Gelli Play

 I got to play with a Gelli Plate today :)

I have to say that I hadn't been tempted by one in the slightest...until this week!  I signed up for the '21 Secrets Art Journaling Workshop' a while ago and recently watched Roben-Marie Smith using a Gelli Plate in her journal....and LoVeD it!

 Sue and I had planned a playday today (we've not had one for aaaaaaaaages!) and Sue suggested we play with her Gelli Plate :)  I now need to purchase my own lol

 We spent a couple of hours making papers and printing pages in our journals, stopped for lunch then did some creating with our papers.

[I also got to play with some of Sue's stamps and stencils :)]

I love the textures you can create with the gelli plate.  All I added to this envelope was the flower, the tiny stamped circles and three green paint circles (using the pritt stick lid) and the words 'native graciousness'.

Glassine envelopes are FaB to work with in conjunction with the Gelli Plate :)

 Finally, this envelope came about because Sue found an ant stamp which was just too fun not to use!!

calendar challenge

A month or so back Kate was inspired by Jill over at the Third Age Musing blog to create a journal calendar page for December '09 and to fill it in daily [see above photo].  As it went so well during the busiest month of her year, she's challenged us to do it for the year.   You can sign up here.

The work is really only in the preparation.  And as the choice of design is up to you, it's down to how much time you have.  Otherwise the daily commitment is only 5 minutes!!!  The challenge is to fill in a little tiny square each day with a word, a picture or a sentence picking out something from your day. 

Kate used pages in her A4 moleskine, adding another challenge for herself by working larger than she's used to.  I decided I wanted to make a book which will then become a diary of the year.  I'll be REALLY chuffed if I manage to write in it everyday, I've never managed to keep a diary beyond the first week or two of January ;)

I started with a large sheet of Bockingford watercolour paper on the kitchen floor and had a wonderful time adding colour to it using my adirondack paint dabbers.

When my husband came into our small kitchen to get his breakfast, he was very sweet and really didn't mind manoeuvring around me, but did fall about laughing at me and insisted on taking a photo...which I'm not sharing!!

 

Once I'd painted both sides and they were dry, I tore the paper into eight pieces, and sewed down the middle of seven of them to create a book.

 

I had a very relaxing time adding tabs to each page which I'll put the calendar months on. 

Then promptly forgot I was taking step by step photos!!  I've stamped the first open spread page using adirondack paint dabbers and stamps by Tim Holtz, Wendy Vecchi and Lost Coast Designs, highlighted the letters saying 'january' using a very soft graphite pencel, and added printed words and 1" squares cut from a sheet of white card stained with coffee.

 

It's still waiting for '2010' to be added, and 'january' to be added to the tag, but otherwise I'm pretty much set!  The book needs a cover, and I'm going to prep february's page next, but it's good to go for Friday :)

Thanks Kate, this is going to be great fun!!!  And hello to all my new followers!  And the uplifting comments people have left as part of the Stamp Man's first blog hop.  If you've not joined in yet, there's still time!  You've got until midnight GMT Sunday 3rd January 2010.  My part of the blog hop is the post below this one.  Happy Hopping!

play date cafe challenge 6: my turn again!

My turn to choose the colours again this week.  I decided it would be fun to use the colours from my blog header, which  was taken from one of my journal pages, before I worked on it some more.

For the challenge, I turned the colours around and used orange as the main colour [yummy Distress Spiced Marmalade] and used a colour copy of the journal page to add embellishments  - that's the recycled art bit :)

The cute owl is from a Hero Arts stamp set from my visit to The Stampman last Thursday.  I love owls!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

that space you're watching...

Well!  News will be announced on Monday :) 

But whilst you're waiting, here's some fun from Port Sunny.   I took some photos of some of my fellow demonstrators.  Here's Jennie showing us how to make those fab grungepaper roses

She doesn't look like she's been doing this for three consecutive weekends at shows does she!!?  And look, I got my own rose

It's exactly my colours, blues and turquoises :)  I had an hour free at lunchtime to shop and chat whilst Sue Roddis signed copies of her new book

I meant to get someone to take a photo of me demoing but I forgot!!  Sorry!  But this is where I was demoing, and this is my sample

I was working on a jigsaw frame and demonstrating how you can add texture to your work.  You can heat Stewart Gill Metallica and Alchemy paints to make them bubble,  add layers of embossing powder and stamp into it, and then add collage pieces.  This isn't finished yet, but I'll keep working on it.

When I went to find Jill from the Stampman she wasn't demoing as Ian had gone for lunch and she had to cover on the till

but I did get a picture of her inky hands, just to prove she had been demoing ;)

Jill definitely won the dirtiest demonstrator's hands LOL!  Surprisingly I had the cleanest ;), although I bet Tracey's weren't particularly bad thinking about it.  I couldn't get near enough to get a photo but here is a demo piece that she made and gave me. 

I ended up getting all the stamps from this demo piece.  I knew I wanted the tree but had to choose between the door in a wall, the door in a tree, or a spider's web.  And I decided to treat myself to a new fairy as I've not had a new one in a long while.  Here's my complete stash.  I love looking at what others have bought so thought you might too.  I also got a lovely yummy piece of moonglow paper that Jill gave me as she said it was very 'Sarah' paper :)  (just my colours you see)

Can you see that corset stamp from Lost Coast Designs?  I had to buy that after my corset adventure this year, especially since just one has wings, just like mine!