Ditzy-Craftymess challenge 1

Hi folks, today see's the first challenge from all of us at Ditzy-Craftymess go live you can find it here and be in with a chance to win a £10 voucher for Mei-Flower who have a lovely range of crafty embellishments suitable for all crafters.

For our first challenge we used the theme of anything goes and all the DT have come up with beautiful. unique and varied projects. Here is my example;

This is my week 2 A4 page for my project 2012 using Authentiquw papers and stickers. This week we had a visit with Auntie Hilary and saw her kittens again who had grown so much and we took a photo of my eldest (who turned 12 yesterday Happy Birthday no. 1 monkey xxxx) and my mum showing how he is nearly her height already :)

Please pop over to the Ditzy blog and join in and Mei-flower to see what gorgeousness they stock xxx

Art Journey prompt - Packaging

The 3rd UKS Art Journey prompt was to collect packaging and then to lay it all out and see what it makes us think of. My mind went instantly to recycling and how much we do as a household to try and do our bit we definately have at least double the amount of recycling to waste and with 2 cats, a dog and a child still in nappies (don't go there he isn't ready and I'm stressed about it!) I think that is pretty good.

I thought of burnt earth for this prompt I don't know why but the idea of yellow going to orange and then brown (it looks black in the photo my 10 month old camera is broken and going for repairs *sigh*) appealed to me and so I went with it;

After the painted double page (my first double) was dry I stamped with black paint using bubble wrap from the packaging and added circles using the end of a kitchen paper tube and added "tracks" using the side of a bottle lid both in beige. I added some of the triangular recycling signs in the beige paint and some doodling in black and white before the journalling.

I am quite happy with the end result and I think I am learning a lot but I have decided I need better paints I am running out of a couple of colours so I will be getting a better quality paint when I replace them :)

Thanks for popping by x

The Liebster Award

Many thanks to Sheleen over at Patchwork Apples for mentioning me in her blog I feel honoured xxx

Here's how it works (and I admit to hitting 'copy & paste' for this):

This award is given to bloggers with less than 200 followers, in the hopes that it will bring many new friends/followers.

Leibster is German and means 'dearest' or 'beloved' but it can also mean 'favourite'. The idea of the Leibster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers. So, in the spirit of good fun I am passing this award on to five other bloggers. Please stop by and visit them.

The Rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2. Reveal your five picks for the award and let them know.

3. Post the award on your blog.

4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogshare-other bloggers.

5. Finally and the best rule of all..........have fun and spread the love!
My favorites for this award are listed below. Click on over to their sites and take a look!

This was the tricky part choosing just five but I somehow managed it;

1/. Jackie at Scraps & Stitches - Jackie is not only a talented crafter but a good friend I have known for many years who is one of the most generous and kind people I have ever met xxx

2/. Sandra at I love all things pretty - Despite Sandra telling me off for crafting too much and trying to send me to the naughty step lol she is a wonderful lady with a kind and generous heart and huge inner strength x

3/. Anita at Inky Blossom - Anita is a very talented scrapper and I am often blown away by the gorgeous LO's she creates she is also a very sweet, kind and generous person x

4/. Sue at Me and Mine - Sue was one of my first followers and did so much last year when I first started this blog and joined UKScrappers to encourage me and make me feel welcome x

5/. last but by no mean least my beautiful sis Shell at Paper pieced memories - Shell is my closest and most trusted friend so much so that she is my Sis. I cannot say enough good things about her she is a wonderful person and most of her crafting is making cards to send out to deployed troops so they have birthday cards, anniversary cards and christmas cards to send home to their families while they are apart. I am her only follower and it would be wonderful if some others would follow her too xxx

That was TOUGH!

Surprise yourself

I was very happy to see that Glitz were starting up their blog challenges again as I really enjoyed joining in with the challenges last year. This year they have changed things up again and are going to post an image for us to use as inspiration for our projects each month. This is this months picture;
I decided to make a sketch from it and concentrated on the central image (mirror) the straight lines of the mantle and the soft "swags" of flowers. Here is what I made using the gorgeous Dance in Sunshine papers;

I substituted a picture of me for the mirror element and punched straight pieces of pp's to make a mantlepiece. Then I did plenty of fussy cutting to make swags of flowers and some punching of butterflies and flowers to keep it all soft. I used a sticker from the Glitz Love nest line which I mounted on some transparency and added one of my favourite quotes to it;

Every layer was added with a different depth of foam tape and pop dots to make the layout very dimensional;

As the journalling for this was very personal I added it to the back of the layout with just the title and a little journalling on the front. In case you can't read it it says, "You can do anything when you dream"

Thank you for popping by and thank you so much for all the lovely comments that have been left it really does mean a lot to hear other crafty people like what I do xxx

There are no Art Police

I wasn't very happy with my last Art Journal page. I am still trying to figure out how to get my backgrounds looking how I like them and wanting the idea in my head to be translated perfectly on the page which is probably unrealistic and certainly not happening at this time. I am working on my resolution to accept my mistakes and not trash them as they are all tools in learning but it is hard for a perfectionist to do that!

I have to say a big thank you to Leanie and Suzie who both inspired this page with their encouragement over on UKS Art Journey. The term there is no Art Police was Suzie's little gem and I hope she doesn't mind me stealing it lol. Here is my page;

I started by gesso-ing my page and then painted a black border roughly around the page leaving some white on the outside. I then added some grey inside and outside the black again painted roughly so their were differing levels of depth. I splatted on a bit of white paint and then used some scrunched up tinfoil to scratch the paint. I added some fuschia paint with a sponge and whitewashed a bit of book paper.

Once the book paper was dry I drew a face (yes me I drew it I am totally gobsmacked!) which I coloured with promarkers and then ripped around. I stuck the face onto the page and painted some white lines and used distress stain (picket fence to add some circles). I stamped soom harlequins with Black Soot distress ink and Sprayed using a mask in the top left corner with a pink cosmic shimmer. Once it was all dry I added my little journalling and I have to say I love the page :)

UKS Art Journey

I am taking part in the UKScrappers new Art Journey this year as I am fairly new to ARt Journalling I thought it might give me some ideas and help me develop my Art Journalling. The first weeks "Step" was to get your journal and included how to make your own, I am going to make myself one at some point but at the moment I just want to continue with the book I already have.

Step two was to try and abandon your preconceptions about your ability to draw/ your handwriting not being good enough/ and anything else that holds you back. We were alson asked to visit ColorLab to get a colour scheme that maybe we wouldn't have normally. This is the colour scheme I ended up with;

I created this page using the colours (roughly) and I added each colour in a different way to try and continue my experiments with texture. The green was painted with a brush, the blue with a soft sponge, the sandy colour with a brillo pad, the white was the gesso-ed areas that I left uncoloured added with an old store card, and the pink was alcohol ink added with a piece of felt.

I added my journalling by cutting up words and letters from leaflets and apart from feeling a bit psycho killer like for doing it lol I like how it looks. I then added some stamping and journalling and I focused my journalling on what I would like my kids to do as they grow to get the most out of every day.

Football Crazy (photo heavy)

I finally got round to doing the DLO for this months Scrapology Challenge. The challenge this months was to follow the DLO sketch (click the link to see the sketch) and use texture in your LO. I scrapped some of the many photo's I took during a trip to a local park originally to walk our dog Molly which turned into a kids vs dad football match;

I used some twine, hessian, chipboard painted and one of them smothered in glossy accents, stickers, stamping, dry embossing and de-bossing, tickets, fabric buttons and a vinyl cog so I think I have the texture requirement covered lol.

Here is a close up of one side;

and of the other;

The title stickers and the embossed wave which I inked (the messiness is deliberate honest lol I liked the distressing look it gave) and the stamping on the pp;

You can just see some of the debossed pp in the top right and the hessian and one of the painted chipboard shapes;

Glossy accented chipboard which I tried to paint the same as the football;

Vinyl cog, fabric button and fabric lollipop flower;

Lots of pics sorry but thank you for coming by and I hope you have chance to join in the Scrapology challenges are always very interesting and great fun x