ICAD17.. Week Two

Hey,

Happy Monday!

Today I am showing you my week 2 makes from ICAD17. See week one here and go to Daisy Yellow's blog for more info.

It was hard to pick a favourite this week, I love everything except my weird Tetrahedron..so hard to visualise in my opinion.

Anyway I've decided to go for Day.10 Sunshine Yellow as my pick for fave..

I covered the index card in patterned tissue paper and then painted over it using Mustard Seed Distress paint. Then I added black paint splatters.

I had originally planned to cover it in a bunch of the yellow MFT flowers that you see, but it didn't feel right, so I added a strip of chevron washi tape and dug around in my random die-cuts pouch and found the Deer.

It all came together so well accidentally, this is why I am loving ICAD random lovely things are created.

Cx

ICAD 2017...

Hey,

Happy Sunday!

Late post from me, I just got back from all day classes taught by Cheiron.

They were awesome and I learnt alot! AND the weather is glorious here in NYC - Summer = yay.

Today's post is about ICAD 2017 (Index Card a Day)..It is run by Daisy Yellow and it's awesome fun.

The idea is to make something with a 4x6 index card as your base every day. Prompts are provided, but you can go off prompt if you want. It runs from June 1st to July 31st. You can jump in whenever you want.

I have LOVED the first week, I got to dig out some fun stuff from my stash and step out of my comfort zone. Plus side being that I now have 7 gorgeous pieces of art. In the photo above they are in day order from bottom left clockwise.

I used so many different techniques and got all experimental..

I've decided to pick a favourite one every week and tell you about it, instead of boring you to tears by describing each one!!

My fave from week one is - Day 3: Vintage -

I love this, it came together so well. I covered the index card in patterned tissue paper and then painted over it with various shades of distress paint. I added the doily and distressed the edges of it with ink. The dress form I stamped onto white tissue, so it would look more transparent when added to the card. The butterfly is from my stash and I added black ink to the edges of the card.

I love all the layers, so far out of my comfort zone!

Cx

Themed Journal...Lyrics..

Hey,

Happy Monday..

I recently started a new art journal. It's smaller and landscape, as you can see.

I love my original journal, but I wanted this one to be more structured. Don't get me wrong, I still want to apply paint / ink / stuff randomly, but I thought an overall theme would be nice.

The background to this first spread inspired me to add the lyrics from a cartoon called Sealab (truly odd), Hubby and I love the theme tune and weirdly sing it all the time!

So I thought, why not make this a lyrics journal?

Here are a few more of my spreads..

I Know You, I Live You by Chaka Khan

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

Fashion! by David Bowie

They are so easy to produce, I can't stop! There are actually a few more than these ones! I love interpreting the lyrics in different ways and it is fun thinking about what lyrics I should play with..

Way too many supplies to list here, if you are curious about anything leave me a comment and I'll reply.

Cx

Playing in my Art Journal..

Hey,

So my Ma arrived last night - yay!!

I suspect that tonight she will want to break out her new art journal and have a play..so I thought I would show you some things that have been going on in mine lately.

The main photo is a spread I created based around a photo of a painting from a book I found in my $1 bin bookstore dive.. The book is called America in Print. I chose to use this painting by William Russell Birch because a) it is the view from Long Island across the East River looking at Manhattan and it's possibly, roughly where I live now on Manhattan and b) William Birch was English..

I used a Dina Wakely elephant paint for my background and used lime paint for my central highlight. I wanted to make the spread be an extension of the painting and I wanted to get the artists name it. I am really pleased with it and it is a fun mix of stamps and stencils.

One of the best things about art journaling is stretching my stamps and stencils and making them work a bit harder for me. 

The next spread was born out of my desire to create a pink spread LOL, seriously..I felt my pink paints have been a bit neglected recently.

Before the paint dried, I quickly used two stencils and removed some of the paint through them using baby wipes..love this technique and you get such awesome results.

Obviously I opted for Flamingoes, they are pink after all. I die-cut them using glossy paper and dripped alcohol ink onto them to create the fun colours on the right ones. The left ones I inked through the negative die-cuts.

I anchored the Flamingoes using tissue paper and washi tape. For a final touch I added some glitter paste through a stencil here and there..

This spread makes me so happy, so soothing..I think it's the pinks..

I love this art journal thing, I like the lack of rules, playing with paint, collaging things in, just the general random nature of it all.

Cx

Happy 4th of July..

Hey,

Happy Independence Day everyone!

I had a play in my journal in honour of today.

I am really enjoying this art journal thing..its weird and fun.

Today's spread was easy to make.

I started by stenciling the words onto the pages, that helped me figure out how to build out the rest of the flag.

As I applied the paint and the tissue paper for the stripes, I covered over the words slightly, but they were visible enough for me to position the cut-out letters / numbers.

The stars were punched out of a dictionary page, that I found in last weekends $1 bin bookstore rummage. These were actually very fiddly to apply to the page..I like to use a regular glue stick to stick things to the page (easy to remove if I change my mind) and then go over them with a Matte Medium Gel (I use Liquitex).

I'm really pleased with how it came out and it was fun, because I hadn't planned on tissue paper for the stripes, I was going to use white paint, but it was a bit flat and I realised I had all these strips of tissue paper that were exactly the right size for stripes!

Here is a close-up, so you can see the stars and the tissue paper -

The tissue paper was from my fave random bookstore chain in London and was a totally random buy that I seem to be using everywhere!

Have a great day..back to work tomorrow kittens - boo..

Cx

WOYWW #364..Seventh Anniversary...

Hey,

Happy WOYWW, it is the Seventh Anniversary of WOYWW today and ATC swap day.

Our illustrious leader Julia is away this week and so Lunch Lady Jan or LLJ is the hostess with the mostess, over at her blog Lunch lady Jan's Fabric Frenzy.

I am not joining in the ATC swap this year, I just didn't have the time this year with my large project at work.

I think Cara will be happy with my desk this week, she's always telling me it's too tidy.. I signed up for a Dina Wakely art journal class run by The Inkpad NYC and so I wanted to have a little play before the class. On my desk you can see my art journal front and centre, my paint pallet, waterpots and brushes, my coffee from the local deli, a piece of scrap grid paper for stamping on and various other bits and bobs.

Because I work from home from my craft desk, my enthusiasm for staying at my desk to make cards is not there. I felt I needed something more unstructured, but I am SO linear that it can't be too random..

So I thought painting would be good and then I was turned onto the idea of Art Journaling by Cheiron.

I am loving what I am creating and it's such a fun, messy way to spend 30 mins immediately after work, then my mojo returns and I spend another hour or so playing at my desk before Hubby comes home.

Here's the spread you can see on my desk..not sure if it's finished or not, but that's the fun part of art journals, you can come back to a page if you want to.

Because I like structure in some shape or form, I traced around oval dies to create the egg like shapes. I then die cut tissue paper in the two sizes and stamped over it. Before collaging the stamped ovals onto the page, I broke out the water colours and painted around the egg shapes. 

The stamped tissue pieces got applied using Liquitex Multi Matt Medium, as did the butterflies.

I then used a Faber Castell Pitt Big brush pen in black and white to draw around all the shapes and add some interest to the blue watercoloured eggs..

I love bling..so...

Here's a close up, so you can see the details.

Fun times right? Best bit is..because of all the different techniques I love to try, I have only had to buy a journal..I have everything else in my craft room.

Happy Seventh Anniversary everyone, especially big shout out to Julia, you are awesome and WOYWW gives me so much every week, even if I don't join in.

Cx

Mini Canvas Christmas Gifts..

Hi,

I wanted to make my 2 bosses a handmade gift.

For 2 reasons - 1) its nice to give handmade stuff 2) they do not understand crafting, they think JT and I are insane...

I guess no.2 has some truth :)

I decided to make them a mini canvas each.

I used the tissue paper and water technique that I showed earlier in the year.

It's fun to do.

The image top right is what the canvas looks like when you add the tissue and the water. The image bottom left is what was left once the tissue is dry and you remove it.

I wasn't overly happy with the final colours, so I used some distress paints and a stencil to create the overlay you can see.

The sentiment is by CASual Fridays, it's a firm fave of mine.

I hope that they like them.

Cx

More tissue paper backgrounds..

Hey,

So yesterday I showed you some of the fun I had over the weekend, playing with tissue paper and water.

I wanted to show you the last few cards I made using the backgrounds.

These cards are all essentially the same, but in different colours.

I used the MFT stitched rectangle dies (constant over use of these dies..) for the background and solid colour pieces. 

Then I die cut the Tim Holtz birthday die in white and adhered it to the background at a jaunty angle.

After a seriously long search for a happy stamp in the font I had in my head, I opted to mask off part of an SSS stamp and use that!

I'm super pleased with these cards, they feel super modern and perfect for men/boys.

Here are photos of all 3 cards..

Cx

Tissue paper backgrounds..

Hey,

Recently, I saw this great idea for kids on Pinterest, it looked easy and fun, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I must point out though that they do point out the ink from the tissue paper will stain your fingers, so wear gloves. They are right. I did not listen, I have had inky fingers since Sunday...

Make sure you use bleeding tissue paper - not regular gift wrap tissue paper. I got mine from a cheapo store in London ages ago, but they sell it in most dollar stores.

The main photo today shows the hexagons I used for some of the backgrounds and a few of the backgrounds.

I did a few different things with the backgrounds.

I decided to cut an aperture in the background for these cards, I used a SSS stitched circle die, then I cut the SSS Smile die - which fits the aperture perfectly.

Both the backgrounds were cut out with a MFT stitched rectangle die.

I created a fun sentiment for the cards, but using a SSS stamp that worked with smile..

This card used the offcut from the cards above. This is an anniversary card for a special friend and her husband.. So I went to town a bit. I stacked punched hearts to add a bit of dimension. Because I did not have glittery purple card I decided to colour one of the hearts and then added embossing ink and sparkly Judikins embossing powder.

Love the faux glitter paper effect.

Final card for today is also an anniversary card. I love the giant Happy - the die is part of a trio by WPlus9.

I have some more cards to show you tomorrow using this technique.

Such an easy technique that gives such different results. I am looking forward to using different punches.

Cx