Women's Tip-in

I have been busy with Christmas shopping, baking, wrapping, making gifts and entertaining friends with an annual pre-Christmas celebration.

As a result, I had not completed my CC Swaps Women's Tip-in page. Tonight I sat down and finished it.

The main image onthe front page is from http://www.vintagepaintworks.com/ the one on the second page is from LisaVollrath's Monthly Muse sampler at http://www.tentwostudios.com/.

I hope my partner, Annie, will like what I have created for her.

The left hand one is coloured and stamped with fluid chalk inks. The second is dye inks sprayed with bleach.

Book for my Sister

Each year I include a handmade item with my Christmas Gifts for my Sister. This year I made a book for her using a technique taught at a class by Cathie Allan of Western Educational Activities. She is a wonderful artist who has been published regularly and designs for one of the RS ink companies. She makes each class so much fun, and inspires us to go home, play with the ideas and make each item "our own".

The book includes family pictures as well as quotes, and a little calendar inserted in the back cover.

Some new items

I Have been busy getting ready for Christmas, while trying to fight off a cold. I made a few Christmas cards for friends and family who appreciate the handmade ones. These are a sample of a few that I made:

Brasso Challenge

Over on New Generation Stampers Trish B dreams up challenges for us. I tried the Brasso technique challenge with a couple of magazine ad pages. This is one that I found in a small advertisement booklet that I received. The image made me think that she was lurking in the shadows, perhaps she is a detective or she is hiding or waiting from someone (think maybe I read too many suspense novels!!).

You take the magazine page, and rub the Brasso over it to remove the inks, leaving whatever portions of the page you desire.

I just added a couple of stamped words to the page after doing the brasso over it. Not sure if I will add anything more, but will leave it and mull it over for a bit.

Playing with Slide Mounts

CC Swaps is running a swap for items made with slide mounts; no cards or ATC's allowed but something different. I have not joined yet, but thought I would play around with the slide mounts to see what I could create.

The first thing I did was a little booklet. I stamped images acetate then coloured the white plastic slide mounts with alcohol inks. I added some embellishments and then glued them to large cardstock slide mounts, then added some fibres to bind the pages together.

All the images are from http://www.heartsintouch.com/ with the exception of the one on the first page which is from http://www.folderoldesign.com/

Front and back covers

The second item I made was a slide mount pin using a stamped image under a slide mount glass and added some old jewellery pieces, a charm and a bail.

Recipe Tag Swap

I have not posted for a while as I have been busy with various social activities as well as a lot of other things.

I recently joined a recipe tag swap in the Chunky Book Artists Group and this is what I created.

Spoiler Alert - 12 Days of Christmas

I recently signed up for a swap that Sweetpea is hosting for 12 Days of Christmas. I signed up once then decided to join a second time, jumping in with both feet as usual!

The the first set of gifts that I made were done on chipboard squares with dye inks, mica watercolours  and edged with leafing. Then I coloured microscope slides with alcohol inks and inserted a picture underneath it. The image I used is from http://www.old-picture.com/

The second set are stamped Clay Necklaces with a colourwash over them; the back has a leaf stamped on it.

Catching Up

I had a few swaps to complete, so took the time to get them done while Hubby was not around to bug me. Each year I participate in a Calendar swap and this year I chose February. Rather than go with the traditional hearts and flowers, I decided to use a background stamp with a vintage couple and some Ivy. The centre panel was done with Adirondack sprays.

I also had a couple of Artist Trading Cards to complete. One is for an alphabet swap, so I decided to use some feathers that my hubby found in the garden, for the letter F. The background is from a sheet of cardstock with Adirondack sprays and stamped off Opalite and Dr PH Martin inks.

The second ATC background is a candy wrapper glued to the cardstock rubbed with Mica Magic inks and rub-ons. The image is coloured with chalks and edged with leafing.

Pictures of the projects are in later posts. 

Calendar page

Artist Trading Card

Artist Trading Card

Another Tip-in Page

The current theme for the latest tip-in page over on CC Swaps is Children. For this page I used a background done with Alcohol Inks and used one of my favourite stamps for the little girl on the front.

The back is done with Fluid Chalk pads.

Challenge Number 3!

The latest challenge was to use handmade stencils and create a page representing graffiti. I have no handmade stencils, nor the supplies to make them, so of course I barged ahead using what I had on hand.

The background was a piece of cardstock, where I had just rubbed off excess paints and other mediums that I had used at various times. I then took some cardboard stencils that I had bought eons ago at a hardware store and stenciled them on the background using acrylic paints and dimensional paints. I outlined them with markers and added some other handwritten words and doodles to the page.  So I broke the rules, but isn’t that what Art and individuality is all about?

Playing around

I have been out of town for over a week with no crafting supplies available, so was ready to play when I got back home. CC Swaps is hosting a bead swap, and although I have not signed up for it, I thought I would play around with some ideas. I tried some clay beads (top picture) and some paper ones (bottom Picture).

I added rub-ons and irridescent threads to the top paper bead. The left one was done with clear glass beads and copper embossing powder, and the right one with platinum UTEE and Purple glitter.

Another challenge page

I worked on the second challenge last night. We were to flip through a dictionary and use the page where it opened, then choose a word to create the page. Mine opened on the letter "I" and my choice was the word Imperial. This word made me think of the Imperial Empires of China, and thus my page evolved. I am not sure I really captured all the wonderful colours and other images that the word evoked in my mind. In hindsight, I would not have added the foiling, but could not cover it up without making the page too busy or disjointed, so decided to just leave well enough alone.

Altered pages challenge

I was in a creative mood today, so I worked on my textured challenge page and added the elements that I thought fit in with the colours. This is my first attempt at something like this and I am actually quite pleased with the finished results.

The picture is in the following post. 

Book page challenge

Another challenge

Another challenge in progress. This one is to take a book and create different techniques on the various pages. I am an avid reader and the thought of doing anything with a hard cover book other than reading just struck fear in my heart!!

I went through some of my books and found one that I knew I would never read, so took the plunge and started working with it by first glueing some of the pages together to strengthen them. I then proceeded to follow the steps as set out for us. First step was to create texture, so out of my stash I got a piece of stuff, which I got from a friend a couple of years ago; not sure what it is called. Step 2: I glued it on the pages with Beedz glitter glue. Step 3: once it dried I added some acrylic paints.

Now to decide how to finish off the page by altering it with various things, but leaving the texture showing.

altered pages

More Sketchbook pages

I have been having a very creative day and finished another two pages for the sketchbook prompts. They are Family Traits and Numbers. The numbers page is in relation to numbers which are significant in our lives so I chose numbers representing events in my life.

Circus Tip-in

I just finished my circus tip-in pages for a swap. The front and reverse pages are below. I decided that I would do the pages with a vintage type look, rather than lots of colour, only because of the images I had chosen for the swap.

Tip in pages - Circus

Tip in - Circus

Doodle artist trading cards

Another challenge was "thrown down" for one of my groups and we were asked to create some artist trading cards by doodling. We now have a swap sending out 10 cards and getting 9 back and they must be as identical as possible, when creating by hand. I have decided to send the doodle one with the abstract look as it was the easiest to recreate en masse.

Sketchbook "The Year I was Born"

 This is my "Year I was Born Page". I am the baby of the family as my Mother did not want any children while World War II was still in progress, being as we lived in Britain, so I came along the year after the war ended.

I could have written many things about that year, such as: I do not like eggs much as due to rationing there were only powdered ones available. My first taste of bananas was not enjoyable as fruit was at a premium. I decided instead to just pick a few key points about the year and add them to my page.

Used stamp pads to colour the backgrounds then added some stickers.

Sketchbook

This is my sketchbook page for "What I Want to be When I grow Up". I have always enjoyed travelling and I would love to visit more countries. I have been fortunate to be able to explore Western Canada and a few provinces in the East. What a wonderful experience to see the diversity of the country!!

I have also been to a few countries in Europe and also the USA, but my husband and I want to take another trip, however we just can't decide on the location.

Sketchbook page 2

The background on this page was done with Lumiere paint scraping. I added images from Dover art and some scrapbook paper. 

Sketchbook

On my Art-Venture group Trish has challenged us to create a sketchbook, using either a store-bought one or home made one. I used some magazine images and rubber stamps to incorporate into my pages.

The first prompt was to produce a page using the letters of our name with words to describe our self.

The second prompt was eight things we love.