Craft Barn - Q&L 13 Path and/or Horizon

I really had fun making this page for the new Craft Barn Quotes and Lyrics challenge, announced this morning.  Once again I've used my brayer, Fresco paints and gone to town!

I used light brayer strokes, starting with Quacamole and Moonlight,

and then Antarctic and Butternut, before going over lightly with Chalk.






I was using a Memory Box wild flower stamp for a tag yesterday, and I wanted to use more - I have a few, (ahem!) but chose just two -  Hero Arts "real dill" and Rubber Stampede "solidago sprig"

I have very few distress markers, but luckily two of the ones I do, are Wild Honey and Bundled Sage, which I used for the solidago, and then used Shaded Lilac distress ink and the Bundled Sage pen, for the dill. I stamped these across both pages, and love how they appear out of the softened background.

I used a Stampscapes leafy sprig for the top border, as it was lacking in something, and Mowed Lawn distress ink

My quote is by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Do not go where the path may lead,
Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail"

I typed this onto copy paper and trimmed it for my pag.

 I did add a Stampscapes grass cluster for the bottom, but the Bundled Sage is very light and it barely shows.

All in all, I am really happy with this page, and am entering the Craft Barn Q&L challenge here 

Summer of Colour 4 - week 3

Wow, made it with a day to spare, this week! Welcome to week 3 of Summer of Colour 

The colours this week, are lavender, grey and a splash, smudge or pop of plum


Nice colours, Kristin!

This week, I'm working in a small journal - well notebook really - it's about 5 x 8, a Moleskine notebook.
Decided to use Fresco paint and bravely didn't stick two together for added thickness - no need, got no seepage through at all..

I mixed my own shade of lavender, from Moonlight and Sherbert - the photo doesn't give a great representation of the colours because it's been raining and dull all day, so a bit dark for photography.

 I used Watering Can archival ink to stamp some random script and criss cross images (Paperartsy)

 for my plum accent, I stamped this image by Tim Holtz - had this set for weeks and it's the first time it's seen ink - Plum archival, appropriately enough!!  - on white copy paper, torn and edged with Watering Can archival before gluing it to the middle of the page.

at the bottom, I stamped some flower seed heads (memory box) in the Plum archival.

Entering the Summer of Colour here 

PA - a Kate inspired tag

Hi, all.  Once again I've ooh-ed and aah-ed over the Paperartsy GD posts this week, but with the excitement of my trip to Wimbledon on Monday and my birthday on Thursday, I've not had time to play along until now.
Kate Yetter was back for three days with some fabulous projects, and my piece today is inspired by her final piece on Tuesday, that you can see here 

I have one of the sets Kate used, and decided to use it too, but my crackle wouldn't really crackle so I changed my background a little.

 I brayered Yellow Submarine and Chalk onto my tag, then Antarctic once the crackle glaze had dried.   However, as I said, it didn't really crackle so I wiped the drying paint back with a babywipe, in just a few places, to reveal the yellow underneath.

I couldn't get my paint to drip either, so I used some of the Izink inks I got in Paris, spritzed well with water and let them drip.  I spritzed a little watered down Chalk Fresco over the top to dilute it just a little (think this picture is before that step, lol!)

 I stamped the lady from HP1306 and painted her face lightly with Vintage lace and used one of my very few distress pens and a water brush for the lips.

I added some crinkled crackly paper that I added Indigo treasure gold to, and various flowers - paper and fabric - from my stash, together with a couple of ribbons.

I edged two of the paper flowers, one with Aqua and one with Saffron archival ink and set a pearl in the centre.

Thanks to Kate for a great challenge, entering this tag to the Paperartsy challenge here 

Thank you - my beautiful birthday cards!

So, yesterday was my birthday, and I received so many gorgeous, stunning birthday cards - with each one I opened I was more and more amazed... as promised here they are for you all to see!

I tried to get one of all of them together this morning, laid out on the hall carpet!

 so now let's seem them in more detail!

 (left) Zo - she knows my love of Liverpool!
(right) Gabrielle

 this stunner is from Lesley

(left) Linda, (right) Sam - she knows my love of Dina Wakley, lol!

 Hazel. Paperartsy - nuff said!

 (left) Lin - Lynne Perrella in black and white sophistication
(right) Jo - scribbly birds - can't go wrong!

 Kirsten - the flower is gorgeous - shiny, love it

 and the inside was as beautiful as the outside

 I'am sure you all recognise this as the work of Julie Ann.... wow wow wow  - more Lynne Perrella loveliness








can't decide if it shows it off better standing or lying down...

and it folds and ties up

once I photographed them all I put them back on the window sill - the sunflowers were from Kirsty at work, they are so gorgeous!

The only trouble with having them on the window sill (and leaving the fanlight open during the day..) is that they tend to fall off.. and down behind the radiator... took me 10 minutes to find the "missing" one!! got there in the end though...



 and then when I got in tonight, there were two more, this is from my brother and sister-in-law, Lynne, (host of the former craft club I used to go to)

and lastly but by no means last, Lesley of Paperlicious Delicious

I think you'll agree I was very very lucky to receive so many stunning hand made cards (and several more from my non-crafting friends and relations) - thank you everyone, they are amazing. 

WOYWW 264 - the one before my birthday..

Well, here we are again, another Wednesday.. another What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday - Julia will let you know what's occurring here  where we all meet up to nose/snoop/rummage through everyone's workspaces...

Mine this week is looking - well see for yourselves..

a bit of a jumble, to be honest!  Some new crafting goodies (an early birthday present to myself) (more on the way..) and some souvenirs from Monday... (more of that in a sec) and a little pile of early birthday cards (it's Thursday, or tomorrow by the time you read this!)

 I had a day out at Wimbledon on the opening day of the tennis championship... see my other blog for all the info - and a gazillion photos - sorry if you click the link, there are lots and lots...you could be some time!

 close up of the menu... it's my first experience of a "corporate " experience and one I really enjoyed!!

some of this will be appearing in a journal page soon!!

In case you don't have time to read the full story, we had tickets on Centre Court - Andy Murray v David Goffin and later Novak Djokavic v Andrey Golubev. Very very good!!

it was my boss who was hosting the day, and she took me and one of the other girls from the office, plus 3 guests. (she also has ladies semi final tickets when she'll take the other girl from work) We are so lucky!!

Summer of Colour - week 2

Hi, another speedy post from me today, and an even speedier entry - to Summer of Colour 2014, week 2 that closes later today...

This week's colours are -

 
Coral, Teal and a smudge smash or pop, of Bright White...

For my coral, I mixed Spanish Mulberry and Smoked Paprika Fresco paints, for the teal, I used (of course) my favourite, Dusty Teal.
This is my very basic tag!!

 if I'd stopped to think about what I was going to do, rather than just dive in all paintbrushes blazing, as it were, I might have done the colours the other way round, but I covered a size 8 tag with my mixed up coral colour,

 then stamped the heart (from Dina Wakley's scribbly hearts set) onto the top of the tag... hmmm disappointing.. didn't really show up

I had already decided my splash of Bright White would be under the smaller heart... so decided to use it behind the larger one too, and Frescos being such good, opaque paints (the opaque ones, anyway!) Snowflake completely covered the Dusty Teal underneath, so I could stamp on top again - I applied the paint to my stamp with a brayer again.

 Just LOVE this little heart.. the text is from the same stamp set.

 Finished my tag by painting a strip of white satin ribbon with Dusty Teal paint, it worked beautifully.

the finished tag.

Entering SOC4, here 

PA - Seth inspired challenge

This week saw the talented Seth Apter make his debut at Paperartsy.  He was using some of his stencils he designs for Stencil Girl and I don't have any (although now have one on order...) and made magic with them which you can see here  - gorgeous, isn't it?

So, I took a piece of textured water colour paper and went to work... instant disaster when I got to step two which is adding gesso with textured paper/card (I don't have any so used some of the same paper I was working onto.. went to bed in a huff and started on it afresh this morning.
I realise now it's how I added the gesso to the paper I was using as a stamp, that was the problem.
My base paint was South Pacific.

 but I carried on, adding layers of colour - Beach Hut, Chartreuse and Antarctic - before spraying with Chalk, then stamping - I used Ellen Vargo stamps, the PA mini numbers (MN23) and archivals Watering Can, Cornflower Blue and Aqua.

 much much better - by this time I was treating it as a masterboard in my mind, and it was working!
However I was to have problems when it came to the stencilling grunge paste - my VAST collection of stencils includes very few words, none really the right size or right words... had one "brainwave" (make a stencil from Tim's 'dream' mover and shaper - thank goodness GP wipes off when still wet... )

the only one I could use, is Dyan's "snow" set, luckily one word is ok.... still blobby, because it's a very open style of lettering... I gouged out the middle of the letters with my pokey tool before the tinted GP dried...

and added some more GP through some of my Rebekah Meier stencils

some of which were added with Limelight tinted GP. I found some metallic markers in a drawer, but they didn't really show up much, so went over the circles with limelight fresco... Once the GP was finally dry, I outlined everything in black or white gelly roll pens (loved that they worked over the paint)

Decided to stop before I wreck this any further - a big thanks to Seth for the inspiration - entering the Paperartsy challenge here  and Hels' Sheridan here (theme today is green)

Monthly Journalling with Darcy - month 5

Well, I am running late with this again, it's been some time since Darcy published the latest month in her journal year... catch it here.
We are playing with JoFY stencils this time, and once again trying lots of techniques.. time will tell, if I have a go at the paper casting...

As urged by Darcy, ("you can do it while you watch the football") I did just that, and stamped onto tissue for step 2.

 The next night, I went back to the beginning and scraped Frescos onto the page with an old credit card.  I've used slightly different colours to Darcy - Tinned Peas, Rusty Rose, Sherbert, and the Mocha Mousse and Guacamole that Darcy used.

Tore the tissue stamping and applied with matte medium and a finger... dried matte medium takes ages to pick off....

Following Darcy's step by step I added Chalk Fresco lightly with a palette knife and started stencilling

 love the effect the blue border has, using torn scrap paper as a border stencil.

 next steps in progress - flowers, the window and the wheelbarrow.

 Assembly time!

I didn't do the paper casting like Darcy did so successfully, but used die cuts from old painty baby wipes instead - the wheel, butterflies and flower

i had to use the Tim Holtz arch for the window and cut some strips of card for the bars.

 Because my journal is smaller than Darcy's, my wheelbarrow is lots smaller too, so holds a tiny size 2 tag and my seed packet.

 I crackled the background for my tag and stencilled some tinted (Hey Pesto) grunge paste through the Lin Brown leaf stencil.

my finished page.

Once again, Darcy, it was a pleasure doing this page!! Entering Darcy's journal challenge here