Totally out of character!

I've made a card for my sister's birthday in January and I am sure she will be very surprised when she opens the envelope - there's no ink splashed around, no paint dolloped on and everything is very neat and tidy! I even kept my hands clean throughout the operation of making it! Both sides fold in and it ends up like a little book tied up with a ribbon.

I actually enjoyed making it but it was time consuming and I must admit that I don't always have enough patience to do fiddly bits. I think this sort of card will only be made for special occasions in future!

Snowy Days

Many years go by without a trace of snow in Devon but we've had enough over the past week to make up for it! It's very pretty and a novelty for a while but we are now getting a bit fed up with it because it's compacted in the driveway and lane, and of course the gritters don't come along the little lanes like ours.  Luckily Geoff's been home all week so I haven't had to drive - he's been taking me to and from work which is great.

I took a wander around the garden with my camera:

My Shadow - nice long legs despite the knobbly knees (it's the welly boots, honest!)

Dots & Spots

This card was made for a competion on one of my Yahoo groups, the theme being dots & spots.  The background was done using a couple of colours of Adirondack Colorwash Sprays through sequin waste, which I moved around as I sprayed.  That background sat in my drawer for quite some time just waiting for an opportunity to use it - I liked it too much to waste it on something that didn't deserve it - LOL! The butterfly was stamped on vellum and then decorated (dots and spots!) with a marker pen before being placed on top of it's shadow and having it's wings lifted. The flower is from Purple Onion Designs.

A tutorial - Colourwash with Salt

I have produced a (apologies for the very poor & yellowy photographs!) tutorial for the November Monthly Art Technique on the Arttechniques Yahoo Group which I thought I would post on the blog as well. Maybe it will useful information for someone!

Colour Wash with Salt

Supplies:

Water colour paper
1, 2 or 3 Water colour paints – depending on the look you want to achieve
Large (for water) and smaller (for paint) flat brushes
Rock salt / granular salt
Gesso (optional)

Using the larger brush, liberally brush the paper with clean water and then, using the smaller brush, lay on the lightest of your coloured paints.

Whilst still wet randomly lay on the other colour/s of paint

Brush over more water to blend the colours together, but don’t overdo it, you need to have some definition between the colours.

Sprinkle with the salt and leave to dry

The salt working:

Once fully dry brush the salt off of the paper and it’s ready to use.

If using bright colours as I have here (mainly for demo purposes) you can mute the brightness by brushing with some watered down gesso (about 50/50). Work gently and quickly so that you don’t disturb the colours in the underneath layer.

Leave to dry, flatten under heavy books if necessary.

ATC made using this background effect – over-stamped with light grey and green inks.

I followed this by using a light liquid blue water colour paint and salt from my salt grinder (don’t let on to DH – kitchen supplies are NOT meant to go into my craft room – LOL!), which gave a random effect with small and teeny weeny grains of salt. The colour is actually a lot better than it looks here; a pretty pale blue without the yellow tinge!

I made the card below using this background:

If you’ve got this far, thanks for looking! I do hope that you have enjoyed this technique and will give it a go.

A Card for my Mum

It's mum's birthday on 7th November so I made this card for her. The paper is from a Laura Ashley block.

A Junky Card

I am a member of a local craft group where we have a competition at each monthly meeting. The October competition was to make something using junk. After a quick hunt around I decided that the junk I had most of was wine labels, corks, foils etc (hic!) so I set to making a collage. It needed something to finish it off and I found the perfect thing on a visit to a pub in London - they had postcards advertising a make of rum and the bottle was just the right size to sit neatly on the edge of the card. (My son did query why I was hiding a stash of postcards in my bag! They were free .....!). Tying some shrink plastic tags around the neck of the bottle finished it off nicely.  OK, so I didn't win the competition but I am really pleased with the way the card came together.

Carrying on the Catch Up

A couple more swaps I've taken part in are ......

...... an ATC wap with the theme 'Women'. I chose to do a grungy background and topped it with a Mona Lisa image stamped on vellum. The braid and flower with gem were added to give a more feminine touch.

The other swap was with the Oriental Stamp Art group, I decorated a plain notebook, inside the covers as well as outside. It turned out really cute - seemed a pity to give it away!

Mushrooms and Citrasolve
Last month I was asked by one of the ladies in the Hearts in Touch group how I used citrasolve with the National Geographic pages. I need to mention that it was Adrienne Goodenough who first mentioned this technique on one of my groups, and it's a great one. I added my own twist by gently scrubbing off some of the colour with a small stiffish paintbrush and then adding shading and colour using watercolour markers.

I didn't actually need to do much to this to make it look like a woodland scene; the path (or I guess it could be a river with reflections in) and the white 'rocks' were already there as was the 'fallen log' in the background. I shaded the base and underneath the mushroom caps then ran a bit of brown up the left side to look like a tree.