Tall Skinny Page - finished

Well, the swap stated that we had to
combine animals and children in a non-cute way....

I hope I achieved it!

Tall Skinny Pages

My fingers are covered in paint and ink!

These are the backgrounds for my tall & skinny pages
for a swap Sweetpea is hosting on CC Swaps.

I finally went shopping for cardstock
to make 26 tall and skinny pages,
and have spent some time this morning adding paint,
colorwash sprays, and stamped partial images.

My images are all ready to be printed and added,
so i hope to get these in the post early next week.

I may even post a picture of the
finished pages when they're done!

Underwater little beauties

Here are some 'Little Beauties' on an underwater theme,
for a swap I'm hostessing.




The mermaids are made with friendly plastic in an
Enchanted Gallery mould, and the fish
is made with air dry clay in a Krafty Lady mould.

Animals and 'art'

Please sign the petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

which may make this and other artists think again about the use of animals in their work.

This is barbaric and completely unacceptable in my opinion.

Deco pages

Just a couple more deco pages for the
NGS yahoo group deco book round robin...

Altered book round robin

I have joined a round robin altered book

There are 4 players,
and my theme is 'turquoise & copper'.
This is a nearly finished spread in the book:

I have also created a sign in page,
and a blank page, and hope my
collaborators are going to produce marvellous things!

Flourish ATCs

I made 2 ATCs with 'flourishes'
for a swap on CC Swaps.

I have seen lots of ATCs using flourishes recently,
including some absolutely stunning examples
(just scroll down Kelly Burton's blog:
http://artsyvisions.blogspot.com
and you'll see what I mean)
but most seem to be the same
'vintage' style - very nice, but not quite 'me'.

So, here's my slant on flourishes:

This one uses silver mirror card,
a flourish stamp, versamark,
some Stewart Gill 'lead patina' embossing powder,
a tasteful nude image, some background paper,
a fabric flower and a little brad!

This one uses some pre-printed
background cardstock,
a piece of Tyvek (painted with colourwashes,
run through a Wizard in a cuttlebug folder
& highlighted with Stewart Gill paint
and Brilliance ink),
a Paper Whimsy image and border,
plus a transparency stamped with a
Crafty Individuals flourish in Brilliance ink.

Deco pages

I'm involved in a round robin deco book swap,
but my muse deserted me....

This morning I got up at 4.30 a.m.
and found inspiration!

I had created a small digital collage
by taking a photograph of a flapper
and using the 'watercolour' filter,
adding a clock,
and changing the colours.

I really like the result,
so you'll probably see it again on other things!

The background of the page is
micaceous iron oxide - it gives a lovely fine shimmer.
I stamped over it with Brilliance ink, and then added the collaged image.

On the back, I used one of the Little Beauties
we've been swapping over on CC Swaps:

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

This page is in a Deco where the owner
specified an Asian theme,
and covered the pages with pages
from an Asian newspaper.

I stamped some Basic Grey paper with Japanese text,
and then stamped and embossed with a
fish stamp - I love this stamp!!!

Travel tip in 2 & 3

Sometimes I make life harder for
myself - and I have no idea why!!!
I signed up 3 times for the tip in pages
swap - so why not just make 3 copies of one design?

Too easy....

So here is design number 2....


celebrating the history
and culture of Wales


the third design also focussed on
Wales - using photographs I took myself,
celebrating the countryside
and some buildings I love:

The final design doesn't work as well as I
hoped - it kind of looks less like a tip in page
and more like a photo album,
but at least the landscape is unfamiliar
to the person who'll be receiving it.

Travel Tip in page

I have signed up for a 'Travel' themed tip in swap.

Once upon a time, a long time ago,
I lived on a ship, and travelled the world....



I remember sending
airmail letters & postcards home,
probably not as often as I should have....


I often used to wonder about the world
below the waves we were sailing over...

...but have never found the courage to travel there.

Collage sheet freebie

Here's another collage sheet for you to use in your art. I travelled far and wide to find the doors, windows & statuary to take photos of, so please don't sell or repost the images in any manner. You are more than welcome to use the images in your artwork, but not for magazine submissions or to make a profit...

Another deco page

I've had some kind of flu-like virus for a few days and had begin to think my muse was sicker than me as I wasn't even feeling up to making art - but I am feeling a little better today and have done some art - first the photo collage, and now this deco page. I am pleased with it. I hope the owner likes it too.

Collage sheet freebie

Please feel free to download and print and use in your art.
You may need to adjust the size in print preview before printing!

Another deco book

Another deco book is on it's travels, this is my contribution:

I painted the page with Golden micaceous iron oxide,
then stamped a scroll with Brilliance platinum planet,
added 3 flowers,
stuck a skeleton leaf down with gel medium,
then added a paper clay lizard that
I had also painted with micaceous iron oxide.

For the back of the page,
I used a brass stencil and some
Dreamweaver stencil paste
(which is way too gaudy)
then stippled over the stencil paste with
Brilliance inks to dull it down a little.

Deco Book

Here is my page in somebody else's Deco book...




I covered the cardstock with metal tape, added colour with alcohol inks, added a packing tape image transfer, framed it with some german scrap and stamped some leaves.

Deco book round robin

Next Generation Stampers yahoo group are running a deco book round robin - where each person sends a small book to a random person on the participants list, and then waits patiently for their book to be sent on to other participants until it is full of beautiuflly decorated pages and sent home....

I wondered about whether to buy a book, make a book or use a book somebody had made for me. I remembered that I had been given a beautiful little book by Margaret Rogers at Art & Soul in Portland, and realised it would be perfect for this purpose.

It is such a pretty book that I have hesitated to use it for anything mundane. making it even more beautiful by decorating all the pages seems like a great idea! I created a sign in page - it's a bit plain, and I may add to it before mailing my book out to the first person:

And then I felt I couldn't let it leave home without decorating a page of my own,
so I did a quick double page spread:

Trish B has been running a paint scraping challenge on Next Generation Stampers yahoo group. The idea is that you dribble 2 or 3 colours of acrylic onto a piece of cardstock and then scrape it about with a credit card. I discovered that I am not able to be messy enough ;-)


I did dribble 3 colours of Stewart Gill Byzantia paint onto the cardstock - but in layers, rather than at the same time. I scraped each layer with the credit card. Each time, I thought the layer looked too messy, so I spread and evened out the paint out some more. And then I didn't like the end result much, so I stamped into the top layer with a clean stamp!!! I really like this now - in real life it looks like silk - but it doesn't look anything like any of the other scraped paint background samples I've seen.....

Quotes ATC

I had all sorts of ideas for an ATC with a quote on it. then I sorted through my quote stamps, and found that almost all of them were too big to put on an ATC. I was short of time, so decided to go with this quote. I felt it needed an organic looking background, so out came the citrasolv & national geographic paper again... I used Stewart Superior India Ink to stamp the quote, and added a punched blackbird that somebody sent me as a gift. I wish I knew where I could get the punch - or is it a die cut?

Paris tip in page

I have decided to join a monthly 'tip in' page swap,
hosted by Sweetpea on CC Swaps yahoo group,
to build up a chunky book with lots of different themes.
January's theme was Paris....

The background is the 'citrasolv & national geographic paper'
I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog,
with layered stamped and printed images on top.

The back of the page uses the same paper,
stamped with fleur des lys
layered with eiffel tower images.

Photoshop brushes

Photoshop brushes are just like rubber stamps.
You create your collage, then stamp on it.
You can choose the colour of your 'ink'
from a massive palette.
On the above collage,
the 'stamping' is the tan 'explosion' at the bottom right.
I am still having fun but must also play
with paper and inks soon....