Monday 29 September 2014

12" x 12" with Finnabair

Hi folks hope your all enjoying this unseasonal Autumn weather - I am, its wonderful, but it is stopping me doing much creating!!
Having said that I was fortunate enough just recently to go to a weekend of workshops with the wonderful Finnabair!!!  These were help in Middlesburgh so just a short drive for me - love the fact that Sue is setting up these wonderful classes so near to home.
If you want to look at more of Finnabair's work click HERE!! 
If you want to hear first about any new classes that are being help in Middlesburgh click HERE!!


I loved doing this piece of work as I don't ever work with photographs and I very rarely use dimensional elements, so I was rather out of my comfort zone!  (But playing with some of Finnabair's newly released products was fab!!!) However with Ania's superb tutoring it flowed really easily and I was so pleased with the result!
Since I brought this piece home I keep looking at her so I think I may have to mount her on some board and hang her up on the wall!!  
I have nicknamed her the frost fairy because the whole piece of work sparkles, but unfortunately I couldn't capture that with the camera!!
I did 3 workshops during that weekend and this one was the first.  I will try and grab time to post the other 2 with pictures.
Seriously if you ever get the chance to do a workshop with this amazing lady - grab it with both hands, you wont regret it!!!
xxxxhugzxxxx

Wednesday 17 September 2014

Regular Art Journaling with Dyan Reaveley

Hi Folks I hope your all happily crafting away and enjoying the start of Autumn!
Last month Dyan Reaveley managed to fit in a journal workshop at AFTH, in between all her foreign travels and I managed to get to it.  
We had a great day and she let us play with some of her new releases.
So below is what I came up with, I used her new 'shapes' & 'suits' stencils in the background and 2 of her new stamp sets for the figure - 'shrooms' & 'strength'.  If you haven't had a look at them yet you can find them HERE


I hope you all manage to get a chance to play with some new items this month - have fun!!
xxx hugs xxx

Monday 1 September 2014

September Calendar Journal Page

Hi everyone - well time continues to fly and the summer is , technically, nearly over and we are sliding into Autumn!!! OK I've just scared myself silly with that statement!!
My Calendar journal page as always  to start off the new month!!
As I explained in my last post I made September by accident then had to go back and do August, the good thing about that was I didn't have to panic to get September's done.
So here it is!
I had a hunt through my stash to give me some inspiration and found these day squares already stamped on a Dylusions ink background so I decided to use them as a base and build the page up around them.
So the background was done with more Dylusions ink - I tried to use more mute colours so that the squares would stand out better. I used distress ink blended through a stencil then I sprayed it with some mica spray and stamped with some of Tim Holtz old background stamps.  

Then I used a stencil and distress ink pad to do the bottom border.
With some of the spare paper from the day squares I drew a face (I've been trying to make myself do more drawing in the hopes that I will improve) which I was quite pleased with and added some shadows and highlights.

I had this board frame in one of my clutter draws and I thought it would frame the face quite nicely.  So I coloured it by applying 2 different colours of distress ink pads randomly directly to it and sprayed it with water.  Once it had dried I added a layer of crackle paint and while it was drying I added some gold mica powder into the wet paint in a few places to give it a bit of bling!!
One all of that was dry I glued the face into the back of the frame and covered the insert with glossy accents and left it to dry!! I was in 2 minds about adding the glossy accents as the face was draw on Dylusions inks and I had used a stabilo All pencil for some of the details and both of the elements are reactive with water, so  I wasn't sure how much blurring I may get.  Still I thought I would give it a go and see what happened.
As it turned out it wasn't a problem as I didn't move the glossy accents around when I applied it so all it did was mute the image a little.
So the squares, frame, face and quote got glued on then I did further stamping over the squares and did some gold mica spray splatters to add extra detail.
The final touches were some doodling round the edge - to imitate the borders round the square, some bronze liquid pearl dots added to the bottom boarder and I finally used some of my stash of wash tape to ground the frame!!
All in all I was very pleased with the result - hence the reason I was so gutted when I realised I had done the wrong month!! LOL!
I even surprise myself with some of the daft things I get up to!!!!
So hope you all have a bright, happy creative month - I plan to!!!!
hugs 
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