Tim Holtz week.

This week I have the honour to hostess the challenge on Wednesday Stampers . My choice of subject for the challenge is Tim Holtz my all time guru when it comes to all things distressed. I confess to being a total geek when it comes to his style and products and am in awe of the ease by which he can create such beauty out of the most grungy of items.

This love of the shabby chic probably goes back to my early days learning interior design. I just loved to take tatty old pieces of furniture and give them the shabby chic treatement but now it's mainly confind to books and canvases.

This canvas has been painted in acrylics and Rangers distress crackle paint before adding the image which has been altered in photoshop and transfered onto the fabric. I've added grungeboard coloured with distress inks of course and added a found metal butterfly. The bird cage stamp was inked onto acetate and cut out as it's not easy to stamp acurately onto a canvas.

I hope you enjoy Tim Holtz week and create some wonderful pieces of art.

More art journal pages.

I'm profiting from a week off to catch up with some projects and here are two more journal pages completed for Coleens Vintage Terrace 2 'Life Path Challenge'.

New web site.

At the end of a very busy week, I've finally got around to doing a couple of pages of my art journal.

With the closure of the free ning groups alot of them have found themselves in panic and in need of a new home. Since I took over the running of Scrappy Accents, I've become more and more drawn into this little cyberworld and the success of last weeks cybercrop just defined for me how important this little world is to alot of people. So I decided to take a leap in the dark and set up my very own site based on the old ning group. It's been a huge thing for me to be brave enough to set up the site and then open it up to the rest of the Scrappy Accents members, but I've done it. I imagine the next few weeks will not be easy and I expect a few glitches in the system as I'm learning on the job, but I'm thoroughly enjoying myself at the moment and am happy that so many people have followed me over to the new home already.

I thank them for sticking by me and look forward to exciting times ahead.

So here's the link www.scrappyaccents.spruz.com

Creative Inspirations challenge

This is my card for the Creative Inspirations challenge blog where the challenge has been set by Maxine. It's a recipe challenge to use 3 flowers, 2 papers and a ribbon.

It's being sponsored this time by Peachy Keen Stamps and one lucky winner will receive a $25 voucher.

Eggs.

This is my arch for the new theme on Gothic Arches this week which is 'eggs'. A quick google search for eggs quickly found me these gorgeous quails egg images which I've imported into photoshop to give them the digital treatment.

Dt call

Cybercrop at Scrappy Accents

I've been busy organizing a cybercrop over at Scrappy Accents starting today and ending on sunday. Would you believe my internet came back on just today as I was wondering how on earth I was going to upload my challenges and tutorials to the site and actually participate in the event!!
Anyway I was working fast to get everything sent just in case it went off again and now I have I can breath a bit easier!

If you'd like to get involved go over to the Scrappy Accents ning group where there'll be challenges and a couple of tutorials by me and hopefully some chat.

Internet woes!! AGAIN!!

For the second time in 3 weeks the internet gremlins have struck leaving us without a connection. An absolute disaster seeing as this weekend I've planned a cybercrop over at Scrappy Accents I'll look pretty silly if I can't be there!!

Without internet I've spent alot of time just photoshop playing and here's what I came up with.

The trees

One of the main features of our little village is the row of Poplar trees which line the road and river. They were planted about 100 years ago and are by now so tall they eclipse the chateau. During the recent storm which swept over Luxembourg and the rest of Europe, we lost a couple of them which was sad enough, but a decision was taken to fell the rest. I can understand that they've become dangerous due to disease and age and that they're not even native to the rest of the valley but they've been a part of our outlook since we arrived here and today we look out on a bare scene without them. It's so sad and we'll miss them terribly.

By chance the theme at Wednesday Stampers this week is Trees. I thought I'd journal about the loss of our Poplars and how I felt about it.

I suppose I'll get used to it and after a few weeks it'll feel as if they were never there but for the moment it's as if a protector has gone leaving us exposed and naked.

Happy Easter.

This little card is for the green and black challenge at Creative Inspirations challenge blog this week.


Now we're over the Easter festivities I hope your not regretting all that chocolate but with spring-like weather arriving it could be time to get out and move that body!

Eggs.

Also this week I made this little house for the Wednesday Stampers challenge this week which is 'eggs'. Mine isn't the chocolate kind but a recycled plastic one painted and sprayed with glimmer mist and nested into a niche cut from a piece of foam board. How happy was I when I saw my canvas from last week featured on the sampler, pity I couldn't see it straight away.

Fabric book workshop.

Last saturday I gave a workshop in France to the Scrap a la Fraise group, on fabric books. These are some of the pages from the book I'd made for the workshop using calico as a base, bits of fabric, papers and embellishments. Everyone had a good time painting their backgrounds and sewing their pages together, some for the first time. I'll post some pictures later from the group.

New Creative Team member.

This second layout is from a kit by Tayrinas Scrap Designs who I've now started designing for also. I'd been pulling my hair out all week trying to find ways to upload the work to them during my crisis even resorting to using my daughters I-Pod connection!

Anyway you'll be hearing alot more from me about them in the future so stay tuned.

No April Fool.

I've just spent a week totally without internet which was the most awful feeling in the world. I discovered I'm so addicted I started to have feelings of rage and tension as the days and nights turned into a week. We blamed everyone from the internet provider to the post office exchange but eventually it came down to a dinosaur of a router box which could have been fixed a week ago. Anyway, what has this got to do with the above picture? Well, two days before we were cut off, I accepted an offer to take over the reins at Scrappy Accents It must have looked like I'd accepted then done a runner!!

This is a fantastic opportunity to make my mark on something already existing and it already feels like a little family to me.

I look forward to taking the group to another level and have some exciting ideas for the future.

The above layout was created for the challenge this month which was originally set by Theresa.