Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - Q is for...

This morning saw another letter announced in the Craft Barn's dictionary Alpha challenge.... Q... My dictionary doesn't have many 'q' words in it but my eye alighted on one I thought I could do reasonably well... Quarter..

I started by dividing the page into four,  and began blocking the quarters in different shades of purple Fresco paints. I was going to leave the definition where it was and colour round it, but decided that looked odd so went to a spare dictionary and cut the word out from there! So, back to the painting...

 top row - Spanish Mulberry, Moonlight
bottom - Pansy, Eggplant

the spare dictionary paper is really really thin so I glued it to a scrap of white card and edged it with distress ink - don't ask me which brown it is, as it's just what was left on the brown blender 

I then took one of my favourite (this year anyway) Christmas stamps - the poinsettia by Penny Black (the stamp is actually called Winter Glow, for some reason) and stamped it onto a piece of card. I kept to the purple theme and used Seedless Preserves distress for this. Cut the flower into quarters and fixed as shown.

I hope the link to the challenge will continue to work, as I understand that the Craft Barn are moving their blog to Wordpress soon, but it should be ok for today at least!

Now, I should get back to Christmas cards.....

Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - Y (with a twist of yellow!)

The latest letter for the Craft Barn Alpha dictionary challenge is Y. But you have to incorporate yellow into your offering.

Not making excuses, but my dictionary is seriously lacking in Y words (when you consider I painted over some when I did my W word...)  This is what I had for Y and Z

Luckily I have another dictionary I can "borrow" some pages from.  I decided to do 'yacht' but also liked the idea of 'yarn' - so thought, in for a penny - why not use both!

I started by painting the page (yes, over my remaining y and z's!!) in Ice Blue Paperartsy Fresco paint, then stamped some fluffy clouds in Snowflake Fresco paint (stamp is a Texture Mat by Caroline's that I have had like for ever!) across the sky.


I used a Stampscapes stamp (it's called Shimmers) and cobalt archival ink, for the waves and the flying duck formation (also Stampscapes)

I originally intended that the yacht could be sailing on a sea of yarn, (well in my defence, it is very hot today!) and positioned the yacht (stamp by Hobby Art) accordingly.

After it was well stuck down (I tried!) I realised the yarn looks like the sandy beach... oh well, let's pretend that is what I meant all along...

The fibres are from a pack of mixed fibres I got years ago from The Craft Barn itself, plus some mohair that I was meant to be knitting into a jumper.. like that's ever going to happen now!  I stuck them to a strip of microporous tape before sticking that to the dictionary page.   The 'Y' letter is by Dylusions, from her alphabet set, stamped in saffron archival ink.

Thanks for sticking with me (literally, it's so hot!) I really didn't think I'd get there with this letter!