Monthly Calendar Journal for July

As many of you know by now, Kate Crane of the Kathryn Wheel, hosts a monthly calendar journal challenge. I have been doing this for exactly a year now as I started in July 2010. It is great fun and I highly recommend it. You can find out more on Kate's blog here Sorry the picture is so bright, really in reality the colour is much nicer. Please click anywhere on the picture to see the detail. Background and squares were all created with acrylic paints and various stamps, mainly Tim Holtz.

Gift for a sick friend

One of my art friends is battling with health issues. A group of us decided to put together a special gift for her. Each of us will create a page which will then be put together into a special book of well wishes for her. As I know she loves vintage I created my page in vintage style. The background was created with tissue, texture paste, gesso, acrylic paints and a paper napkin.

My computerwas invaded by a horrible virus which meant that I have not been able to post anything for several days. Thank goodness it is finally sorted. So here is a page created for my friend Roc's monthly journal prompt.
The theme this month was "If you had super powers what would you do?"



You can see what other artists have created in our flickr group
here

Shabby chic Dress form and a freebee

I have been somewhat obsessed with dress forms lately, but then you seem to see them everywhere just now. I was delighted when I found this wonderful little mini workshop on how to create them yourself. There are several videos and lots of photos and clear discriptions, and as far as online workshops go, it is pretty cheap. Details can be found here.

Anyway, here is my first attempt, - I can feel a new addiction coming on lol..


I have also created a new background, please feel free to use. This could be used to create the top of the dress form.

The images on this sheet are mostly from ephemera by the Graphics Fairy (Thank You!!) which I have turned into digital brushes.

Postcard swap"hand drawn faces"

In my art group there is a monthly postcard swap. This month the theme is "Hand Drawn faces". I used a mixture of Caran'dache water soluable crayons, water colour pencils and acrylic paints. The background was done with lots of different layers, torn vintage paper, paper napkins, gesso and golden fluid acrylics.

Monthly bird journal page "Zetti"

The theme this month in one of my art groups' monthly journal page swaps is Zetti bird. Well, anybody that knows me a bit knows that Zetti is not really my thing, but hey, nothing like a challenge and I really want to do this page swap for the whole year, - so here is my zetti bird.

Most collage bits are from various Crowabout sheets on flickr, thank you to Nancy Baumiller and others!

Mona and Friends annual ATC swap

These ATCs were done for a swap which the wonderful Marion from Bockel 24 is hosting. It is an annual blog ATC swap with the theme Mona and Friends. The aim is to make 3 ATCs with altered portraits of women by Rennaissance artists. You can find out more about this swap here

I decided to do all three of my ATCs with portraits of Angelo Bronzino. Though each one was a quite different portrait, they all have a similar look. I decided to alter mine in a sort of Gothic style, but not dark Gothic as I don't like that apart from at Halloween time.
I created the background with old papers, gesso, acrylic paints and inks. The images were altered with bits from two Paper Whimsey Gothic sheets and some bits from free collage sheets from Pringle Hill Studios and Paper Scraps. Thank you ladies!

New ATCs for a swap

Here is a set of new ATCs for a swap in one of my artgroups.
The theme is "Botanical". My ATCs became so bulky I had to make little envies for them again.... Here they are all ready to go out in their envies

And here are the actual ATCs




I used Pink Paislee Butterfly Garden papaers for the background of the ATCs and Tim Holtz papers for the envies.

Fabulous Candy

The wonderful Moira from British Stamp and Craft online shop Happy Daze is offering some fabulous candy on her new blog.
You can check it out here

Next to projects in mail art swap

Here are the next two projects for my mailart swap on "Life is like" quotes, - a postcard and a tag. Now I only have the envelope to do.
These two are in a more "blingy" style, so a bit different from the last two. I set myself the challenge to only use stamps, papers inks and embellies but no collage images for this swap.

Art Group Trade

In my art group there is a trade for making cards with quotes on "Life is like". We have to make an extra long skinny (3 x 7) an ATC, a postcard and an altered envelope. So far I have done the skinny and the ATC.

Blogger is being a pain!!

Like many people I think I am now also starting to experience serious problems with leaving comments on certain blogs. I just tried leaving comments for people that linked to the June calendar challenge (see post below) and found I could not leave comments for about half of the people. I found the same last night with several other blogs. Does anyone know what the H is going on? - this is sooooo fustrating and such a waste of time!

June monthly Calendar

Some of you will know that Kate Crane has been hosting a monthly Calendar/journal challenge for quite some time now. I have been doing this challenge for a year now (I think I found out about it in July last year). It's great fun, doing just a tiny bit of journaling each day. Details of the challenge can be found on Kate's blog here. There is a link there to the flickr group too. If you haven't done so yet, check it out. It's great to see everyone's individual styles.

Happy June veryone and thanks for visiting like always!

Set of tags

Having been away for most of the month of May, it is great to finally be back home and have some time to create.
Here is a set of tags I made with the free to use collage sheet posted below. I added embellishments, some stamping and a handmade charm to each tag.

New Giveaway

I thought it was high time for another freebie, so here is a sheet of tags for you, one is a jpeg the other a png. (With many thanks to the Graphics Fairy for the use of her wonderful images).
Individual tags are 2.5 by 4.5 ". Enjoy!

Monthly bird journal swap

The theme in my art group's monthly bird journal swap was "quote". Here is my page for May, - I love this Chinese proverb....

May Monthly Journal Prompt

I am back home at last from having been away for work and sadly on Monday I am off again until almost the end of the month. What I miss most is my art space...., and visiting all my bloggy friends, for there has been very little time for that also...
Anyway, in one of my art groups there is a monthly journal prompt, not an easy one this month, - the theme was: What would you do if you were not afraid? Well this is all I could come up with...(Please click on the image to see the detail)

May monthly calendar page

As I am going to be away from home for the most of May, I did my May monthly calendar page a bit earlier this month, just to have it ready in good time.
For those of you who don't know, quite a group of us are doing this every month. More information can be found on Kate's blog here
I am such a hopeless photographer, I think you'll have to click on the picture to see some of the detail.

Happy Easter and some Freebees

Here are some new papers I made, below you can see a project I did with one of them and a description of how to do it is in the post below that. Images used are almost all from The Graphics Fairy, thank you!!!

New ATCs

Here are some ATCs I made for a swap I am in at the VintagePhotoImage ATC yahoo group. The theme was whimsical flower babes. I haven't made ATCs for ages and actually found it quite a challenge.







They became so fat they did not fin in the normal sleeves, so I had to make little holders for them all, - a good way to use up some bits and pieces of paper if nothing else...


Finally, in the post above this are some more of my background papers free to use for any of your spring projects. I am also showing a photo of one of the papers I used to decorate a candle.
Here's how to do that:
Cut out some thin tissue paper. With low tack tape tape it to some normal copier paper, preferably in the middle of you paper.Load this paper into your printer.
Open your design and print on your printer's best setting onto the tissue paper. Carefully remove tissue paper from its backing. Layer it onto your chosen candle, holding it in place while you carefully heat it with your heatgun. The tissue paper melts onto your candle, - it's that easy, just take care to keep moving your heatgun so the wax does not melt too much. Have fun!