Silly Witch

The last couple of days I have spent cleaning my house......and garden.......ready to leave it for the next couple of months. While I like the house to look presentable I HATE having to clean it.......it is so BORING.........especially when new stamps have dropped through the letter box and are shouting to be used!
So to relieve some of that boredom I made this journal page as I went along!
Vacuum the living room............go gesso the pages, while that is drying........vacuum the hall and stairs.........not quite dry........vacuum the landing and bedroom.............colour pages with Distress ink and spray inks..............while drying....... clean bathroom (such fun!).........stamp pumpkin background.........put out rubbish....................you get the picture!

I know the witch looks kinda creepy but don't be scared! Does it make it better if I tell you the body of my witch is actually Beth Ditto? (sorry Beth).......I cut her out from a fashion supplement that came with a Sunday paper! The creepy face is from Stampotiques new Halloween cube. The legs and hat are hand drawn.

The words are from Macbeth..........the pumpkin background is one of the new stamps, it's from Impression Obsession........

.......the crow is from Tim Holtz Haunted Mansion stamp set.

While I was tidying in the garden I cut down several dry things and rather than just throw them in the compost I made an Autumn display! 

Cardoons in a metal basket.

The thing with feathers

which apparently is HOPE and it perches in your SOUL!

 This double page spread is in my A4 journal.It started as a really yukky coloured couple of pages, I had used up some paint rather than waste it and really didn't like the result! So, it sat there for a while until I decided to just work over it.

The images came from an old copy of the RSPB magazine courtesy of my Mum.

  There was a much more defined border around this to start with but again that changed as this developed.

 I really like the stamped ferns and little flowers, carried them on across the bottom of the mag image to help blend it into the background.


While we are on the subject of birds this arrived in the post this morning (from Amazon) just in time to take with me on Saturday when I head back to Kazakhstan.

Hopefully this will keep me busy for a while!

Styx and Stones

 may break my bones
but words will never hurt me

Remember the Mills & Boon episode a few posts back when I said I had also bought another book that had yelled "journal page" at me? Well, this is that book............doesn't she just look like a witch writing a spell? Well.....she did to me, and I liked the title as well!!
This is what it became........

this is in my A5 Molskine journal.

She has an added witch hat cos all witches wear pointy hats! And extra blood dripping from her pen. I think it must be a happy spell she is concocting as she is smiling, either that or she is extra cruel!

Embossed skulls added to the left hand page edge, added these cos if you look very carefully at the original book cover there are tiny skulls on the curtains behind her.
Working on these reminded me why I don't emboss things very much these days..........I HATE the way embossing powder gets EVERYWHERE even when you try to be so careful!!

UNDER GROUND and LATE COLOUR

Yesterday I met up with friends in London. One of the things we did was to visit THE BRITISH LIBRARY as I wanted to see the original hand written copy of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. I did not know that it was originally called 
ALICE'S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND, did you??

 It was only when it was eventually published that it became ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. It was lovely to see the original and I bought a facsimile copy of the book along with a poster and some postcards that no doubt will end up on a journal page!

 

Here's a couple of pages from inside the book with original drawings by Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), the drawings by Tenniel came later.............the Library has the original woodcuts for some of the Tenniel drawings, apparently they were found very carefully wrapped in a bank vault in Covent Garden.......I covetted those I have to say!

Today is another day and I have been clearing in the garden getting it ready for me disappearing again (next weekend) and the onset of Autumn/Winter!
There is still some late colour out there

along with some interesting dried seed heads

ABC...........XYZ

I found these card stencils while rummaging through a drawer so they have been
streakily gesso-ed
roughly painted
randomly stitched
charcoaled around
white pen doodled
and pastel enhanced

on top of a 
gesso-ed
painted
distressed
stamped 
circle stencilled background

to make this double A4 journal page spread!

HIBOU GRUNGE

This week the challenge on SIMON SAYS STAMP AND SHOW is to show your grunge! I never really know what is meant by "grunge" so I looked it up! Apart from talking about grunge music the main definition seems to be "the state of being covered with unclean things, grime, soil, dirt, filth, grease, stain!" I even found one definition that described it as "cleaning the grunge from under the microwave"!!! Why under the microwave should be any grungier than elsewhere I don't know!
Anyway I hope no-one thinks my "grunge" offering should be relegated to under the microwave.......please don't say so if you do!!!!

Here is my HIBOU book.......hibou is French for owl and I only use it cos I like the word.

The pages inside, they are attached to the cover (more about that in a min) with a simple pamphlet stitch.

With the ties closing the book.
OK confession time.........my book cover is made of..............GRUNGEPAPER!! I know, I know, the stuff I don't much like..........well, one of the DT nspiration pieces on the Simon Says blog is a book made with grungepaper, so I thought mmmmm will give that a try, I knew I had some somewhere.
Then again looking at the DT pieces there was another using a Tim technique called rusted enamel, it's in his book but a quick online search soon found a Youtube video showing how to do it.........so I used that on the cover too and I REALLY like the way it came out! See, I don't hate all things TIm!

7Gypsies rub-on letters.

Captain Nemo

Does this ever happen to you? Once you see something once and then start thinking about it that same thing keeps popping up?
Well, that's what happened with this! I was "googling" Steampunk and JULES VERNE kept popping up, then I was down at THE STAMP ATTIC with SARAH and she pointed out an octopus stamp and said it would work for 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea so I bought it and then last week in an old book shop in Liverpool there were several copies of that very book for 20p so I bought one of them (that makes up for the full price M&B!).
At that point I thought "OK this is meant to be" and gave in, so here is my JULES VERNE 20,000Leagues Under The Sea inspired journal page!

 At the weekend a friend was looking through my journal and passed comment that it is very hard to tell what size things are on my blog (I think this is cos I crop close to the edges) so just so you know this journal is an A5 Moleskine (so opened out to a double page spread like above is A4).........and it is one of my fav journals!

It seems I have taken to this "print then cut into strips" method of adding words to my journal pages! Harking back to my previous post re: cliches........."making a rod for your own back" comes to mind! It does take some time and is fiddly but I like the way it looks!

OK so I realise that it is a squid in the story and this is an octopus but come on, it was a miracle to find a octopus stamp never mind a squid!!

This was actually the title page from the book I bought, the rest got lost under the other stuff but I kept the title and author wording.

Cliches

is what this post is full of. Ones like "dog with a bone" and "more money than sense" in particular!
After I posted my pumpkin bookmarkers Effie comented that they didn't suit her Mills and Boon books (which apparently she doesn't actually have!) so I sort of challenged her to make one that would suit them!
See the result here!
Now not one to be left out  (dog with bone comes in here)I headed to town this morning and trawled through the charity shops for a M&B but could not find one anywhere. Next I tried The Works.....no M&B but I did find a fab book with a very cheesy cover that will make an appearance as a journal page sometime soon! Getting fed up now I headed to Smiths where in frustration I bought a FULL PRICE M&B (more money than sense)!!
This is the book I bought

And this is what it became

I used just the words from the story synopsis inside the cover and added Vampire Bills (from True Blood) head from my copy of Rolling Stone mag (the one with the blood spattered naked men on the cover).

Funny how words can be twisted to mean whatever you want!!!

Over the page

bookmarks. A while ago a friend sent me some great bookmarks (thanks Zoe) that clip over the page and they made me think " I can make those"! So here are my versions.

They clip over the edge of the page and have small magnets inside to hold them in place.

Such a sad litle pumpkin face!

Three little pumpkins......does this count as a pumpkin patch I wonder!

And a scary face for a change!

I used the two new HALLOWEEN CUBES from STAMPOTIQUE which are available here in the UK from THE STAMP ATTIC

Something fishy

this way comes! I would like to introduce you to Phineas (on the right hand page), Giorgio (with the shell) and Bard (next to Giorgio) and their fishy friends Ambrosius (fat fish) and Gawan (the other fish).......don't you just love the crazy names??!

These guys are from STAMPOTIQUE! While I LOVE the Daniel Torrente and Jill Penney images from STAMPOTIQUE, there is a lot more to the company than just those! These are by AMY WILSON WELLENSTEIN and are so quirky in a very different way.

PHINEAS.......the little swirls and the quote are also from Stampotique, the swirls are one of the JO CAPPER-SANDON images and the quote from Amy (to go with the fish).

GIORGIO and BARD

A shoal of AMBROSIUS-es and GAWANs
 These fun images will be available from THE STAMP ATTIC in the VERY near future along with the new images. 

This week on CRAZY AMIGOS the challenge theme is fish so I am entering this as my piece!

The other weed images I have used are from Lavinia Stamps.

Steampunk debutante

I make no apologies for the Steampunk fest that is going on on here at the moment cos I LOVE IT!! It is so right up my street with its use of found bits and pieces!!

As you can see this piece features another of the folded book page pieces I am so into using at the min.along with the GRAPHIC 45 STEAMPUNK DEBUTANTE papers,  I sprayed this one with ink and like the way it ran between the pages.

A bit of a labour of love was adding the little washers to the pages! To make them hang the right way I had to use 2 jump rings for each one!

Sat in the folded pages are two old radio valves with the words STEAM and PUNK added on strips of metal along with a couple of paper roses.

Even the bird has a few watch parts added! The bird is a STAMPOTIQUE image.

An old watch added as a necklace.
Graphic 45 papers and Stampotique stamps are available from  
THE STAMP ATTIC