that wonderful hoax about fairies at the bottom of the garden, and what it would feel like to write to somebody trying to explain that they really WERE there? Well they are in mine, and very probably yours too, it's just that I can never quite catch them ....

EXCITING NEWS!!

Linda (Blue Eyed Girl) and I have had our heads together for a couple of months now and we've been designing a NEW CHALLENGE BLOG!! We want it to be something that affirms and encourages everyone to grow through their art, and to find it therapeutic and healing as we have. We also want to offer a wide variety of themes and ideas so that all of us can challenge our boundaries and try new things. Our first challenge goes up on Friday, but the blog is live now so get on over to Big Art Adventure and bookmark it! If you'd like to sponsor us just say so!

I'VE BEEN PLAYING

I finally got hold of a Castaway stamp pad - basically bleach without the smell - and have been playing around to see what it can do.

As you can see the results are rather interesting - you stamp your image (which comes out quite WET), leave it to dry for 5 minutes during which you see no apparent difference. Then you iron it on the HOT setting and it appears like magic! Having said that, on some cardstock nothing much happened at all ... particularly on linen finish card. I got the best results with the smoother card.

On the top ones the colour has bleached out of the stamped area, leaving the background colour completely unchanged. On the lower ones, the two blue ones show a reverse effect - the branches are the original colour and the background has been bleached away.

Apparently it only works on "uncoated" paper or card - I tried it on some texture pattern paper and it did nothing at all, but overall I like the results and think it's probably worth investing in ... and anyway I HATE the smell of bleach!!

I DID IT AGAIN .....

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After all my protestations about making vintage art which isn't brown, I seem to have slipped back a bit here! It started with this gorgeous grungey brown paper and sort of went from there. Somebody gave me a pack of vintage rub-ons for my birthday, and this postcard was one of them. Before I knew it I was back in full brown mode again. Sorry, I can't help it.

There's a story here of this lady who is waiting for her fiance to return from the Great War. She's actually quite tired of waiting for him (which she feels she has done rather a lot of) in fact she's not even sure she can remember his face any more, or why she agreed to marry him, particularly when he doesn't write very often and then only a postcard.

However, she's hoping that when he finally does come back it will all make sense, because it would be such a shame to waste the gorgeous trousseau building up ... especially the silk undies.