A final goodbye

Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to you all! Today is the day that we say farewell to our little gite in France and go on our way home. It's been totally wonderful, but I am also happy to go back again and can't wait to get back into my own craft space where I will have all my supplies to hand again.

So here is the final page of my nature journal (at least for the time being).

This page started with the little painting of the bird (copied from a photo). Next I had great fun creating the background with the help of stencils, inks, stamps and paints.

I also used some treasure gold and Lindy's Stampgang Moonshadow mists.
Next the little flowers were added. I painted them a few days ago and they were still flying around.

And finally a stamped butterfly and sentiment both from a JustRite set.

As you can see I adhered the butterfly to a scrap of gauze for a little more dimension.
Well there you have it, thank you for all your wonderful comments on this journal, it has been really encouraging and much appreciated!

There is never one way to do art  journaling, the main thing is to enjoy it and to do what gives you joy, and I certainly have done that. If you haven't tried it yet, I hope you will give it a go!
Have a creative day and thanks for stopping by!

Mini for Calico

Hello lovely visitors, thank you for dropping by here and welcome.
Today I am showing a second project as guest designer For Calico Crafts. I designed a mini using some of their wonderful products.

To get a full tutorial on how I made this, please head over to their blog HERE. The project has been there for a while, but I forgot to post it here, - how silly is that. If you have a minute, head over there, Calico Crafts is a great site that sell wonderful products!

Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful day full of sunshine and laughter.

Just a Little Note

Hello everyone and great to see you here, a warm welcome to you all.
Today is my turn for another project for the Artistic Stamper. I have altered a little note book to keep all my crafty notes together.

To see how I went about putting it together, please head over there by clicking HERE
Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful day!

Beauty is Everywhere

Good morning, good morning and thank you for dropping by even if by the time you read it it isn't morning at all lol...
Well, my holiday is slowly coming to an end, about 4 more days left. Even though I won't have such a wonderful garden to work in anymore, I still plan to continue my nature journal, at least occasionally as there are so many new techniques I still want to explore and it will be great when I have all my supplies at my disposal again....
Anyway, today's page started with an attempt to paint a wild rose:

Well of course after the rose was finished it needed some other elements to surround it, so out came the texture paste to add some texture and then it was coloured with Distress Inks. Some background stamping, a scrap of a paper serviette, some butterflies and bees and some text created with Donna Downey's inspirational words and there you have it. It all got a bit dark again, the water colour paper just takes up the inks so strongly, (well that's my excuse anyway)

The bee and butterfly are Artemio stamps

Paper serviette, this is one of my all time favourites, I have used it a lot. I love this technique and it certainly is a lot quicker than painting it all oneself...

I may have time to do one more page, will see how it goes. Hope everyone's week is going well, thank you for visiting and have a wonderful creative day!!

And the Magic Continues

Hello everyone, welcome and thank you for visiting again. Sorry this is my second post today. The first one was scheduled before we left and is a DT piece for Snazzys...

If you have been here earlier in the week, you will know that I am still away in France, having a magical time. It is just so beautiful here, hence the title of this post. While here I am working on a nature journal.
In my last post I showed some foxgloves, there are many growing around here and for some reason they fascinate me. So here is another page that features them among other things.

Like with my previous pages, it's a mixture of hand drawn and painted images and stamping. I think so far this is my favourite page, even though I am not happy with my hand painted images, I think I need a lot more practice....
Anyway, here are some close ups, warts and all:

Here I warmed the foxgloves up a bit more, probably a bit too much....

Some stamped butterflies, I think it's a Crafty Individual stamp...

hand painted Margeritues, they went rather wonky

From a Tim Holtz set

We are still here for a few more days, so I know there will still be another page or two, so bear with me...
Hope you are having a good and creative time where ever you are, thank you for visiting and see you next time.

JOFY Journal page for Snazzys

Good morning everyone. Today it is my turn to show a project over at Snazzys where we are showcasing the funky and quirky JOFY collection from Paper Artsy.

Here is a sneak peek of what I made. To see the full project, please head over to Snazzys, and I would love it if you left me a comment there.

Thank you for visiting and see you next time!

It's a Magical World...

Good morning and thank you so much for dropping by here. Welcome to friends old and new alike!
I am still very fortunate to have the time and piece to play in my nature journal. Today I am sharing a little painting of a foxglove (Digitalis), poisonous as you may know.

The following was copied from a site about this special plant:

Foxglove was used for working magic, for protection, and communicating with fairies, elves, and woodland spirits. It had many names; lion's mouth, fairy caps, folk's glove, and witches thimbles. In France, it is known as gant de notre dame, or our lady's glove.

I thought it interesting that while Foxglove (digitalis purpurea) is very poisonous to humans if misused, it is been used as a heart medicine and also for cleansing the kidneys.

The countryside here in our little place in Burgundy is filled with foxgloves, my drawing sadly is rather a poor specimen compared to the beauty of the real thing...

I mounted it on a bit of paper created with the help of kitchen salt. I was recently inspired by the beautiful papers created by Maria from Maria's Knutselplezier and before  left hope I made some papers to take along as I wanted to use some for this journal.

Anyway, the rest of te page was created with the help of Distress inks texture aste through a mask, and various background stamps. The dragon fly, another magical creature was of course a Tim Holtz stamp, stamped on water colour paper that was coloured with inks and moon shadow mists.

Though I took a ton of craft supplies with me, I completely forgot about embossing powders otherwise I would have embossed my sentiment in white. As an alternative I stamped with white paint but it was not very successful as you can see, I find clear stamps don't stamp very well with paint... I went over it in a white pen to make it a bit better.
Here is a close up still and some pictures of my salt papers

These are so much fun to do! Just splash away some wet media, inks, sprays or paints, sprinkle over some rock salt and leave to dry to let the magic happen all by itself!

Well that's it from me for today...

Rather a long post, so thank you for sticking with me and have a creative day!!

Evening serenity

Hi everyone, welcome to my little corner in blogland and thank you for dropping by.
Today I am showing you the second page of my nature journal. This one is more in an evening mood.

It's again a combination of stamped and hand drawn images. though this time they are mainly stamped and just enhanced a bit with hand drawing and colouring of course.

The bird was stamped with a Kaisercraft stamp, fussycut and adhered over a stamped wild flower from an Artemio set, I just added some coloured flowers at the top.

More Artemio wild flowers and a Pink Paislee rub on. Wished I hadn't added that as of course once it's on the page you can not really colour over it with water colour and it just sticks out, but hey ho, embrace imperfection as a certain famous crafter likes to say.

The background was created with that same famous person's tissue wrap, coloured with Distress Inks in various greens and browns and then stamped with some further Sheena Douglas wild flower stamps in Black Stazon.

Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for all your kind comments on my last page, I really hope you like this one too. There will be more to follow so hopefully you will not get too bored with them.

I am adding this to the Frilly and Funky challenge where the theme is "Summertime"

Thank you for visiting and hope it's lovely and sunny where you are! Happy creating!!

Nature Garden Journal

Bonjour everyone, lovely to see you here in my little place on the web.

Today I am sharing something a little different... As many of you know, I am in France at the moment and while here decided to play in a brand new journal. In this journal I am going to combine my two great arty loves, stamping and water colour painting.

Some of the elements you see on this page were hand drawn, the hazel twig on the left and some of the flowers on the right, some of the other flowers, the bee and the butterflies were stamped, as was some of the background obviously. I used a combination of water colour paint, water colour pencils and Distress Inks, as well as some Jet Black Archival ink for the stamped images.
Here are some close ups still

Hope you like it, - I did say it was a little different didn't I lol.

I'll leave you with a couple of photos of the lovely little garden where I sit and paint. It's gorgeous weather here, warm but not too hot and so peaceful and beautiful. I feel very privileged

.Thank you for visiting and I hope that you have some sunshine and beauty surrounding you where ever you are.
I am going to add this to the Simon Says Stamp and Show "Good to be Green" challenge