From Bits and Pieces on my desk...

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to my new followers, you are all so very much appreciated!

I don't know about you but I always seem to collect an awful lot of bits and pieces on my work desk. Usually bits left over from other projects or bits I changed my mind about in the last minute. I pop them in a little empty container and promise myself to use them in a next project, and then more often than not, I don't.

Well, this weekend I set myself the challenge to use all the bits and pieces and nothing else to create something. The result is a couple of tags.

This is the first one. After completing it I decided to turn it into a Christmas card. (Yes I know it's two days away from Halloween so what am I doing making Christmas cards....)

Here is the second, after completing it I also turned it into a card.

Not exactly traditional Christmas colours but then hey, these were just bits and pieces on my desk and tell you what, there are still many more left, - I can feel a journal page coming on....
Have a good week everyone!

Spooky Halloween mood

Hello everyone! Today it's my turn to post on the Artistic Stamper Creative Team blog.

 I have to be honest, I don't think I have made only one single Halloween project this year, and it's not this one, but this one has at least a bit of a Halloweeny mood to it. To see the full project and how I put it together, please click here, and like usual I really appreciate the comments people leave, either here or over on the team's blog

Thank you for visiting!!

Friday Freebie a mixed bag....

Friday already again and here is this week's freebie. The paper is 5 x 7", I made it to be used as the front of a gift bag, with different sized matching tags. Obviously you could use it for any number of projects. I also made a Thanksgiving version of the paper for American friends. There is the usual jpeg sheet and individual pngs so you can resize if you want.

Twelve Tags of Christmas Funky Junky style # 6

Time seems to fly, for here we are already at tag # 6, half way! The Funky Junky is hosting this challenge and you can see her original tag here

My tag has turned out very different again, but there are several elements that inspired me: The lay-out, the use of a clock, the tree and I would have loved to have used Tim Holtz' Snowflake rosette die, but alas I don't own it so had to make do with a normal rosette which I dolled up a bit with one of my favourite parchment poinsettias. (They seem to become a bit of a trademark....) I also don't have a tree die, so I stamped my trees instead. The Funky Junky Boutique is sponsoring this challenge, - there is a fab prize to be won for someone who has completed all 12 tags. Well, I'm determined to complete all 12 of them, as they are great fun to do and make me do things that I would not normally think of.

Canvas and Parchment

Can you believe it, nearly the end of October.... It's my turn today to post on the Spellbinders Blog and as I was really not in the mood for another Halloween project, I did a Christmas one in stead....
This week we are showing different things that can be cut with the Grand Calibur.

Here's a little peep at my project. To see how I made it please go here and I would love it if you leave me a comment over there. Thanks for visiting!!

Grab a bargain!

This is a post for anyone who is interested in buying some second hand stamps. For the next few weeks I will be selling some grab bags of second hand stamps at the bargain price of £12.50 ($20) (15 Euros ) for a minimum of 5 stamps (depending on size) Included in your bag will be a mixture of wood-mounted and unmounted stamps. All of them are in excellent order and some are almost new and rarely used, all of them are non-cute, arty sort of stamps. Some Christmas stamps will be included also
For non UK customers there will be an additional charge for postage: $7 for outside Europe and  4 Euros for European customers. Included with your package will be a hand made tag and one or two little surprises.

If you are interested, please email me.

Play Time

Did quite a big tidy up at the weekend and got quite depressed about the amount of unused stash I have flying around, some of it so gorgeous, and yet there never seems time to play with it. Well no use moaning, so I decided what I needed was some me time and so I finally did some journaling again. Here's the result:

This started out as a 6 x 8 little flat canvas. I covered it in papers of the Prima Romance Novel paper collection (I have the 6 x 6 pad). Also added some washi tape and strips of old book pages. Then playtime started with gesso, acrylic paints, stencils, stamps and sprays. I alo added texture with Utee that I stamped into and some texture paste here and there. Love doing this. Some of the texture bits were high lighted with Treasdure Gold. For the vocal point I used a La Blanche stamp. I stamped it on tissue paper, coloured with Prisma Color and Inktense pencil and adhered it to the page. Because of the texture underneath the face got a bit blurred, so I stamped that again on stamping paper, cut it out and then matched it up. I went over some of the detail still with a black Pitt pen and a white gel pen. The final step was adding some shading with a charcoal pencil.

I glued it onto the front of the Prima Mixed Media album that I received from our amazing bosses at Snazzys.
Here is the other side, done in a very similar way. Most bits are from the Romance Novel pad, the heart and wings are from a Prima stamp. The wings actually come attached to the heart but I decided to use them in a different way.

Journal Cover Freebie

Sorry, this week's freebie is a day late, but sometimes life just gets in the way....

Something a bit different this week, two 6 x 8" papers which you could use as the front and back of a journal.
The textures in the background are from Playing with Brushes on Flickr. Thank you!!

Serenity

So I told you it was going to be inevitable...... I am going to turn into a scrapbooker......

The photo is of my beautiful daughter in law with little Lucia a few days after she was born.
I have to say, I really enjoy doing these arty LOs, messing about with gesso stamps and sprays, it's almost like doing a journal page. Here are a couple of close ups still

As using Gesso, stamps, inks and pretty papers are definitely my favourite products and using them together is a favourite technique, plus the subjects of my LO belong to my most favourite people in the world, I thought I would also enter this for Simon Says Stamp and Show, where the theme is "favourites" this week.

Funky Junky 12 Tags of Christmas, tags 3, 4 and 5

As I am on my Autumn break right now, I finally managed to catch up with the 12 tags of Christmas Funk Junky Style.

Here is number 3 

In the case of all of my tags, - they look very different from the originals, but I took inspiration from several elements: The colour and elements are very different but I used the words Merry Christmas, the snow flakes and the idea of the lattice behind the main snowflake. You can see the original tag here

This is my tag number 4

Again very different from the original, but I took inspiration from some of the elements: The general rustic look with the gingham background (in my case a Waltzing Mouse stamp), the gingham ribbon at the top and the word postcard. Here is the original for this one

And here finally is my tag number 5

 - I wished I could have made it it look more like the original but I don't own any of the dies she used and so had to improvise heavily. This time I took inspiration from the colour, the music background, the embellishment at the bottom with the rosette and snowflake and the word Noel. The original is here

And by the way, this challenge is sponsored by the Funky Junky Boutique. Anyone who plays along for all 12 tags is in with a chance to win a fabulous price!

I really enjoyed making these tags, taking inspiration like this makes me do things I would not have thought of otherwise and I am looking forward to the next one already which will be published on Monday October 22.

Sleeping Beauty

I suppose it was always going to happen..... now that I am a granny, I am probably going to turn into a scrap- booker too..... I have done the odd LO here and there before, but not very often, but I have a funny feeling that there will be more in the future......
This LO is heavily influenced by my two favourite scrap artists, Finnabair and Heather Jacobs
Thank you ladies for your constant inspiration!

Artistic Stamper project for October

Hello everyone, thank you for visiting my blog.
Today it is my turn to show a project on the Artistic Stamper Creative Team blog
Here is a sneak peek of it:

To see the full project, please click HERE and I would love it if you leave me a comment there.

Friday Freebie

This weeks freebie is another sheet of Christmas themed tags, but this time in much more muted colours. I have also made a matching 6 x 6" paper for each tag. Enjoy!