Look - I've gone all cutesy :)

This card isn't exactly my usual style, but I really enjoyed making it and I like how it has turned out.

The sweet little anime-style couple are a new stamp from Dewdrop Craftz - the stamp isn't actually released until Friday, but I was lucky enough to get hold of an early copy after asking very nicely, as I needed it for a wedding this Saturday.

The wedding is likely to be a little unconventional - as the couple are kind of gothy/punky/alternative, and many of the guests will be also.... so I decided to veer off the standard cream and white wedding colour scheme for this card.

A quick how-to:

I used an A6 Artoz card blank in pearlescent midnight blue, and cut it into a gothic arch shape.
Across the middle is a strip of decorative vellum with a silver damask pattern, edged with a silver krylon pen and stickified with my Xyron.
The rest of the card was stamped with Autumn Leaves flourish stamps in silver ink (chosen because they matched the design on the stickers so well), and then the whole thing was edged with the Krylon pen.
I also ran a length of dark blue satin ribbon across the vellum strip.

The dark blue velvet stickers at top and bottom were a gift from a friend at work who is a cardmaker - she thought they might work with my gothy wedding card, and she was right - thanks Shona!

The happy couple themselves were stamped in black versafine on plain white card, coloured in with lyra aquacolour crayons and a waterbrush, accented with purple stickles (his tie pin, her necklace), and then cut out with a slight border once dry. then I clear embossed the whole piece, and edged it with the silver krylon pen.

So, that's the card done.....now I just have to work out what on earth I'm going to WEAR!

Meet Markus

My new motor, isn't he purty?

Why Markus? Well, he's a nifty mover, and can turn on a penny.....

Pity it's not a Swedish car, that would have made more sense, but the Canucks haven't had many (make that any, ever) players from the home of Vauxhall, and besides I just wanted to honour our departing captain somehow - we never really got to say goodbye to him properly - and so he gets a little silver Corsa named after him whether it makes sense or not :) :)

It appears to be silly o' clock

But I kind of got on a roll with this CJ entry and wanted to finish it (I'll be shattered at work tomorrow, but).

This is my entry in Ann's tattoo CJ. Her theme is "tell me a story" - the idea being we explain the meanings behind our tattoos.

It's very much not my usual inky, painty, arty farty style - I even used patterned papers instead of making my own, which is unusal for me nowadays - in fact it's decidedly scrapbooky - but I really really like it :)

The cool thing about this particular CJ is that it's designed to hang up vertically - so a 2-page spread has a top and a bottom, not a right and a left. That makes an interesting change.

On the top page I had an awful lot of info to fit into a 6x6 page, so I did a bit of paper engineering to give me a bigger canvas. I like how it looks shut, and open it gave me plenty of room to explain the ins and outs of my 4 old tattoos (if you want to read, you'll need to click):



On the bottom page, which was all about my new backpiece, I HAD to use the beautiful orca stamp that Michelle carved for me. This is the best stamp I own without a shadow of a doubt.

Looks great doesn't it!

Behind the orca I put some cream vellum just to tone down the colours of the backpiece photo, as the bright reds and blues don't really go with the olive/currant papers I used.

That's the same reason I changed the colours of the Canucks logo, I hope they won't sue me for using the wrong Pantone :)

Here's the bottom page open:



I really enjoyed working in this book. It's always fun to do something a little different.

My last entry for the UKStampers 'Take One Stamp' CJ

(at least unless Petra's missing CJ ever turns up - which I really hope it does one day)

This is my entry for 3DJean's book - we had lovely giant chipboard tags to work on for this one, which is great because they can hold up heavy stuff like the thick texture paste background I put together for my page.

The stamp we were given was a fabulous pair of Zetti legs:

Cool aren't they.

My first attempt at this page was to make a Chinese dragon, with numerous pairs of stripey legs. It would have looked great if I could have got it to work :)

Having abandoned the dragon idea, I went for a puppet, as I figured that way I could cut the legs up and present them in a slightly different position to how they come out when stamped, as that would add a little variety to the book.

A quick how-to.

First I stamped and cut out a draft copy of the legs, and arranged them on the chipboard tag how I wanted them - I also sketched in her upper body. (copied from a picture I found on the net of a marionette, as I can only draw when I'm copying...)

Then I layered on a thick helping of texture paste all around where the puppet was due to end up, and etched swirls into the wet paste with the end of a paintbrush.


Once dry I sponged the paste randomly with Ranger pearlescent acrylic paints (cranberry, wild plum and raisin), and sprayed some dark purple and dark blue glimmer mist on for good measure. And when all that was dry I rubbed a very small amount of gold rub n buff over the top to highlight all the texture (a little of that stuff goes a very very long way)

Her legs were embossed in gold and coloured in with pink and orange glimmer mists (with a paintbrush rather than sprayed).

And her body was sketched onto plain white paper and painted over using various acrylic paints.

Button brads and a little bit of netting at her collar were her finishing touches, and then I glued her down in the valleys previously left without texture paste.

Some gold embroidery thread and lilac dymo tape finished the page.

This book has one more stop before it goes home to Jean, but that's a secret ;)

a new baby and a new tattoo

Don't panic - the baby isn't mine!

Huge congrats to Anam and Ian on the birth last night of their lovely baby girl - I woke this morning to a text with the happy news - and am so pleased for them all.

She has a beautiful name, but I will leave that up to Anam to reveal :)

And as for MY new baby :) My backpiece is now finished (and sore! lol)

It took a total of just under 9 hours over two sittings, and yesterday's sitting was way more painful than the first, no idea why.

But it was so worth it, Mike has done a great job and I love it!

The colours in the photo are a bit off - the waves are actually quite a bit darker, but you get the idea.

Blimey, is it the end of term already?

There's another school year gone. My baby is growing up so fast!!!

And bless him he didn't seem at all phased by the fact I insisted he go into the garden to have his photo taken with a blank piece of paper :)

Just standard random behaviour around these parts.

I didn't get my act together to make beautifully handcrafted gifts for the teachers this year - they've got nice smellies from Boots - but the card at least will ensure they don't forget Connor in a hurry. It's very "him", right down to the grubby fingernails :)

Little Boxes on the Hillside - literally :)

Ever had great fun taking part in a swap, and then got to the end of it, looked at all the lovely little pieces of art you have been sent, and then thought "now what do I do with all these??"

I did :)

So I made this.

It doesn't fit anywhere near all of my new houses on it, because as the swap hostess I am lucky enough to have a full set of 55. That is despite it being huge (my foot wasn't in there deliberately but I have left it in for scale). But I have set it up so that the houses are interchangeable (all stuck on with velcro) - so they will all see duty on the hillside at some point.

Before the velcro went on:



It's just a cheapo box canvas coloured with acrylic washes - took no time at all, but I really like how it looks with it's little town in place.

Squeeeee - I just got the BEST pressie!!!!

Thank you Anam!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

New look for my beloved Swindon Wildcats....

.... please don't sue the team, Mr Disney!!!

Separated at birth....

New Swindon logo:


Disney's High School Musical Wildcats logo:


eeek!!!

(I like the red, though....)

(thanks to eagle eyed Tracey who spotted the likeness, clearly a closet HSM watcher! :) )

Picket fences

It's been so long since I blogged anything creative that I've forgotten what I usually write...

ummm... these are for a swap, and I had a ton of fun making them....

The fences are made from wooden coffee stirrers from Maccy D's - they are narrower than lolly sticks, so better suited to the scale of this project.

The first one was Alison's idea (I was staring blankly at the three plain fences I had made and had no idea where to start, so I fired her a text - "pearly gates", she said - "brilliant!" I said :))

So I cut the fence posts down at the sides to resemble gates, collaged away with religious texts and a doyley, sprayed it to death with pearl Glimmer Mist, added a padlock with white wire, a rather dour looking angel with vellum wings, and one of my favourite quotes, and bob's your uncle :) Not really my usual style at all, but I like it.

One down, 2 to go....



The next one is more my usual kind of thing - purples and reds and a Stampotique goth girlie.

The fence for this one was primed with black gesso, and then overpainted with red and violet interference paints, stamped with watermelon pigment ink and then oversprayed with pearl Glimmer Mist (seeing as it was still out from the last one :))

The girl was coloured with watercolour pencils and a waterbrush, and her hair is made from thin black wire.

The angry cat and cobwebs (made from a cool snippet of fabric sent to me last month as a swap host gift by the lovely Audrey Hernandez) finish this one off nicely.

Last one:



Number three was just plain fun to make, although it has a sad story:

My poor little alien has crash landed, and as he sits amongst the rusty wreckage of his ship, all he can do is sit on a battered old farm fence and look folornly at the skies :( I'm sure he'll be rescued soon though.

The fence was stamped with musical notes (for his sad, homesick songs, sob), and then randomly overpainted with red-oxide acrylic paint and antique linen crackle paint. After the paint had cracked I went back over it all with a light coat of aged mahogany distress ink.

My alien pal was coloured with watercolour pencils and perched on top of the fence (I removed one post to make him more comfortable). His ship wreckage is made from a cool bit of rusty metal I found in the street (packrat, me???). And the little sign is just card and string, hung onto the fence with a small brad.

Oh... My... God!!! :) This ain't a town it's a city....

Ever wanted to know what roughly 1,200 little cardboard (mainly) houses look like???

They look like that :) (click on the pic for a better view)

That is (most of - I'm still waiting on 2 or 3 sets) the output from my recent Little Boxes swap.

I have a fairly large living room - approx 24 foot by 12 foot - and that is it completely covered.

I couldn't fit them all into one photo - hence the rather odd looking pic - I took 3 and merged them together in Photoshop (thanks again to Darby for the lend of his PC :))

Insane isn't it??? lol

Darbs and I were up till around 3am this morning sorting them all out into envelopes to be sent to the swapees.

I'd say we were about two thirds of the way done when we gave up.

More envelope stuffing tonight for me tonight then!

It'll all be worth the effort though when people start to receive their swaps :)

Blog holiday

hi peeps

I have come back from Disneyland Paris to find my PC at home has died - and I won't be able to blog from work (not that I'm ever supposed to :) ) because we are crazy busy

So I won't be blogging for a while - but I'm still alive :) and yes we had a fab time at Disney!