A few more bits & pieces

Due to the house purchase being imminent I have been trying to finish off some swaps I've signed up for as I know that in a couple of weeks I will have a household painting brush (as against a crafting paintbrush!) permanently fixed to my hand so playtime will be very limited. And, I have no idea when I will get a craft room sorted in the new house.

This card is for a Vase swap on the Oriental Stamp Art group, the stamp is from Joanna Sheen and the background paper is a page from a school text book.

These ATCs were made for a swap on UK Art Swaps with the theme being blue & green. The background is fabric paper, made by sticking various pieces of torn papers, napkins, tissue etc randomly onto a thin cotton background, over-stamping, stitching and then sealing with matte gel medium. After adding the fairy images I added another layer of gel medium and sprinkled some fairy dust on before it dried.

Another one for UK Art Swaps, this time an Autumn postcard. The background was done with distress inks and the leaves were made using a technique I heard about from Hazel at KnitYoga called Drunken Scotch - it uses clear glue and alcohol inks. I tried a couple of different clear glues but the one that worked best for me was Glossy Accents. The large leaf stamp used on both the background and for the large drunken scotch leaf is by Stampers Best.

I had another play with my new stamps from Stampers Best, this time I used Charlie Chaplin, masked him, stamped with the harlequin background stamp from Cherry Pie and layered onto a piece of grey c/s which I ran through the Cuttlebug and then swiped with silver ink.

Now for something totally different - a card for Mum's birthday. This gorgeous stamp is from Chocolate Baroque;  I layered it up, painted with watercolours and added Stickles.

Hollywood Greats

I bought some really great stamps (Hollywood Greats set) from Stampers Best recently and have had fun playing around with them the past couple of days, masking and brayering and getting VERY inky fingers (why do I always do this when we are due to go out to dinner?!). I liked the idea of the layout (although perhaps Betty Grabel should perhaps be standing a bit straighter!), not sure about the bright blue background though - it's Hydrangea Stayzon and I thought at the time it was good to use Stayzon on the glossy CS. I'll definitely be playing around with this a bit more using different inks.

Fun with Fabric Paper

Time's got away from me yet again; that's house-hunting for you, it takes over your life :(.  But, we have now found a house, had our offer accepted and it's all going ahead so I now have to play, play, play in my craft room before it's taken away from me. Who knows how long it will be before I get set up in the new house.

On the Arttechniques group we were challenged to make fabric paper - what fun! It's very messy but very addictive and a great way to use up scraps of this and that (junky bits which I always seem to keep).  Here are photos of my first couple of efforts. This one is quite small (possibly 8" x 6") and I used pictures ripped from a napkin for the main design. The flowers didn't show up well enough for my liking so I stitched around them, added a bit of extra colour and then used a watered down gesso wash to soften the background a bit. I finished it off with 3D Dimensional paints and accent beads.

This one is about 10" x 12" and was done in more autumal shades (the colours don't show at all well in the photo), I added a few skeleton leaves and after adding more layers I stitched around the leaf shapes. I have now used this as the base for covers for a book which I am making pages for on the Oriental Stamp Art group - it still needs a some work but I'm getting there slowly and if I remember I'll add photos of the finished covers!

Catch up time .......

After a slow start I am now going great guns in my craft room  - I decided the best way to start messing  up that pristine room was to have a session making background papers, spraying inks, splashing paints etc. It worked! I've been doing a few cards/ATCs for swaps, a birthday card for MIL, a new baby card to welcome my first great neice into the world and a get well card for an online friends hubby. I'm not too good at doing cute but I gave it a try for the first two below! Scroll down for the ones using the new backgrounds I made.

Mum in Law's birthday card

Card for Ellie

Get well card for Leo's hubby

'Beauties' ATCs

Koi mingle card (Oriental Stamp Art group)

Orange & Black ATC swap - Cherry Pie



Wendy's Challenge

This was to use a virgin stamp from our stash.  I have MANY such stamps so it was hard to choose! Whilst I have used the 'Horizon' stamp (Coronado Island) several times I had not used either 'Fall Lady', also Coronado Island or 'Tide Poem' (Stampmagick) before despite them being 'must have' purchases at the time!

Unfortunately the base card decided to curl a little whilst I was trying to photograph it; it is straight really!

My new craft room ........

Well, here we are, new house (temporarily) and new craft room. This one definitely has lots of pro's such as its size and the fact it has lots of natural light and a sink but, there are cons too. Being rented on a short term let means we can't do ANYTHING here, so putting up shelving is a 'no-no'. I have things stacked high and every wall has a bookcase or similar against it - I am thinking I may have to have some back-to-back bookcases in the middle of the room but I'd rather not.  I do seem to have a LOT of UM's, that's them in the little plastic takeaway tubs! In fact, I think I have a lot of most things!! I still have 4 boxes to unpack .........

Row Houses

I signed up for a swap to make 5 row houses not really knowing what they were or what I was going to do.  They were great fun to make - I dug out some backgrounds I had in the draw full of 'precious papers' and went from there. Oh yes, they all had to include a button - that was the taxing bit!

OK, so you have to turn your head sideways to see this one. On my computer the photo is the right way but each time I try and put it on here it goes sideways! Pity as it's my favourite!