WOYWW 266 - 9.7.14

Morning all.  Hope you are all well and geared up for another desk-fest! Chief cheer-leader Julia has the info here   It was her birthday on Monday, make sure you wish her well!

As promised, I have new stash to share with you from Newbury on Saturday, when I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow deskers Janet and Mary-Anne again.

 I wrote about the show here but am showing the pics again here!

I was at home on Tuesday afternoon waiting for a repair man to fix my hot water  and had time to finish my Darcy journal page (here) but you'll see some of my goodies back on the "desk" waiting somewhere to put them away to!

Have a good Wednesday, and happy desking! I really hope the card's arrived by now, Julia!

Darcy's Month 6 journal page

Darcy's Month 6 journal page for her regular Paperartsy challenge grabbed me as soon as I saw it, and I started it straight away.
It's taken me a while to get the next stage done though, but today when I was forced to stay in while British Gas fixed my (lack of) hot water (all sorted now!) I carried on.

 Followed Darcy's background technique - I used some Limelight in with my Chartreuse.  I used an archival ink though to stamp my greetings, as I didn't want to get my text stamps painty.  As the ink (fern green I think now) was quite dark, I put a light wash of watered down Chartreuse over the top.

 Followed Darcy's instructions for my flowers and leaves.. really wasn't happy until I'd doodled round the flowers with a black pen!





but I love it now!

 I did the grunge paste stage several days ago, it's quite a thick layer....
This is where I carried on today - painting over the journal - used Spanish Mulberry, Claret, Eggplant, Dolly Mixture (I think) Blood Orange and a bit of South Pacific, as these seemed to tone well with my top layer.

 Used both Chalk and Snowflake, and a mixture of brayer, brush and cut and dry to get the look I wanted

 two or three layers of white/chalk

 then the hard bit - tearing up that fabulous background!  Cut a strip off for the punching and die cutting... at this point I realised that my circle punch that would have been teh right size, is broken... typical!!

the only flower I like really, is the top right one, as I used a thinner nibbed pen - the others are a brush tipped Pitts artist pen and the lines are too thick, I wish I'd tried the thinner one first!!

Didn't have much success with my ruler and the edge markings, so did some with a credit card too.

quite liked how the stems came out though.
Don't have a tag punch so just omitted them!







I did opt for a title, just felt the page needed some words.  I like the dots Darcy, great finishing touches.

the finished page.  Entering Darcy's Journal challenge here

Journal page - inspired by Ellen Vargo for Paperartsy

Wow, what a week we've enjoyed again at Paperartsy - loads of beautiful projects from the designers.
I only had time for one though, and took my inspiration from Ellen's ledger page, here .

I don't have a ledger journal, so used my mini ledger stencil and sponged some sepia ink randomly over the page.

 Lots of layers of scraped paint, following Ellen's methods, I used Limelight and Chartreuse on my first layer then Honey Dew, Hey Pesto and more Chartreuse Love how the sepia stencilling still shows under the translucent paints.

stencilled circles and stamped the circle Ellen stamps using Honey Dew and Chartreuse (kind of mixed together) before stencilling the seed pod - didn't want to completely copy Ellen's.

 Used the mini parquet stencil for my border, and a brown Inktense pencil blended with a water brush round the dictionary page.

and a different Lin Brown quote

off for an afternoon sport fest now, entering this to the Paperartsy challenge here and Country View Crafts - Stencil it - here 

Newbury - Artstamps show

Good late afternoon to you... I've been to the stamp show at Newbury Racecourse today, a show that takes me 2 and a half hours by train (each way) what with up to London, across London, down to Reading and change again for the Racecourse..... anyhow, this year the show wasn't as big as usual due to some administrative problems with the organisers - we are promised it will be back to normal in 2015!

However, despite the reduced size, I managed to do a bit of shopping ...

 some 12x12 stencils - good deal, 4 for £20 instead of £6 each. couple of gorgeous (if fiddly looking, in the case of the butterflies!) Memory Box dies

 enough double sided tape and foam dots to last me a good while... flowers, papers, one of those collapsable paint brush buckets.






stamps - the same stand with the offer on stencils, was doing Inkadinkadoo stamps at BOGOF (buy one get one free) so it would have been rude not to, right?
and some odds and ends... the stamps bottom left, were being demo'd, see photo below..  I couldn't resist them

 stunning in black and white, with a pop of sponged colour and a few dots of liquid pearls through the wreath.

Don't often take pictures at this show, but as I had my camera with me, making my neck ache, I took one to show how empty the hall is - anyone who's been before will probably be amazed to hear this was just at lunchtime when the place is normally heaving!

Still, I don't think I did too badly, and got home in a decent time, every train on time and right at the platform as I arrived for it, which can't be bad!

Thanks for looking.

SCO4 - week 4

Don't know where the week's gone this week - well I do, lol, it's World Cup and Wimbledon again... anyhow, Monday saw the fourth colour prompt announced by Kristin for Summer of Colour 

These are this week's colours  -



Pink and Apple Green with a Smudge, Splash or Pop of Dark Green . I was laughing with pinkly-challenged twitter/blog buddy Sam that it would have to be flowers... so here we go!

I decided to work in my small Moleskine notebook again.

 I coloured my page with the bright green Portfoleo pastel and blended it with a damp babywipe, then added some more colour and wiped it with a paper towel before heat setting it.

I stamped the JoFY flowers (MN34) all the way round the page as a border,

  then coloured the flowers with a watercolour pencil and a waterbrush.

I used two shades of pink, although it doesn't look like it here, the light is awful for photos tonight - the darker flowers are just where I blotted less to dry the water!

I then used a dark green pencil for the dots between the flowers...






When I was trying to find somewhere with enough natural light to take the first photo, I looked out of my bedroom window and saw these great clouds - nothing to do with the Summer of Colour, but I loved the shapes, so have to share them!

this is zoomed in on the brightest part of the cloud in the first shot.
Anyhow, I'm entering my journal page, to the Summer of Colour here !!

Dragons Dream - TIO - K and a heart

Welcome to another challenge from the Dragons - thank you for rising to the stencil/N theme last time, I know we all loved visiting your entries.  I'll be announcing my Dreamboat 3 soon.

This fortnight, it's the turn of Silvia to choose, and she wants us to work with "K" and to use a heart.  Don't forget you need to use at least one real stamp, on your tag.

I was still stuck in stencil mode, so my hearts are stencilled in tinted Grunge Paste over a Fresco'd background  My word is Kiss..

 I used the Limited Edition Jo Firth-Young paints in Dolly Mix (background) and Amethyst, mixed into the grunge paste.
The heart is from the mini gothic romance stencil (crafters workshop), it's the bigger of the two.

Once the grunge paste was dry, I stamped a Kaisercraft script stamp using black archival, through the stencil so I didn't stamp onto the background too.

 I also added some small bubbly type dots to the background, rolling the stamp (it's from the new Ellen Vargo set EEV06 for Paperartsy) in Magenta Hue archival, some purply ribbon and the Tim Holtz word stick  I coloured the letters with my white sharpie marker and wiped the stick to remove the white paint from the rest of the word stick so it just sits in the recessed letters.

 time for some more extras  - a bunch of paper flowers from my rather extensive collection - these are all by Prima , and some heart brads.

We're looking forward to seeing what you dream up for us this time - have fun!

WOYWW 265 - the one after my birthday!

Thanks to everyone who visited last week and left birthday wishes. it was a great day, despite being at work - champagne and chocolate cake at lunchtime!!   I had lots of gorgeous hand-made cards - I blogged them in detail  here but will share just one group shot here before we get down to business!

So, here we are again, into July already and time for another global journey visiting desks and other workspaces. Julia will fill you in and provide the link here
Not one to disappoint Mary-Anne, I have some new stash to share...

the paintbrushes were a gift, I was given a voucher for my birthday for Country View Crafts (if you don't know them, check them out, their service is fabulous, speedy, efficient and for UK, free postage... and I bought a couple of extra Paperartsy mini stamps whilst I was browsing.. thanks, Lin!  And some more new stencils too.... You may spot Janet's handpainted mug (yellow) being utilised as a pen-pot in the background...

Also sitting on my square journal (page part done for Darcy's monthly challenge) is the last ATC I was waiting for for the anniversary, from Chris (Pearshapedchris) which I forgot to pose in last week's shot!
Hopefully you'll be able to click on the photo for a closer look.

I'm off to the stamp show at Newbury on Saturday (hope it stays dry, although I've just heard a forecast for the weekend... maybe they'll have got it wrong!) and hope to meet Mary Anne at least, (as well as some non-blogging crafty friends). You know what that will mean - MORE new stash next week!!

Have a great week, enjoy the desk hopping and see you soon.