Travelling Light

I was well ahead of myself for the Sunday Postcard Art this week in the theme of 'Travel'.  I worked out a design and created it yesterday.  When I woke up this morning and got ready to take a picture, it just didn't look like anything I would create.  It was so sombre and bland.  All kind of beige on beige if you can imagine that.

A new way of looking at things

I started again with the same basic concepts but got out some lovely colourful ink (Dylusions London Blue and Vibrant Turquoise.) And could not resist adding some colour to the Union Flag.

The tickets were stamped with an Indigo Blue plate called Travel on various coloured paper with various archival inks.  I then cut them to ticket shape and punched the little half circles using a single hole punch.  There is a ticket wrapped around the card at the top right hand side with a hole punched right through the card.

Steam punk Traveller

The steam punk traveller and the sentiment are stamped in StazOn Jet Black.  Steam punk man had his binoculars 'enhanced' with some bronze paint applied with the lid from a waterbrush.  And the reflection on his lenses is create with a white souffle pen.

Fairies at the bottom of my garden?

I bought the Kate Crane DVD set 3 / 4 and decided to use a background technique she demonstrated.  Once I'd completed the background I realised I didn't have a clue what the page would be about.  I started playing around with various stamps and ended up using a toadstool stamp from the Dylusions range.  Having coloured and cut it out, I knew what else I needed - a fairy!
I'm not usually good with cutesy pictures so went on the hunt for a good image I could use.  Maybe a small vintage child image I could add wings...  I just couldn't find anything so in the end almost decided on yet another quirky drawing.
After several attempts I realised I couldn't draw a quirky fairy, because fairies are quirky.

Fairy in the forest

Instead I set about drawing what is part fairy, part pixie :)  Whatever she is, she's happy, and I like that.
I must buy some more Promarkers or Copic markers for these small faces / bodies.  trying to use heavy, gloopy paint just doesn't cut it.  Her wings have the tiniest touch of glitter, which you may just be able to see.

Just sitting on my toadstool feeling happy

My Pretty Summer Hair

I visited a website last night and they have a postcard challenge, and the topic for the week is 'Quirky'.  How could I resist?  I have never done a postcard size before, so this was something a little different.  It's a nice size to work with although I probably would have enjoyed this subject at any size.

As soon as I sat down to do the design I knew I wanted to use this months free stamp from Craft Stamper magazine, in fact I decided to use on the main image.

My Pretty Summer Hair done for Sunday Postcard Challenge (link below)

I used Dylusions Inks for the background and some Archival Inks for stamping.  The face is drawn on white coated paper and coloured with water soluble wax crayons.  The hair is this months freebie as mentioned above.

A close up of her very pretty hair :)

The Sunday Postcard blog is new to me but I will definitely be checking in there frequently.

Technique Time

About a year ago I was very interested in card making and decided to take the Jennifer McGuire course called Inspiration Canvas.  It was a great class and I learned lots of techniques, with each being produced on a small heart along with an embellishment in many cases.
As soon as I had completed 80% of the hearts, I watched the rest of the videos, played with the techniques on paper and then gradually put everything away in a cupboard.

This weekend I took everything out of the cupboard and finally finished the canvas!  It's not exactly my style now but I'm glad I did it.  The techniques are still great and the canvas will be a prompt for alternative techniques for things I'm currently working on.

12" x 12" Inspiration Showcase canvas

While I was finalising the remaining hearts and attaching it to the canvas, I realised that I really don't like following what someone else has done.  I would probably have been happier attaching the hearts to swing tags and writing descriptions on the back, but didn't think about it early enough.

Various techniques including resist, dry embossing and stamping with paint

Stamping on canvas, painting with pearl, heat embossing, mica powder and rust techniques

Rosette and Canvas heart

Embossed canvas 

Various ink, stamp and embossing techniques.  'Create' is coated in Glossy Accents

I couldn't resist switching out one of Jennifer McGuire's techniques and replacing with one of my own - rust!

I've been booked!

For weeks now I've been creating  a book and I finally finished it last night.  Except for the title plate which I want to make from metal, but will sort out later.
For now, here is my book which is to be titled 'Inspired'

Front Cover, the title will be 'Inspired"

The pages are made from mount board (usually used with frames).  The paper is Neenha solar white cardstock and I used a whole variety of Tim Holtz distress inks and Ranger Archival inks.

Time to Dance

Magic

Some of the backgrounds I stamped with paint, some I used water soluble wax crayons (I still don't know how that happens)

Being Good

This girl on this stamp reminds me of my sister, I have a couple that remind me of her.

I used a Hero Arts background stamp on this one and used Brilliance Moonlight White archival stamp pad from Tsukineko.  Leaves a lovely subtle image.

The page on the left is intentionally blank, I didn't want anything to detract from the right hand page.

Mr Phrenology Head

Rather than stamping him from the Stampers Anonymous stamp, I used the digital version and printed it from my computer on Neenah cardstock.  I coloured him with distress ink and then gave him a twinkle to his eye using a souffle pen

Rocket Scientist

There is only one page after this and that is the back cover, which is almost identical to the front cover.  The edges of the book have been painted with gold pen and the binding was done using a Zutter binder.
There's only one other picture to show....  the whole book!

Did I mention it was very small :)

ATC - little beginings

I have entered an ATC swap and, never having made an ATC before, I thought I'd make a couple extra.  The theme for this swap is 'metal' or metal related.  I had some great ideas that followed the theme, but what did I make?

Dream in Colour

Well, they are very vibrant, colourful ATC's with no sign of metal anywhere.  For this fiasco I blame the arrival of my new Dylusions spray inks from Dyan Reaveley.  They are just so bright and bold that I didn't want to stop playing with them.  I love how the colours blend and change as you look at them.  On the Dream in Colour card I used Bubble Gum Pink and Pure Sunshine.  All of the other shades are made by the colours blending together.

Smelly Cat

On this one I used London Blue and Bubble Gum Pink again.  The cat is cut from a bigger stamp and coloured with inktesil pencils.  I did some random stamping with various things and sprayed through a harlequin stencil with water to get the ghosted image.  The letters are tiny individual stamps I filled in using a soufflé pen.
And as for the 'metal' ATCs -  I made 4 in accordance with the theme, and two will be going into the mail today.  I will post photo's later once they have arrived with the recipient.

There's something fishy about this...

A couple of weeks ago, Captain Slow and I went to the aquarium where I saw a tank of Piranha fish, that glittered and shone as they swam.  They were the most beautiful colours and  the sparkle on their bodies looked like stardust stickles to me.

Last weekend I decided to do a journal page and test my theory that Piranha fish are made of stickles

You can't really see the sparkle in this photo but each fish has quite a bit of texture, the bodies have star dust stickles and the eyes have a coating of glossy accents to raise them and make them more 'eye' like.



This photo better shows the texture and the fish eye.  The fish were drawn and coloured with Inktensil pencils and then collaged to the page using Golden gel medium.



You can almost see the sparkle in this shot, but I must admit it does look more like Rock Candy distress stickles!

I'm a little rusty today

I have had so much fun over the past week making myself a pencil box!  A few months ago I found a Bronnley soap box that was the perfect size and started to paint and stamp on it and then lost interest.
About a week ago, I decided it had to change drastically - and it did!

My lovely grungy rusted heavy metal pencil case was born.

I had no idea I was going to enjoy making this so much and didn't take many photo's during the process, but for anyone interested I'll try to document what I did.

For the box, it was a small box originally holding three Bronnley brand soaps.

Metal banding on the top and around the side is cut from Tim Holtz grunge paper

The Euscutcheon is a Tim Holtz grunge board element

The rivets are pearl half domes usually placed in the centre of paper flowers

Painted in a battleship grey colour

The rust is applied by placing glue where you want the rust to appear, sprinkle with Crafty Notions Rust powder and spray with white vinegar.

Above is the empty box after I had painted the outside Grey.  You can see the untreated eustucheon at the top of the photo.

The box is now glued and painted in grey but no rusting is done yet.  Even now it looks heavy and is a shock when you pick it up and find it's just a light box.

More views of the eustucheon as I worked on the rusting process.  Before I applied the rust powder, I covered it completely with Distress Ink in Rust (what else!).  I made sure I covered all of the cut edges to that no grunge board was visible.
This is the eustucheon after the first spray with white vinegar.  I think I sprayed it three times by the time I finished

A close up of the rust, it looks real because it is real.
Once completed I covered everything with a layer or two of clear Golden Mat Medium to seal it.  I applied it with a brush but then stippled it with a cloth to removed brush marks on the rust.  The brush marks are only on the painted surfaces,

It is now full of markers and pens and sitting proudly on my book case.