A little catch up....

Here are a couple of bits and bobs I've made recently that have seen the light of day elsewhere but not on here....

Firstly a couple of journal pages that I used as examples in a basic stencil/mask tutorial for UKScrappers

(I'll probably put the tute on here eventually, but in the meantime if you'd like a read, it is available to UKS members in PDF form here)

The first one deals with the unfortunate fact that I'm now on the downhill slide towards 50! noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

How did this happen????  To be fair, I have got to admit that I'm enjoying my 40s more than either my 30s or my 20s - but I kind of wish I could be having all this fun in a body 20 years younger :D

The second page was a quickie to celebrate the fact that I'm booked in for a new tattoo!  It won't be happening until August, but the deposit's paid and I can't wait!

I'm having my very old Celtic style armband re-worked into a Haida  thunderbird - hence the "out with the old and in with the new!" bit...







Here's the old tattoo, done when I was still in my teens, I still really like it but it has got blurry with age (a bit like the rest of me :) ) and it doesn't really go with my Haida orca backpiece

And the bird is going to look something like this, nowhere near this big or intricate - but this gives you an idea of the general style and colouring:

My armband will become the horizontal black part of the wings (my tattooist is going to work my old design into something more "Haida-ish" :) ), and the heads of the bird will go up onto my shoulder with the tail and wing feathers hanging down onto my upper arm.

Exciting, if painful, stuff :)

And here's something completely different, over at Collabor-ART, I have paired up with the very talented Shirley.

We have each got hold of a pocket Japanese Moleskine journal (these things are very cool!  I got mine from my pal Vicki here)  and we are going to swap them back and forth adding to what's gone before until they are full (or we get bored :))

Fish by PEZ

I have already done a bit of work in mine to set the bright colourful tone I'm aiming for - and now it's ready for its first visit to Shirley's desk.

I think we are going to have lots of fun with this over the next few months.  I'll be sure to share how it develops

Old Skool!

I think I've actually finished this month's fabric CJ entry - for RainbowJoy - ahead of the due date - whoot!!!

I am still on my embroidery kick, can you tell? :D I really need to do something a little different next month, maybe felting....

Anyway - back to this month. The other CJ I am currently in is tattoo themed, and clearly the tattoo vibe has cross pollenated over to the fabric CJ this month.

I have always loved the old school "Sailor Jerry" style of bold, iconic tattoo designs, not that I have any like that me'self. But I love them on other people - swallows, nautical stars, pin up girls and of course the classic sacred heart.

So - I sketched a sacred heart with scroll onto linen, and embroidered over the top with black thread for the outline, and various different variegated threads for the colour.

The "MUM" is black satin cord couched onto the top of the scroll with black cotton.

The "old school" is hand drawn onto cream hockey tape

And I got the lovely fabric from good old ebay

I made a bit of a mess of the binding, which is a pain, (it's not as wonky at the top right corner as the photo makes it look, though) - but I'm still a novice at this quilting thang. I'll get the hang of it eventually.

it's not quite Big In Japan...

.... more like 5 minutes of fame in Taiwan.... but hey, I'll take it :D

My mate Anam over in Oil Country was approached at the tail end of last year by a tattoo magazine from Taiwan called 'Tattoo Extreme', as they wanted to run a piece on her tattoo-related scrapbooking.

They were clearly impressed by what she sent them as the result was a 7 page article (should have been 8 pages but one got missed off in a printing error, apparently)

You can see the full article here

And at the top of page 7 (see above), if you look very carefully, you'll find me :)

Three of the bits on that page are mine, and there are also contributions from my Tattoo CJ pals Lori and Willow, and the lovely Rhomany too.

Great fun - thanks for including me in your project, Anam x

I'm slowly playing catch up....

I have been getting worryingly behind with my collaborative commitments recently, partly because life in general has been busy, and partly because the fabric work I have been doing is so much more time consuming than paper stuff.

So I am pleased to have got another entry for the Tattoo CJ done and dusted

This is Vicky's book and her theme is "My First Tattoo"

Well, my first tattoo is verrry old :)

I had it done when I was just 16 (sorry Dad!!!!), and it is a Hawkwind logo.

For those of you too young to remember the space rock geniuses (geneii??) that were Hawkwind, here's what the logo is supposed to look like:


And here is the oh-so-cute Dave Brock, who was singer/guitarist in the band in their best era:



I got a Christmas card from him one year, I nearly fainted with joy!
I've still got it somewhere.....must try to find it......

Ahhh, Hawkwind, Here and Now, the Stonehenge free festival, those were the days!

Anyway, back to the CJ

The background was made with glimmer mists (which makes it so difficult to photograph!) and a mask I cut of the band logo from acetate.

There is also a fair bit of stamping of suitably "space rocky" swirls and things using pigment inks in toning colours.

I highlighted my tattoo on the photo with a little pronged frame thing (I can't remember the proper word for these - a conch? something like that), stamped and embossed the title, handwrote the journalling, and edged the lot with acrylic paint.

That was about it

Close up of the journalling:



(the bit at the end isn't very clear in the photo, it says "I thought it was so damn COOL at the time, but to be fair, it hasn't aged all that well :)")

Close up of the left hand page - I was trying to capture the shimmeryness.... glimmer mists are so fab but you just can't capture it in a photo....



Now on to the next Fabric CJ entry - see you in three weeks!

Creating shouldn't be so difficult...it never used to be

....but this CJ entry has taken me nigh on a week, and it really shouldn't have taken anywhere near that long!

Anyway, it's done now :)

This is my entry in Lori's book in the Tattoo CJ circle. Her theme is "the good, the bad and the ugly" - great fun theme - it gave me an excuse to scour the net for some really naaaasty tattoos, and also some really amazingly wonderful ones.


The actual layout uses all sorts of random stuff I had lying about - the fabulous leg was cut out of a tattoo mag; the black netting used to add a bit of texture to the background, while also toning down the bold pattern of the floral paper underneath, was cut out of an old pair of Connor's tracksuit bottoms lol; and the black tape around the edges of the pages is hockey tape - which is JUST like 7 Gypsies bookbinding tape but about a tenth of the price :)

I got the gorgeous wooden swallows from Etsy.



The text up in the top right hand corner (which is somewhat less violently pink in real life, the flash messes with it) was generated with an Around The Block label machine - just like an old fashioned Dymo but with cooler fonts



I made my leggy lady a footrest from red felt, with stamped calico labels for three little accordion books - these contain photos of good, bad, and ugly tattoos I had found on my Google expedition. I had to hand sew this onto the paper and mesh backing, because my sewing machine wasn't having any of it.

The accordion book covers were made with some leather-style vinyl I picked up in the scrapstore years ago. It was white, but I coloured it with red and black alcohol inks, and perforated it around the borders of each cover with a tracing wheel, which you can't really see in the pics, but it makes them look quite convincing IRL.


The accordion books look like this ^ once opened.

A closer look at the contents of the three books is below:

The good


The bad


The ugly


So that's one CJ down 2 more to go in the next couple of weeks - it's a good job I have deadlines because it is keeping me making stuff even when I'm not really in the mood for it. I know I would be really frustrated with myself if I let myself stop altogether.

This appears to be my 600th post

Is "blog candy" traditional? I think it is. OK, please feel free to comment on this or any other recent post. I'll choose someone at random from anyone who comments on anything at all over the next 2 days, and send a little goodie bag of nice things :)

It's always cool to get a handle on who out there is actually paying attention.... :)

Anyway - here's a badly photographed CJ entry.

The theme for this journal is "the story behind your tattoo", so I've homed in on my most recent one (my backpiece of the mother and baby orcas) and explained what it means to me.

Rather than being a double page spread this one has the "why orcas?" page on top, which then lifts up to reveal the page with the tags. So, no, I don't have the binding holes on the wrong sides :P

I went a bit crazy with my new sewing machine on this, just because I could :) So the big orca on the first page is a little "quilt", complete with wadding. I stamped my beautiful Michelle Ward original onto denim, and then painted over the top with Lumiere paint. Then I machine sewed BADLY around it a few times.

The smaller orca is the same stamp on clear shrink plastic with gold ink. I punched the holes before shrinking and hand sewed it to the page.



Oh and the background is three colours of Ranger pearlescent acrylics scraped onto cheap watercolour paper using an old credit card.

On the second page there is a naaaasty photo of my flabby back. I would have preferred not to expose my extreme chub to the world but I can hardly do a CJ entry on my backpiece without a photo of my back! :)



The tags explain what the tattoo means to me - freedom, motherhood, Canada and the most beautiful sport on god's earth.

The little tiny acrylic picture frame (1" square) holds a photo of the tat in progress:

And I made the embellishment below by embossing a thin sheet of copper over an Orca pendant I bought when I was in Vancouver (and highlighted it with acrylic paint and alcohol ink)



So, hopefully, now everyone knows - that's why orcas! :)

Taking the scenic route....

....as Sir Timmy would say.

Here's my entry in Willow's tattoo CJ.

The theme of it is "a tattoo tour" - and basically the idea is similar to Ann's CJ that I did last month - it's a "show me all your tattoos" type thing - but the vibe is less scrapbooky and more artsy/collage.

So that meant that despite the similar theme it really did feel like doing something totally different. And it was mucho fun.

I know I say that about virtually everything :D But I really DO have so much fun making stuff - it's like being in pre-school again :)

I started this one off by cutting lots of relevant words and phrases from some old tattoo mags and sticking them onto some DCWV 'Far East' paper, more for the texture than the pattern as it was going to be fairly well covered up:



Then I toned it all down with some scraped on gesso, and added a wash of yellow, orange, red and purple acrylic paints:



The background was finished off by stamping with a GPP corrugated cardboard style stamp in brown chalk ink and edging with deep purple distress ink (I don't have a separate pic of that stage but you can see it clearly enough in the main photo above)


The lady is an image transfer of an inkjet print onto watercolour paper using Stewart Superior Transfer Ink (I love the soft quality of these transfers), coloured with watercolour pencils.

I cut stencils in a post it note for the crosses (which mark the locations of my five tattoos) and the dotted lines, and used chalk ink cats eyes DTP through the stencils to decorate her.

The road sign (Viva Las Vegas stamps) was stamped onto some Basic Grey spotty paper, watercoloured with brown dye ink and a waterbrush, and covered in crackle glaze.

The shrink plastic bird (Tim Holtz) is completely irrelevant but I had it lying around and thought it looked good :)



I printed pictures of my tattoos on transparency, cut them out using a stencil cutter (heat tool), and stained the edges with brown ink to make it look like they had been burnt. Each of these was tied onto the background using brown waxed thread.

To each of the pockets, I tied a tag which had been sprayed with orange and red glimmer mists, which explained a little about each tattoo.

I didn't go into huge detail though, as I figured that everyone who sees this will also have seen the layout I did in Ann's CJ, which has a little more info.

There is a swipe of titan buff paint behind each transparency just to make the tattoo pics clearer to view when the tags are out.



And the title "Take the Grand Tour" was cut in an art deco font on my Cricut (via SCAL software), painted with Aged Mahogany crackle paint, and then highlighted after drying with gold rub n buff to highlight the cracks.

And that's about it for that one. Can't wait to receive the next journal :)

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.

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.

Tattooed Heroes...my entry in the altered book

My book is now ready to post off, I've really enjoyed working in it - I hope the other girls do too. It might be the first time some of them have had an Altered Book to play with - but hopefully they will have fun with it. My first time was in a CJ round too - and that inspired me to make one of my favourite CJ entries ever - so hopefully this one will inspire a bit of experimentation too, at least it will give people something a little different to work on.

Here's the intro page for my book:

I used Hambly rub ons for the scrolls (and a Creative Imaginations one up in the top left). The word "celebrate" was cut on my Cricut using SCAL software (which can cut any true Type font). The rest of the title was stamped.

My main entry is pictured at the top of this post.

All the photos are from Modblog (don't click through if you're squeamish!), and are printed onto transparency - because I wanted some of the text from the old book to show through in places, and because I love the intensity of colour you get from a transparency.

Here are some close ups:


The super cool Leopard Girl. Her frame is made from funky foam, heated, stamped, and then painted once it had cooled down and set in shape. The black tribal motif below her was cut from a dingbat font using SCAL/Cricut, and then coloured with black pigment ink and clear embossed.

The white tribal motifs you can just see to the right of her were stencilled with white pigment ink through the waste cardstock left over from cutting the motifs.


This ripped page flap (actually about 5 pages stuck together for sturdiness) was painted black and then oversprayed with red glimmer mist. (The central section where the transparency was going to go was left plain though - with just a bit of white gesso toning down the underlying text a little). Once the transparency was stuck down and outlined with purple metallic pen, I stencilled tribal designs over the top using "watermelon" pigment ink from the new Ranger pigment range (those inks are da bomb!!!! AMAZING coverage over pretty much any surface)



Journalling on the back of the page flap - handwritten with certain words stamped for emphasis - pretty self explanatory. Again over a stencilled design (this time using "snow cap" ink)


I just LOVE the white ink tribal design on this guy's forehead - stunning work. Hard to see in the photo but this chap is set into a niche cut through the pages of the book. I dry brushed some deep purple paint around the outside of the niche to provide a subtle frame. And set some tiny microbeads into the corners.


This guy looks super cool - but that's one look I definitely won't be copying, don't think it would go down too well in the office :) He is set into pearly coloured paint with some red glimmer mist sprayed into the mix. The border of the page has been cut into a zig zag, and then stuck down onto some more pages underneath, just to give a bit of interest/texture to the edge of the page.


And finally a close up of the X as you can't see it all that clearly in the main picture. This was also cut with SCAL - 5 times - and then all the pieces were stuck together to make the letter nice and thick like chipboard. The top X was coloured with watermelon ink and then overpainted with black soot crackle paint. So when it cracked you could see the red beneath. The rest of the "Xtreme!" title was stamped.

I think that's everything. Now I just need to wait 9 months for the book to come home again - it's like waiting for a baby :)

More Little Boxes

I'm on the home stretch now :) 13 down, 8 to go

These four little buildings have one thing in common - they all feature image transfers from a tattoo magazine.

I'd forgotten how easy and how much fun gel medium transfers are from magazine pages - it's a lot easier than from a photocopy - less scrubbing to get the paper off.

I did one transfer into metallic paint on card, one onto cork, one over some vintage sheet music and one onto canvas.

First up a couple of little churches - these were made in pretty much the same way. The main body of each church was made by rubbing green and brown pigment inks over pale yellow textured card, and then sprinkling and heating some bronze UTEE randomly over the inked surface. I then cut the church shape, with a window, and stuck the transferred tattoo image behind. I stamped a Zetti image of filigree arches all over the churches just to add a little detail - and outlined the building and the window with copper Krylon pen. The little cross made from twigs from my garden and a bit of copper wire was the finishing touch.

The next building has a more traditional tattoo image - so I decided to make a tattoo studio for our little community - called the House of Pain :) Way to reassure the clientele :) The image transfer of the dragon tattoo is on a sheet of cork, which gives a nice texture. The roof of the tattoo studio is made from little vinyl brick stickers that I have had forever, and only remembered last night - they are perfect for this project. I have used platinum UTEE for the "cement" in between the bricks. And yes - I know a roof made of bricks is a little unusual :)

Finally I was inspired by the Japanese horse design on my last transferred tattoo to make an Oriental palace. I have a feeling that pagodas are more Chinese than Japanese, but hopefully nobody will mind my cross cultural faux pas.

The Emperor's horse was transferred onto canvas, out of which I cut the pagoda shape freehand. I painted roughly around the horse with red paint and stamped some kanji-like characters in black. Gold UTEE edging and an Oriental charm attached with red brads complete this piece, which was mounted onto card for stability.

I am so enjoying making these little beauties - and also receiving everyone else's, as the swaps are starting to come in now.

Please check out the gallery over the the Little Boxes web page to see some of the miniature masterpieces that have already been sent in - check back every weekend as I add more.