Craft Barn Q&L - 17. Peaceful/Grace

I missed the launch of the Craft Barn Quotes and Lyrics challenge last Sunday as I was away.  I had a look during the week for a suitable quote or lyric, using either 'peaceful' or 'grace' and was struggling...

Then this morning I looked again and came across this quote by novelist John Updike "Rain is grace, rain is the sky descending to earth, without rain there would be no life"  I really like this, it's meaning is quite deep if you stop to think about it....

 I used a mixture of Frescos for my sky - Antarctic and Chalk, I wanted a really pale sky... the to find the rain... I spritzed some Fresco (Beach Hut I think) mixed with water. For the earth I mixed Guacamole with Limelight and then blended Guacamole with some of the leftover Antarctic for the middle ground.

Please forgive the bad case of wrinkles!!

I stamped the Tim Holtz grasses, forgetting I'd already used these for an early Q&L page, but it's too late now!

the rain wasn't really prominent enough, so I added some drops of blue Izink ink and spritzed it with water to run down the page.. blotting it before it got too intense.

The birds in amongst the grasses are die cut from the Memory Box resting birds set. (I love these birds!)

and I typed the quotation out on lightweight card, leaving enough space to cut it into sections.

Entering the Craft Barn Q&L challenge here

Darcy Journal - month 8 - The Tree of Knowledge

When I was away last weekend, Darcy posted her final page in her monthly journalling series with Paperartsy. The Tree of Knowledge - which involved a recap of some of the techniques we'd learnt over the last 7 months - and drawing... eek!!

However, I wasn't going to be undone by drawing a tree to join in the final challenge.  Here is my entry.

 I used a mixture of Fibralos (I have the 15 chunky set, so quite limited with colours) and water colour pencils (Inktense and WH Smith) for my background

loved re-visiting the torn paper as a mask border and the mini wall stamp is lovely.

 my tree - I sketched it roughly on paper first as recommended by Darcy, then on the journal but rather than fill in the lines, I kind of used it as a guide, and painted the branches.

 I then had a panic about the leaves, as I didn't have the Urban Snapshot set Darcy used, but a twitter convo resulted in Darcy suggesting Sara Naumann's set 12- one of the new ones - for Paperartsy, as there is a splotchy stamp that was perfect!  3 colours of Fresco - Holly, Tinned Peas and Sage - give a lovely soft full in leaf tree look - thanks Darcy, thank goodness you were on twitter at the right time!

then on to the technique leaves - die cut as Darcy showed, (only had to staple one together, lol! ) and chose my techniques to fit on such a small space.. I chose - (left page) stencilling on tissue, crackle, blending opaques, torn stamped tissue; (right page ) masterboard (I had some of the one I used for Darcy's previous month where we did this, so die cut a leaf from it) blending Treasure Gold, stencilling resist with portfolios,  stamping into gesso.

and to show that the apples really do keep the leaves in place!

and of course the apples themselves! cool idea Darcy, they were fun to do (once I got a red I liked mixed)

thanks for months of fun with this Darcy and all your hard work getting these pages ready for us to try!
It's been great to play along.

Dragons Dream TIO - Y - Transport

Welcome back to the Dragons Dream TIO challenge - this fortnight, my teamie Jax has chosen the letter Y and the theme of transport for our tags.

I started by painting my tag with black gesso, and then applied a layer of Crackle Glaze (Paperartsy)
The top layer of paint is one of the new limited edition Lin Brown colours, Hint of Mint. - got some good cracks.

The Y is of course yacht - a smart mode of transport if ever there was one!
The yachts are a wooden stamp by Stamp It (an Australian company) and I've coloured them with my fibralo pens which I blended with a barely damp paintbrush
Stamped the letters on a scrap of white card and mounted on black. The letters are a teeny tiny set from Hampton Art.
Finished the tag with some blue and white fibres.
Hope to see some fabulous transport tags, don't forget to use at least one real stamp.

WOYWW 273

Hello and happy Wednesday, time for another WOYWW hop.
I'm sorry I didn't get to visit many of your desks last week, but with being off work I went out and about a lot, no crafting done until late on Friday just before I went away for a couple of days crafting with a group of friends, with the fabulous Lin Brown (Yoursartfully)

my craft mat is under that lot somewhere!  the Prima goodies at the front were won, (on France Papillon's Journal on Monday 100 giveaway recently) and they arrived on Friday.  The journals I took with me at the weekend - I seem to have 3 on the go now! A4, A5 and A6!! bit like Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, small, medium and large, lol!! the tags are the ones we did on Sunday on our Techniques/Mediums play (check previous post for more details)
Suffice it to say, that I now have another long list of "wants" - gelatos, colour bloom sprays, Silks, Brushos... oh dear!

I will try - but can't promise - to visit more of you this week, now I'm back at work, lol!!

Projects from the weekend crafting

Morning (oh, it's afternoon...) all...

Here are some more pics of the projects from the weekend.

Saturday we made a Lynne Perrella book full of stamped and stencilled fun.

 Lin had prepped some of the shapes with Chatsworth papers, some were left plain and we painted with Frescos
Back and Front covers, tied with beaded thread

 some of the smaller pieces were glued to the bigger ones

 and one left to form a smaller page

 so you can see both sides
Some of us "may" have done a little online shopping for some of the Technique Tuesday stamps we used (the set that these diamonds came from was gorgeous)

and the finished book.


Sunday was a day of techniques... as I said in the post yesterday, we tried loads of different things - tags galore!

 we tried gelatos (gone on the list!)
Love the one on the left, removing the gelato through a stencil with a babywipe, great resist!
the red one is gelato over a clear embossed stencilled image and the gelato removed, the drippage on the bottom one is great, and the other is just blended.

 silks - hmm not bad, may resist buying these, but I did like the detail painting with them!

 Colour Bloom sprays (got to have these!)

Love the pastel shimmer of the bluey/purple one (over gesso, but it does dry a bit sticky)

 oh, this should be rotated..colour bloom over fabric on a tag.

 and some silk screen printing - this was fabulous!!

 and on some journal pages, ready to play further with!

 we were a bit dubious about the black, but it looks fantastic!

these are in my big A4 journal so you can get an idea of the size a bit more.

We also stamped and stencilled over fabric covered tags, (left) and used Inktense pencils (already hav those, phew!) over grunge paste
You'll have to forgive my big blobby stems, when I painted over the grunge paste my stencil wasn't placed back accurately!

We also tried crackle glaze on fabric, but I've not got a picture of that as my crackle wasn't great - my top layer of paint wasn't thick enough - and brushos - but I mixed mud due to my poor colour choice so you're not seeing that either!
So a big thanks again to Lin B for her trouble with these workshops, and to Lin, Lesley, Karen, Emma and Sam for the fun.

I'm looking forward to some shopping (ahem) and playing with these tags and pages I started!

A brilliant weekend of crafting fun

Hi, just got home from a fabulous weekend at Lin Brown's with Sam, Emma, Lin, Lesley and Karen.

If we gloss over the travel chaos that Lin and I had to go through to get there, everything ran like clockwork., even if Saturday started with a 5am alarm call...

The venue we used last time, the Bead Scene, was no longer available, so Lin very bravely allowed us into her home.. we were soon hard at work

concentrating hard!

 Not sure if Lin is thinking "what have I done letting this lot in...."

 part of day one's project, this fabulous chipboard book

 

 I'll show the rest of it tomorrow

 Sam and Emma trying to decide what to have from the huge menu for dinner...

Day two saw us experimenting with lots of different products, most of which I'd not used before - this is Silks, but we tried Colour Blooms (need!) Brushos (probably need) Gelatos (must have) Intense pencils (do have!) and lots more - the screen printing was fantastic fun...

 lots of chatting, laughing, drinking tea and eating chocolate, we made tags galore, played in journals (some of us) and had loads of fun...

 Mark, Lin's lovely hubby, took the obligatory group shot, we couldn't leave out Meg, their gorgeous dog

see,  told you we laughed all weekend!

I'll take some pics of the tags we made tomorrow, so come back and see more of what we did.

Lin and Mark, thanks for welcoming us into your home (and for the guided tour of Lin's wonderful studio) and for the endless cups of tea and coffee.

Girls, it was great to spend 2 fun-filled days with you. See you all soon. xx

Journal page inspired by Linda Cain - for Paperartsy

We saw a wonderful journal page from Linda earlier this week at Paperartsy. You can see hers here

I bought a new A6 - teeny tiny for me - journal yesterday and was itching to find time to play with this challenge, luckily being so small it didn't take too long!

 I used Dolly Mix, Guacamole and Lake Wanaka for my background

 and Snowflake to stencil the flower which I then outlined with a black fine nibbed pen..

I added some stencilled bubbles (the new colour, Marlin which is gorgeous!) and stamped the JoFY mini flower, which I painted in Amethyst.  I stamped the dotted line border round the page (from JoFY26) and round the edge of the text (from the same set) which I cut in half, I painted the words with Amethyst too.

Entering the Paperartsy challenge here 
I'm away for a crafty weekend with friends, been a bit of a travel nightmare, but we'll get there! See you soon.

WOYWW 272 - a week off (work, not from WOYWW!)

Hi, welcome to another round of desk/globe trotting. I am on a week off work this week - so far I've had a day at Kew (see the photos here) on Monday and London (see the photos here) yesterday - think my legs want a rest today!

 Although, I did stand up to take these shots!
my A4 journal that I've been using lots lately, closed on the "desk" sitting on top of my pile of stencils (which usually sit on top of the Fresco paints in the plastic box)

I "may" have a bit of a sort out later today.... or maybe I'll just craft!

Join in with WOYWW here.