Arches ATCs

I needed to do 3 ATCs on the theme of Arches.
I saw some lovely stamps and ordered
and paid for them 3 weeks ago,
before the swap closing date,
but they haven't come yet :-(

The swap is due to be mailed,
so I had to go to 'plan B'.

I live in Brecon, which is a beautiful
town with lots of Georgian architecture,
so I took my camera off into town
and took some photos of arches.

Two were arched doorways and
one was an arch 'feature' in the
middle of a wall (why?).

I decided to make the ATCs a little
interactive by placing some
stamped pieces behind the doors,
and went with the theme of
'love' and a wedding!

Geodeco Thingies

Above - gold & black Geodeco Thingie with hot glue heart


Zeborah came up with the idea for Geodeco Thingies,
and has put a tutorial on the
After Midnight Art Stamps website:

http://www.amstamps.com/geotut/

I have been meaning to make one for a while,
but always seemed to have other things to do,
so I decided to motivate myself by running
a Geodeco Thingies swap on CC Swaps:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CCSwaps/


Below - black & blue Geodeco thingie
with air dry clay swirl
(made in a Krafty Lady mould)
and blue star gems

J ATC

I am taking part of an alphabet ATC swap,
where we make one letter of the alphabet each fortnight.
We started with Z and are working our way to A.
I was a bit stumped with 'J' - I could think of lots of words,
but not many ways to represent them.

I finally decided to stop hoarding my gesso backgrounds
and used some for this 'J is for jigsaw' ATC.

Nice Matters Award

The Nice Matters Award is a new friendship award started by Bella Enchanted.
This award is for those bloggers who are NICE people;
good blog friends and those who INSPIRE good feelings and inspiration.
Also for those who are a POSITIVE influence on our blogging world.

Dawn very kindly nominated me, and you really need to
check out the gorgeous new furniture she has purchased:

http://goldbettyboop.blogspot.com/

I would like to nominate these people for a NICE BLOGGER award

Annie - http://anniesatticroom.blogspot.com/
Autumn - http://www.autumnlightdesigns.blogspot.com/
Bren - http://brens-stuff.blogspot.com/
Chrissy - I'd like to add her, but she hasn't shared her blog address!!!!
Fiona - http://www.fionascreations.blogspot.com/
Helen - http://vagabond35uk.wordpress.com/
Maggi - http://fromtheartgrotto.blogspot.com/
Pauline - http://thequietestone.blogspot.com/
Sally - http://sallycraft.blogspot.com/
Sweetpea - http://sweetpeasgotart-i-tude.blogspot.com/
Trish - http://www.trishbayley.com/techniqueszone/
Zeborah - http://zeborahloray.blogspot.com/

I could go on, but these few will be enough for now!

So to all the wonderful ladies listed above I would like to
THANK YOU for brightening my day with your blogs!

Hanging ATCs

I recently ran a 'Hanging ATCs' themed swap on CC Swaps.
Participants had to create a set of 3 ATCs
and they had to be able to be hung on a wall.
Some people hung their ATCs individually,
some in a vertical set, some in a horizontal set.

I made a 'shell' themed trio,
stamping brilliance inks in silver, gold and blue as a resist
to blue & green dye ink,
and making matching shrink plastic 'dangles'.

I was going to hang the ATCs onto a thin piece of driftwood,
but they are going to Australia,
and I was worried that the driftwood
might be a prohibited import,
so I created a twisted wire hanging arrangement.

I rather like the assymetrical nature of the wire,
and the fact that the ATCs don't hang level,
but if my swap partner wants to straighten
it out so that the ATCs hang level,
then there is enough flexibility for her to do that.

ArTiTextural Home Fat Book

I have been quiet for a couple of weeks because
I have been working on 55 fat book pages.

Each picture shows the backs of the pages on the left,
and the fronts on the right

I had to incorporate fabric onto the pages,
and originally made 55 glittery squares,
but couldn't come up with a design which used them in a way I liked,
so decided to use gauze down the side of the page instead.

This is the first fat (or chunky) book I have ever
worked on where the pages didn't need to be as near
identical as handmade pages can be.

It is also the first fat book I have ever worked on where
I will get to meet many of the contributors,
as this fat book is being made for the Portland Art & Soul retreat.



I think it will be a fantastic book,
and with 48 artists contributing,
it will certainly be fat!

I wasn't quite brave enough to make them all different,
but I did vary the design here and there and did five different colourways.

I found it interesting to see how the same design
can look quite different according to the colours used.
When I began working on these pages,
I liked the 'gold' version least, but having finished,
I think I like that page most of all!



Finally, the house which inspired the pages, built in 1873,
probably for the housekeeper and handyman/chauffeur
of the governor of the local jail,
who lived in a much grander house next door!