La grande Seolane

A stunning view on a day out!

It's hard to believe that I spend the winter months ski-ing in the shadow of this mountain :-)

Absent in the alps!

Escaped the UK heat wave for the meadows of the southern French alps 

Some flowers growing at the top of the road :-)

The gorgeous view across the valley

Hope you are not all too jealous!

Keep crafting girls & I will catch up with all the loveliness when I return next month - the local Internet is not very reliable :-(

TIOT

My angel made top 5! I must find out how to add a blinkie :-) last years blinkie is still just a URL :-(

And Windows 8 is still confusing the hell out of me, I've not even managed to sign into blogger since I got my new laptop!!! God bless the iPad :-D

Grey & raining

No, not here thank goodness! We are currently enjoying our 4th consecutive day of summer :-) but as I am entering the LIM: shades of grey & the ATCAS#17 which is water it seemed appropriate to go with the usual weather!!!!

A 4x6 shades of grey piece of paper (stash) which reminds me of sheeting rain, Tim Holtz's umbrella man die which has been layered - the head & umbrella are plain grey, the coat is a scrap of black/grey & white, his trousers are a slightly iridescent charcoal as is the brolly handle, the shoes are a shiny slate grey & his hat is a silver grey! Not fifty shades but I did my best using scraps ;-)

I'm off to the garden now to practice dealing with the warm weather as I am soon to be off on my holidays!  

July tag time

Both my stepchildren are married to Americans & live in the USA - they agree to disagree by living on opposite sides on the continent! I am therefore well aware of the various holidays that they have over there....

This month's tag has caused some brain wracking! I had none of the requirement :-( so I had to put my thinking cap on & on & on again!

Eventually I decided to go with the following:

I embossed a tag with the gridlock texture plate, coloured some rows in red whispers pen whilst leaving some rows white to create the stripes on "old Glory" the top left corner has been coloured in the same way white a DI marker in chipped sapphire. I took a water brush over the coloured areas to blend the background, I have used an ancient Fiskars punch for my white stars that are blue onto the blue corner. A piece of white ribbon has been given some ink treatment to turn it blue, a label stamped in red & cut out & July has been added - I've used foam pads to raise the label to make up for the fact that the paperclip is quite thick & also added foam pads behind the number 4. I stamped the telephone from this months issue of Craft Stamper and coloured with Promarkers then fussy cut before mounting on more foam pads. A small strip of red paper to create the reinforcer + a length of twill "remember" tape finished the tag off. 

I did not call the kids on the day because daughter was away with the family camping and son was entertaining his mum & stepfather but I did text them :-D

Hot canary

Ok, so where's the bird?  No bird... It's title of a piece of music for violin - many moons ago, when I lived in the Middle East, I often used to spend Thursday evenings in a place called the Ewan nightclub - not really a club tho' rather a restaurant with a resident band. Eduardo was an amazing Spaniard who played the violin and "Hot canary" was his signature tune- I've never found a recording of it that seems as good ;-).

That's the background story & the challenge is a twinchie one so I've coloured a 2" square with squeezed lemonade, mustard seed & a little vintage photo DI, the stamp is a Craft Stamper freebie & I've stamped an extra violin which has been coloured with Spectrum Noire pens then "enamelled" with clear bossing powder, raised on some foam pads & 4 tiny black beads are glued to the top of the neck (tuning knobs?). I've a few more song titles in my head so tomorrow may see more creativity - I've been working in the garden today & am due out this evening so time to play has been short!

www.twinchieschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/  is where you'll find the challenge so why not come & join the fun!

Travel gold

I thought that this would be quite a good link for TIOT's metal challenge.

For a few yearsI had the pleasure of attending a summer school at Galashiels in the Scottish borders area. We learnt all kinds of things, mainly to do with embroidery as it was run by the Embroiderers Guild Scottish branches. I decided that I wanted to make a cover for an art book that I planned to take on a road trip.

I have used a carved wooden printing block to create the pattern on the front cover, stamped with a gold fabric paint & then added some puff paint (black) - once it was fairly dried I heated it with my heat gun to make it puff...that's such fun! After I had got it all puffed up and it was cured it was time to go over it some metallic paints in various shades of gold, bronze, copper & mauve.

The centres of the little squares were then further decorated with seed beads, some of them are metallic. I stitched a grid by hand with some variegated threads.

The shoe came off a birthday card which happened whilst we were on the road trip, the cicada was to remind me of the crushing heat of travelling through central Spain in July! 

The back cover was another piece of black felt that's been painted with puff paint, there is black ink & a touch of treasure gold for the outer frame. The inner panel is puff paint and metallic paints in copper, gold & bronze. Again I have done some stitches (chain st) using a variegated thread and embellished with more seed beads.

The spiral binding has assorted ribbon, yarn & fabric strips tied onto it & a few even have charms ( scissors, 2 articulated fish, a beaded tassel & a heart)

The closure is a length of variegated yarn that has been oversewn with metallic machine embroidery thread.

It has some lovely memories of a fabulous journey through Spain in it :-)

Landscape

It's time for a new theme over at Moo Mania: Landscape !

I just happen to have 2 stamps that fit the  bill, one urban & one rural. 

The urban one is a Tim Holtz clear stamp where I've used archival black & DI broken china. 

The rural one comes from a set " winter holidays" make unknown!

I've inked the stamp with felt pens & then coloured in the sky & meadow. 

Hour

Inchie Monday challenge: hour

Take 1 paper scrap (stencilled with DI). Mask the hourglass corner of DOCRAFTS Urban stamp, ink with archival black & stamp. Hand written title up the side... My very first inchie- wow but they are small!

SAND

This weeks challenge across at Less Is More is sand!

So, other than an "oasis" scene which is a Christmas stamp and it hardly seems right to use that on the 1st of July, this pairing of sand dollars seemed the obvious route to go :-)

A 3 1/2" square card - the larger sand dollar is from Clearly Impressed's "shore cliff elements" collection which has been stamped with Colorbox  dune + a little cocoa around the edge & the smaller stamp is inkadinkadoo coastal/maritime set & it's been stamped with dune ink. 

I've also decided to attach a picture of a postcard I bought in the USA years ago with the legend of the sand dollar. 

See you all in blogland again soon.