18 & 19 Dan Street

Phew!! Houses # 18 and 19 finally finished... only got 20 and 21 to go! This has become a more major undertaking than climbing Mount Everest!!! I'm absolutely exhausted from making all these houses!! Who would ever have thought that it could be so completely physically draining???

Of course, those among you with your fingers on the pulse will know that the previous paragraph is just a pathetic pretense. I have actually finished ALL of the houses already, and they were ALL sent off to the swap organiser on Wednesday!! AND they were a joy to make! You wouldn't deny me a bit of dramatic artistic license now, would you?

And anyway, my friend Kate, right? You know, Kate that I used to teach with in the college for the deaf all those years ago. Kate! Yes, the one that I used to go to Disney with every year with her and her kids, that one. Well, anyway anyway... Her sister Grania? You know, Grania, the horsey one that lived in Ireland all those years and was the editor of a countryside magazine? Well, anyway, Grania actually HAS climbed Mount Everest (check amazon for Grania Willis if you don't believe me!), and I'm sure she'd say it was harder than making a few houses out of card. But anyway, you're deliberately trying to distract me, you mischevious so-and-so!! I digress...

More stamping, hand painting, ink blending tomfoolery on these houses. You know, the kind of thing that is the bread and butter of this blog! Anyway anyway, I hope you like em! Click on the image for a better view :o)

Birds ATC

I made this for my friend Lesley's My Time to Craft challenge. This weeks challenge is "birds", so I thought it was time to give the two bird stamps I had made, another outing.

I tinted the card by blending brushed corduroy and broken china distress pads, then spritzed water onto it for a stained effect. I then dried it with a heat gun.

Finally, I stamped the two birds images in black versafine ink.

I hope you like it. Click on the image to enlarge it! :o)

House Tag Challenge

It's Friday again, so it must be time for the Tag You're It challenge!

This week the challenge is called "Our House", so how could I resist, seeing as I was already making houses for a swap I'm in?

Nothing new about this one technique-wise, just lots of the usual masking, ink blending and overstamping.

I hope you like it, click on the image for a larger view! :o)

Um.... 5 More Triangular ATCs

Well, I enjoyed making the last 5 so much, I thought I'd make 5 more! This time, I didn't have the sense to make two of them point-side down, so they'd be easier to photograph, so they're split into 2 images here. Click on either to enlarge them.

Nothing groundbreaking to say about these really! In the second, the word "bored" is deliberately spelled that way! Honestly!! :oD The 2 stamps used in the 4th are some that I had made for me as a one-off.

I hope you like em! Ta for taking a look! :o)

Fragments Mini-book

I'm getting quite hooked on these 2x2 books! They're a great size cos they're big enough to stamp on, but small enough that you can finish them quickly. This one is for a friends birthday, a few pages are duplicates of things in other projects, but I have mostly missed those out on the photos I've included on here. I hope you like it!

Click on any image to enlarge it.

Bits Mini-book

I've called this a mini-book, but perhaps it should really be called a micro-book, as it's only 2 inches square! It was intended as a kind of sampler, no set theme, just an attempt to incorporate a range of images and techniques on a small scale into one coherent whole.

As there are 18 sides plus covers in this, I'm not going to write about each one. Suffice it to say that the book incorporates stamping, masking, embossing, batik, dabbers and alcohol inks. That might sound a lot, but as the pages are so small, it didn't take to long to make. I hope you like it!

Click on any image to enlarge it.

Once upon a tag...

front back

I don't often say this, though it's often true, and in this case it's more true than ever.... this looks a lot better in the flesh than when photographed!!

This tag started out as something very different. My plan was to make some tags using predominantly PaperArtsy stamps. Once I got under way, (and I don't know if this ever happens to you, dear reader), it quickly developed a mind/voice of it's own, and I just went with it! I did manage to largely confine it to PaperArtsy stamps, though I did use a few others when my limited PaperArtsy collection didn't yield up the right images.

The jigsaw piece was created using the Batik technique I explored in my last posting. The splatter stamps were highlighted with glossy accents and the copper bookplate was distressed with espresso and a greenish dabber (I forget the name of the colour). A portion of the back of each side was decorated so that when the tag was torn and the edges held back by brads, they wouldn't be white.

The heart on the back of the tag was outlined with a Sakura Gold-Touch pen. The words "Love's Labours Lost" were printed out in brown from the PC, and stamped with an image in clear embossing ink, which was then allowed to dry to give a watermark effect. The fingerprint is the artist's own :o)

I hope you like it. Click on any image to enlarge it.

Batik Style Tags

These 3 tags use the batik tag technique explained by Tim Holtz on his blog. I used a selection of his stamps, my bird stamps and a couple of others from other sources.

Basically, each tag is stamped in a pale distress ink colour and then clear embossed. Using cut'n'dry foam, the tag is inked with darker distress inks, with the embossing acting as a resist.

Brown paper or newsprint is then placed over the embossing, and it is ironed with a hot iron until the embossing powder melts again and is soaked into the brown paper.

Finally, other images were stamped onto the tag, the edges were distressed by filing them and then applying walnut distress ink.

I hope you like them! Click on any image to enlarge it.

Bind-it-all Calendar - November

November, and a page made with my own stamps that I had made. The birds in flight are one stamp (stamped 1/2 off the page on the left and right sides) and the birds on the ground are another stamp.

The background was created using Tim Holtz's embossing powder/flicking technique from the Christmas tags series on his blog. There's not much else to say about this one, except that I think the stamps have given a really clear impression, and I'm pleased with them! :)

Quote reads "How sad would be November if we had no knowledge of the spring! - Edwin Way Teale"

December tomorrow!

Bind-it-all Calendar - October

It's October, so it must be halloween! Dried marigold distress ink background, overstamped with Tim Holtz's worn wallpaper stamp in black. Blood drips (a stamp of my own design, actually paint drips, but it works for this too!) stamped in fired brick distress ink.

Distressed slide mount outline was stamped onto white card that had been coloured with shabby shutters distress ink, applied with a baby wipe. Witch was stamped in black onto white card, coloured with green ink and a water brush, trimmed and fixed to the back of the slide mount. Slide mount was fixed to the background using silver snaps.

All that remained was to stamp the text in black and distress the edges of the design with black ink.

Quote reads "October is crisp days and cool nights, a time to curl up around the dancing flames and sink into a good book. - John Siner"

November to follow tomorrow!

Once Upon a December Night

I had the idea for this book back in September, and I wanted it to be a take on "Twas the Night Before Christmas", but with a more adult feel to it. I think it's the biggest thing I've ever made, 13 verses to the poem, and 32 pages in total to decorate.

The poem itself took quite a while to get right, but that was nothing to the task of trying to collect appropriate stamps to illustrate it. I searched for weeks, but was unable to find stamps of the right style to illustrate some of the verses. Eventually I designed a stamp of my own for one of the pages (it's for the verse about chimneys, you'll know it when you see it), and I used acetate/photograph/alcohol ink techniques for the 4 or 5 remaining verses.

Things I am particularly proud of? The book plate on the front which was plain chrome when I started. I painted it with brown acrylic paint and then attacked it with sandpaper - I think it looks great!

As there are 32 pages, the flipbook is quite large, so give it a few seconds to download! Click on the image below to try the interactive flipbook.

P.S. If it doesn't work for you, your browser may not have the latest version of the bit it needs to see the book. You can get it by following this link:

Click here to update your Flash player

Click on the slide show images below to see a gallery of the pages in this project!

Santa Tag

Another 6x3 tag for the tag swap I'm involved in. PaperArtsy holly border was stamped and embossed in gold. Fired brick distress pad applied to the whole tag, black soot distress pad applied to the holly border with a wet wipe. Eyelet surround is black card with a crackle background stamped and embossed in gold, then punched to shape. Santa is a rubbadubbadoo stamp, applied as low-level decoupage, which is to say it was separated into layers, but no 3d foam or silicone glue was used. This still gives a 3d effect, but it's much more subtle. Back of tag was stamped with my own avatar and "handmade" stamps and a tapestry snowflake stamp, in fired brick and aged mahogany.

Oh, and I almost forgot, there's a tiny amount of stickles glitter on his hat and beard, just for a bit of sparkle :o)

Click on the image to get a larger view.

Words Tag

Another of my own stamp designs, the original design shown on the left. I love this stamp, it makes such a crisp, clean impression, and is so versatile - the words can be kept in one block or separated to make 6 word stamps.

The tag was stamped and embossed with black sparkle embossing powder and the words were then coloured using Sakura glaze pens.

Designed by yours truly!

I've finally gotten around to having a sheet of my own stamp designs made. The image on the left shows the original stamp design, and on the right is an ATC made with the completed stamp.

This stamp is based around an image of my grandmother as a young girl, I hope she likes it!

In-flight Entertainment

This project is based around the movie descriptions in an Air Canada in-flight magazine. They were so short that taken out of context the sentences seemed a little bizarre, and many of them were not even recognisable as the movies they were supposed to be describing!




Pages 1/2 - "A commitment-phobic man keeps falling for a woman with no short term memory".



Pages 4/5 - "A professor framed for a murder in the Louvre unravels a religious mystery".



Pages 6/7 - "The son of a brilliant archaeologist receives the ancient map that his father died to protect".



Pages 8/9 - "A Manhattan orphan infiltrates a brutal gang in order to avenge his father's death".



Pages 10/11 - "After a series of unsuccesful romantic set-ups, a visually impaired man meets a woman he could fall for".



Pages 12/13 - "Stripped of her noblesse, a French woman goes to Versailles to try and win back her status". The attached mini-book contains an account of the famous case of "The Ghosts of Versailles", in which 2 women on holiday in Paris in 1901 claimed to have gone back to the time of Marie Antoinette.



Comments welcomed!