Animals

Many moons ago....I got some stamps from lord only knows where! At some stage this winter, when I was plotting & planning to while away the hours that I was forced to spend on my own and far away from all my crafting stuff, I had this daft idea that I could use all those small animal stamps to either make some inchies or ATCs.  

More moons passed, the inchies were stamped & coloured but that was it! What next? They needed something to tie them all together....

Then, this weekend, a girlfriend came round bearing gifts. The children that she works with had been marbling with oil & paints and she had rescued 7 sheets of lovely paper that had been heading for the bin! She figured she knew someone that would have a use for it!!!

I managed to get enough (almost) out of one sheet for this set of ATCs, added the appropriate sounds for the various creatures, did some random stamping with lids, paw prints,drips, bird tracks....the horseshoes are hand drawn! A fun project that I shall probably pass on to the grandchildren & then this morning I read that TIOT this fortnight is all about animals....it must be fate :-)

Inch

A creative day after a night that was fairly restless!

I managed to work out what I wanted to do with the 3 colours that I never/hardly ever use & then discovered why...they don't really exist in my repertoire.

Papers & white ink/embossing powder

Pastel pencils & eyeshadow still using the same image at the top right

 Watercolour ing with felt pens ans watercolour paint (sap green!) then added some stencilling using chipped sapphire DI.

I'm guessing I won't be rushing out to buy these colours in any great hurry!

I also managed to find my Barcelona photos that I'd been hunting for....

So I drew a black border around the under paper, added a happy mail border I'd got, die cut some letters & coloured with Promarkers and added the chimneys from the magical building of La Pedrera in Barcelona. A little black intense pencil around the images & letters to finish off.

And finally my inchie! I might have to explain this for some of the non British though :-)

The theme is throne, now, we all, of course have one of these, don't we? No? Course you do!

In some parts of the country the toilet is referred to as the throne and as I did not feel up to drawing a throne or a toilet, I went with the sign one sees for the ladies room :-). A free stamp image on shrink plastic, a little off on the shrinking of the width but it's now on a piece of black card to make up the missing sliver... 

There are a couple more obscure ones to come this year so I might have to get my thinking cap on soon!

Journal 52

We got our theme early this week in the city....and I hunted high & low for some photos of Barcelona but I just could not find 2 of our albums, how weird is that! 

So I had to go with Paris because I got an Air France magazine from a friend recently, she acquired it on her return flight from staying with us at the chalet in august.

A map of Paris, a piece of card that I coloured & embossed (TH) a tag with the arc de triomphe & some writing....

And the rest of the map with a TH stamp on the flip side

DLP is going to be more difficult as it requires us to use 3 colours that we never use.....I use most & most of the time but I managed to work out that navy, brown & olive are the ones I use the least....sounds a bit on the camouflage side so I need to think of a way for it not to look like army issue!

Maybe my beer consumption today will help, we were supposed to be at a brewfest in Maine today with Nicki & Joe, on a beach in the sun! We had our own version here with some bottled beer and bangers on the BBQ but it was not the same without the family & I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that I shall not be visiting the USA this Fall due to ongoing health issues for Bill. He is getting his hip operation on the 20th of next month & hopefully that means that he will start to improve 9 months after his fall.

Keep watching this space for updates to inchies, twinchies,tags & pages....:-)

Twinchie circles

Tuesday already so here is this weeks share on the twinchie challenge circles

A mop-up square with paper artsy SM15

& inkadinkadoo prehistoric

I added some colour to the circles with Promarkers

Journal 52

It's time for a rhyme...I felt pretty stumped on this one as I didn't want to use a nursery rhyme and I've never really been a big poetry reader ( more limerick type!)

Anyhow, I'd been sorting & clearing stuff off my desk & I remembered that I'd come across a sheet of "rose" paper and also some roses that I'd fussy cut that were from another sheet. Would I ever use them? Seemed highly unlikely so they had been put in a "re home" pile. All of a sudden I had a lightbulb moment - I recalled learning a poem about a rose & how it's beauty fades so fast, well the poem is very old - the author is Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) and I learnt this poem at school many moons ago. I had to google it to make sure I remembered all the words! I decided to print it off and add to the rose paper that had been given a gesso wash to tone it down.

And now this open is stuck in my head....serves me right! My teacher must have done a good job as I only got a few words wrong :-)

EIM

I thought about doing a play on words for this one as Alex Salmond has been in the news so much recently with the Scottish independence vote, however, as I really can't stand the sight of the man, I decided I did not want to see his face on my blog!

Therefore I decided to go for something rather boring....

A little fishy on a salmon paint chip with a little extra colour added.

Happy Monday everyone :-)

DLP 39

Another theme for us....splats, splashes & drips.

I've used a sheet of paper that I had in my stash & splashed it with diluted white acrylic then stamped with black archival inkblots.

I then dripped red & green silk paints as well as violet & yellow drawing ink from the top edge of a white  sheet of paper.

I had a load of die cut & punched leaves in various autumn colours which I added, leaves looking like colour dripping from the sky was the aim

Cuddly

I was busy this week....well, I cleared my desk, that lasted all of about 24 hours. Then I decided that the small pile of images that I coloured back in the winter whilst Bill was in hospital really needed to be put to use and as I was low on cards....I made up some 4x6 (blank for now).

Having just come in from cutting the grass I discovered that ATCAS are doing a theme this week that I can actually enter as I have not 1 but 2 that fit the bill!

The dancing mice coloured with watercolour pencils / strip of wallpaper border (another piece out of the scrap box!)

The hugging mice coloured with Promarkers , they are mounted on a piece of Joules carrier bag...

This is the one I'm going to enter :-)

Elsewhere I've been playing with metallic acrylics, my new white pen (molotow 127HS) and making some border strips for the art journals as well as doodling on pages...

I'm awful glad I've got a small pullout surface built into my desk, it comes in very handy when there is stuff spread everywhere!

Have a good weekend where ever you are :-)

Moo

Well I really must apologise for not posting these sooner, one is current but the others are not!

1 - Corrugated cardboard, feathers, cinema & movies

Corrugated card/ honesty seed/ punched leaves

Mop-up/ free feather stamp

Silver card (chocolate box!)/ film advert

2 - buttons, anything goes, texture

Mop-up/ buttons

Recycled card/ stamp

Wrinkle technique. Card/ beaded stitching leaf shape on cotton fabric

3 - hot summer, recycle, music. 

Oil pastel background/ice cream stamp

Recycled Amazon packaging/recycled raffia,flower,label from a bar of soap

Mop-up/music sticker/band & instruments button

And as we are on small art I might as well share this weeks Twinchie Bear

EIM

Monday is here again, not sure where the past week went!

Schedule is the order of the week so here is my little art piece for your perusal...

A mop-up square and a tiny calendar page from before I was born!

DLP 38 FEATHERS

Potentially in trouble here as they are not all pigeon feathers but as I don't plan on selling the owl (?) feather or my journal maybe I will be ok.

I made my latest DLP challenge page this morning using some "happy mail", stamps & real feathers.

Page with "tip-ins" opened out

Page with tip-ins folded over (happy mail items on the back)

Reverse of the page has stamping, happy mail envelope, dictionary page & writing + a piece of happy mail that is from a French children's book.

Journal 52 & twinchies

Week 37 came out yesterday....NEWSPAPER is the theme!

Here in Scotland it's all about the referendum which is now only days away so I had to go with some of today's headlines. I've already voted thanks to the postal system and this is no reflection of my political tendencies ( Salmond/Daily Telegraph )  Ian Paisley died yesterday & has therefore made in into the papers again, the 2 items on the right hand side of the page tickled me ( camera & aliens!!!) and who can resist puppies? The tip in page is the paper title cut and stuck onto a piece of happy mail.

Then we have 2 twinchies SAFARI from last week

And this week's BOOKS

DLP

Oops! I did make a page for the latest challenge"use a white pen prominently" would I would appear not to have posted it yet! 

Well, actually, I made 2 as I felt the white pen didn't show up too well on the first page...

This is a mop-up piece of card that got some stencilling over the top, I used some Paper Artsy stamps and then got to work with my Sakura gelly roll. I tried to use my Sharpie paint pen for the bunting but it was not playing ball & so I resorted to using a corrector pen :-)

Feeling that this was a bit too light I went to the other extreme....

The only dark card I could find that my pen seemed happy to write on was black. I used the same stencil as in the other page but this time I outlined all the shapes, filled some in completely & doodled in some of the other sections. Shame it's another B&W post.....

Happy mail

Keep putting off the latest DLP page (prominently use white pen) but I had myself some fun anyway...

Using mop-ups & under papers & stamping off/brush wipes I have been using TH "tiny tags & tabs"

Added some stamping, paper flower cutouts...had a fun time :-))

Red

Monday is here again! Where did last week go????

It's time for a new theme across at EVERY INCHIE MONDAY - RED. So I've got a bit of a fruit salad thing going on here...

Cherry Red

Strawberry red

Happy Monday!

September

Another Tims tag challenge has rolled around and this time I am not waiting until the last minute!

This is the tag that Tim has made....check his blog for details!

My efforts at "ghosting" with alcohol ink were crap! OK, I was improvising on the glossy card front and all my inks were fairly bright but...

The green was as close to the right effect as I could get :-(

So after a main image stamped in archival, some ru-ons and some butterflies....

I tried another image on the blue, a girls face free stamp, some more rub-ons & butterflies.....

Hmmmm! Time to try a different route!

A Bundled sage mop-up, a stencil with some versamark & clear EP, swiped over with DS crushed olive, EP ironed off. Skill stamped, assorted small Halloween images stamped, a tiny strip of rub-ons then a punched spider and more die-cut butterflies. I've added white pen to his teeth to make them gleam!!!

Journal 52 texture

 A night of little sleep....lots of thinking....a new journal page using plenty of stash that's been lying around for a while!

This weeks challenge is to use texture. I just happened to have a sheet of card that had been paste embossed, stencilled, inked & stamped - that gave me my background. I had some washed metal food dishes  that had been double sided with sticky tape onto thin card & run through a couple of different TH embossing folders, I cut these into banners. Also, in the flowers/foliage drawer where some fabric flowers (Paper Artsy stamp) that have been hanging around just waiting to see daylight :-) so there is a mustard one (cotton) with a button brad centre, a raw silk shocking pink with glitter brad, turquoise machined one, pale pink multi layered paper one, dyed linen with a metallic sequin centre & a mauve (synthetic) with large sequin & metallic brad. A little strip of nylon lace begged to be added at the last minute

Next stop DLP with using a white pen prominently

Renaissance

I wanted to find a colour image for my inchie this week but failed....for me, Renaissance is going back to my history lessons at a French schooling Libya and the French king of the time Francois 1er!  So here he is in all his b&w glory....

I've even managed to make those copper edges look ever so slightly distressed :-)