Challenge 52

I'm always trying to keep ahead of things and I know we're still in January but I'm turning my attention already to Valentines Day.  Our new challenge number 52 on Creative Inspirations is Love.  I made 2 cards this time as I loved the resist technique on the handmade paper, then I couldn't decide which one to use.
Anyway, our sponsors for this challenge are Quixotic papers and Di's digi downloads.

Seriously inky fingers.

I got some seriously inky fingers this week from creating this journal page for the wednesday stampers.  Resist stamping then lots of Adirondak ink on the background spritzed with water.  The butterflies were also stamped with Adirondak ink and the stamp spritzed to get the watery effect of the stamping. Lots of ink and lots of colour - bliss.

Blog candy winner.

Well, the Creative Inspirations blog hop is coming to an end and it's time to announce the winner of my birthday prize.  Congratulations to Krafty Kows (Jeanette)  for winning my Creative Inspirations birthday blog candy.  Get in touch and send me your address for mailing please.

Congratulations again and thanks to everyone else who entered and sent me messages in the comments.


Krafty Kows said...


Thank you for the chance. Jeanette

Saturday, 22 January 2011 21:36:00 CET

My new favourite colour.....

I'm starting to see a familiar colour popping up in my work alot at the moment - it must be wishing for blue sky and sunshine!!

This little card is again using my new favourite colour and some stamps from My Stamp Box.  The Sizzix die cut dress was over stamped and the spotty background  was using acrylic paint with a circle stamp.  A bit of doodling and a ribbon and voilà as they say



A bit of old cardboard.

Whilst in a crafty vacuum last week and urged on by my friend Lena, I was pursuaded to have a go at making this little piece of wall art like the one made by another friend Lilith for Jardin du Mixed Media.

It's basically cardboard painted with acrylics and decorated with book page, stamps, rubons and an overlay.

Finished off with some wire and sequins I'm rather proud of it and have it now on my desk in front of me for motivation. The quote "Recognise that negative thoughts are nothing more than thoughts - they're not facts or reality" came from a magazine and has really stuck with me.

A very happy accident.

This  project was one of those things which just evolved as I went along after first having something very different in mind.

I did want to alter a wooden tea box as a project for My Stamp Box but once I started to work on it, it just fell apart. Not to be put off, I just changed direction and decided to alter just one of the wooden panels into a wall hanging. I glued patterned paper to the background and random torn pieces of book pages on top of that. I didn't like the look of the book page on top so tried to pull it off but it was stuck fast. I wet it to try rubbing it off and as I did so I realised I was left with a fabulous transfer effect. I thought I'd go with it and gave it a light coat of white acrylic paint before stamping the flowers onto the background with chalk ink.

It was all starting to come together now and some beautiful chipboards from Magistical Memories, some flowers from My Stamp Box and a piece of lace finished things off nicely.

I am a domestic goddess.

You know when you have those days when you feel the feedback you get for all your hard work is totally negative? Even though I love my girls dearly I still get "haven't you washed my jeans yet?" or "uhh not THAT again for dinner", or worse still, "you didn't vacuum under my bed!".  I have to just remind myself that I AM a domestic goddess, I do cook brilliantly (I just have some off days), I wash in accordance with what there's most of (ie. jeans, bedding, pink stuff etc) and sometimes I skip a bit on the cleaning, so here I am big-ing myself up a bit.

The theme for this week on Wednesday Stampers is 'tags' so I've made myself one to display on my desk.  The image by the way isn't me so don't get the wrong impression here but the stamps I've used are from My Stamp Box.

Happy 3rd Birthday Creative Inspirations with a blog hop.

Please come and help celebrate Creative Inspirations Birthday.We have a fab blog hop with soooo many prizes to give away plus Dt blog Candy also.What you have to do is follow the list below taking you to all the Dt Design Team blogs ,each blog will either give you a letter or number. Please keep these at the end and unscramble the word. Once you've finished, keep the word safe. Leave a comment on each members blog as you go and then add your name to mr links back at the Creative Inspirations blog, if you have completed both the challenge on the 16th Jan (current one) and blog hop then enter twice if you've just done th blog hop enter once.If you do both you have more chances of winning.

Don't leave your answer in your comment but E-mail your answer to andrewjude45@hotmail.com  we will pick winners on Friday 27th Jan.

These are our wonderful sponsors.

Now all you have to do is hop along to do the blog hop starting with corry's blog -  she's first .Good Luck and happy Hopping.

Corry
Cheryl
Jude.
Jenni
Suzi
Emma
Autumn
Pattie
Lorraine
Jaine   - You are here, So here is your letter and number from me so note it down R 2
Christine
Debs

For one lucky person who leaves a comment here I'm also offering a prize of my own of a celebrations card making kit.

Time for a celebration at Creative Inspirations.

Creative Inspirations are celebrating their 3rd birthday this week and on 18th there'll be a blog hop to celebrate. The theme for the next 2 weeks will be Celebrations and this is my card.

The sponsors for this next 2 weeks are Sentiments 4 you and Mami Doodles.

Second altered book page,'Light'.

As the snow melts and the rain sets in, I have to remind myself that it's still only the beginning of January.  The days are short, the mornings are dark, the evenings are dark and at this point spring is NOT around the corner, so at the moment I'm craving the sunlight.

As it's time for the next journal page in my altered book, I've chosen Light as my prompt. 

While making the page, I used a glue stick to glue the pages together as I really didn't like the bumpy effect that the gel medium left behind.  So I  covered my pages with torn book page as a background then used acrylic paint to paint over it.

If you're playing along too leave me a comment and let me know. 

Let there be music.

I've been having alot of fun over the past few days adding pages to my art journal and even though I wasn't going to make resolutions, one promise I've made to myself is to add alot more painted elements to my pages.  I had fun creating this page for Wednesday Stampers theme of "Music" using a picture of my Grandma, her brother and a couple of friends. I don't know how well she could actually play as I wasn't aware she actually could until I saw this photo, she wasn't known for her musical ability.

The stamps are from Clear Art Stamps.

Dream Big

If you're going to dream, dream big - why not? After all there's no harm in it is there?

For the first challenge of 2011 at Wednesday Stampers, the theme is Dream Big so here's my journal page still using my old 2010 journal which I'm dying to fill up and finish.





Altered book entry # 1 Winter white

Wow, 1st January, I think I've only just got used to signing the date with 2010 and now I'll have to put 2011. Even saying it outloud sounds terribly futuristic and odd. 

I hope if you're reading this on 1st January, you're not too frazzled from last night and whatever you did, it was good?  Happy New Year to everyone and whatever you do don't get on the scales today ( I'm not, that'll be tomorrow).


I'm posting here my first layout in my new altered book.  It's called "Winter White" - thanks Lena for the prompt and is inspired by the incredible amount of snow we've had so far this winter.  I've used tinges of blue to emphasize the wintery feel. The background is white acrylic paint and some texure paste stamped onto the page using bubble wrap. I used a soft blue ink pad to highlight the texture and around the photo. I also decided to move my paper clips to the sides of the other pages as it made my pages have a huge hump in the top corner. The next time I glue the pages together I might try a glue stick too as the pages did buckle a bit using the gel medium. I didn't mind that as it added to the snowdrift effect on the pages but it might annoy me later on.