Pave Sigaut

This piece started out with me printing an image onto calico.  The image is courtesy of The Graphics Fairy, a wonderful source of free images and I used Lesley Riley's TAP (transfer artist paper) to print the image and then iron on to the fabric.  I added bits of fabric, lace and trim, some flowers I'd crocheted, buttons, beads and stitching.  But then it sat half finished for a few months because it lacked a focal point and in spite of trialling several solutions nothing seemed to look right.  Then for Christmas I had a set of sewing themed stamps from Toodles and Binks which includes a button card image and after stamping that out and adding buttons I had my focal point. I mounted the fabric onto mounting board covered with scrapbook papers. I quite like it now!

Cute owls

I shall stop apologising for my poor neglected blog and just say that these are two owl birthday cards destined for young people of my acquaintance, a boy and a girl.  I had a set of chipboard owl shapes as part of a pot luck box and they look really cute covered in scrapbook papers and made into a card.
This card is more my usual style:

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.