Noel canvas

Mmm... it's been so long since I blogged.  I blame my daughter of course, I still don't have a camera so for the last few posts I've borrowed hers but the state of her room means it is not readily available.  I'm not prepared to venture in in an attempt to find it myself and when she's home she can't be persuaded to look for it either.
However, my sister-in-law challenged me here to put up a pic of the noel canvas I made recently so I've managed to get a reasonable photo with my camera.

Julia chose nearly the hottest day of the year to run an all day Christmas card class at Tidworth and asked if I'd like to come along and do a spot.  So half the ladies chose to make a canvas with me and above is what we made.  I used distress stains to cover the canvas super quick and the baubles and little banner underneath are made from grungepaper with the bauble (Elusive Images) stamped onto acetate and mounted over the grungepaper.  The twig was kindly donated by my apple tree.
Everyone chose their own colour scheme and each was different and they came up with some combinations I wouldn't have thought of but which looked fabulous.  I like to see everyone take my idea as their starting point but come up with their own look.
The day was really enjoyable thanks to all the hard work Julia put in to the preparation and the day, to Amy, my niece, who kept the coffee flowing, and to all the lovely ladies who came along to play and get inky fingers.
Apart from this I haven't been doing too much lately: cards for birthdays etc., ATCs when I just want to play and try out new stamps.  I've been reteaching myself crochet, something I used to do years ago but had more or less forgotten so I've been using the very useful book by Jan Eaton, '200 crochet blocks' and just doing samples of each of them to get comfortable doing the stitches and working patterns.  Great for doing in the evening while watching tv.
Full of good intentions to be back soon!

Odds and ends

Here's a collection of odds and ends of things I've been playing around with over the last few weeks.  This is my journal page ready for July.

I altered a mint tin here: coloured with alcohol inks and added a bottle cap and some ideaology bits. There are micro beads filling in the bottle cap and beads on the lid and cord.

I bought this tin of pins because I liked the tin with its polka dots but I decided it needed a little label on the lid so I stamped some calico with a Tim Holtz stamp and the pincushion is a Hero Arts stamp that I stamped and coloured separately on calico and then ironed on with bondaweb.
And finally another apple: I traced round the largest and smallest nestabilities and outlined the shape with stitching.  The fabric is some I tie dyed a few years ago!

Apples again

I'm still playing about with apples on and off and am making a 6x6 inch square book incorporating different techniques using apples as the motif.  I die cut 4 apples and stuck them to the page to make a pattern and then noticed the negative shape in the centre.  I remember that this was an exercise when I took a creative sketchbooks class a few years ago and we were doing pattern making but it is not something I have played with since.  However this time I traced the shape and cut a stamp from thin foam and stamped with it using Big and Juicy ink pads.

 First of all I stamped it all over a page and it became a tessellated image, looking a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

Then when I stamped it individually I realised it looked like a flower so I added a centre to it.

Then I stamped it in green and it became leaves so I cut them out, gave them a red flower centre and stuck them in a different pattern.

Good fun - must do more often!

June calendar page

Here's my June journal page already to go.  I used bunting stamps that I ordered from Michelle Ward's Green Pepper Press and there are so many different designs in the set - they are great fun to play with.  The background is marbled using shaving foam - it smelt lovely for ages!

May calendar page

I'm really ahead of myself here and have done May's journal page already even though I've only just started filling in April.  Using my favourite colour here and the cute Paper Artsy houses.

Craft Stamper free ezine

Craft Stamper magazine is offering a free Best of 2010 e-zine on its website here.  I subscribe to the magazine and always find plenty of inspiration inside so it's worth checking it out.

Printer's tray

I received a Seven Gypsies printer's tray for Christmas and this week I got round to filling it up. I sprayed the tray with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls (present from Tim at the Artsycrafts day!) and used Basic Grey Scarlet Letter papers for the backing and then I just added lots of bits and pieces I had previously made, stamped, embellished etc. but never found a home for.  I made some fresh pieces too to fill up the gaps and I'm really thrilled with the result.

April calendar page

I also finished my April calendar page today, in plenty of time and without an apple in sight.

Tulips this month, one of my favourite flowers, and the polka dot stamp over the background - using it on everything at the moment.

Apples

I'm a bit obsessed with apples lately since I bought a Nestabilities apple die set.  I used them in this month's calendar page here and I zentangled one while listening to The Count of Monte Cristo on the radio:

 I scanned the picture and it's come out quite large but in fact is only about 5 inches square.
Then I used the smallest apple in the set to cut a stencil from acetate and stencilled some black fabric with Stewart Gill True Colour paint which covers dark fabric really well.  When dry I overstamped polka dots with chestnut metallic paint. This is the finished piece:

I had some paint left over on my palette so found a scrap of calico and stencilled a few more apples to use up the paint.  Then I decided to use the scrap piece to try out stitching etc. to see what worked.  I also used the nestabilities to actually cut out a couple of apples from the fabric and the Cuttlebug handled that very well.  I liked my efforts on the scrap piece so ended up finishing it off as a very mini quilt, about postcard size:

 If I'd planned the piece I probably wouldn't have done 2 red apples on the top row, 2 green on the bottom, but that was just the way I did it and I like the overall finished piece.  The apples have stem stitch round them and the border has French knots. Now I've just got to get round to doing something similar with the main black piece.

Calendar 2011

Last year I saw the fabulous calendar that Kate made over on the Kathryn Wheel and thought I'd like to have a go, but I probably wouldn't have got round to it if I hadn't then seen it in Craft Stamper Magazine.  So I have started this year and so far have kept it up - not only making the pages in time for the beginning of the month but actually filling in all the squares! So here are the first 3 months.  I tried photographing them both indoors and outdoors, Jan is actually purple but came out blue indoors and pink outdoors, and March doesn't show the true green either. Ah well.

Artsycrafts with Tim Holtz

Oh dear, my blog is sadly neglected.  Partly because I don't have a camera at the moment (had to borrow my daughter's for this post) and partly because I haven't really been doing anything very productive.

However, I was lucky enough to go to the Artsycrafts event last Friday for a wonderful class with Tim Holtz and another wonderful one with Lin and Leandra. I went with my daughter and we had a lovely, very full day which really lived up to all the anticipation.  And here is the Configuration box I made in Tim's class, finished off at home with a few extra bits and pieces added.

It's crammed full of goodies, most of which we got on the day, as well as the box and a pile of papers we had a bag full of embellishments and a selection of Ranger products.
And here's the little house we made with Lin and Leandra, also good fun and much messier than Tim's class (the white paint on my black jumper hasn't come off....):

So sweet!  So many people put so much work into making the day go without a hitch and making it something really special which I think everyone there enjoyed.