Back from down under and tag-a-day round two.

Hi everyone and thanks for dropping in. As mentioned yesterday, I am finally back from Australia where I spent most of July and August with my little grand children. After winter there, it's back into nearly Autumn here in the northern hemisphere, but I had the most amazing time both with family and meeting some craft friends too. More about that at the end of this post.

Sorry for the terrible picture, but they just never stood still lol...

Towards the end of August Spring is on the way....

Today will see the start of a new challenge I have set myself, namely to create a tag a day for 10 days in a row....
Here's number 1.

It's happened to me before, when back after a long time of no crafting, I find that my mojo is still left behind where ever I have been. Some years back I found that one good remedy is to do just a little project every day. So here we go, just a little tag, created on a small tag shaped piece of balsa wood. I got 10 of these ages ago and found them in my stash, no idea anymore where they came from or who made them, sorry.

I started by colouring some texture paste (Finnabair Sand Paste) with a little Decoart fluid acrylic in burnt umber. An idea I got from Brenda, who just did an amazing project for our latest A Vintage Journey challenge.

Next colour was added with various brown and blue toned paints by both Decoart and Golden.

More colour and toning down was achieved with the help of some Decoart Antiquing creams.

And finally the tag was embellished with some Calico Craftparts, altered with the help of paints and embossing powder and some flowers.

While in Australia, I spent one wonderful day meeting up with some crafty friends, we had such a great day, exchanged gifts and had the most amazing time!

Here they are, 4 wonderful Ozzy ladies, from left to right: Margaret, Heather, Helen, and Adriana.
Thank you girls for the most amazing day!!

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow I will share tag number two and some more photos of our crafty get together. Thanks for your visit today and have a great week!

Shabby Chic, - a card for Shimmerz and finally back

Hello all and lovely to have you drop in. I am back from Australia and soon more regular blog posts should appear here again. I apologize for it having been so quiet  and also for lack of comments on your blogs....
While I am super busy with piles of washing and unpacking after having let out our flat for two months, today I  just have a preview of my latest project for Shimmerz:

To see the rest and get a step by step, just head over to the Shimmerz Blog by clicking HERE.
Tomorrow normal blogging services will be resumed lol, hope to see you then....

Thanks for your visit today and happy crafting and creating!!

"Amaze" a mixed media canvas for Shimmerz

Hello all and thank you for your visit. August is just flying by and it is time for me to share another project on the Shimmerz Blog. Here is a little corner of a mixed media canvas I created.

Like usual, if you want to see the rest and how I made it, please hop over by clicking HERE

Hope you are all enjoying whatever you are up to and can find some creative time for yourself too!

Thanks for your visit like always

xxx

The Secret to Having it All, - a journal spread for Shimmerz

Hello all, hope you are doing well and thanks for dropping in. I want to start with apologizing for my lack of visiting and commenting, - but I am away from home (visiting my grandchildren in Australia) and time for the internet has been very limited.... Things will return to normal come September, but until then, please forgive me and I will try to catch up at least a bit when I am back home.
Today I have a scheduled project to share on the Shimmerz blog.

This is obviously just a little corner, if you want to see more, please join me over at Shimmerz!

Have a wonderful week

Altered Canvas Board for Shimmerz

Hello all hope you are all happy and healthy and thanks for dropping by. I am sharing a canvas board today on the Shimmerz Blog.
Here is a little corner of it to hopefully tempt you to have a look at the full project.

Meanwhile, thanks so much for dropping by here and look after yourselves!

xxxxx

Today is full of possibilities...

Welcome to my blog everyone and thank you for taking the time to come by. I hope July is going well for you....
I am going to share a little portrait with you that went through a few transformations along the way:

It was done as part of my Children of the Wild class with Kate Thomson and is based on the first full scale painting she guided us to do. The title of the class relates to the fact that all the paintings are based on children and their connection to animals, and this particular painting was based on a story around a girl with a birds nest on her head.
Here is the first stage, including the nest, the whole thing was taken from Kate's example.

Here is a close up of the nest, I left it quite loose and scribbly as I thought I would paint over it eventually anyway.:

This is Kate's painting that mine was based on, you can see I took a rather different interpretation, though I applied many of the same techniques.

Kate's picture is is on her Pinterest, so as it is public anyway, I think I can show it here too.

Anyway, I love Kate's original but as I am not really into the whole children with animals growing out of them thing, I decided to paint and draw over the bird's nest and add some further background elements, stamping and a sentiment,  to my version, so that is how I landed up here:

I now think I should have left alone with the sentiment, but there is always a next time, live and learn as they say....

Well that's it, thanks for your visit like always and hope you will find some time to do something creative today!

Until next time

xxxxx

More altered papers

Hello all and welcome, specially also to new followers, thank you for coming along on my arty journey!

I am on a mission to use up some of my huge collection of papers, and so I have now finished the second little mini book I have been working on this month.

I have shared in detail in earlier posts how to put minis like these together and also how I go about altering the papers used, if you are interested, you can find descriptions here, here and for the construction of the little book here.

Like usual I have used inks, background stamping, embossing and die cuts.

Most of the stamps used were designed by Gabrielle Polacco.

And here the final two pages, using exactly the same techniques once more, just with different colours.

Most of the dies used are from the Tim Holtz wild flower thinlits set.

And one final tag, to fit in the side pocket between two of the pages:

I embellished the tag with a couple of little home made Tyvek beads and that was pretty much it.

Well, I am glad my little books are finished now, - high time for some different kind of projects and art work, but more of thast in a few days to come. Thank you for your visit like always!

xxxxx

A Trio of tags for Shimmerz

Hello all and happy July to you all. As you read this I am on my way to Australia to visit my grand children, so I'm afraid my blog will go very quiet over the next weeks. I'll be there until the end of August. But there will be a few sneak peeks every now and then, and I am hoping I will also find the time to show you some further work in my sketch book that will come along with me.

For today just a little preview:

The rest can of course be seen over on the Shimmerz blog.

Thanks for coming by and as I set off to the Australian winter, I wish all my friends in the Northern Hemisphere a happy Summer with hopefully plenty of sunshine and creative time!

xxxxx

Reach for the stars, an altered file folder for Mixed Media Monthly

Happy July and welcome! The first of the month means a new challenge over on the Mixed Media Monthly challenge blog and this month our theme is "Reach for the Stars". I altered a file folder to keep all my travel documents safe.

We have an amazing sponsor this month, who will also do a guest design post. It's no other than the wonderful Seth Apter!!! Here is our graphic for the month, if you want to play in our challenge to be in with a chance to win one of his amazing stamp sets, don't forget to add this graphic to your post!

My project is a full size file folder and I started by cutting a bit of card slightly smaller than the folder and then adding some scrapbook paper as my first layer.

Next I gave it a thin coat of gesso and then added various elements such as lace, strips of fabric and tape to add some texture. I also did some stenciling, using a variety of texture pastes.

The only Seth Apter products I own are two of his stencils and I used elements from them both for my background.

Time to add some colour, - I used a mix of sprays, inks, Distress Crayons and Gelato, but decided to keep my folder in monochromes. Below a few close ups:

The next and final step was to add some embellishments:

A large stamped and embossed butterfly adhered over a clock die. Both are by Tim Holtz.

Highlighting the stencilled words with Gelato and Distress Crayon.

A large flower I had in my stash in similar colours was dry brushed with a little gesso, - I also added some stencilled and wooden stars and that was pretty much it.

Do hop over to the blog to see what my talented teamies have created and to get all the details of the challenge. Of course we all hope you will decide to play along and if you do, don't forget to add our graphic to your post!!

Thanks for your visit like always and have a creative month!

xxxxx

Creating substrates and an experiment

Hello all and thanks for dropping in. I am still hugely enjoying doing an online class with Kate Thomson called Children of the Wild. In one of the many videos Kate shows how to make amazing mixed media backgrounds and I had great fun experimenting. Here is a little portrait I did on one of them.

The backgrounds are very textured, so doing the portrait straight on top, was not easy, I think a next time I would do that differently. But, - you live and learn. Below some further substrate examples:

Kate suggests to do these on old ledger paper, but I don't have any of that, so instead I used some 12 by 12 scrapbook papers with a ledger like background. As the techniques are part of the class, I can't really share them, but here are some more samples:

I used chalk paints mostly Decoart and Paper Artsy and played around with a muted colour palette which I think suite these techniques so well. Obviously stamps and stencils play a part as well.

Kate's site is called Fractured Angelics. I so love the "fractured" elements she uses in her work and shows examples of in her class.

Here is a smaller piece, started as a 12 by 12 and then cut into smaller parts. I incorporated more blue and quin. gold in these ones.

Here is another cut part of the same piece and my portrait was done on one of the other smaller pieces.

Here you can see just how much texture there was on the substrate, - kind of obvious it was going to be hard to draw straight onto that, but I just had to give it a go. I used pencil, stabilo All and tinted charcoal for the drawing.

This is probably my favourite bit of the piece, I love how the colours work against the stencilled bits.

Anyway, that's it for now, I'll experiment some more, so stay tuned :o).

Thanks for your visit like always and have fun with being creative!

xxx