Craft Barn Q&L 24 - Heart/Risk

I look forward to the alternative Sundays when a new Craft Barn challenge is announced.  I look forward to finding a great quote quickly wherever possible, that I know I will be able to illustrate in my journal...

I don't so much look forward to fighting with the computer to keep the internet connection alive but that's my fault for (still) not ringing my provider to moan about it!

However, I have my quote, "words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart" - a Shakespeare quote again today; I have my journal page!

 I have kept it really simple today. I used part of a Stencil Girl stencil, and Iced Spruce distress ink to outline the heart in the middle of my page.  I also used  Iced Spruce to stamp a Paperartsy script stamp (my favourite, MN61) inside the heart to continue the theme of the quote

After removing the stencil, I then used the Art is stencil by Crafters Workshop (I think this has to be my favourite ever stencil) and randomly applied Evergreen Bough through parts of the stencil, around the heart.







I wrote the quote, with a black Sharpie marker, as shown, taking the actual words of my quote, as a guide

so, as I say , a really simple, quick entry today.  Am linking to the Q&L challenge here 

Gift tags - inspired by Lelainia Lloyd for Paperartsy

Sneaking in on the last day, (but better than last month when I failed completely) with some gift tags inspired by Lelainia for  Paperartsy

 followed Lelainia's instructions, so I won't repeat them here, I used Plum and Cherry Red Fresco's

 It's still very misty and gloomy here, so I had a bit of hassle with the photos... but this one came out ok!

I used a mixture of small PA stamps (I don't have the Lin Brown greetings set, so substituted some others from my stash, but the Noel and holly are Lin's and HoHoHo is JoFY's

Not sure if I'll have time to make another entry, we'll see!
Now I just need to buy some gifts to attach to my tags....
Entering the Paperartsy blog challenge here 

...that journal page...

Did a little bit more faffing with the journal page that was on show in my WOYWW "desk" yesterday

 I had started by gesso'ing the journal page, as I discovered that either the brushos or the Deco Art media sprays went through the paper if not.. I tried out all the media art sprays I got (black, white, purple, yellow and green) and some brushos.. I think brilliant red, yellow and black. may have added some leaf green too... Love how the media art drips!

I wanted a focal image but nothing too fancy.. settled for the JoFY flowers, stamped twice, on two pieces of scrap paper.  I painted them with some brushos, mixed in a little pot, with similar colours to my background. Stuck them to the page.

then this morning (bravely, before work!) I took the black media art spray, and with the end of the spray tube, dropped some ink (paint?) on the page above the flowers and let it drip.  Did the same,upwards (ok, so I turned the page up the other way) on the other page.

Luckily I stayed free of black mess on my hands and went to work... Tonight I added some more sprays of black, and let it drip, and a little yellow on the right page.  Some words to finish - had to use alphabet stamps as I don't have any 'vertical' stamps  and voila!
A bit messy, a bit dark (but looks better by the daylight bulb I took the photos by, so maybe in daylight it won't look so dark...) but FUN!
thanks for looking. and try these sprays, they are fab!  I want some more colours....

WOYWW 286 - new goodies (again)

What do you mean, it's Wednesday again?!  Next you'll be telling me it's December on Monday.... oh!
So, if it has to be Wednesday, what better way to spend it than at Julia's Stamping Ground for another desk-hop-fest. And (I know, don't start a sentence with 'and') here's my desk... well, floor, but you know me by now!  You also know me well enough, to expect new stash purchases.... never one to disappoint -

 The brightly coloured bottles are some DecoArt Media sprays which I chose as my prize from the Craft Barn Q&L challenge the other... powerful colours but I am having fun...

the other items in the box, are some EZ mount for some unmounted stamps which I now have no excuse to getting mounted... and another Colour Bloom spray called Storm Cloud which is a kind of grey (storm!) coloured. The 'Stick It' is a thin sheet of adhesive for sticking to card/paper etc before die cutting intricate shapes, and enables you to stick the resulting die cuts easily to your project... time will tell how well it works  I'm thinking letters, and things like Tim Holtz Greenery dies, will be perfectly easy now....

The next picture is for Julia.  Last week she commented on some words on a journal page and said she hoped they were word stamps, not individual funky letters. (I'd have had no chance of lining them up, you are right Julia!!)

well, they are whole words -  Clarity Word Chains, two sets, and I love them!

They come in a chain, joined, but designed to cut apart.  Oh, and the journal pages underneath?  that's some of the new sprays,and some brushos... bit dark and muddy, so needs attention!

So, that's what's on MY workdesk, what's on yours?  I'll be round to check soon.

Dragons Dream - TIO - X and Purple

Hi, and welcome back to the Dragons Dream TIO  for our penultimate tag in the alphabet challenge... boy, that's gone fast!  This fortnight, it is my supremely talented team mate, Julie Ann, who was "lucky" enough to pick (i.e. be left with) X - probably one of the hardest letters in the alphabet to depict... The twist is to use purple...

I sprayed my tag with the crushed grape Dylusions spray.  not before I'd picked up and sprayed a tag with after midnight by mistake - oh well, got a blue tag ready for another time now!  

Got a somewhat patchy coverage (made worse by the flash on the camera!!)   Used the two skeletons from my new super sale bargain price Tim Holtz set (mini halloween) and heat embossed them.

Wrote xray in white pen in the space on the tag, which immediately picked up the purple colour from the spray.  Of course I intended that to happen, it's a shade of purple now!!  It looks whiter in the photo than it does in real life!!
Finished with some chunky purple fibres from my stash.

I know Julie Ann will have made a beautiful, elaborate tag for her entry, because she always spends a lot of time and effort on her tags - but time is against me this time so it's a quickie here!!  Do pop over and see what the rest of the team have dreamt up for this challenging letter!  See you soon.

time for another WOYWW....

... but not a lot again! some finished but slightly disappointed with, journal pages (the one I was faffing with a couple of weeks ago) Head to Julia's for the wheres, whyfors and hows - once you've checked mine out!

The previous post tells the pluses and minuses of how this page came along.... and the eagle eyed amongst you may spy a little something hiding under the journal.... to find out what, you'll need to visit the post after this one later today!!
tee hee! Happy Wednesday (unless like me you do most of your visiting later!)

twin journal pages...

it's been ages since I played in my journal just for fun, but I was bored yesterday (no football to watch!) and I couldn't summon enough enthusiasm to make some more Christmas cards...

The page on the left was mostly done, and was hanging around on a WOYWW desk recently but I don't seem to have taken a proper sized photograph

 this is the right page. it's gone through a few transformations, I was painting over some random brush strokes that I didn't want, with Plum and Chalk Fresco . The yellow is brusho dropped in the wet paint.  and smudged around... and partly wiped off. Stencilled Marlin and Chalk through a stencil.

the left hand page has had more brushos dropped on it and both have gesso circles (lids from an old glue bottle or something)  The right page I diluted with some gesso first, it was a bit dark to do anything over..

 and black gesso with a stickles lid, and a credit card

 followed this through on the other page too

 the pages needed something to focus on, but I chose to stamp in Cobalt archival ink on Paperartsy Crackly tissue (still hoarding some) but once I glued it to the page, it blends in too much, the background is too dark...

 used Plum archival on tissue for the right page, which shows up a little better.  Would have been better on white card, I think....or the stamping done in black ... or left off altogether!

thanks for looking!

Craft Barn Q&L - 23. Friendship/Journey

Hello, hope you are having a good Sunday.  The new Craft Barn challenge for their Q&L reaches no 23. The prompts are Friendship and/or Journey.  Searched out a few.... have quite a lot of stamps with 'journey' on them... but I really liked this quote by Aristotle "Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies".

 I started by stencilling Ice Blue Fresco paint through the large numbers template from crafters workshop

 then, stamped the image by Tim Holtz onto the journal page, and again on scrap paper.  I cut out the main image and added some colour to the dog and layered it over the journal

 stencilled some leaves with Grunge Paste in the corners and when dry, added Pan pastel


typed up the quote on scrap paper and glued it to the page.

 This came together really quickly, and I love this image of the little boy and his dog, which quite fortuitously has a "friend" definition as part of the stamp.

Just wanted to say a big thank you to the Craft Barn (and the random.org) for pulling my name out of the hat for the prize for the "nowhere" challenge - it was fun spending the voucher yesterday!

WOYWW 284 - a little bit of this and that

Welcome along for another What's on Your Workdesk? Wednesday... I'll start, this day after Armistice Day, with a closer look at the photo of my Dad that was sitting on the workmat the other week,

together with one of my Mum - that's her, sitting on the top of the Spitfire - she served in the Wrens, as an Air Mechanic, working on the Spitfire. This would have been taken some time after 1944 as that's when her service record shows she was enlisted. Hopefully you can enlarge it to see it a bit closer - I look very like her, though Julia thought I looked like Dad. (I can see lots of my middle nephew in him, the more I look at this photo now)
Dad served both in the Army and Navy. This picture was taken at Christmas 1942, as it is noted on the back, when he was in the Navy.
On my desk proper - well actually not, it's the kitchen counter - some flowers I received at work on Monday, from a grateful client whose mortgage application I had helped process to a happy conclusion. It's so nice to be appreciated and to receive a thank you!  And yes, of course I saved the bow! I nearly saved the pretty cellophane, but had to tear it too much removing it!

 

 the "desk" proper on the floor - my normal place of work, as most of you know (and as is stated in my blog header) - and some more new stamps (yes, Mary Anne, MORE!) I took advantage of a post on Facebook from the Stamp Attic announcing further clearance offers, and - erm - snapped up 5 more sets!! Well, it would have been rude to have ignored such bargains!


Finally, another photo from the Tower of London on Saturday

the stunning poppy installation to commemorate the First World War and the 888,246 British and Colonial servicemen who lost their lives. Several of you have visited the post I published on Saturday  and I make no apology for the number of photos I shared on it!!
This weekend I need to crack on with some more Christmas cards as after my spurt the week before last, I've not done any since!  In the meantime, I will get to as many of your desks as I can.

heads up - poppies are about

Just a quick post to point you in the direction of "photosbyh" today for LOTS of poppy pics from the Tower

Dragons Dream - U and Quotation

We are nearly at the end of our alphabet challenge at DragonsDream - how fast has that gone?!  This fortnight, the gorgeous Gabrielle has chosen U, and to use a quotation - don't forget you must use a tag and at least one real (non digital) stamp.

I went for my old favourite, Tim Holtz's Umbrella Man...

 I painted my tag with a mix of Elephant and Chalk Fresco to get a slightly lighter gray than the Elephant is (could have just used Concrete of course!)














Stamped the raindrops (Designs by Ryn) - new, yum!! in Watering Can archival and filled the raindrops with Glossy Accents and set aside to dry.

Umbrella Man was die cut from a piece of paper from Finnabair's Sunrise Sunset pad and the quotation on a piece of the leftover paper.

I have to say, I am very impressed with the Ryn stamps, they stamp beautifully, even unmounted - I have run out of EZ mount! - this is a perfect stamping, just by inking them and stamping the rubber onto the tag.  It is really thick rubber, so I maybe won't need to mount them at all (result!)

Edged the quote and the die cut, with Old Paper distress to match the edge of the paper and used foam pads to mount them to the tag.

Hope you'll join in with us again, we love to see what you create.  We're already dreaming up the next set of challenges, hope you'll like them....

WOYWW 283

Here we are, ready for another Wednesday Workdesk hop? Just in case you don't know the info and Mr Linky can be found here  at Julia's Stamping Ground

Once again there isn't much on my desk today... a bit of a wide angle shot...you can tell it's turned colder, slippers are out! the only reason they're not on my feet is so I could move back further to get the shot in!

the open journal is a bit in limbo, Fresco paint background, bit of messing/dripping with Brushos - and no chance of carrying on with it tonight (I am writing this on Tuesday night) as I am watching football (soccer if you prefer) on TV.

I have however, as you may have seen from the previous couple of posts, started my Christmas cards, and got a huge chunk of them done (33) at the weekend... which is a big relief! (here's a sneak of some of them )

I'll be along as soon as I can to see what you've been up to - Happy WOYWW.
Oh! I had new stash to show too.. bargains - Tim stamps on clearance from the Stamp Attic (think they're mostly all gone now!)

Craft Barn Q&L - 22 - Moon/Sensation

Afternoon, welcome back!  Been a bit of a crafting flurry here the last couple of days, finally got started on the Christmas cards! (scroll back to the previous two posts) and I have some more to share today. First, though, it's the Craft Barn Q&L challenge - Moon and/or Sensation

My first thought was "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's... then I googled for some quotes, and came across "Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star" attributed to W Clement Stone - and in various similarly worded versions, to several other people too.  I liked that, so decided to switch tacks.

After another masterboard's worth of Christmas cards, I settled down with my Brushos - well I had to play with new toys, right?!

 I worked on a piece of Paperartsy's Smoothy card, and used Ultramarine, Leaf Green and Emerald Brushos - a mixture of sprinkling the Brushos onto dry card and spritzing, and then more spritzing the page in the dry parts and dropped more Brushos into the water.  This is my first play with them (apart from a short play at Lin Brown's when some friends and I went for a workshop in August)

A long search ensued for a moon stamp - I still think I have a different one, but couldn't find it... this is part of a stamp that depicts "twinkle twinkle little star) but I just cut the moon out. Hence you can see the face under the Pewter paint (no silver!) (Fresco)

For the stars, I stencilled Pewter paint  through a stencil and cut out 3 stars










I wrote the quote on a spare scrap of card, and stuck it to the page.

Decided it needed somebody or someone to be aiming for the moon, so stamped the little people (Stampscapes) on another scrap of card and trimmed them and glued them to the foot of the page.

Quite pleased how this came out, entering the Craft Barn challenge here 

Oh, and the third masterboard Christmas cards? These are they!

 just used Cherry Red and Chalk Frescos, the tree is by Woodware and is just repeatedly stamped in Library Green archival, first and second generation stamping.

So that's another 12 from another sheet of paper, I'm well on the way now.

Masterboard 2 - getting in the groove!

So, whilst I was waiting for some Glossy Accents to dry on my tag for next week's TIO (what do you mean, last minute?!) I started another masterboard for some more Christmas cards...

I used more non traditional colours, Limelight and Turquoise again, with Chalk to tone it down, and some Prima Colour Bloom spray (glistening waves) - I used some Pressed Petal on the last lot but forgot to tell you)

stamps are from the Lin Brown Christmas set for Paperartsy
I cut these up smaller, so even more from the A3 sheet - got 12 in all
and yes, it won't rotate again - it's the right way round in the file on the computer!!

 finished  cards

close up.

Christmas cards - Masterboard Style!

Well, at long last, my card making for 2014 is kicking and screaming into being.... I decided I'd try some on a masterboard style, for speed of backgrounds.  Quite by chance my latest Craft Stamper arrived as I was mid-paint and Helen Chilton is doing a similar thing, although hers are very different in look.

Anyhow, I have some A3 copier/printer paper, which I decided to use to save even more time, even though it's quite thin. It also takes up most of my available space...

 I didn't work with it this way round, just can't persuade the photo to rotate back!  Used Plum, Turquoise and Chalk Frescos, directly dropping little blobs (not little enough in some spots) onto the paper, and brayering away.

 then took the 'eye chart' Merry Christmas from the new Paperartsy Hot Pick HPXM05, and stamped using Plum and Aquamarine archival inks, over the paper...

  cut it up to fit my card blanks (I used Craftwork Cards, the ones that are almost 6x6 inch) and as you can see, got 6 from my sheet of paper.

stamped the Tim Holtz deer (please don't ask why I didn't use the die, I only remembered about it when I had cut the 4th one out....) on Smoothy white card, in black archival; and the sentiment, which is from the same Paperartsy stamp plate.

Fought with the double sided tape to stick the backgrounds to the cards, and used a glue stick for everything else.