Pillow

A new week & a new month - I wonder what it will bring?

I know the inchie challenge is pillow ....

And here is the bigger version of the same image as my ATC

I managed to use up some more of my snippets with the crazy bird stamps....

Meet the Lord of Misrule and feeling Blue

The Reluctant Ruler, Night Bird and Dunce....

And last but least Frank and his friend Sammy Sore Belly - I think he's eaten too much spicy food!

I'm having real fun with these little chaps and can well understand why they are so popular!

It's taken me ages to find them available in the UK but I eventually found them at Art from the Heart, I also managed to get the 2 colours that I needed to complete my 2015 distress ink collection :-) happy girl!!!!

DLP

Our final page for May so next week will bring something different to texture!

This week the challenge is textured paper/I'm so not feeling it!

I've used some Icelandic book paper (happy mail), doilies coloured with abandoned coral, 2 hearts cut from different embossed wallpaper scraps, another from embossed tracing paper and one cut from some Braille paper - they have all been coloured with abandoned coral.

I used my DYMO machine to create the label.

Left hand side... The bottom heart is the tracing paper, it's buckled a little with the wet glue :-(

Right hand side...

Close up of the Braille paper!

Henri

My journal 52 page is here!

I stamped my birdies onto inky mop-ups and fussy cut....Henri spent Friday night dancing his wings off!

Journal 52

This has morphed

Into this thanks to stamping of assorted birds, birdcage, tracks....

Which still needs adding to for our latest challenge WINGS... I'm waiting for my Bird Crazy stamps to arrive!

WOYWW

I've gotten myself nice and inky today after cutting the grass & my visit to the dentist.

Here's what's happening...

I've been prepping an art journal page with one of my new stencils 

And I think I might actually link myself this week....a first!

Earth

Positiv journal reminds us that it will soon be Mother's Day in France so the chosen theme is Mother Earth.

I printed an image of the world, stamped assorted leaves / acorns / flowers & dragonflies.

I coloured some of the images with watercolour pencils.

Stamped an Indigo blue free stamp and watercoloured it.

Black & blue

No, the title has nothing to do with the challenges.....it's the state of me after my "wee tumble"!

I realised it's Rudolph day as well as every inchie Monday so I'm doing a double post....

I made quite a few cards for last month's Rudolph day but only posted one lot, keeping a reserve as it were! So here are a few more but not all LOL.

 And the theme for our inchie is envelope so here is my ATC

And my inchie

Say cheese

Yes, I do realise it's a strange title but DLP want us to use cheesecloth & the prompt is "say cheese".

So here is today's little adventure...

Blended DI in mowed lawn / pine needles / evergreen bough / peacock feathers / salty ocean.

Some  swirly stencilling in salty ocean & cells in a mix of gesso/white acrylic.

Then I applied a strip of gauze bandage that has been coloured with Deka silk paints in shades of blue & green (this was done ages ago so cannot remember colour details)

I've stamped say cheese please as the young lady is looking rather po-faced! She is a stamp that I won for a comment on a Facebook post last year, I've coloured her using promarkers in shades of green & blue. Her wings have a glittery lindys stampgang wash

I'm really glad I got this done this afternoon as, later when I took the dog out, I had a fall which resulted in me landing on my hip & elbow. Needless to say I am now feeling rather sore & stiff :-(

J52

I just love it when fate play nice :-)

I made my bright journal page yesterday in the hope that it would be appropriate for this week's prompt at journal 52 and our Hostess posted the theme earlier....all I had to do was colour a couple of ovals with my new fossilized Amber DI that arrived yesterday (still waiting for abandoned coral &Cracked Pistacchio to arrive :-(.  The prompt is top ten /lists so it's some my favourite cities I've visited and the ones I've yet to get to.

Barcelona is one I want to revisit to check out the progress on the Sagrada Famiglia, I'm returning to Edinburgh soon as friends have a flat there, Boston will be a flying visit on our way the Maine in the fall to see the family.

I'm thinking I might link this one to the current Paper Artsy challenge.

Bright

Sadly the title does not reflect the day! It's been dull & showery all the way so I've spent some time at my desk playing....

I've signed up for Marjie Kemper's latest online class and the bright refers to the journal page I've prepped using the same colours as she uses in her second lesson: mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry & Seedless Preserves. They happen to be some of my favourites :-)

So I'm all set for the next Journal 52 challenge.

Meanwhile at Moo-Mania we have a new challenge: bottles.....

A clear stamp from Creative Stamping's "Café Riviera" collection coloured with Promarkers & a mop-up as a background.

Fingers crossed for a better day weather wise tomorrow but as its a holiday weekend in the UK I had better not expect miracles!

Tailor

I really wanted to do something with the other half of my masterboard and so I have another entry for TiOTs challenge.

This time around I've added some shirt buttons rescued from some of Bill's old work shirts and a Paper Artsy image.

See you over at try it on Tuesday...

Joan Miro

A very different challenge this week from Positiv Journal: art a la Joan Miro! It certainly appealed way more than our last artist (Frida Kahlo)

A quick check for some suitable images on Google and I narrowed down my options....

They say the rooster is the emblem for France as he is the only animal in the farmyard than can sing whilst having his feet in "muck" so I deemed this one to be an ideal candidate.LOL.

Here is my take, thanks to a little tracing & poetic licence - less visible brush strokes in my sky (acrylic ink) and the details are not really there but it was fun :-)

Cannes

It's the start of the season in the south of France: the stars are out on the red carpet in Cannes for the film festival and by coincidence our theme at every inchie Monday is film!

Here's my share...

A favourite from long ago!

And my ATC done with a Paper Artsy stamp...

DLP

We are still running with the textured pages and this week it's modelling paste/rising to the occasion.

I've got home made paste through a stencil, home made spray ink/diluted silk paint/Medici Mixed Media Iris spray ink.

Goldfinger gilt wax (a bit heavy handed!) some lace scraps in ecru, a piece that got coloured with Dusty Concord distress stain and an experiment of ecru cotton lace dipped in permanent black Quink.....when rinsed out it became a great shade of denim blue (it was going to be used to lengthen a pair of jeans!). 

I used glossy accents to stick some micro beads to the lace...

Good advice

Yep, that's the title for the Journal 52 theme this week!

I was clearing stuff from my desk and ended up with this page, scribbled distress stains / some stamped images / some stickers that I've had for ages (bought cheap!)

Keep crafting seems the way to go!

More words

About a daddy....

Torn dictionary strips, watered down white acrylic paint, stencilling with black acrylic, chipped sapphire DI & handwriting. 

Any man can be a father but it takes someone special to be a daddy

I just had to keep the fancy B!

Words

I found these words the other & wrote them onto a page I had prepared with mixed of black/white/blue acrylic paints and some stencilling.

The sewing room

I started to stamp a masterboard a little while ago, thank goodness I was not planning on doing a page that large!

I still feel a bit daunted when it comes to large pieces of work (37x25 cm)

Anyway, I cut the page in half after I had coloured the mages in (assorted stamps)

Edged the paper with DI Tea Dye & Vintage Photo, die cut the Tim Holtz tailors dummy from tan card, over stamped the body with a flourish stamp & stained the pedestal & neck in a darker shade of brown.

Some of the stamping has also been embossed.

I'm linking this to TIOT for their new sewing & buttons challenge.http://tuesdaytaggers.blogspot.co.uk

Tea time

Positiv journal posted the new them early this week 😀 for a change! It can be as late as 10pm some weeks & given that it's a French site it's even later there.

This week is all about a peaceful moment with tea/coffee/hot chocolate - I've used an assortment of stamps& watercolour pencils

Inch

....by inch we work our way through another year, this week with a diagram!

I scratched my head a bit for this one lol but I managed to come up with something.....

A Tim Holtz rub-on for the inchie

And one of his blueprint stamps for my ATC.

I wonder what I'll come up with for next week?  See you later....

Laughter

DLP time again, we are still in "touchy freely" mode and the call Is for stitching & the prompt " all that I am after is life full of laughter" - some of the design team even spoke about " wet panties" laughter,

I seriously hope they did not mean that literally!

As luck would have it, when I was in my samples drawer last week fishing out my waxed paper, I came across a piece of drawn thread work from a couple of decades ago.

A piece of blue linen type fabric, threads removed, an assortment of threads to gather the remaining weave into bundles. It's been backed with a piece of synthetic fabric that's coloured with transfer crayons. I also had a length of gauze bandage that (came out of one of our car first aid bags) I've coloured with silk paints.

The prompt has been hand written onto a strip of watercolour paper that I ran my tracing wheel around & then stitched by hand.

Weather here has been dreadful all weekend but it does mean that the journaling has got done lol, I also linked my bunting pages to a challenge and have done my inchie/ATC for tomorrow, if it stays like this all week might even get round to adjusting the length of the curtains that I got recently for our bedroom!

See you all again soon and thank you for your visits/comments, they are all much appreciated :-)

Outside in

Strange title! Strange subject too LOL.

Friday sees the release of journal 52's weekly theme & this week it's "outside in" - now I thought about clothes that were inside out but that didn't float my boat and Friday evening/night did not bring any inspiration. Fortunately a friend stayed over and we were discussing the theme over breakfast, she works with kids & is good at taking a simplistic outlook on this kind of thing.....

It was cold and wet so I did not see me crafting outside and one of her favourite sayings is "no such thing as bad weather just inappropriate clothes" still did not make me want to play outdoors with my journal, everything in it would end up wrecked!

I followed up on one of her ideas....inked some tissue & mulberry papers with distress inks & some silk paints (using supplies!) which I then took outside & left in the rain for a while.

I brought them in & dried them off before deciding which one I wanted to use today....

Mulberry paper + Big 'N Juicy hydrangea 

Pale green tissue paper with Big 'N Juicy hydrangea

Mulberry paper with ALL the different green distress ink pads applied bar the cracked pistachio which has not hit my shelf yet!

Green mulberry paper, distress stain in 2 shades + some splats of silk fabric paint in dark green

I went with the tissue paper torn using a ruler, raided the bag of random flower die cuts & found 2 chipboard trees as well. The flowers have some small flat bling stickers in their centres..

A fine Sharpie to doodle a border on the 2 pages & a few pieces of washi tape that I received in Happy Mail. We went from inside to outside to being back inside again, the journal is undamaged as it got to stay indoors & I managed to stay reasonably dry :-)

I'll be back tomorrow with my DLP pages....yes I got them done too!