TOFF #10 Stripes and WOYWW #118

Where did that week go?!!!  I can't believe it's Wednesday again already.  I've had a rubbish day, fighting off some stomach bug and generally feeling rotten, although I did watch 'The Adjustment Bureau' starring Matt Damon :) and got a journal page and a tiny canvas made - so maybe not such a bad day lol

The canvas is for a friend of mine who is moving out to live in Hong Kong for a year.  It's tiny so she should fit it in her suitcase!

I had to tidy my desk when I couldn't find my blank inkpad...

...ta dah!  It didn't take long either, as most things now have a home to go to.  More images for desk junkies available from others very like me over at The Stamping Ground!  The journal page I've been working on was for the 'Stripes' challenge over at The Octopode Factory.  I added stripes to the snail a couple of nights ago so just needed to create a background and add some journalling. [This is my A6 passport size journal]

I found it quite hard to come up with something for this little snail as she is so sad!  I wanted to do something more personal than making up a little story about her, but couldn't bring myself to write a list of 'things that made me sad' as I don't dwell on sadness!!!  This quote jumped out at me yesterday and as she has her snail shell strapped on I decided she was really a worm pretending to be a snail ;) 

PDCC 74

After a chat with Sarah C at Paddy's last week I thought I'd give 'clean and simple' or 'less is more' journalling a go ...

... although I am beginning to wonder if that's a contradiction in terms!

This week's wonderful colour combo was chosen by Ruby (aren't those pots fabulous on that wall!), and we're sponsored this week by Lizzie Ann designs who sent the DT some gorgeous rubberstamps each:

I decided to start with a textured white page in my journal - a successful 'less is more' start - to which I then added flowers stamped in blue and lilac/purple - at which point I got carried away lol

Ah well, I'll persevere!  These are gorgeous stamps to use, and come brilliantly packaged in a cd case.  Lizzie Ann designs have supplied an equally brilliant prize this week valued at approx £25

So why not check out this week's DT members pieces for inspiration, then get crafting (and remember, anything goes as long as it's created in blue, purple and white) and enter your piece over at The Play Date Cafe ~ have fun!

Fiona Schultz

Jaclyn Miller

Jinny Newlin

Libby Hickson

Michele Gross

TRacey Kuzniak

Colleen Dietrich 

Julie Ranae 

Savannah O'Gwynn 

Ruby2Shoes 

Andrea Ewen

and this week's guest designer

Taylor Usry

Did you wear your red nose today?

Who remembers the first red noses?   These are so comfortable compared to the originals, and I can' get over how they seem to suite everyone!!  You still can't breathe through your nose whilst wearing them though.

For those non UKers reading this blog post, today is Red Nose Day 2011 for Comic Relief which raises money for the poor and disadvantaged both here in the UK, and in Africa, and this year will include Japan.  I wore my red nose and beeley boppers whilst out driving today and didn't spot any smiles..I would have smiled if I'd seen me!!!  

Things have been a bit busy in my life at the minute, which I'll be able to share with you soon, so my apologies for not keeping up with my DT commitments, and not blogging so often.   

I've been having a brave play in my journal this week, encouraged by the lovely Chris Bedford from Pear Shaped Crafting.  I'm pleased I'm having a go, but one of the things I really don't enjoy is the glare from the shiny paper.  I will be sticking with my usual style but am enjoying the challenge :)

I do, however, love this card I made using this week's play date cafe colours.  It's based on a piece of wallpaper I found on an exposed wall in Ancoats, Manchester.  It had a leaf image on which I've outlined and extended with my sewing machine, adding additional colour with scraps of fabric.

I can't promise that normal service will resume in the next few days, but I will let you know some very exciting news soon!

journal workshop

I've had a wonderful day today.  I taught my steampunk journal at Paddy's and thoroughly enjoyed myself :)  

And got to meet a blogfriend IRL!  Sarah A and I met over at The Play Date Cafe and it turns out that she doesn't live that far away, and was able to make it to the workshop today :)

As usual I was pretty rubbish at remembering to take photos.  We had a fabulous time with walnut ink, various autumn colour inks by Sticky Fingers, and Distress Inks.  Everyone had to restrain themselves from cuttlebugging too many of their pages!   The ruler and the cogs were particular favourites.

We had a very special treat at lunchtime.  Sue and Cynthia, like the good students they are, have been off journalling.  They've taken Dina Wakley's online graffiti class, and combined it with some ideas from my journalling classes and come up with some regular prompts to use on their pages.  

I love Cynthia's money tree!  And should have got a photo of Sue's word collage on a hand shape.  I'm off on my hols on Monday - two weeks camping on the Isle of Wight.  I'm scheduling some posts but please forgive me for not visiting your blogs for a while.

Inspired by ... [hang on, wasn't that yesterday?]

Sue Roddis and her Stampotique stamps!

Sue brought some of the latest Stampotique stamps with her yesterday [she's on their design team].  How cool is that!!!  Now those of you who know Sue will know she loves these images, and anything halloweeny.  My collection of Stampotique stamps lean to the cuter end.  We didn't have much time to play with them whilst Sue was with us, so we stamped a few up on white paper.

Sue has a bit of a drive to get home from mine so yesterday, Helen and I still had some playtime before tea after Sue had gone! So we carried on playing in our journals.  How fab are those heads?

 

My pages were already coloured, and the blue one was stamped.  The door, cat, angel, heads and odd bloke are all part of the new Stampotique release.  Wendy at The Stamp Attic has got the new release on order and they should be in soon [EDIT: Wendy's expecting them March 6th but you can pre-order them from her HERE].

another journal page

My journal has blank pages, some pages just coloured, and others with varying amounts of stamping and imagery on them.  Of course, it also has some finished pages LOL!  Anyway, this was a page I shared a while back but couldn't think what to write on back then.  The perfect quote was said to me the other week so I've now added it to my journal.  I really must get into the habit of dating my pieces though!

Inspired by ...

Diana Trout!

For this week's play date, Sue, Helen and I decided to use one of my journalling books for inspiration, and I chose 'Journalling Spilling' by Diana Trout.  I love her splashy, painty way of journalling.  We started by watching one of her art journalling youtube videos:

Then we got out a selection of collage papers and paints

and obediently picked out both paper and paint randomly,

ending up using colour combos we really wouldn't have chosen.

I picked out two reds, a blue and black.  The hardest thing was not reaching for a rubber stamp to add pattern and texture.  I had to make my own with my paintbrush!

And my gel pen.  I love the small circles surrounding the larger one.  I also used a pearlescent paint to add highlights to the page as it was in danger of being too dark.

The words were found in the Radio Times..they seemed rather fitting!!!

Looking after our children at the same time as journalling meant I forgot to take pictures of us ... sorry!  If you missed our last 'inspired by' day, have a look here.

EDIT:  And head here to Sue's blog, Jabberwocky, to see her yummy pages; she's written on hers :)

GPP Street Team Crusade No 36 - Braving the Elements

I chuckled to myself writing that title as although it really refers to the recent cold weather, I do feel I braved, or even battled, with one of the elements we had to use in this challenge!

Michelle Ward's challenge was to gesso a journal page, paint it with acrylics, splash it with water and wipe (I forgot to wipe...ooops!) then stencil with homemade snowflakes before adding them to the page. 

It was the paint on the gesso I battled with!  I'm used to splooshing my paint around, dabbing and blending it, leaving some areas dark and making other areas lighter by watering down the paint.  Acrylic paint does not behave itself when it's on top of gesso....aaaarrrgh!

Having said that, I LOVE the result!!

I meant to take a couple of photos as I went along but I got a bit engrossed and forgot!!  I used Adirondack paint dabbers [stream, pool, eggplant, snowcap] and then highlighted areas with my new Inktense colouring pencils.  This was soooooooo relaxing, and the gesso base gives a great 'tooth' for the pencil. 

The final task was to add some journalling, which I did, but may paint over as I'm not happy with it.  I preferred the page without it and imagine it would look better with white gel pen handwriting across areas.  I was trying not to write in and out of the snowflakes, don't know why, just thought I ought to try something different!!

This is my first time at entering this challenge, although I've often looked and drooled over entries.  If you look at my snowflakes, they have little hearts in there, an idea I stole from Julie Prichard!  I've always put straight cuts into homemade snowflakes before!!

Going to leave you with a couple of images of the pages I did yesterday to demonstrate how I layer acrylic paint onto my journal page, and later add stamping and images.  It's still a page in progress.

The page on the right, below, was one from a previous demo which I added to with a baby wipe and green true colours paint to co-ordinate a little better with the page on the left.

where does time go?

Actually, I know exactly where it went, although I still can't believe it's a whole week since my last post! I taught a journalling class at Paddy's last Saturday and Tuesday. Both classes went fabulously but I was exhausted afterwards and couldn't do much the next day. I've also moved classrooms at school (teachers still work in the holidays!!!) and been working hard on the last of the corsets as one has quite a few people left to work on it before Sept.

This is one of Anne Jagger's pages which we all loved. People were great at trying out new colour combinations and I love her use of purple and red together. Anne was happily splashing paint around whilst Paddy was out of the room. When Paddy came back, she was very pleased with the pinkish splashes that had been added to her pages :) Check out more of Anne's pages here.

The aim of the class was to get one page finished and have backgrounds started on a few more so they could be continued at home. Another was to use our favourite stamp images in our journal pages as so often we use the images for cards for friends and never see them ourselves. I shared Pam Carriker's tip of using charcoal to highlight images (thanks Pam) and everyone loved it!

Jess' theme for her journal was finishing school and the school hols -

Chris, Neet and Sue have all put their photos and comments (thanks guys) on their blogs so head over and admire and let them know what you think of their pages! On Saturday, Chris brought some of her favourite stamps with her which we all fell in love with and have had to put in a bulk order for!! Aren't these just so fab :) They're available from the Stamp Bug.

So as you can see, we were very, very busy :)