Digi and Paper

I've been at the scrapbooking again - both digi-scrapping and traditional paper scrapping.

Both of these LOs were inspired by/created for challenges over at UKS.

The first was a digi page done for the weekly challenge:

The details of this challenge were to use the colours purple and turquoise, to make a LO about yourself and to use butterflies and/or journalling about change, growth or freedom. As soon as I saw this challenge, I knew I had *the* perfect digi kit for both the colours and the butterflies - April Morning from PeppermintCreative.

The paper LO I did was for Shimelle's & Now For Something Completely Different class/challenge:

This was a fab challenge and I loved following Shimelle's step by step photos to see how she created it. It was a lot of fun interpreting the instructions using my own stash and ideas and I'm really pleased with the resulting page.

Jar of Hearts

Here's a fun little project. This was inspired by (and is being entered for) two separate challenges... the UKS Technique Thursday challenge (I wanted to try the crackled/shattered glass technique) and the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge, which is to stamp and show a song title (what a fab idea)!

The song that immediately sprung to mind when I thought of favourite songs, is Christina Perri's Jar of Hearts. DH and I *love* this song - so much so that I bought him the album for christmas.

So the idea occured to me to make an actual jar of hearts! :)

I had some of these cute little mason jars lying around that I found in a pound shop and thought might be fun to alter.

I used some alcohol inks to colour the inside of the jar and I made a little collection of hearts by stamping a Crafty Individuals heart image onto various scraps of pink/red coloured paper, cut them out, and then used the crackled glass technique (several layers of UTEE and then placed in the freezer to cool before being bent and twisted to make the UTEE crack). I thought the cracked hearts fit very well with the lyrics of the song.

To finish decorating the jar I wrapped some TH tape around it along with a piece of lace ribbon and a vintage metal button. I coloured a TH grungeboard flourish and heart with red Distress Ink and stamped a TH ticket onto patterned paper and stamped the title onto it and then added a layer of Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint to all three. I glued the ticket and heart onto the lid of the jar and the flourish around the ribbon/button.

Et voila. A jar of (broken) hearts.

Simple Recipes

Wow, two posts from me in one day! I'm on a roll! :lol:

I'm also taking part in the Simple Recipes monthly challenge over at UKS and have made this LO for the January challenge:

The challenge inspiration included a delicious hot pink and chocolate colour scheme and also challenged us to use up some stash so I dug out these pink and chocolate papers that I've had sitting around in my stash for, like, forever! :lol:

I spritzed Worn Leather Dylusions spray through a 12x12 mask for the background and then layered my papers and photo and did a bit of stitching (with Bazzill In-Stitchz thread), including stitching on a piece of chocolate coloured lace. I added flowers and chipboard elements and hand-wrote the journalling.

This was a great challenge. Can't wait to see what February's challenge brings.

Think Pink!

I'm joining in with the new Art Journey project over at UKS and thought I'd share my first page with you.

The prompt/inspiration for this page was all about using colour for inspiration. I seem to be more and more attracted to the colour pink recently and, reading through the list of products/techniques for making backgrounds etc, I was reminded that I had a brand new paint dabber in a gorgeous shade of pink. It was fate! :) So I dug it out and used it to cover the entire page. I then mixed some of my Dylusions paints to get a nice paler shade of pink and used this colour to stamp around the edges using a piece of sequin waste (forgot to start taking pictures until I was part way through this stage! :lol:):

I then sponged white and then purple paints through a stencil to add butterflies in opposite corners:

Next up I wanted to make a big title for my page - the words Think Pink just seemed the perfect summation of what I wanted to say with this page. I used Tim Holtz masks for the letters and sponged black ink over and around them. I love the bold effect of the black against the pink background:

I then added my journalling. There's more I wanted to say here really (like how my Grandma was a devoted lover of pink and I suspect I may slowly be turning into her! :lol:) but I ran out of space!

To finish off, I felt like the page just needed something more to tie it all together, some kind of border. So I used Papermania butterfly stamps and black ink and doodled some lines between the butterflies to join it all together:

All in all, I'm really pleased with the results. It's quite a simple page but the colours make it bold and striking - and the "challenge", as it were, was all about colour so I think it meets the brief quite nicely. :)

An evening of creativity...

So tonight I managed to crowbar myself away from the comfort of the sofa and spend most of the evening in my craft room. And creative productivity ensued:

I finished up the set of Sherlock ATCs that I was working on:

I also finished up a set of Paris-themed ATCs I was working on:

And I made this card:

I am SO pleased with this card! The image is a Stitchy Bear digital stamp that I've printed and coloured in with my ProMarkers and I am really pleased with how the colouring has worked... I think this may be some of my best colouring to date. I'm especially pleased with her hair (btw, loving this image - my sister and I used to be totally into this kind of fantasy art). I'm really happy with the colour scheme of the card and I also played with some new products/techniques including my new Sizzix Framelits and colouring plain gems with ProMarkers.

I'm entering this card into this week's Passion for ProMarkers challenge - the theme is recycling and I recycled a piece of my scrap paper, that I used for spraying/inking/stamping/painting things on, as a background for this card; the colours were just a perfect match! :)

Oh and I also painted a page in an art journal tonight, ready to work on tomorrow.

Ahhh.. it feels so good to be creating again! :D

WOYWW - 24 January 2012

Well, my fellow WOYWWers, it's finally happened. Shocking I know, but nonetheless true. Yup, after months of whining in my WOYWW posts about what a mess my craft room is... I have finally tided! And not just "push the mess back enough to make a bit of space to craft in" tidied, but proper tidied!

As in... the floor is once again visible:

As in... I can close all the drawers in my craft stacker unit:

As in... all the crap had been cleared off the windowsill and hubby was finally able to reach the window to put the blind up (and I can now use the windowsill as display space):

As in... hubby was also able to put up the Ikea storage rail and noticeboard that I bought... ooooh... well over a year ago!!

There is still more to do but a lot of crud has been thrown out (2 bin bags' worth to date) and most stuff has been found a new home (look at where my precious collection of Tim Holtz Idea-ology stuff now lives... in this funky vintagey trunk I found at The Range!):

I still have a bit more rearranging of stash to do and have yet to tackle the "dumping ground of randomness" that is the top of the Expedit:

But overall the room is looking much, much better and, more importantly, is once again usable!

And speaking of which, today's view of my desk finds me mid- various projects:

Gracing the beautifully clear and organised desk area today are a sheet of printed digi stamps awaiting colouring, some in-progress ATC backgrounds and, happily combining my two main passions at present, some in-progress Sherlock-themed ATCs! :D

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the crafty world on your journey around the WOYWW desks. Hope you're having a happy - and crafty! - Wednesday.

P.S. I must apologise in advance if I don't manage to comment on many WOYWW blogs this week... I am having problems lately with Blogger failing to load blog entry pages and this has been frustratingly preventing me from commenting a lot of the time! :(

WOYWW - 18 January 2012

Wednesday again already. How did that happen? I've not been crafting as much as I'd like recently... mainly cos it's just too flipping cold! Brrrrrr! I've been hibernating in the lounge with the gas fire on and I ain't coming out till it's spring! :lol:

I did manage to brave the chilly craft room long enough to get a bit of crafting done though (though, sadly, no tidying just yet!):

The pages on the desk are in-progress backgrounds for a CJ entry. Hoping to get the entry finished and the CJ posted this week, if I can tear myself away from the comforting warmth of the fire!

Crafty Catch-Up

Inbetween my growing anticipation/excitment over the final episode of Sherlock last night (wasn't it *awesome*?!!), I managed to find time to do a teensy bit of crafting over the past couple of days. :)

Firstly I made a quick birthday card for my mum:

I really wanted to have a play with a lovely set of Prima flower masks that I got recently so I picked this design and used stencil glue to stick it onto the card, so as to prevent ink leaking underneath and this losing/blurring detail, and then used Dylusions spray inks over the top. I inked the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink and then matted onto brown/gold card and inked those edges too. I attached it to the card front and stamped the greeting in Tea Dye DI and then added a little 3D butterfly sticker to finish. Quite a simple design but really pretty. :)

I also found time this weekend to do a quick digi LO for the UKS House Challenge:

I used some of the fab photos I took at our day out to the zoo on Saturday. I went with white space on this LO and used elements from Penny Springmann's 12 Months - June and Claudi Designs' Days of Joy kits.

WOYWW - 11 January 2012

I fear this poor little blog has been sorely neglected of late. Unfortunately, the reason for that is pretty much down to a severe lack of crafting over the past couple of months! The craft pit has been all but unusable after I started a full-on tidy-up/clear-out/reorganise way back in November but the process then got stalled by the events of December/January - not to mention me then being laid low by flu over the Christmas period!

However, I have deadlines looming (and the urge to craft is strong - it's the space to do so that's lacking!) so I've kicked my backside into gear and at least cleared enough space (just about!) on the desk to work in and have set to work.

Which means I actually have something on my desk to share with you on this windy Wednesday! :)

Gracing the preciously small space in the centre of all the clutter are some in-progress art journal backgrounds. I gesso'd and painted them last night and they are now awaiting further inking/spraying/painting/stamping and journalling. Which is hopefully going to happen tonight.

The big tidy is still going to happen - it HAS to, I've literally got a small path from the door to the chair and a small space on the desk and the rest of the room is disaster!! - but in the meantime I am at least crafting again. :)

365 Photos - Day 2

First things first... I've realised I need to make a new blog for this project, otherwise I'm just gonna be spamming this blog with them. But I haven't got time to do that right now so am posting Day 2's photo here:

Today's prompt was NEW and with Christmas just gone, and DD2's first birthday on Christmas Eve, there are a lot of new toys around the house at the moment. One of DD1's favourites is her new play kitchen.

365 Photos - Day 1

First day of the new year, first photo for the 365 Photos project. :)

Today's prompt is CELEBRATE:

I went with a shot of the debris of last night's (this morning's?) celebratory new year's drinks. :)

Happy New Year!

Wow. Been a while since I posted in here. December was... uh.. a bit manic. I had DD1's first birthday to prepare for as well as Christmas, a visit to family in N Wales before Christmas, family members staying with us over Christmas etc etc.

I've also been doing absolutely naff all crafting as the craft pit is in total disarray. The planned tidy-up and reorganise got derailed part way through and then I had to just pile stuff anywhere in order to make space to get some urgent bits done (e.g. a few christmas cards) and now it's just pretty much unusable. New Year's resolution number one is to get in there and get it properly sorted... once I finish getting over this rotten flu that's plagued me since Christmas Day! :/

Anyhoo. New year, new start and all that. Lots of crafty goodness to look forward to in 2012. I am eager to craft, I miss it. I just need to create a usable space again.

And I've also signed up for something a bit fun for 2012 - Suzie's 365 Photos project. Today's word is Celebrate. So expect to see lots of photos from me this year.

Oooh and hubby has also very nicely upgraded my laptop with extra memory and a faster hard drive and it's soooo much faster. So that should make blog posting all the easier.

So there we go. 2012. Onwards and upwards. :)