Finished canvas from the Lin Brown Weekend - Live life be happy!

I was determined to put the finishing touches to the canvas before too much time went by...

 so, as I showed in the post about the weekend, it started as a canvas which we covered with patterned papers.

I don't have many pictures of the metal work in progress, as I was having too much fun

 but this is probably my favourite, the stamp by Donna Downey.

I used Stazon to stamp it onto the metal, then outlined over the stamped lines with a teflon tool, on a foam block, to create the outlines

 used the brass brush on the background of the metal piece, and a dotty wheel on the reverse of the leaves, on the acrylic block, to add some texture to the petals.

t

the paint goes on! (see the post here for further details

so this was as far as I got at Lin's - the metal pieces stuck  down.  It's not quite as dark as it looks in this picture, as you will see...

 I constructed the metal flower (using Lin's technique ) - nowhere near as good as Lin does them...
I used DecoArt Turquoise shimmer for the bottom and top layers of the flower, and left the middle petals plain silver

 the letters hanging from the dowel at the bottom

 close ups

 the whole thing..

now for some more close ups






Drew a large L and a large ball and cup to create the look of the rivets.  Filled the space round it with a mold. The rest of the word live, are some die cut letters stuck to the background and covered with self adhesive metal.

 A selection of paper flowers (mostly Prima) and some metal embellishments, I added some Treasure Gold in Silver and Sapphire to the plain white flowers and to the metal leaf

and some more flowers at the bottom of the canvas (much tweeting and discussions this morning of the placements of these!)








And here it is,. hanging on the wall in my hallway.

Thanks so much for the class, Lin, it was brilliant and I am really pleased with how this came out..

Happy Birthday to me..

I was lucky enough to receive some fabulous hand crafted birthday cards today, as well as a bunch of beautiful shop-bought ones too..
Here are the hand made ones from my lovely talented crafty friends - thank you all for making the day special.

 lol! ok, I'll share them...

 here they all are laid out in the hall...

now for some close ups.

(sorry about the light, it's trying to rain!)

 on the left, Debs, on the right, Linda
beautiful flowers, wonderful layering

 left - Sam, right, Kirsten
they know I'm a fan of Lonely Girl and Tim's crazy birds!, gorgeous backgrounds too.

 left, the #PATwits group - card made by Catherine Johnson,  right - Lesley
more fab backgrounds, and Dina again!

 left - Lesley, a FB friend and right, Chris - love the wildflowers on both of these

and, last but not least, left - Hazel  and right, Lin.
love how Hazel's used the bird on a map, and simply love all Lin's layering.








I think you'll agree, these are all fantastic, thank you all so much!   I may just give up making cards completely myself....

Dragons Dream - Tag It On - Brown and Crackle

So, Wednesday again... and time for another challenge from the Dragons at Tag it On - this time, the super talented Julie Ann's choice which is - brown, and to use crackle.. Any choice of crackle you prefer - paste, paint, whatever.

I reached for my trusty Paperartsy crackle glaze, because I was in a bit of a hurry to get this started before I went away for last weekend (nothing like last minute round here!)

I used Chocolate Pudding on the base tag and Buff on top... quite subtle cracks.   I added the honeycomb stamp from JoFY 30 in Potting Soil archival ink.

I stamped the bee hive on white card, and took one of the chipboard shapes that matches the large bee from the same set, before stamping the bee on the shape. Coloured it with Inktense pencils
Stamped some of the little bees direct on the tag, and and the text; in black archival.

Do come and join the Dragons and see what my team-mates have dreamt up for you this fortnight - to join in, you need to use one real stamp on your tag. have fun!

WOYWW 316

So, it's Wednesday again, and time we meet at Julia's Stamping Ground and see what everyone's been up to and share our workspaces... Julia's will look very different this week as she's taking a break in the sun, lucky lady!

 A pile  is what's on my desk today... a pile of early birthday cards (keeping them for Friday) , some MDF arches some die cuts, some wooden stamps and the new distress ink...




You may have seen here the report of my weekend away I mentioned last week - it was fabulous!!



The wooden stamps came from there, as Lin was getting rid of some duplicates she had had from her days of her shop and the die cuts were from Lesley, one of my friends I went away with.  They're the scribbly heart/splats from Tim that I hadn't even seen before, not sure why....Lesley also collected the arches from the MDF man that we'd ordered and brought down for us.

my canvas we were working on is sitting on the stamps to my right of where I work, waiting for time time to finish it off... probably not till the weekend though

Handing you back to the link up at Julia's, thanks for stopping by. .

A Metal Workshop Weekend with Lin Brown

Saturday saw the usual suspects (me, Lin S, Sam, Emma and Lesley) descend once again on Lin Brown's home - thanks to her and Mark for the warm welcome, (not to mention the bouncy enthusiastic one from the gorgeous Meg)  for two days of metal workshop..

 we started by covering a large canvas with patterned papers

 glued down, and put to one side to fully dry whilst we got on with the metal pieces...

 everyone hard at work!  Sam was working on an MDF arch rather than her canvas

Day one saw me being surprised by a birthday cake (photo borrowed from  Sam's blog!) as it's my birthday next Friday... thanks girls, that was lovely!

 Lin being very industrious

 one of my metal pieces, stamped these flowers (Donna Downey) on metal, and refined the stamped lines with a teflon tool on the foam mat

 At the end of Saturday, Jo Myhill joined us at a local eatery for dinner

 Day two and it was time to greet Meg again, love this photo of Emma with Meggy...

 The scary moment when you have to decide what colour to paint over your papers... thanks to Emma for helping to rescue mine by reminding/suggesting I needed to put some white (well, I used Chalk actually) over the blues - before that it really wasn't looking good at all!!  I used Glass Blue and China, and a bit of Smurf too...

 then time to arrange the metal pieces...

and some background stamping before gluing down the metalwork... still has some finishing touches to be done at home sometime soon...

 Lin still hard at work... as it was Father's Day, Lin and Mark's children their partners and grandchildren all popped in during the morning so Lin's "Y" has got rather abandoned..

 Lesley and Emma

My canvas

 Sam's second piece of the weekend, (she's such a speedy crafter!) -  a square of multiple metal pieces,
laid out over her canvas

 Emma got on so well, she was finished (apart from some finishing flowers to be applied at home) - before any of us!!
Looking gorgeous, Emma - and so's the canvas!

 my piece, with the dowelling rod added at the bottom and my metal letters hanging from them..
it says "happy" - will take some close ups when it's properly finished!

back inside for some more work!

 Sam gluing down her metal

 out into Lin's beautiful studio for some stamp-choosing!
Meg came too..

 Mark took some group shots. and all too soon it was time to go...

I'd just packed my camera into my suitcase when I took it out again when we noticed this gorgeous cloud pattern in the windows of the building opposite the platform!

A huge thanks to Lin and Mark for the warm welcome, multiple cups of tea and coffee, cake and biscuits and lunch, and for letting us invade your home once again, and to Lin, Emma Sam and Lesley for a great weekend!