I Heart...

I bought a five aperture frame in the post xmas sale at M&S outlet store a couple of years ago (cheaper than cheap!) and immediately got inspired to create an 'I love...' piece, based around little polystyrene hearts I got in Hobbycraft, a different themed heart in each box.  It started well, decoupaged old map paper (from 7 gypsies) on one (for travel), music tissue paper on another, paper flowers (nature and wildlife) grungy metal (science and industry)...and then got stuck.  Couldn't think how I could do the night sky/space on a heart.  So it all got stuck away in a box, languishing for want of inspiration.

And then in December I went to Liberty of London and saw some fantastic beaded birds and animals

That's it! !  I covered the heart with stretch netting to represent the fabric of space and time (actually from inside the cushion covers of an old sofa we threw out- recycling at its best), painted it with mod podge and black paint, and then used pins to stivck various glass beads.  I made a telescope out of kebab sticks, rolled paper and jewellery findings, and covered a little plastic rocket with embossed metal tape which turned out a bit Wallace and Gromit, so very cute.

Here are all the frames:

Travel

The background papers are a mix of tim holtz and Graphic 45, and I made the battered suitcase out of foam rubber and strips of leather.  Wish my suitcase looked like that, but it is pristine as it hardly ever comes out of the storage cupboard due to me having married a reluctant traveller!

Science and Industry:

The background to this one is a bit of broken printed circuit board out of a redundant piece of audio equipment my hubby was ditching.  Light bulb is tim holtz ideaology as are die cut and embossed metal cogs.

Night sky/space

Quite proud of that telescope.  I used slightly glittery midnight blue paper behind this one. Hard to see in photo.

Music:

The music box is a die cast pencil sharpener (car boot), and the little dancer is from Prima.

And finally Nature and Wildlife:

Little plastic elephant and a cigarette card I got from car boot sale.  The butterflies are cut from Graphic45 Old Curiosity Shop and paper flowers are a mix, don't know makers.

Each frame has a related tim holtz ideaology word band attached.

Here's the whole thing

 

and some of the details

It took a while, but I really like it now it is finished.

Postage Stamp for my Dad

I had to take the day off work today because the cold I've been fighting off since Hogmanay finally caught up with me and I felt awful this morning, achy and shivery.  A couple of extra strong Lemsips later and I'm feeling a bit better, but still coughing like a drain.

Not one to look an unexpected day off in the mouth, I finally got around to making a little frame for a favourite picture I have of my dad when he was about 2 years old, which would have been circa 1922.  I used the Tim Holtz Alterations Postage Stamp Frame to make a small box frame, with paper from Tim's Vintage Shabby paper stash.  I also used the dies Elegant Flourish and Honeycomb, and a small heart from Movers and Shakers Cupid set.  Some ideaology in the forms of a word band and memo pin, a bicycle (probably Prima, but out of packet so not sure) and some flowers and ribbon hand coloured using distress pens and inks finish the frame.  

I've got a picture of my mum at a similar age that I think I will do another frame for, as a matching pair.

The letters are Victorian or Edwardian bone squares from a partial set that has been kicking around my family for as long as I can remember.  Something that was used in the schoolroom I think, and as my grandfather was a schoolteacher that would make sense. They have lowercase on one side and uppercase on the other.

The frame is about one inch deep.

12 Tags of 2015 #1, January, and a NY Resolution.

Gosh, here we are in 2015.  Happy New Year everyone. 

New year, new tags from tim.  

I shamelessly copied this first one, with hardly any differences except for a couple of wee ones.  I had the alpha parts numbers and the chitchat stickers, but not tissue paper (stamped my own using white tissue paper and black soot ink pad, and various stamps) nor the distress glitter nor some of the paints and spray colours, so improvised with what I had.  The whole point really.  

Here it is on my tag board, at peg number 1.  I took off all the previous years' tags as can be seen by the faded areas on the board, but they will slowly be covered up as the year, and Tim's tags, 

progresses.  That's one of my resolutions, to complete every tag.  I started with good intentions last year but it didn't finish well.  :-(

I love the glitter on this one, luckily I had gold glitter that wasn't too brash.

And a close up..

I really like the shadow effect on the chitchat stickers. That's so clever.  It gives the whole tag depth.

I wonder what this year will bring?  Health and happiness to all I hope.

Cheers.

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation....

It's MONTHS since I did a blog. Months. No excuse really other than after I moved my craft room upstairs to the spare bedroom, I totally lost my crafting mojo. In didn't like being so isolated so rarely went in there.  I've not got a big house but I felt so out of the loop up there. It was also a bit too compact, so it had to be kept tidy (and I'm a mess magnet).  And there was no room for spreading myself about, which I like to do, with 2 or 3 projects on the go at once but that was a no no too. And no room for any crafty buddy who wanted to come over and play.

Problem.

This was solved on October.  My youngest son Tom graduated as a building surveyor on July and has been working as such for a firm in the middle of Edinburgh since May.  He and 2 of his ex-university mates decided to take a flat together in town, which meant I could take over the now spare sitting room that my boys used to have.  Hurrah!! Whoop!!!  But also a little sad as we are now empty nesters.  Hey ho. Swings and roundabouts.

It's taken a bit of time to get it as I wanted, and required a trip to ikea for another desk and storage shelves, but I'm sooooo happy now.  Here are some pics.

New desk area, and shelves.  The ikea cd rack holds all my paints, pens etc, and also space for sissix dies etc. ink pads are in old cassette shelves on my new desk.  I spray painted the multi cubbyhole shelving white, to match in with the rest.

The spare desk, for spreading out on or for craft buddy, and the metal wall board that I store my Movers and Shapers dies.  This is now hanging on the wall within easy reach of my diecuttting and embossing area:

I've also got a sofa for lounging about on (an important part of the creative process I find!) and other cupboards for storage.

It's all fab.

                                                        *******************************

Since I moved everything in, which was in the middle of November, I have busy on lots of projects, so here are some of these.

It was my sister Ailsa's 60th birthday in December so I made her a memory assemblage using a tim holtz mini configurations book. We went to London for a girly weekend, theatre, shopping and met up with friends for dinner.  Fab time, had by all.  This is the book, using 7 Gypsies papers and various TH ideology bits and pieces,

Cover

Inside the book I have filled the boxes with all sorts of bits and pieces that are relevant to her life.  She loved it.

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I saw a lovely Christmas burlap panel on Paula Cheney's web site, a site I follow as she has some lovely ideas on it, so I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing them. 

http://www.oneluckyday.net/2013/08/christmas-burlap-panel.html 

I ended up making a few of these as Xmas presents for friends.

This one isn't finished, but don't have a photo of the final outcome,

I coloured the tim holtz christmas charm with alcohol inks and then sealed it with glossy accents so it looks like an enamelled charm.

The papers I used for these are a mixture of Tim Holtz Seasonal Stash, some leftover paper from a christmas project from last year (can't remember what paper this was), but mostly pictures from a a John Lewis carrier bag!  This is it:

 

I've got loads of this left over, so will use it again next year.

Another present i made was a model of my son Lucas' kitchen.  His partner Jill gave me a box and

suggested that I could build a kitchen in it, and she would love something like that.  After such a forceful hint, I could hardly refuse.  Even I was surprised how well it turned out.  The box is roughly 8 x5 inches, to give an idea of scale.  I used white foam board, greyboard and some dark mirror card, and made some Fimo bread and eggs.

The top one is the real kitchen, and my version is underneath

Finished item.

That'll do for this blog.  I've got another one to do about the 12 Tags of 2015....

Something Fishy's Going On

I found these little fishes in a charity shop.  They were a horrible orange and and yellow colour, but I liked their shapes.

I painted them using an Ranger adirondack paint dabber in a colour called 'Stream', though I don't know why it has that name as it isn't remotely stream coloured. :-/

I then painted the lower half of each fish with Salty Ocean distress paint dauber.  I forgot to take a picture of that stage though, so just take my word for that. It's so easy to get totally absorbed in the work and it's easy to forget to record the different stages!

I've had some little Cosmic Shimmer iridescent watercolour paint pots for ages, but hadn't found a project to use them on. They were perfect for painting fishscales and the tails anf fins.  Here's the finished fish.

I'll have to change the position of the hanging hook on the lower fish.  I decided to paint him facing in the other direction to his twin.

I was really pleased with the look of the scales.  

Tim's Tag and My New Art Journal (or at least the cover of it)

 Here's My take on Tim's August Tag.  Strange that it was using a rusty technique on the corners, considering the photo album I've just completed.  I used a Crafty Individuals stamp that was given to me by my crafty friend Zuzu. I'm not really in to stamping, so don't have that many and this was the only one I had of a head. Or two heads in this case.  

I used distress stains in peacock feather, vintage photo, bundled sage and weathered wood, though the sage colour has pretty well disappeared. I used a tiny attacher to attach some of the elements as I haven't got a sewing machine handy (attic? back of cupboard under a pile of junk?), and not enough patience to do that by hand. I made a big fluffy bow using the 3 times around the fingers technique.  I think if I was doing this one again I would use embossing powder on the stamp as it doesn't stand out enough and that area of the tag needs a bit of texture.

My other project that I finished recently was an art journal cover. I was supposed to be going over to Zuzu's house on Thursday and she had decided that we would be creating a journal page, and I've not done that before.  As it turned out the date was cancelled, but I did the cover of my new journal instead.  I bought a ringbound book of multimedia paper to use as a journal, but the cover needed strengthening.  I covered the front in patches of embossed foil, using all my favourite embossing folders, and a couple of Movers and Shapers die cuts that were hanging about in a drawer.  I added some stiff card to the reverse side.  I painted over the foil with white gesso and let this dry then dribbled alcohol inks in several colours over it.  Once dry I sanded back the relief areas to reveal the foil.  I hope it stands up to some wear and tear.

I hope I can create interesting pages inside.  It's a big book (A4) with lots of pages and a bit intimidating.  Eek.

A Bit Rusty. Must be all that rain.

 So, the holiday on Loch Awe was a wash out, so much so that we came home a day early.  But the place we were in was lovely, the view over to Ben Cruachan was quite stunning, and we did get one day of sun before rain ruined it all.  I got one decent picture from the loch side showing the view from our lodge.

Back to my crafting room.  Don't care if it rains when I'm there.

I was given a large John Lewis photo album by someone, with the request that I make it look 'like something from Mad Max, because I know you can do that sort of thing'.  Gulp. Can I?  I do vaguely remember seeing the film about 20 years ago, but I don't remember the details.  Apparently the Mad Max look involves a lot of rust, found objects, buckles and chains, so I  have been working on that for the last few days.  I wasn't sure about how to go about making something look rusty so I experimented with different paint finishes.  The first was okay, but wasn't quite right as the colour was wrong and it ended up too smooth and shiny because I mod podged it at the end. Matt finish mod podge isn't matt enough!

So I took a different tack and this worked well. 

For this one I painted a piece of white foam board with Ranger black gesso and then painted over that with a coat of Americana acrylic paint in Bitter Chocolate. I then used Ranger's clear embossing dabber around the edges of the piece (I love this dabber, so much easier than using an ink pad) and then covered that with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo distress embossing powder.  That  gives just the right kind of 'grittiness'. I treated the die cut cogs in the same way.  The colour overall was a bit flat so I gave a light random sploding of very, very watered down orange paint, just what I had on the shelf which in this case was Decoart Traditions Quinacridone Burnt Orange, and Crafters acrylic Pure Pumpkin. 

Finally, to add a little contrast to the patina, I shook up a bottle of Tattered Angels glimmer mist in Midnight Blue and then dipped a paintbrush in the bubbles and dabbed very sparingly on a few areas.  This gave a slightly metallic blue sheen which brought the whole thing alive.  However, it's a good idea to check that the top is screwed up tight before shaking the bottle.  I didn't, and I've still got blue hands 2 days later!

The banner is one of those lasercut wooden ones that came from Hobbycraft (I think) and I simply coloured it with Smooch blue pearlised accent paint. The female body is one I made from fimo clay.

After the experimenting came the real thing, so here are the pics of various stages of the make, using the same techniques as above.  I sealed up the inside pages in a poly bag and masking tape so I wouldn't get them messed up.  I used white foam board again for the title piece, to give a bit of depth.  The spine is swiped over in Vintage Photo distress stain.

There are a whole host of different found objects, many from my drawerfull of loose junk so I'm not sure what they all are, but everything was altered to give it the rusty look, apart from one or two of the Prima Junkyard Findings, and the Tim Holtz buckles, cogs, philosophy tag and foliage piece.  I liked the way the copper shone against the rust, so I mixed up some Ruby and Renaissance Treasure Gold waxes to make a coppery colour and used a tiny bit of it to highlight the lettering (Tim's Alpha Parts, with a coat of paint to take the shine off).   I made the bands to go through the buckles out of suede cut from a charity shop handbag. I had tried to make some from grungeboard but they cracked, and then from black gaffer tape, but that was too shiny and stiff.  The suede has the advantage of being supple and strong and so much easier to get through the buckle.

On to new things tomorrow.  Haven't done Tim's tag for August yet, so will have a look at that,