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

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone is having exactly the kind of Christmas they need.
Merry Christmas one and all.

Cxx

Winter themed ATC coins

I made this trio of ATC coins for a swap which had a winter theme...and I made the little holder out of double sided patterned paper to keep them in place in the envelope while in transit.

The left hand one I used a resist wax with distress oxides for the sky and texture paste with ultra fine glitter for the snow.

The centre coin was made with acrylic paints that included a little shimmer in the sky and the snow had a little glitter added while the paint was wet.

The right hand side coin again had resist and oxides for the sky with white acrylic snow. The snowman was stamped onto card, fussy cut and adhered to the coin.

The stamping on each coin was using black archival ink

I really liked how they came out and I made quite a few of these in a similar style and the extras will be abandoned throughout the winter months as part of the art abandonment movement.

Until next time
Cxx

December square

December rounds out the year of swapping monthly decorated 4x4 squares and I chose to end with this snowy scene. I used a mix of blue distress oxides and white acrylic paint for the background and black archival for the stamping. The snowmen were fussy cut and adhered to the completed background. I am pretty pleased with how this one turned out.
Until next time
Cxx

November square

Just realised that it has been a full month since I posted anything here. We were hit by a particularly nasty virus which is still hanging around weeks later... But I cannot knowingly neglect this for too long so here is the 4x4 square I made for my November swap partner.

Until next time
Cxx

Home Sweet Home

These are samples from the Thursday art group at the Hospice. They are 7x4 inch hangers made with paper, punches and stamps and were great fun to make. Participants added lots of personalised features on their individual hangers, some relating to homes they grew up, other to homes they might like to live in. Lots of discussion went on while they worked and it was interesting to hear people's experiences. At the end of the session everyone had a completed hanger to be proud of.

Until next time
Cxx

October square

This is my 4x4 inch decorated square for October...as part of a year long swap at UK Stampers. When I think of October, Halloween immediately springs to mind as the most obvious theme...and I went with that!  I used a piece of embossed card from another project for my base (matted onto thick purple card) and two retired Stampin' Up! sets. The cobwebs and blood are from Ghoulish Grunge and the spider, bat and monsters are from Googly Ghouls. I like that it is cute and spooky rather than scary spooky and I hope my swap partner will like it.

Until next time
Cxx