Envelope Swap

 I joined in another one of Sue Ralphs swaps, this time is was an envelope swap. You had to decorate an envelope, either a shop bought one, or make one yourself, so I decided to make mine. Dylusions paints and a bit of my favourite neon paints, some tim holtz tissue tape, and a Visible Image moth stamp, and Bobs your uncle!!!. Love it. 

Butterfly Tag

 In November, I entered another one of Sue Ralphs swaps, the  challenge is to make a tag, then swap it with your assigned partner. Well...I just can't help using neon paint in everything I do now!!.. it just lifts everything...including my mood, I think I have passed this love of these colours to my grandsons, because it is their go to colours too.

Recycled Tags Swap

 Over on the Indigoblu facebook page, Sue Ralph set up a recycled tags challenge swap, so I thought I would give it a go. You sign up to participate, then Sue pairs you with someone else and you make the stacked tags and post it to your designated partner. Well... I don't know how it happened but I was signed up with two people... heck!!. This challenge got me excited, because i had to think hard of what to use on my project, but when i haf finished them, I absolutely loved both of them, even tho they are both very different styles, I used the same stamp set as the focal point, Indigoblu's Jane stamp. I used lots of different items, from plastic milk cartons, ring pulls, plastic spoon, jigsaw pieces, old frames, and broken jewellery to name a few. I loved the outcome and I have to say I had a hard time parting with them...( is it wrong to love your own work!!)😁 

This is the other stacked tags

Which set do you like best?

Dina's Birds

I took another one of Dina Wakleys online classes again , the title of the class was "birds of a feather", I have to say that when I knew that the subject was birds, I wasn't too enamoured, I'm not really a bird drawing fan, not that I have ever done it!!!...case in point!! But as I am now a fully fledged fan of Dina Wakley and her fabulous free and easy manner when it comes to doing art, I thought I would give it a whirl.

We had to print out several photo's of different birds and choose one we liked to carbon copy the outline onto our prepared backgrounds, easy so far!!!....but then we had to paint them using loose brush strokes and scribbly lines!!!...heck!!

Next it was time to draw our own bird after being given brief instructions on how to do this using sectioned boxes to get proportions right, and then once again, proceed to paint with free and easy brush strokes and scribbly lines. Well..Dina, you make it look sooooo easy, but can I heck emulate your style, of which I adore.

An artist once said.."you paint who you are"...well, I am definitely too anal, over cautious, trying to be perfect, scared of making a mistake....crikey, it is only a piece of paper, what the heck is wrong with me.

I am not saying I don't like my results, infact, I think they are pretty amazing considering I have never ever done a bird in my life...but why oh why do I feel the need to try and fill in every feather!!!!...grrrrr.....practice practice practice.

The bird on the right is the traced one, the bird on the left is my hand drawn one.

After The Lunch

Hi all. I have started doing a journal of a collection of a few of my favourites.... verses, poems, quotes, sayings, passages from books that I like...etc. well, my absolute favourite piece of poetry is one by Wendy Cope, entitled 'After the Lunch',  the minute I read it I likened it to me and the relationship that I was in at the time!!.

 I used the fabulous window image from the ARCHITECTURE stamp set by The Artistic Stamper,  it has a relevance to my memories of the guy.

I stamped out the whole of the poem inside the little book. If you are wondering how it goes......

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes

The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes,

I wipe them away with a black woolly glove

And try not to notice Iv'e fallen in love.

On Waterloo bridge I am trying to think

This is nothing, you're high on the charm and the drink,

But the jukebox inside me is playing a song

That says something different, and when was it wrong.

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair

I am tempted to skip, you're a fool, I don't care,

The head does its best, but the heart is the boss,

I admit it before I am halfway across!!

Ooops Oh Well!!

Soooooo... I took another Dina Wakley online class, the accordion spine book class. I am guessing I will be doing a lot more of her classes now that she is more accessible. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this, and think it came out just great, very Dina-ish, I find it hard to do her sort of style without playing along with her.

The goddess Dina Wakley

All hail the absolute art goddess Dina Wakley!!. The one thing that has kept me sane in this lockdown is watching Dina Wakley' s  daily demo's, ...oh my word, why do I always come late to the party!! Why have I not seen her amazing work til now!!. But I absolutely love her style, with her "oops oh well" attitude and her wonderful free brush and pencil strokes that I want to emulate so bad.
Anyway, I took an online class of hers yesterday, called "Page In Motion",and I absolutely loved it. She showed us how to create a journal page with moving parts... dina style!!!. I am in lurvvvvvve.

Blossom With Time

Do artists blossom with time?...I certainly think so, when I look back at my style of crafting when I first started, it has definitely changed, I am still working on trying to be much looser, much freer, and less analytical, I'm not there yet,will I ever get there!!!,definitely not if I am always getting to a point where I dare not make another mark on it for fear of ruining it!!! heck...what do I have to fear...the piece will only go on the teetering mountain of previous stuff anyway!!LOL.

Anyway, enough of my mentality and on to this months challenge, in the garden. sorry guys for my overuse of this brilliant stencil yet again, but I love it, I love the random feel and the freeness that I was talking about, although I think this was more by chance than skill!!

The Dragonfly

the challenge for this month at The Artistic Stamper is "Words". so I have made this card with the lovely sentiment, you would not think that it is sooooo colourful and vibrant because when you try to photograph anything bling or neon, it just comes out so dull, so I apologise for the terrible photo, but..hey ho...I'm no David Bailey!!!

A Broken Winged Bird

So this months The Artistic Stamper challenge is "Words".. however you want to interpret that, you cannot deny that words can be very powerful, and the tone always make a difference, ask anyone who has analysed a text to death, reading it in different tones..LOL.
This card came about by just throwing stuff on a piece of card til I liked what I saw, you can just see the fabulous arched window from the architecture stamp set in the background  then I added the bird image and finally the fabulous sentiment.

Butterfly Friends

I was watching Hochanda on TV yesterday....I'm always watching Hochanda!!!!... especially when Lou Withers is on, who doesn't love a bit of Lou!!. Anyway, on her show there were some Brusho's, and some new brusho's called Sprinklit. you sprinkle this stuff on top of your brusho's and it makes them sparkle...I ordered some, my brusho's haven't seen the light of day for ages now, so I got them out, if you don't have any I would definitely recommend you do.

I started this card with some texture paste, stamped into it while it was still wet, then once dry I sprinkles the brusho powders on and squirted water on them, I love how they merge and mingle.Can't wait for my Sprinklits to arrive!!

Happy Neon Year!!!

Hellooooo everyone, Happy New Year to you all. I have started my crafty new year by using my absolute favourite colours...for the moment!!... yes... Neon colours, so vibrant, I just love em. At the moment I am only using some very cheap poster paint sticks from The Works, truth be told, I bought them for my Grandchildren to use, but as soon as we were having an art session, I felt like hiding them from Jack and Billy, I couldn't believe how gorgeous they were, they certainly don't feel like poster paints, they actually feel exactly like gellatos, rich and creamy, and glide over the paper like a dream.

Mixed Up Magic

Mixed media...who doesn't love it!!. I love the style, I love watching people do it...actually  I spend more time watching other people doing it than I actually do it!!! So for this months The Artistic Stamper challenge "Mixed Up" says mixed products and techniques, which is what I have done for my sample. I have used stamps, spray inks, stencils, gilding flakes, actually I like the effect of the gilding flakes.  I first glued up a Tracy Scott stamp and stamped the texture paste, then added the flakes, gorgeous, and I think I will be doing that technique again. I have to confess that I was making this into a journal cover, but cut it upside down so the spine was on the wrong side, so just cut the spine off, I can always cut a new journal front and glue this on the right way.

The Sound Of Music

My favourite movie by far is The Sound Of Music!!. I have it on DVD, but I still have to watch it when it comes on TV, so as this months challenge is all about "music", then obviously I have to interpret a song from that film. Yes....I can hear you groaning, heck, she is using that stencil again!!!....but I just love it, so I'm not gonna apologise for it!!!. 
I have used the DOG ROSE stencil to interpret the edelweiss...yes, give me a bit of poetic licence!!!..but it also shows how versatile that stencil is!!. I have also used the SEQUIN WASTE OPEN stamp to add a bit of texture in the background by scraping a small amount of texture paste on my card and stamping the sequin waste stamp into it.

Music and Memory

So... this months challenge at The Artistic Stamper is all about music, and however you interpret that, you cannot deny that when you hear a certain song it always takes you back to a particular memory relating to the tune, my own song that evokes memories is the one by Aerosmith....I dont wanna miss a thing!!!. it was one of those "Our Song" kinda things!!. let me know which song or tune brings back the most memories for you.

My Thoughts

For Septembers Artistic Stamper "Black and White" challenge I have decided to make a little book of thoughts, inspirational quotes, positive affirmations...stuff like that. I made the spine myself as the eileen hull spines were not long enough, this is a 6x6 book. I rounded the corners of the spine with my newest purchase, the WRMK corner chomper...I love it, my little corner rounder punch just doesn't do the job on anything thick, but these are wonderful.

Happy Birthday To Me!!

This post is from The Artistic Stamper Blog, written on the 21st August

Well guys...it is my birthday tomorrow...not that I want any more, but it is better than the alternative!!..lol. so I am gonna have a lovely day, quaffing champagne, being taken out wined and dined in my favourite restaurant, doesn't get any better than that for me.

So I suppose my looming birthday inspired me to actually make a birthday card!!. Boy oh boy, this card must have been the most frustrating card I have ever made, no matter what I did, what I threw on it, the inks just kept sinking into the card...grrrrrrr, could I heck make it more vibrant. I gessoed the back hoping that it would make the inks stay on the surface...nooooo....I must have wasted more ink, but I kept on, even sprayed it with my hairspray to keep the inks on the surface, and finally after all my efforts I was rewarded with this grungy loveliness, ooohh I do love to just throw ink and paint about and see what I get.

Anyway, thought for today, don't give up, it will be ok in the end (and I am not just on about my card), and a Happy Birthday to me for tomorrow.

Beach Huts

Still catching up on my blog posts, this is from Augusts anything goes challenge. As it is my friends birthday next week, I have decided to make her a set of go to cards....a card stash..(and an excuse to unload some of my crafty makes)!!. I made the card stash folder using a weetabix box, and covered it with old map pages, the pockets inside are made with the same map pages, after all, the cards in this set have a beach/travel/journey kinda theme.
After a bit of stamping, stencilling, spritzing, I stamped the little BEACH HUTS on the bottom of the folder, and coloured them with promarkers.

Wish

For Augusts Artistic Stamper "anything goes" challenge. My most used stencil of all time has to be the DOG ROSE stencil by Lesley Matthewson,
it is a huge A4 size stencil and has two flowers on it, so each flower fills an A5 size card with no trouble. I am loving the red and teal colour combo here.

All Woman!!

Just catching up and putting my Artistic Stamper posts on my own blog. Julys challenge...."celebrating women". what a fabulous subject!!. however you interpret it, you cannot deny that the female of the species are pretty damn awesome....well... I know that I am!!! I am not claiming to be some kind of superwoman, but when I look back at what I have achieved, and pretty much on my own with not a lot of help from anybody else, (my hardest problem is asking for help!!).. I think I have done amazing...so there you are!!....I am going to celebrate the magic that is me, and all you fabulous females out there.