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Oriental Crane Sunrise

January 29, 2013 By 11 Comments

I have a craft room!!  It’s mainly white (the walls are a very pale aqua) and it has been well and truly purged.  The hallway is full of boxes and I’m only allowing things in that I really love or I  know I will use.  There’s so much stuff going out that I think we’re going to have to open the doors and have a warehouse sale at some point.

I have a slightly bigger table than I used to have and I’m slowly getting a working arrangement set up that suits me.  It’s got a south facing window which is actually proving a slight problem as the low winter sun (when we see it) slants through the window into my eyes and there are not many places to put the table to avoid it.  I’ll have to drop the blind when it’s very sunny, but I have some good task lighting, so even in the evenings I have plenty of light to work by.

I’ll do a full studio tour when I’m finished – still a fair bit of unpacking and sorting out to do, but I did manage to make a card at the weekend.

Oriental Crane

Not my normal colour palette at all, but I love it.  This has been created with PanPastels, mainly using tints to create a soft dreamy colour scheme.  I rubbed various tints around the background then used a circle mask to add some ink (Saffron and Venetian Orange Archival).  The stenciling (Tile Texture) was done with ink and I didn’t realise until Lesley pointed it out that it gives an illusion of oriental vertical script.  I stamped the blossoms with Versafine and lightly dabbed on PanPastel in shades of lilac and pink.

I stamped the lanterns from Lily Pad with Versafine Smokey Grey and the crane (Oriental Crane) was stamped in black.  I added a hint of colour to the lanterns and crane with Coloursoft pencils, then added a tiny bit of VersaMagic ink around the edge of the card.  It’s mounted onto a lilac embossed card (ancient stash recently re-discovered) and onto gold pearl card.

I’m really pleased with the way it has turned out and I can’t tell you how enjoyable it was to craft in a clean, tidy, WARM, space …. bliss!

 

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Embellished Stencil card

August 22, 2012 By 6 Comments

I have just had an article published in Crafts Beautiful which features stencilling, so I thought I’d show you this card.

I guess this would qualify as a Less is More card?  It uses the Crafter’s Workshop Cherry Blossom stencil (12×12)which I have then embellished by drawing flower centres with a Pigma Micron pen.  I used Memento dye inks for the stencilling – Pistachio and a mixture of Morroco and Love Letter.  I used a lovely stencil brush which has a rounded top rather than the traditional flat top and I use a swirling motion rather than a pouncing or stippling action. It’s easier on the hand and gives a lovely soft, even colour.

The sentiment is from Pretty Poppies, stamped with Love Letter, and I trimmed it to a rectangle then used my Zutter wide corner rounder on it.  I’m going to have to get some more of that red satin ribbon in – it’s perfect for Christmas and I seem to have run out of it!

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Let your dreams take flight

August 4, 2012 By 9 Comments

It’s been a funny couple of weeks and many ‘non-urgent’ activities have fallen to the bottom of the to do list.   I have a stack of unread emails in my inbox, a heap of unfinished projects, a messy house (hey, what’s new) and tumbleweeds rolling around the blog.

Adrian and I have a lot to sort out.  He is obviously still grieving – for both parents – and nothing but time makes that any easier. We haven’t started the job of clearing the house yet, but have had a fair bit of stuff to do, including finalising all the social services paperwork (we were on the ‘Direct Payments’ scheme, so have to sort out redundancy for the carer and reconcile the bank accounts – tedious, but necessary).  It’s the end of a chapter and the start of a whole new book for us.  Peeking through the grief we feel a sense of freedom and we know that our future is now full of choice and opportunity.

I may not be around blogging as much as I’d like in the immediate future.  I’m still making time to create – mainly introspective musings in my journal, workshop and retreat ideas (one of the many things that I’ve been reluctant to commit to before now) and quite a few magazine submissions.  Luckily for me, Chocolate Baroque has an amazing Design Team, so there will still be lots of inspiration coming your way over on the Design Team Blog.  I’ll try and interject some non-Christmas stuff this month in case you’re not quite ready to be thinking of that yet.

Here’s a simple one layer card that I made this morning.

I had used the Zinnia stencil with PanPastels on another project and laid it over a sheet of glossy card to clean it with a baby wipe.  The pastel to baby wipe ratio was just right to leave a beautifully softly coloured pattern (I tried it again a few times and it’s a bit hit and miss, but the key is to use glossy card).  I stamped over it with Memento (Teal Zeal), but stamped off on paper first to give a softer colour, then stippled around the edges and stamped the sentiment.  Stamps are all from Butterfly Dreams.

Says it all really!

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Pretty Poppies

July 2, 2012 By 9 Comments

I did mean to get this card blogged over the weekend, but I made the mistake of tackling some weeds in the garden on Saturday, and the weeds definitely won.  We have long gravel drive – and the weed situation was getting a bit ridiculous, so I donned the gardening gloves and thought I’d just pull a few out.  It was very satisfying, they came out really easily – most seemed to be very shallow rooted and I was soon pulling handfuls of them out and feeling very triumphant at my horticultural prowess.

An hour later I could hardly straighten up and all the muscles in my legs were screaming in protest.  I staggered into the house on jelly  like legs and promptly collapsed on the sofa and before I knew it, it was Monday morning and back to work.

The muscles are still aching, but I now have a rather virtuous feeling of having actually done some exercise and having a slightly less weed ridden drive too. I’ve decided that extreme weeding really should be classed as an olympic sport!

So, the 8x8inch card above, which I made last week when I actually had some of that stuff called energy, is fairly simple.  I stamped the poppy three times and cut out two layers of flowers to decoupage.  It’s coloured with Letraset Aqua Markers (which I have decided to get into the shop as I love them so much) and the top layer of flowers is glazed with clear embossing powder.  The background and stamped panel uses the Flower Frenzy 12×12 Crafter’s Workshop stencil, coloured with a mix of Memento Pistachio and Olive Grove inkpads.  As you can see on the stamped panel, I used a very light touch to create a subtle background.

Here’s a close up of the layers.

There are some lovely cards coming up on the Design Team blog with both sets of our new stamps so do keep an eye out for those.

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Well done Waist

June 11, 2012 By 9 Comments

Here’s a journal page created with PanPastels, Crafter’s Workshop Templates, polychromos pencils and acrylic paints.  The little poem is a reference to the fact that my hips are lagging a dress size behind my waist at the moment which makes trouser buying an interesting exercise.  (You can click on the image for a larger view.)  I used the pointy circles template in the background (I actually stencilled a little gel medium through it then rubbed pastel over when it was dry) and when I was doodling on the page, I used the spacing of the design to create the hourglass figure.  I wasn’t intending to draw a person, so her head is a little squashed onto the body to fit on the page.

It’s very clear to me that my journal pages are getting brighter and more lighthearted.  I wouldn’t say journaling has saved my life, but it certainly helped me cope with “stuff” and the pages dealing with it are literally as well as figuratively dark and messy.  OK, so they’re still messy, but so is life.  At least I’m viewing it through multi-coloured glasses these days (rose-tinted is so last year dah-ling!).

Tomorrow I have a Steampunkery sample and a review of the Ranger Inkssentials Speciality Stamping Paper, plus news of a giveaway …

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Origami Landscape

May 7, 2012 By 14 Comments

I created this canvas back in February and after I first created it, I knew that I wanted to turn it into a landscape with trees. I found some Japanese origami paper in my stash and thought it would be fun to create some trees from it, but changed my mind and decided that I would use torn strips of it to create hills instead.  The trees were made from dictionary paper coloured with PanPastels and the flowers are newspaper coloured in the same way.  I used a Black Soot Distress Marker to add some shading to the base of the tree trunks and around the edges of the flowers and put a big blob of Black Diamond stickles into the centre of each one.

This is what it looks like now.

I’m going to re-photograph it in better light as it doesn’t look very in focus to me.  Possibly because I left the camera on the manual settings after trying to capture a huge owl at dusk that had landed on our neighbour’s wall the night before.  It was getting pretty dark, so we were there with the tripod and the long lens, adjusting the camera’s settings for low light and using the remote control to minimise any camera shake on the long exposure that was necessary.  Half an hour later we were excitedly downloading the photos from the camera to find we had lots of very blurry dark shots, but one or two that clearly showed that we had spent a good twenty minutes photographing a wooden decoy!

Our suspicions were confirmed the following morning – the owl hadn’t moved a millimetre!  I’m pleased to say we saw the funny side – in fact we howled with laughter.  Howled … get it?  H-”owl”-ed!!  Yeah, ok, I’ll leave the bad puns to Adrian.

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