Cards - again!

So, I think I have to accept that I'm enjoying making a few cards again at the moment. I think it's because the quirky digi images from Vera Lane make it easy to do a quickie card with a gelli printed background from my stash (and I do have rather a large stash!). Anyone would think I have an association with VL but, honestly, I don't! I just like several of their images.

I made a couple of Thank You cards and a couple of Birthday cards, all for my Oriental craft group:

The card below uses an image from Onyx Expressions, sadly no longer in business:

And, because I liked the clean lines of the above card I used the same format for my Father-in-Law's birthday card (it's so hard to come up with new ideas for the older generation in the family each year but you can't really go wrong with Elvis can you?!)

That's it for today folks, thanks for looking; I'll be back soon. I'm 'planning' on being more active on my blog this year, can't promise anything but I can have a plan!

Christmas and New Year Stuff

During December I made a few Christmas cards just for close family and friends, some of which I actually remembered to photograph/scan. I keep forgetting that vital step recently, usually remembering just as the card goes into the post box!

Here are a couple I did remember to take photos of - the first background is done with Distress Oxides and the second is a gelli print; the images are from Vera Lane Studios on Etsy.

And here are are some New Year's cards, the last two for ladies in my Oriental craft group hence the nod to 'oriental' with the text stamp in the background. Top background is a gelli print, the others are done with Distress Oxides (you'd never believe these are my two favourite ways of doing backgrounds .....!!) :

Thanks for looking!

I'll be back soon ;)

A little book of Alice ......

Earlier this month I attended a workshop run by the very talented Mark Gould of DecoArt at Let's Be Creative, a gorgeous venue at Rogate, between Petersfield and Midhurst, owned by the lovely Brigitte O'Brien.

I'd attended a workshop with Mark before so knew it would be a fun and interesting day and it certainly was. We used a different background technique on every page and then used stamps/images/paints to complete the pages. The covers used prints of images from Salvadore Dali's illustrations of the Alice in Wonderland book and these were transferred to the board covers. The stamps were from a variety of companies and all paints were DecoArt.

Starting at the front cover, here are the pages of my book, not necessarily in the order I have them because it would be too easy for me to work out how to stop the photos jumping around the page on their own, wouldn't it!! I've cussed at them enough and whilst I still can't get the page with the splashes on to go central at least you can get to see the pages:

This one is on acrylic so the image is stamped on the back and painted in reverse.

Yes, I know, I painted the heart and spade the wrong way round - hey ho, I like to be different!

This background was done using embossing powders - possibly my least favourite look but it was a different technique to use.

This one was painted with chalkboard paint and cut to look like old slate. I'm going to go back in to this one at some point and add something at the top.

Hopefully I will manage to get to Let's Be Creative again before too long (they hold some amazing workshops) and I'm definitely going to stalk Mark and go to more of his in the future. 

A couple of ATCs

I am one of a group of 9 ladies who each month makes 9 ATCs, the subject decided by the hostess that month. We each send our creations to the hostess, she divvies them up and then sends us all a full set.

For September the theme was Trash Polka; having never heard of Trash Polka before I had to resort to old faithful Google and found that it's a style of tattoo. So here is the ATC I made for everyone:

In retrospect, and after seeing everyone else's, I would have been better off not crackling the background - after all, you don't often see people with crackled skin do you?!

I did enjoy this challenge and would definitely like to do something else along these lines in the future.

For October the theme was Crows - at least I know what they are!! I wanted to do something a bit different and knew about this image of a crow with a saying by Sadako Sadaki on his wings so went with that. The background was done using Distress Oxides and the 'world' is part of a circle cut from pages of an old National Geographic magazine which had been subjected to CitraSolve in the days when that was the thing to do! I have quite a stash that I'd forgotten about until I went hunting for something suitable for the world image so it's good to have had an excuse to actually use some of it. 

Thanks for taking the time to look - hopefully I'll be back with some more offerings soon.

A bit of Paint Pouring

Over the last few months I've become rather addicted to acrylic paint pouring. I spent several weeks watching YouTube videos, buying supplies and trying to catch up with other commitments so that I could clear some space in my craft room and get ready for action.

Here are the photos of the first few pours I'm willing to share (yes, there were some disasters!). This one is a swipe -

Another two swipes - both of these were still wet when I took the photos but they dried nicely and kept their colours and are now ready to varnish.

(The white at the bottom left is reflection, it is really black!)

I've learnt a lot from doing these, and from following Deby Coles website, Facebook group and YouTube videos. There are many people putting up videos and it's worth watching a selection as everyone has a different way of doing things. I have started off with PVA glue as my base but if I ever want to do more with my artwork (like selling it) then I would need to look into using more expensive ingredients as PVA glue can yellow over time. But, it's good enough to practice with!

So that's it for today - already a third of the way through October and I've managed 2 posts - I'd better buck up my ideas!! See you soon :)

And somehow it's October again - which means Blogtober 2017 is upon us!

So, having not blogged since August I felt I should up the mojo and have agreed to take part in Blogtober again.

To start with, since I don't really make cards these days (although I seem to have made several over the last few months!), here are a couple of quickie birthdays cards made for ladies in the About Oriental Stamp Art group. Again, images by Vera Lane, the backgrounds are done using Distress Oxides.

Thanks for looking; I'll be back with something other than cards very soon!

And yet another birthday ........

And today, it's Karen's birthday so I can finally blog her card! This card is along the same line's as Wendy's card in my previous post, just a different Vera Lane digi image. I do so love these images - I don't usually do 'cute', preferring grungy and messy playtimes, but these images have an quirky edge to them which I like. Again, I used a couple of my own hand made stamps to add extra dimension to the card.

That's it for birthday cards - I don't make many these days, possibly just 4-6 a year as I prefer to do more in the way of ATCs or canvases. So next time I'm here I promise to bring you something a little bit different!

Thanks for stopping by.