Postcards from Paris (by Jo)

I was so pleased when Elaine chose Willy's book for our next project. I thought the combination of the black card and the bright inks was stunning. I chose a black background for my book and wanted to use bold colours too but wanted to avoid copying Willy's colours. With hindsight I would maybe not have chosen Distress Inks and maybe gone for sizzling colours instead but these were the inks that were in my head at the time and they do seem to suit the subject matter. I chose Broken China, Pine Needles and Dusty Concord.



It was only after I inked all the tags that I realised just how many surfaces I'd be stamping on. I'd chosen Elusive Images' Paris Memories plate as I thought it was my best chance of having a large number of stamps on one theme at my disposal. Even so, I found I had to introduce other stamps so I didn't have to repeat too many.
I used some stitch stamps from HOTP and also some sequin waste for backgrounds. Other images came from Paperartsy, Prima, The Artstic Stamper, Butterfly Kisses, Craft Stamper and Dimension Fourth.

I really liked the bleaching on Willy's flags too and used some bleaching on every tag. The flower worked particularly well so I did use that as a recurring motif, with Hero Arts Old French Script stamped over it. I discovered what Willy meant about the effects of the bleach over different colours.

Putting the book together proved quite simple considering the great effect the flags produce. It was hard to get a photo of the book showing how the tags move but I hope these give you the flavour of how the pages look.

Finally, I decided to depart from Willy's project when doing the cover. I'd been very taken with the cover of Penny Bearcroft's Fuerteventura journal and wanted to produce a collage style cover along similar lines. I also wanted to have a crack at that style as I'm planning to produce my own holiday journal in just a few weeks' time. For my cover I printed some words over a panel from Artylicious' Decadent Brocade CD. This was mounted over some Cuttlebug embossed card, with some die cuts from the same Cuttlebug set (including the tag which was a piece of paper I'd been using to try out some Cosmic Shimmer and Crafty Notions mica sprays). The lamp image was actually my first bleaching practice piece. The key is a ScrapFX laser cut chippie, which had a thin coat of Viva Terra to give it a bit of texture then was lightly swiped with gold ink. The number tag is made with a stamp I love but don't often have the opportunity to use. It is from a US manufacturer. Probably Purple Onion. These bits are held together with an Idea-ology ball chain.

So this is the finished cover. It doesn't look very square as it is standing up. So, to use Judith's expression, it's decidedly 'on the wonk'. Thanks for nominating this challenge, Elaine. I really enjoyed it.

PS My apologies for the arrangement of pics on this post. I look forward to the day when what you see in the preview pane in Blogger is what you see on the page after you've published!

PPS I have just found out about Blogger's new post editor. It might be too late for this post but hopefully my next one will look much more sensible!

Project for June (written by Judith)

Well, slightly later than normal,we'd like to let you know what our chosen project is to be from the June edition of Craft Stamper magazine. Elaine has chosen the project this time, and it is 'Flutterby Flag Book' on page 16 by Willy Anderson. The lovely vibrant colours against the black are really striking, and the butterfly theme running through the book pulls a large amount of different stamps together.
Willy has suggested the option of a yearbook, or using tags for the flags, so it will be interesting to see what we all come up with. Jo has made a start and you can see her sneaky peek here

As you know, at the beginning of the month, we went on our mini Retreat near Bedford. We had four days of chatting, cooking, and crafting together. We had two adjoining appartments,which were stuffed to the brim with our crafty stash. We spent one day attending a class with Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts, making a hanging consisting of three mini canvases. We worked on our circle journals, making pages for each other, and trying our hand at skills that we taught each other. Elaine taught us how to make leafy backgrounds, using leaves from her garden and Adirondack inks. I taught the girls how to add beading to Stampbord, and they made a necklace. We didn't achieve everything that we had planned, but there is always next time! 

The farm where we stayed was brilliant, we made friends with the resident dogs, and admired the horses. The owner even brought her chickens round to meet us! She had a very large great Dane called Dufus, who was a little disconcerting, but if you were brave, and fronted him out, he was okay. 

As well as the four of us meeting up, we took our Art dolls, and photographed them together too. It was lovely to see each other's work in the flesh,because we only get to see photographs too.

We have lots of happy memories of our time together, and were very sad when we came to say goodbye to each other. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can meet up again.

Alluring Alliums (written by Judith)

Well, it's with severe misgivings that I'm posting my project this month. This project was supposed to be our easy option, yet we have all struggled with this one. I have worked with canvas and gel before, and was not at all apprehensive as I started this project. However, I have not been able to produce the results that I wanted at all. This has been partly due to time constraints, and partly to the quality of my tissue paper I think.

I knew straight away that I was going to make my own mask for this project. I love alliums, and wanted to make a mask to represent that flower on a Monet inspired background. I thought about how I could achieve the effect that I wanted, and decided to make my mask in two parts, one for the stalk and one for an outline of the ball type heads.

I created a background, using Adirondack paint dabbers, using Pebble in the centre, and a mixture of Willow, Juniper and Cool Peri around the edge, blending them softly. I then placed my two masks together in the centre, and inked around them using Citrus for the stalk and Wild Plum and Currant for the heads. I then took the head part away, and inked around the little branch pieces using first Citrus and then Stream for shading.

Next I used small dots of colour around the edge of the heads to represent the flowers of the Alliums. I used a mixture of Wild Plum, Citrus, Raspberry and White paint Dabbers.                                                          

For my stamping, I have used a combination of stamps from Elusive Images, Stampotique, Artemio, and Tim Holtz, using Stazon to stamp them on tissue paper and acetate to create the effects that I wanted. 

I decided  to cover my entire canvas with Golden Gel, which, as I anticipated, did cause my Adirondack Inks to brighten and move somewhat. This meant that I had to go over them again to repair the effect a bit. I would therefore reconsider using Adirondacks another time, or just avoid going over the whole piece with the Gel. You learn from these things. However, I did see it through to the end, and I enjoyed the process in a strange kind of way, so thank you Lesley, for challenging me! Judith x             

Sweet, sparkling music of summer (by Jo)

She didn't! This isn't the same canvas. Having looked at the first version I decided it needed a little bit of green with the pink. I suspect this was partly on account of passing an apple tree on my way to work and admiring the blossom. I think I'm happy with the green. I also changed a stamp which looked like it didn't belong.

I have to say a huge thank you to Sharon Neill here because I wouldn't have been able to improve on my initial effort without her advice on how to apply the tissue and what gels and inks to use.

The base coat is Adirondack Sandal Dabber and a red acrylic borrowed from my son's A level Graphics kit. I mixed up the green from some of his other colours (oddly, not blue and yellow!) and added that in. The next stage was the stamping onto tissue. I used Blazing Red and Jet Black Stazon. The stamps were from Beeswax, Crafty Individuals, Judikins, Hot off the Press and Elusive Images. My first attempt used Golden gel medium (gloss) but I decided I didn't want the 'brushed' texture so I changed to Mod Podge. The Heidi Swapp leaf masks were kindly donated by my good friend Lesley and the inking over the top is Brilliance in Crimson Copper, Pearlescent Crimson and Pearlescent Poppy.

I am quite pleased with the result. But I think the canvas looks nicer in reality. The photo shows it looking very red whereas the colours are actually much more varied with pinks and bronzes. The finish is also very glossy which makes the colours look even richer. I feel inclined now to use these masks on another project very soon. Maybe next week on one of our journal pages...

Will she....or won't she? (Posted by Jo)

Well, surprisingly, I have a finished canvas. But I am not sure yet whether you will see that one here or not. The gel/tissue/masking combination used by Sharon in her wonderful Craft Stamper piece gave me some problems which I didn't fully resolve. Getting a satisfactory finish might mean starting again. But while I am trying to decide here is a little peek of what I have so far.

May's Craft Stamper Project (Judith)

Life has become very busy for us lately, and last month proved to be extremely hectic! Only one of us managed to make the end of the month deadline, and we felt that maybe some of our projects were becoming too complicated.
This month, Lesley has chosen Sharon Neill's Abstract Art project on page 38 of May's Craft Stamper, as our project to tackle. The colours she has used are really zingy and vibrant. We are all digging out our masks and tissue paper for this one, and hopefully we will all make the deadline this month!
We are also busily planning for our mini Retreat at the beginning of June, so we are trying to cram in lots of preperation for several craft filled days together. It is exciting enough that we are meeting up again, but this time we are taking our tools and our stash with us. We have an itinerary of projects that we intend to make together, and some craft shopping planned as well. It just doesn't get much better than that!

One of the projects that we intend to make is a circle journal, now those of you that follow my blog, will have seen these pictures, and I apologise for that. I have made the covers for my journal already, trying to give an indication of colours that I am partial to. We had intended to try and make a couple of inner pages as well, as a kind of mood board, but time is just running away from us. We will all make our basic journals, and all work on a double page in each other's journals while we are together. At the end of our stay, we will have a memento of our time together in the form of  hand crafted pages from each of our friends in our journals. We also plan to put some photos in there too. We have been plotting behind each other's backs, (doesn't that sound terrible?) to work out what to put on these pages, and I think that they will be gorgeous. We will have so much to blog next month, we won't have enough days in the month to blog everything.

Hopefully, we'll be back soon with some sneaky peeks of our canvases for you, Judith x

In a monastery garden (posted by Elaine)

Well just when everyone had given up hope that I would ever finish my April project, here it finally is!!

I have to say it was tricky getting a decent picture as it is quite long!

While everyone else was busy with cubes, I decided to try and use a piece of skirting board for a slightly different approach. As soon as I started thinking about doing a long panel design I though of using this gorgeous stamp from Beeswax Stamps in the US. BUT I don't have this stamp, my distant crafty friend Jo does though and she kindly agreed to lend it to me.

I thought that by stamping this image a few times I could make it into a cloister effect. I have always loved cloisters as they have such a peaceful atmosphere, often  enclosing beautiful gardens. They are little safe havens of tranquility.

I had seriously over-estimated the accuracy of my stamping!! One of the things I most admire about Helen Chilton, whose project inspired us this month, is the incredible accuracy of her stamp positioning - I think it is really awesome! Even with a stamp positioner, I couldn't do what I wanted and stamp it all in one line, so I stamped separate images to stick together. Then when I came to colour the images I just couldn't get the colour I wanted, so in the end I stamped the image onto Basic grey Wassail paper in a sludgey, olivey green-grey sort of colour, cut them out with my trusty decoupage scissors and stuck them all together.

The effect I wanted to create was the idea of the changing colours of light through the different times of the day, starting with dawn and going through to evening. I needed a landscape effect, so I used strips of torn Eclipse tape to create the effect I was looking for, sponging on my beloved Adirondack dye inks in five blending sets of colours. I used about 18 different colours all together I think, working hard to keep using the correct blending foam squares as I kept changing my colours!

On each panel I did four colours to look like sky and mountains.

Once I had done that I had my backgrounds and decided to use exactly the same stamps in the same position on each panel, otherwise I felt the overall effect would be far too hectic. I had hoped to use the Elusive Images Wild Meadow stamps, but they were too big for the scale of this project, so I used a Crafty Individuals set CI 207 - that I often think of as mini Wild Meadow!!

I positioned them all on a large block and repeat stamped the layout on all five panels. I edged the top corners with the Lavinia vine stamp that is so very useful. I finished off with the little grass stamp from Wild Meadow (I was determined to get it in there somewhere), and then shaded around the edge of each panel and over the whole image lightly with more dye ink to pull it all together. As a final touch I added some tiny butterflies and dragonflies and a bird in the sky on each colour.

Putting all the panels and layers together with the wood, it was clear I would have to do some serious paintwork to get the wood to match into my stamped panel.

So I covered my wood in gesso, painted it with some acrylic paint in a blending colour and then tried to match it to the colour of the arches by stippling very dark grey paint on with a shaving brush. I did manage to do a couple of horrible blotchy sections, just don't look too closely!! I was trying to get a stoney sort of effect so the moulding of the wood looked more like part of the surrounding architecture. I had to try and do justice to all the lovely moulding my OH did especially for me to fit the size of the panel.

I finally stuck the whole lot together with lots of extra strong DST and glue roller. And if you've managed to read through the end of this screed without dropping off you get extra bonus points and you can sit in my monastery garden for a little longer!!

Sorry I kept you all waiting so long girls. xx