A sympathy card

I have been working with the new Chocolate Baroque Artist's Bauble set of stamps. As well as the baubles, this set also includes a cross, some corners and a classic motif. The cross is useful for sympathy cards and for Easter too. Here is a sumpathy card I made, with the addition of a little splash of yellow. I think I was feeling inspired by spring finally blossoming when I was making this card.

I stamped the cross in black Versafine. I recently treated myself to the Spellbinders Radiant Rectangles set when I went to Ally Pally. I stamped the sentiment from the CB With Sympathy set and then used one of the dies to frame it, inking with Memento London Fog before taking it out of the die. I cut one of the other dies out of black card to mount the sentiment. I finished off with a selection of flowers in shades of white, lemon and yellow, including the daisies, one of which was added to the centre of the cross.

Thanks for popping by! Hope you have had a good week.

Elaine

Artist's Baubles

Some more lovely stamps have been released over at Chocolate Baroque - Artist's Baubles.

 

This set brings together some old favourites, reflecting the styles and designs of some major nineteenth century artists including some of my own favourities such as Morris, De Morgan Mackintosh and Klimt. Originally, these stamps were issued as separate sets, but they were such old favourites, they have been remade as a sampler set and are sure to be really popular. I have been having a play with these stamps, while my DT colleagues have been working their magic with Punky Flowers.

 

 

These stamps are great, each with a distinct style of their own. I chose the Mackintosh bauble for this card, embossing in a dark metallic EP, before colouring with Distress Markers and a water brush. To frame the image I cut thin strips of black card which I added to reflect the style of Mackintosh furniture. I added a black ready made sentiment high on the card, again to reflect a feature of Rennie Mackintosh chair designs.

 

I rarely get my Distress markers out, but they worked well on this design and I must resolve to make better use of them.

 

Guess what I spent an hour tidying my craft shed today. I am really determined it is not going to get the better of me again - how long will this new me last I wonder?

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Elaine x



New stamps and tidy crafting space!

There are new stamps launched this week over at Chocolate Baroque a great set of quirky designs called Punky Flowers.

Head over to the Design Team blog to see some great projects that my team mates have been working their magic on.

I have been really busy with my massive craft shed tidy. Spring finally arriving got me motivated for a very overdue massive tidy. Plus I ordered a new drawer unit to help my organisation. This is it.

It is a Really Useful product and I am delighted with it. I already had one 11 drawer unit which I had put through its paces, so I was confident it was going to work really well for me.

This was my desk when I started this blog in August 2009.

 

It has gone through various changes!

 



This didn't last long - much too cluttered and my working space was too restricted!

 

 

This was another try, but still not right!

 
Below is what it looks like now! My collection of wooden cassette racks for my ink pads has grown for one thing! My lovely OH found another one for me yesterday in the charity shop. My collection is growing ever upwards and is now topped off with my kilner jars of ribbons sorted by colours.

I also have what I call my messy bench where I do painting and more mucky jobs. It's quite tidy for a messy area at the moment!!!

While I finished off the inside of the shed, my OH was busy clearing some fallen trees outside in our woodland and making a log pile as a bug hotel, so this is my new view out across the garden. The daffodils in the picture are just going over now. I always feel sad when they go.

My main task now is to make a supreme effort to be much tidier to avoid the need for such a major tidy again, but also to use more of my stash and stop buying so much until I have used some of it up!

Hope you are have had a great bank holiday weekend, we had some amazing sunshone, although it is raining this morning and we have been trying to catch up on gardening as our patch is constantly trying to revert to nature, it is always a bit of a tussle, but only a very gentle one on our part!

Elaine



The Book of Secrets

This is another project I made using the newly launched Indian themed stamps from Chocolate Baroque. I love making books and when I saw the stamps on the Indian Textile set, they made me think of clasps on an old antique book.

I've included two pictures here as I couldn't decide if lamp light or sunlight gave the most accurate impression of the project!

 

I used a technique I have never seen anyone else mention, but I am sure I am not the first! Using a stamp from the Indian Elephant plate I embossed onto the black gessoed chipboard covers with clear embossing powder. I then added different shades of brown and black paint with a baby wipe to give the colour of old leather. I then added some Florentine Gold Treasure Gold gilding wax over the raised area to add highlights. 

 

 

I embossed the clasps in the same way onto thinner card and cut them out, before adding more gilding wax much more thickly to make them more evenly gold in colour. The "studs" are gold pearl card candy highlighted with Aquamarine gilding wax. As you might be able to guess I love Treasure Gold, it is such a good quality product. The lettering cut with a Tim Holtz die and the brass butterfly charm also get the same treatment. I finished by adding a little brass key, gems on the clasps and an embossed keyhole. The back cover is embossed in the same way, but otherwise unadorned!

 



 

The book is an accordian book, held together with a seam binding ribbon in a pale chocolatey colour.

 

I got the brighter pictures today in the sunshine in the garden. I was tidying in the greenhouse when I got in from work at lunchtime, a job that is much overdue and very late this year thanks to the extremely late spring which put me off getting on with my seeds and the fact I have been very occupied with an intensive spring clean of my craft shed which took me about three weeks in the end. What an exhausting job, but so worthwhile, it feels great now, with just labelling of my many drawers to be completed. Some pictures might follow, it's changed quite a bit since I first posted my crafting area.  I had a delightful suprise when I spotted this little hazel dormouse in the greenhouse.

 

 

He or she had made a very neat nest in one of my old pink cotton gardening gloves. I very carefully left everything as it was and decided to stop my tidying so as not to disturb it any further. These little creatures are protected by law and we want them to be as safe as possible with us. We are lucky enough to spot one every couple of years here, but we see the tell tale signs of chewed hazel nut shells each autumn. We have planted lots more hazel nut hedging since we have been here for wildlife food. It would be nice to eat some of the nuts ourselves, but the creatures always get to them and our walnuts first!

 

So the planting of my window boxes will have to wait for another day, but it was a good excuse to retire to the garden seat and read in the sun! A nice way to finish off the afternoon. I hope you are enjoying spring in your neck of the woods!

 

By the way, I was thrilled that I was the lucky winner of the Snazzy's challenge I entered with my last posted project, so I am now the happy owner of a Prima Finnabair art journal and have a nice project planned with that, thanks to the generosity of owners Val and Don. I am thrilled as I have never won a challenge or blog candy prize before.

 

Elaine x

A Flavour of Finnabair

This is my entry for the current challenge over at Snazzy's blog which is to produce a project inspired by the work of the very talented Polish mixed media artist Anna Dabrowska (Finnabair). I have my lovely friend Lesley to thank for prompting me to take part when I saw the Finnabair inspired projects she has posted this week as a member of the Snazzy's DT.



Its been tough to get a picture that reflects the rich colours of the project, this is a pic I took last night by lamplight on my desk which has the warmer hues (I have tried to cut out as much of the mess as possible!!!).

I have tried to bring in all sorts of elements that reflect Anna's work and the companies she designs for, while putting my own spin on the project. I wanted it to capture things that are important to my own style too.

I started with a shallow 8 x 8 MDF frame which I covered with black gesso and part of a sheet of the 7 Dots Studio paper Night's Fever from the Dreamer range designed by Anna. This sheet of paper actually came from Snazzy's on my one and only visit to their lovely shop, so it seemed very appropriate to use it as the base for my project. Anna's projects nearly always feature a face, often her own, but I certainly didn't want to use mine so I cut into a book of Pre-Raphaelite paintings I bought very cheaply specifically for the purpose of  using in mixed media projects. The painting is Love's Shadow by Sandys and I chose it because the colours matched the background paper so perfectly. In fact I loved the match so much I was tempted to leave the frame then and there without any further embellishment, but it wouldn't have been any good for the challenge then!

Anna works for Sizzix and Prima, so I included part of a die cut Sizzix clock face that I aged with a rust effect paint and Moonshadow Mystic Malachite ink and different Prima elements, including the flowers and sculptured blooms, the words that come from a Prima journalling card and gem swirls. Anna uses loads of flowers in her designs, including large flowers cut in half. I painted a range of different flowers with black gesso and highlighted some with Aquamarine Treasure Gold to tie into the green elements of the paper. I also added lace, torn paper (the french words) and lots of metal elements in Finnabair style. I added a moth cut out from a serviette as that seems to be a motif Anna identifies with. I included red and green flowers too, again to tie in with the background paper.

I added my own touches with some nature themed elements, the bird and dragonfly charms and berries, the pen nibs and clock faces which are motifs I like to include in my work and some elements from jewellery I had salvaged. I used quite a lot of the Treasure Gold to give green touches to my metal embellishments. In the end I decided not to add any of the spraying that is part of Anna's trade mark style as I liked what I had done the way it was and liked the way the shine of the metal elements toned with everything else.  

The good news is I will have the opportunity to learn much more about Anna's techniques at first hand because I have been lucky enough to secure a place at a couple of the workshops she is teaching in the UK at Snazzy's in August and the even better news is that I will get to spend  very precious time with my lovely friend Lesley, so that will be a weekend to really look forward to.

I have to say I have really enjoyed making this project it brings together so many of the things I love to use and for once I am quite satisfied with my end result! So thank you to Lesley and to Snazzy's for encouraging me to take part in my first challenge for an absolute age, it was very welcome respite from my shed spring cleaning which is still no where near finished. It won't be touched this weekend either as I will be at Ally Pally at my favourite show, spending the whole weekend with my two other special crafty friends Jo and Judith!

Elaine x

A leafy background

Posts are rather few and far between for me at present. I am in the midst of a major crafty reorganisation in my shed (it is just about warm enough to work in if I keep the heater on) and after well over a week of sorting out, I am getting rather fed up of all work and no pleasure from my enormous crafty stash. If this doesn't teach me a lesson to slow down my craft purchasing, nothing will.

Today I have a card from the last release of background stamps from Chocolate Baroque, this uses the Leafy Trails stamp.

I wanted a simple, but sophisticated colour scheme and went for one of my favourite colours brown with gold. I embossed the design in gold on a medium brown card and matted onto gold mirri and dark brown. I painted the leaves with a couple of layers of brown H2O paint and then added a brown ribbon and die cut bow using the smaller die from the Die-Namics Beautiful Bows set which makes such lovely neat bows in two different sizes. I finished with a Craftwork Cards sentiment mounted onto a small scalloped circle.

I hope you have enjoyed a slightly warmer weekend wherever you are. It has been dry with us and mostly sunny and we even managed lunch sitting in the garden yesterday for the first time this year, although we did have light snow flurries only on Friday. I think I need to give my shed tidying a miss tomorrow and get out into the greenhouse for some tidying in there. The masses of primroses in the garden tell me spring may finally actually be springing and I may finally be able to get going with the vegetable seedlings.

Elaine

Indian delights from Chocolate Baroque

There are two new gorgeous sets of stamps just launched from Chocolate Baroque for April, both with Indian themes.

 

The sets are Indian Textiles, that I used for my canvas above:

 

 

and Indian Elephant which is equally inspiring.

 

 

Both are on special offer here and work brilliantly with one of my all time favourite Chocolate Baroque sets Paisley Elephant.

 

For my canvas which is 8 x 20 inches, I was inspired when I saw the Indian Textiles plate to think of Tibetan Prayer flags - a prayer flag is a colourful panel of rectangular material often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas, they are believed to bless the surrounding countryside. Traditionally they are printed with texts and images. You can read about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_flag I love the way the weather makes them faded and tattered, I once saw some hanging outside a tiny wooden chalet in the Alps in Switzerland, sadly I didn't take a picture. I have some to hang outside my shed sometime. I also saw a similarly art inspired set of flags last year on Terri's Artful Affirmations blog (see my side bar) which was part of a swap she was doing with other artists. I loved the idea and as always Terri's work was full of lovely vintage elements. I can't seem to find the link, but if I track it down I will add it! EDIT - I e mailed Terri to ask for the link and here it is! It is lovely to see her flags again.

 

I painted my canvas in different blues acrylics and then made my flags from rainbow dyed mulberry tissue in different colours. I started by stamping the text stamp from the Paisley Elephant plate in paler colours, which doesn't show at all in this pic which was so hard to take due to the size of the canvas! I stamped the textile stamps in black Stazon before adding words from the Artistic Expressions plate. I tore out the flags to get the tattered effect the prayer flags often have in the open air. I added some touches of white tissue to give a cloudy affect between the flags, sticking everything down with matt Mod Podge. I finished off with loads of butterflies which are mostly DoCrafts Flutterdies and some others and the little birds which are cut from serviettes. I wanted the feeling of flight and open air. This is not really my usual style of work, but I did enjoy myself!

 

Hope your Easter is going well. I am in the throes of a massive spring clean in the shed, brought on by the purchase of a brilliant new drawer unit with 33 drawers, as you might imagine I am in heaven filling those up. It should reduce me need to hunt for stuff significantly!

 

Have a great day, the sun is peeping through here and it promises to be another good day!

 

Elaine x