BRAMBLE HEDGE

I am leaving you with this journal page over the weekend while I am gone; I am off to THE CRAFT BARN to teach two workshops over this weekend. I am really looking forward to it, it should be great fun, will report back next week.

And don't forget the Craft Barns WEEKEND EXTRAVAGANZA is coming up in only two weeks........12/13th September..........I will be there demoing along with 16 others!! Promises to be a fab weekend, come along if you can!

So next week I will be back.......... with exciting news.........well, I think it's exciting, I hope you will too!!

LETTER A

Today is the day for the fourth READY STEADY STAMP challenge and I was really pleased to be asked to be guest designer for this one.

Here is my piece of inspiration!

The five ingredients that had to be included this time were the letter A, canvas, brown/cream/white, a scalloped circle and clear drops (raindrops).
You also have to include some stamping, mine was minimal this time with only the leaf being stamped.


A close up of my canvas flower with the scalloped circle button in the centre.

PUMPKINS GALORE

This card is made with another new stamp from INKADINKADO, this time from the PUMPKINS GALORE set. Inspire word is INVOKE ARTS, both stamp companies available from THE STAMP ATTIC

NEW STAMPS.....NEW JOURNAL

Late last week I got some new stamps, I went a bit mad and bought four sets of Halloween/Autumn stamps; because I couldn't decide which ones to get I got them all! They are all by Inkadinkado and are available from THE STAMP ATTIC.
I also got a new journal which I am going to keep to the Halloween/Autumn theme that I love so much.

So, I have been waiting for a bit of time to play with them, I finished off my latest Craft Stamper project today and off it went in the post so I settled in for some play time!

I LOVE this skull stamp, I think it is so clever with the words set into one side of it. It is combined here with some rub-ons I found in the drawer the other day.




This page came about from the scrap pad I work on. The cherish words were already on there from something else and I stamped the stars and 2 different skulls next to the words just to try them out really but then I liked the way it looked so tore it out and stuck it into the journal. The extra colour around the torn piece is oil pastels.......another new toy!

This page started in a similar way to the previous one........the paint circles were already on the pad so I stamped the Ravens Gate image over them and then coloured in the background. Torn out and then stuck in the journal.
Letters are drawn through a stencil and again the colour is oil pastels.

GARDEN OF DEATH!!

Ok, you might have noticed that I changed the header and background to my blog!!
I ABSOLUTELY love it!! If you don't that's Ok but don't be scared it's only a picture!

Just in case you were wondering it is called "Garden of Death", a painting from Finnish symbolist painter and graphic artist Hugo Simberg.

MAKE YOUR OWN JOURNALS

The jounal I started on the jounalling workshop I went to is almost full!
So, today I took myself off to Hobbycraft and bought an A4 pad of 25 sheets 100lbs/220gsm medium surface cartridge paper for £5.85. With that pad, the back off it and some extra card saved from the backs of other paper pads and my trusty Bind-it-All I now have the 5 journals you see here! Not bad for under £6.

The biggest is about 20cm square, next is about 16x20cm, then about 10x15cm and then 2 small ones at about 10.5x15cm, they each have either 12 or 13 pages.

I started out covering the covers with scrap book paper (the red one with diamonds) but then decided it would be better to cover them with my own stuff! So, that is what I used for the rest.


THIS IS MY FAVOURITE!!
It is covered with a piece of paper from the pad I use to work on. Yesterday I was spraying a page in my other journal with a stencil and Adirondack spray inks, I dumped the wet stencil onto the pad, wiped the excess ink off with a baby wipe and then picked it up to reveal the pattern underneath!! It was almost nicer than the jounal page!

NOT ANOTHER JOURNAL PAGE?

I know, I know it looks like this is turning into a journalling blog!!
I can't tell you how much I am loving messing in my journal, it is SOOO relaxing! I am doing other stuff, just not stuff I can show here yet, it's either for publication or for workshops/demos and so I am left with journal pages!

This one came about from looking at a sketch on RACHEL JACKSONS blog, thanks for the inspiration Rachel!



And so to finish here is the page I started last night in front of the TV. It is sketched with a charcoal pencil, I love those things! I have no idea how this will end up, need to think about it and play some more, will show the results later!

LIZARD

THINK MONDAY THINK ATC theme today is LIZARDS. Here is my entry, a bit more funky than my usual style but I liked the way it turned out!!

NOT THE DESTINATION

One advantage to staying with my Mum was that I had some time to work on my journal.
I finished this page tonight, the picture of the bird heading down hill with such determination came from an RSPB mag that Mum was throwing out, the picture just made me smile!

I noticed earlier that SATURDAY WORKOUT theme this week was "to make a journal page"..........so, here you are!

BLUE RUSSIAN

It has been over two weeks since I last posted on my blog and I have really missed it, hope you have missed me too! Unfortunately my Dad has been seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia and I have been staying with my Mum..........real life comes before fun.........he is on the road to recovery now so I can find the fun again! My last post was my entry for READY STEADY STAMP second challenge and purely by chance this entry is my piece for their third challenge.

The piece is worked on an old book cover, for the photo it is stood against the book I took the cover off.


This time we had to use cuttlewax technique......see RSS blog for details and a tutorial............I did not have any wax paper so I made my own! Take a piece of greaseproof paper and rub a candle all over one side, et voila wax paper! Proceed with technique as described.
We also had to use the colour blue, the theme monument (mine is a Russian church......stamp by Stampington), a piece of cork (this was the hardest bit trying to make it fit in.......my church image is mounted on it) and a metal embellishment............I think mine is obvious!!


I bought five of these cast iron handles only very recently so I was pleased to be able to use one of them. I added some white pigment ink over the raised areas followed by a touch of blue to tie in the colour theme.