Hello

This was a card I made during our recent media blackout  after construction workers killed the main cable and knocked out phone, tv and broadband for miles around and it took weeks to get it sorted out. I am waiting to see if the bill reflects the time we were without services...and if not I will be making a claim...but the down time saw an increase in productivity in other areas of life...including some creative time.

The construction site is still active so we are really hoping they will be more careful moving forward, but for now its good to be back up and running.

Until next time
Cxx

Forever Fearless

Last year a friend put me onto an art journal group with weekly  inspiration prompts - the kind that you can dip in and out of whenever you like - and this was made for the first prompt of 2019. The prompt was words and it also had a mood board to go along with it. I chose to work on this grey board book page.

 I first covered the entire page is some newsprint style designer paper and
lifted the colours (pink and blue) and a little grunge form the mood board.  I used DecoArt media line fluid acrylics for the background and Distress Oxide inks for the heart.
I used black modelling paste and a stencil for the Forever and Fearless wording and once it was dry I used Treasure Gold over the top. The Here I am is a chipboard piece which I painted with fluid acrylic, stamped over with black archival and added touches of treasure gold for highlights.

Additional background stamping using black archival and a selection of mark maker stamps form VLVS and a little doodling with black and white gel pens finished it off. I was really pleased with how this piece came out and I am going to add the finished piece into a book I am building.

Until next time
C xx

Hello Friend...

This card  (one of many  this week) made  using freebies from a magazine. The magazine had a selection of stamps and stencils as free gifts. I know, we all know, they are factored into the price of the magazine and so not exactly free, but hey we use this to justify buying the  mag right?  But anyhow these freebies included smaller samples of stamp sets I already own but they are perfect for tags and atcs/coins etc and the mini stencils are great for any project. I love the font used in the sentiment stamps and just know I will use them loads....unlike the focal flower on this card which is possibly my least favourite of all...and that is the reason I chose to use it first.

I made the background for this card using one of the stencils (flowers and leaves)  and I  used three shades of distress oxides through the stencil, moving it randomly across the card until I was happy with the end result. I stamped the focal image onto white card three times...once using green ink to get the tint detailed leaves in green, and the other two which were fussy cut and layered, were stamped using memento black and coloured with promarkers. Although this flower will never be a firm favourite, I was happy enough with how this turned out and will try to find at least two other ways to use this image. Watch this space
Until next time,
C xx

Have an open heart.... First AJP of 2019

This is my project made on the first day of 2019...my first AJP of 2019  which was made for a swap in an art journal group. I had such fun getting all painty and inky after all the Christmas stuff and with January first being a holiday I was able to spend as much time as I needed just working on this to get it finished in one day.

I used a 7 x 10 inch Canson mixed media page for this project and started off with a  fairly thick layer of gesso randomly applied with a palette knife to give some natural texture to the base page.

My background colours were DecoArt media line fluid acrylics in Pyrrole Orange and Diarylide Yellow,  over which I used a scratchy stamp from Andy Skinner's Toxic set using black archival ink.

The borders were made using a Dylusions stencil and black archival ink (which I also used to ink the edges all the way around) Once the ink was dry I outlined the pattern using a broad white uni-ball signo gel pen.

The cat lady (Ranger Dylusions design by Dyan Reaveley) was stamped direct to the page and also onto linen card. I coloured the dress and shoes with poppy red promarker and cut  out the dress and the legs from the linen card and adhered them over the stamped image.

The hearts were a free stamp with the latest (Feb 2019) edition of Craft Stamper Magazine and all of then were made into mini pockets before being adhered to the page with gel  medium. The centre pocket was stuffed with assorted small and  mini hearts punched from red textured and red glitter card. The wording on that heart is from Tim Holtz  small talk (sticker stack)

This page is all packaged up and will be on its way to my swap partner tomorrow. It is my first project of 2019 and I will be kinda sad to see it go... but there will hopefully be hundreds of projects in 2019...so onward and upward
Until next time, Happy New Year!
C xx