The Journey continues...

I'm still catching up with the weekly Art Journey prompts over at UKS. Well, I say catching up but I'm not really... cos it's taking me over a week to get a page done so I'm actually falling further behind on the weekly prompts, rather than catching up! :lol:

But nonetheless, I am being obsessively pedantic about wanting to complete the prompts in their proper order and not skip ahead etc so I am ploughing onwards. :) I'm actually really enjoying the process and the pages I am creating and am looking forward to having a journal full of amazing pages by the time this journey is finished.

So the latest page I have completed is for the Week 6 prompt which was all about building up layers to form your background:

I followed Vicki's tutorial fairly closely on this one and used Eco Green paints, Cosmic Shimmer Acrylic Drawing Ink, Derwent Inktense pencils, Tim Holtz tissue tape and white tissue paper to build up my background. The figure is from Tumblefish Studios.

Mother's Day

I'm being organised here and getting my Mother's Day card made nice and early... cos mum will be coming over for a few days next week so I want to be able to give her the card to take home with her. :)

April's issue of Craft Stamper magazine has a great article on making patterned papers by pressing petals and leaves using a BigShot and I was dying to have a go at this technique so when we went for a walk at the weekend, I was scouring the hedgerows for soft leaves and flowers! :lol: I decided to use watercolour paper for this technique as I thought it would absorb the pigment nicely.

I thought the resulting paper would be perfect for a Mother's Day card:

I cut an A5 card blank in half horizontally to make a tentfold card blank. I then matted the pressed petals paper onto purple SU cardstock and wrapped purple and green Making Memories ribbon around it before attaching to the card blank. I wanted to keep with a floral theme so I chose this yummy hyacinth stamp that I picked up recently on eBay and coloured it with my Promarkers and cut it out. I attached it to the card with foam pads and stamped a greeting onto the card using purple ink. To finish I added some tiny purple gems.

I really liked this technique and am planning to try it again... in fact, I must admit that I actually went and bought a bunch of flowers the other day, with the intention of harvesting some petals to make paper! :lol: Talk about an addicted crafter! :lol: :lol:

I'm entering this card into this week's Passion for Promarkers challenge, where the theme is "For mum/female relative".

Joy

The monthly challenge over at UKS consists of a one word prompt - Joy. To be interpreted however you choose.

This is what I went with:

I immediately thought of these photos and, by happy coincidence, the colours in the photos went beautifully with the Renewed Spirit digi kit by Agnes Biro/Yellow Butterfly which I had bought recently and was dying to have a play with.

In some ways, this LO is a bit different for me... because I'm in it! :lol: I'm usually the one behind the camera, snapping away, so I don't often appear in the photos that I scrap. And, of course, I look horrendous in these photos! :lol: To be fair though, I had good reason to look awful... I'd been feeling like death warmed over just the day before, due to what was later diagnosed to have been a bout of swine flu(!), and was still dehydrated (as proven by the fact that it took two anaesthetists working together over 20 minutes to get that canula you can see into my flipping hand!!), and I'd been through a very quick, very painful, labour followed by a few hours of poking and prodding and, finally, surgery, to resolve some post-partum complications!

Nevertheless, I decided to scrap these photos - regardless of how awful I look - as, as the journalling explains, the moment these photos capture is one that pretty much sums up the word Joy for me. :)

This LO was made using PSE 10 and all the elements are from the Renewed Spirit kit, except the title and journalling, which are done with fonts installed on my computer (can't recall the font names atm, sorry!). :)

WOYWW - 7 February 2012

A very quick WOYWW from me today cos once again I've stayed up till silly o'clock and I *really* need to go to bed!

So here's what's on my desk today:

Sooo... as you can see, my good intentions of keeping the desk/room tidy have been slipping a bit... I've been backsliding into the fatal mistake of not tidying up between projects and once again the teetering towers of stash, tools and general oddments are encroaching. Really must have a bit of a tidy.

The main feature of the desk is some parcels and cards packaged up ready for a trip trip to the post office tomorrow (errm, later today!) but there are some fun bits and bobs from various projects hiding out amongst the chaos too...

A pile of washi tape:

A zentangle ATC:

Some sheets of collage images for art journalling:

A few paints:

Right. I really MUST go to bed! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you're having a great Wednesday. :)

Little Poser

I know all mothers are biased but DD1 really is ridiculously photogenic. She has the most adorable smile and seems to just instinctively strike a pose when the camera comes out. I took this gorgeous photo of her just last week and just knew that I would have to use it on a scrapbook page:

This LO actually combines a couple of challenges. Firstly, the weekly challenge at UKS, for which I had to use a sketch, use stitching, use butterflies and make my own flowers. And secondly the monthly challenge on the little crafting group on the parenting forum I hang out on - for that challenge I had to use green, use a favourite technique or item and recycle something.

The papers are Basic Grey Perhaps (my "favourite item" - I adore BG papers and have a quite silly amount of them, partly cos they're so pretty I find myself reluctant to use them, cos then I won't have them anymore! :lol:) and I punched butterflies using Tim Holtz Movers and Shapers dies and a Stampin' Up! Embosslit. I made the flowers by layering gathered circles of netting, paper blossoms, and Tattered Florals cut from plastic from a packaging box (my "recycled" item) and pearl beads hot-glued into the centre. I also cut more TH butterflies from the plastic packaging and layered them over the paper butterflies on the page.

Pretty in Pastels

This week's theme at Passion for Promarkers is "pastels". I stamped this adorable Gorjuss image a few weeks ago and it's been sitting on my desk ever since, waiting for me to get chance to colour it in. You usually see the Gorjuss images coloured in quite dark/sombre colours so I thought why not be a bit different and see how she looks in pastels? As it turns out, she looks lovely... :)

The Gorjuss image is coloured in with my Promarkers and cut out and the patterned papers are from a 6x6 pad of, quite frankly, scrummy Webster's Pages papers that came free with the latest edition of Simply Cards & Papercraft, which dropped through my letterbox today. A lovely coincidence as the colours were just perfect for a pastel card.

I used a Martha Stewart border punch along the bottom of the papers and used my Sew Easy tool to sew a blanket stitch joining the two different papers together. The layered label shapes for the sentiment were cut with Nesties. I attached my coloured image with foam pads and added layered paper flowers, held together with brads, and some snippets of gem swirls, coloured with my Promarkers.

12 Tags of 2012

Have made a rather last-minute decision to join in with Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2012.

I've always liked the look of his 12 Tags of Christmas but things are just too manic in December, especially in the last 2 years(!!), for me to have time to join in. So I like the idea of doing Tim's tags at a rather more leisurely pace - although this one was a bit of a rush, given my late decision to take part! :lol:

I didn't have half of the yummy stash that Tim had to play with so I did my own take on it, using the same or similar products where I had them and making the rest up as I went along! :)