Darcy's Month 2 Journal for Paperartsy

I was thrilled to be the random winner for last month's journal page by Darcy - and am loving the stamps!

The second month's journal page was even more gorgeous than the first - check Darcy's here
The lesson's we're learning this month include - paint resist techniques (with stencils),faux tags, masking, embossing, crackle glaze, using a neutral colour palette; and many more - here is my version

 I won't go into detail about how I did this, because the techniques are set out in detail on the Paperartsy blog in Darcy's article.  However, I LOVE this paint resist with the cornflower stencil

the faux tags on their background - or is that in their background, lol!

 using 'found objects' as Darcy describes them - she used a ruler, I used the edge of one of my Paperartsy flexi blocks (it was closer to hand!)

one of the faux tags in close up

 not sure my faux scrunched up wax paper worked as well as Darcy's!

 Resist with Portfoleo pastels over a crackle background - like Darcy I loved this one! the cornflower stencil doesn't show up too well, hope you can see it!

 Forgot to take any pics of this real tag in progress!  Used the birdcage from HP1103 and part of the squiggle flourish from DingDong5 (SIDD5) and detail platinum embossing powder (if you could see how hard to reach my embossing powders are, you'd be impressed I could find anything!) I love the platinum though.

Tag in situ

Finished page - thanks again, Darcy, had great fun with this, once again!  Entering it to Darcy's monthly journal challenge here 

DragonsDream - TIO - A

This fortnight, Elizabeth has chosen the letter A and "not a usual tag shape". Hmmmm!

In the end I went for a heart, and drew round a wooden heart shape I have in my stash supplies (waiting to be decorated!) I used Kraft cardstock.

I painted it with Fresco paint from Paperartsy, though to my shame I can't remember what colour I used - I think it was Moonlight.

I stencilled grunge paste through the "art is" stencil by Crafters Workshop and let it dry. I used a film cannister to add some circles with Little Black Dress paint.

Took some Prima flowers and a Paperartsy (JoFirth-Young) sentiment stamp and (hopefully) artfully draped the flowers down the heart.  At this point I realised I hadn't actually used an A word - apart from the 'art is' stencil!  Yikes... inspiration (of a sort) came overnight when I thought of - Abundance - and abundance of flowers, lol!!

We look forward to seeing what you come up with and how many different tag shapes you can make.

WOYWW 247 - new stamps!

Hello to you all, fellow deskers.. Julia is hosting this blog hop for the 247th time - amazing! If you don't know about it click the link and there are pages on her blog to explain it all. Why not join in and show the world where you create - although it does tend to take over your life!

Anyhow, I've got some new stamps to show you this week (oops!) one set I won from the paperartsy blog challenge and the others I bought all by myself!!

Too the view standing up today for a change... makes it look pretty busy!
Oh, do you want a close up? ok...

As you can see I've already played with the Ellen Vargo stamps - the geometric ones, see the piece at the back of the "desk"!

Underneath these stamps is a new journal page I'm working on for Darcy's Paperartsy Journal challenge (a monthly one) - this is the challenge I won the set of stamps from (on the right page) - designed by Darcy herself.
Looks like the paint water jar needs changing again - but at least I haven't left the brush in it!

Enjoy your jaunt round the workspaces of the universe - catch you somewhere soon!

Craft Barn - Q&L 4 - Age

A new challenge was set today in the Quotes and Lyrics Craft Barn series. Age, or Marriage.

I chose age, and a quote by Mark Twain - "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter"

 I started by spray mounting two pages together as the paper is so thin. This caused some wrinkles.. which go with the theme I guess!

I coloured the page with Wild Honey distress ink - the colour is much more even looking in real life, I promise!   I used the Jo FirthYoung stencil round the edges,and London Bus Fresco paint, adding some highlights with Blood Orange and Claret, and then some Chalk (new colour)

 the criss cross is also a new stencil (Crafters Workshop) - Walnut Stain distress ink.  The flowers are a Memory Box die, coloured with Pan Pastels, adding some of the green around the criss cross patterns too.

I used an alphabet stamp to spell out age, distressing the edges, and hand wrote the rest of the quote.

I really do promise the colour is better blended that it seems!  Linking to the Craft Barn Q&L challenge

Bloom and Grow...

Been messing with a journal page for a few days, think it's finished now... maybe!

 I forgot to take pictures early on, but there are a few layers of leftover paint on the page, the uppermost ones are Dusty Teal and Amethyst.
I used the new JoFY stencils - the bullrush with Antarctic and then black archival ink and the Paperartsy numbers mini stamp

 used an old Stickles lid and Eggplant Fresco to make patterns and a black pen to outline round the stencil.

Finished with some double bumping over the words - first with Snowflake and then Little Black Dress again.

New Kew photos

Just a quick heads-up - went to Kew today and took lots (!) of photos with my new camera - they are here
now, I'm off to play with my new stencils.

Abstract Art - Ellen Style

The lovely Ellen Vargo was back at Paperartsy this week showing off her fabulous new abstract style stamps.  Luckily I had one set on order and on it's way to me - and tonight I got to play!

Ellen made cards, a journal cover and ATC's from a masterboard - I kind of mish-mashed the first and last projects and made this:

I cut a sheet of heavy white Smoothy card more or less in half, then brayered the new limited edition colours, Chartreuse, Seaweed, Tikka and Chutney with a hint of Chocolate Pudding round some of the edges as Ellen did.

 I used the rectangle and triangle from EEV02 and stamped them in Orange Blossom and Potting Soil archival inks.

Then took the square and stamped it in Snowflake Fresco

As I don't have any of the solid stamps, and couldn't find anything suitable in my stash, I added some black marker lines round the squares and then mounted it on some black card.

I have a teeny tiny alphabet set and spelt out "abstract art" on white card and mounted it on black as shown.

This would be loads better with some more of Ellen's stamps so I think a shopping spree is on the cards!  Entering this to the Paperartsy challenge.
Hope you have a good weekend - I am intending to go to Kew tomorrow with my new camera, it's the first weekend the weather is meant to be vaguely encouraging!!

WOYWW - week 246

Golly, Wednesday again... welcome to another gallop round the workspaces of the world, thanks to the lovely Julia at the Stamping-Ground
So, what do we find on my floor today? (apart from a load of stuff that needs clearing away?!) well.....

 an unfinished journal page (new stencils, new paints, yum!) post - love those hearts, from my mate Lin and a card from the postman - yes, I've been shopping again! oops...

 the new paints I bought at Stevenage meant a reorganisation of my paint storage box... these are all Frescos...still space for a few more, just not many!

but I had to find room for some of the contents of this box (and some of it was just on the floor....)
This box is now on top of one of the towers of stamp storage... I suppose you want to see (I had to move some other boxes to the other room to do this!)

It's going to be a bit of a pain not having them right within reach but better than nothing!  I also moved the ribbon box from the other end of this wall of stamps, so I can at least reach them more easily now.


Hope you all have a great day - I'll try and catch up with you - or as many of you as I can - later - but I may be late home from work, it's very busy!

Darcy's Monthly Journal Challenge

In January Darcy started a journal challenge at Paperartsy, using some of her just now released new stamps. She was using a fabulous square paged journal which I loved. So, when I was at Stamperama this time last week, I managed to get hold of one.

This is the result of the first page. Not completely satisfactorily, but I'm happier with it today than I was yesterday... I followed Darcy's instructions (for the most part) in her post here  though I did leave some parts out.  The stencilling under the page I abandoned as I couldn't get any more paint off, so used one of Jo Firth-Young's new stencils on top.  Paint colours are the new Limited Edition Frescos.

 GP mixed with Amethyst and Dusty Teal (love love love!)

 like it at this stage...Lake Wanaka and a Snowflake layer

 hmmm perhaps made a bad choice next... Limelight and Sage, my final neutral layers were Irish Cream and Nougat.

 started rubbing back - hard hard work, by artificial light it didn't like as if much of the paint was coming off... but coming back to it this morning, it was better but I was still very unsure...

 but I went in with stencils anyway - this is one of JoFY's and I used Seaweed and Toffee to highlight the edges. Love this stencil

 I knew I wanted to use this little JoFY mini, on my border but rather than as Darcy had, I just stamped and painted it on the journal not on card too. I used Amethyst and Dusty Teal again, and Chartreuse mixed with a little Chalk to make it more opaque.

 happy now!

final step was some words - one of Lin B's new ones, stamped on card and cut out to paste across the spread.
I know I didn't follow all of Darcy's steps (like the underpage stencilling, or the silhouette image, but this was a great, fun challenge to take part in. Looking forward to next month - well later this month actually - and the journal is fabulous, strong strong paper - all those layers and no holes created even when I scrubbed and scrubbed!
Off to link it to Darcy's journal challenge here now!

Craft Barn - Q&L - 3 Strong (or Miss)

Last week whilst I was at Stamperama at Stevenage, spending heavy (as you do!) the latest Craft Barn Q&L challenge was released.  The lyric or quote prompts this time are Strong, or Miss.

Much searching ensued - I liked the Churchill quote that has been used already (Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong) but decided to keep looking.. This afternoon whilst waiting for some Grunge Paste to dry for another challenge, I jotted down a few others I liked.... the only Miss I could find that I even part-way thought about using was "Miss You Nights" by Cliff Richard (or Westlife depending on your generation!) but in the end, stuck with Strong.

I wanted to use my new Stencil Girl stencil that has lots of different hearts on..  and went pink - very pink!
I stencilled using the Picked Raspberry distress ink, then used one of my only 3 distress paints, which just happens to be Picked Raspberry too and painted in the gaps.

 Wrote the quote in a black Pitt artist pen and doodled on the solid hearts with a white Sharpie marker.

Inspired by Julie Ann for Paperartsy

The lovely Julie Ann was back at Paperartsy sharing an altered suitcase - full of memories.  I decided to re-do one I had done some years ago, mainly because it wasn't very good...

 I started out slapping on some Peacoat (the new, opaque one) Fresco paint - but that was too dark, so whilst it was still wet, mixed in some Nougat and Chocolate Pudding. Spent some time faffing with the colour - still not totally happy!
Added some Onyxite TG on the corners and some scripty stamping

Inside, Julie Ann somehow manipulated a stencil... I cheated and stencilled and stamped on some tissue paper!

the lid has a piece of paper chain from East of India (found these at Ally Pally years ago!) and cut and tore it to fit

 for the inside of the case I made a couple of love letters on some watercolour paper, and there's an old, faded rose... a scrap of lace and a key

 Was still faffing with the outside!  Added some Crackle Accents to areas, to get the look of worn leather but it doesn't seem to crackle very well these days, should have used the Fresco one!!

finally a label which I stamped "treasures" (a Wendy Vecchi stamp) and some stencilling before distressing the edges and adding some Walnut Stain distress ink.

Sorry about all the shadows - after the awful weather yesterday (what a dreadfully windy stormy night!) it was so bright when I was taking these - not  that I am going to complain, it's nice to see some sunshine, long may it last...
I'm entering this to the Paperartsy challenge here 

As the sun colours flowers...

So, some of what I bought at Stevenage, that was still secret squirrel, was announced on the Paperartsy blog tonight (here, if you missed it)

 stencils, limited edition (fab colours) paint - and of course new stamps...

 so tonight I had a play.  The background colour is Chartreuse - yummy - and the leaf is stencilled with Seaweed - reversed the stencil so the leaves were facing each other over the pages.

 and some more, with some (not very well done, bumping using Chutney. My journal is very fat now and it isn't easy to work on!)

 then used the other stencil I bought (there are more, I didn't get all of them - wish I had...) and used Space Cadet and then bumped with Snowflake over the large clusters

then took one of the stamps which is a leaf, but with text pattern - this set is fabulous! - and used Saffron archival ink as it was close to the greeny-yellow of the Chartreuse paint but enough of a contrast to just show up - and without using an acrylic block, rolled the stamp randomly round the pages.

Finished by stamping the quote from one of Lin's new quotes set (that I claimed as my Paperartsy prize last week) on white card, cutting it in half and mounting it to the page.

Great fun, and great new products, Lin and Paperartsy, I love them!!