been poorly sick :(

... with an ear infection...which meant I couldn't teach my workshop at Paddy's on Wednesday. Big apologies to those I was supposed to teach! So, now feeling much better, I decided to do a step by step to one of the cards :)

Sometimes it feels like it must just be the right time to do something!  I'd been wanting to do a card with stepped folds for a little while, then spotted that Vixykins had had a similar plan. I thought that tumbling Autumn leaves would be a great theme for this card design.

 So I headed over to Sandy's blog, as directed by Vix, to get some idea of the folds.  I then adapted it to fit on a square card base.  Thanks Sandy and Vix for the inspiration!

Ok, step 1

Using acrylic paints (I used Stewart Gill True Colours, but Adirondack Dabbers are also fine!), smoosh and print autumn colours over a piece of cardboard (Amazon packaging in my case!)

Step 2

Apply gold paint to a leaf stamp using a sponge or dabber and stamp onto your painted cardboard.  I used the Tick Tock Flowers plate by the Artistic Stamper which is also available at Paddy's Stamping Place.

Step 3

Cut five leaves out, following the general shape of the leaf.  

Step 4

Head over to Sandy's blog and fold and cut your card (can you see the mistake I made with mine above? ) Stamp leaves over the card again using gold acrylic paint.

Step 5

Place a piece of A5 paper under the central section of the card and stencil through sequin waste with red, yellow, gold acrylic paints on the centre of the card.

Step 6

Fold your card correctly, and add your leaves and additional elements using Glossy Accents as necessary!

If you get around to making one of these cards, please let me know as I'd love to come and see :)  Now I've spotted that The StampMan's current challenge is Autumn so I'm off to link in this post :)  Vix is demoing at The Stamp Man tomorrow so I'm heading up there with her for a day of craftiness and friendship :)

PDCC#44 Play date with a difference

Oh if only I'd been standing a little more to the right, that crown on the wall would look like it really was on Penny's head lol!

We have a Play Date with a difference this week, courtesy of a conversation Penny Bearcroft and I had at one of my workshops at The Stamp Attic, Wantage!  Penny thought it would be good to give people a ReaL colour challenge, with colours that didn't go together, and were yucky!  I had a think, and asked Penny to come up with some such colours.  After she named hot pink, mustard and navy blue, I gathered some art supplies in said colours, and off we went!

Now I've picked the colours to tone, and happen to love this combo, but my question is, if the colours are tonally correct, are there any colours that don't go together? We'd love to hear any suggestions.

Penny produced this gorgeous piece using a Stampotique stamp, available from The Stamp Attic:

I was in the mood for a play with my needle and thread:

This is a 1 1/2" square memory frame.  I coloured the lace flowers with True Colours by Stewart Gill.

I know many of us in the UK are disappointed we can't get hold of Memory Box stamps, so you'll be glad to know, there's another chance to win this week.  Head on over to the cafe to check it out, 

and don't forget to visit our other designers, including our guest designer this week, Elise.

Julie Ranae
Suzanne Czosek
Stephanie Kraft
Savannah O'Gwynn
Lisa Somerville
Ruby 2 Shoes

Elise-Guest Designer

We say goodbye to our fellow designer Stephanie this week, although I'm sure we'll stay in touch!  We've loved working with you Stephanie, thanks for all your hard work at the Play Date Cafe.  We'll miss you

another metal box...this one's for PDCC#30

I so enjoyed making my metal covered box the other day I decided to have a go at using a different colour acrylic paint for the base, choosing 'pink' from this week's play date colours mainly as I could find a green and a yellow stazon ink to colour the metal but the pink is rather bright in stazon, to say the least!

Mona chose this week's beautiful Spring inspired colours and it's amazing how every play date cafe designer's piece is so different this week.  The balance of colour in a project really changes the effects.  Mine is very definitely PINK!!!

The base metal is gold coloured and I painted it with pink True Colours [Baby Girl] by Stewart Gill before spraying it with pink Sticky Fingers spray [to add texture] then adding extra colour using Sunflower Yellow and Cactus Green Stazon Ink.

I cut the dragonfly from felt and organza using the new die from Paper Artsy.  I'm so in love with that die!!  Don't forget to visit the cafe for some more inspiration for these colours!  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with :)

PDCC #23 Singing the blues

[Sorry, I really couldn't resist that April Fool 

(scroll down to the next post to see it; the posts were scheduled minutes apart)]

Blue has been my favourite colour since primary school but funnily enough I rarely use it in cards.  It does mean it crops up a few times in my colour choices for challenges though ;)

 I noticed that for all the other play date challenges which strongly featured blue I have crocheted or sewn, so this time I decided to challenge myself to make a card.

I still had to get my paint out though as all my 'blue' inkpads lean towards teal.  However, it was only this week that I discovered that some people didn't realise that you could use paint on stamps.  If you've never tried, why not give it a go? 

 I used a piece of cut n dry foam to apply a baby blue and a bright blue to my stamp (just clean fairly quickly with a babywipe),

 then added layers to my card and finished with some stitching and braid.

Thanks so much to those who entered mixed media entries to the play date cafe challenge this week.  Any regular card makers fancy the challenge of using paint this week?

And don't forget to visit all the other designers to see what fab cards they made too! You can check them all out here but it's so nice to visit their individual blogs and let them know what you like about their cards.

another fun art journalling workshop at Paddy's

I find it really hard to remember to take photos during workshops.  I'm too distracted...teaching!!! :)  It wasn't until I moved to sit opposite Paddy at the end of the day and spotted a photo opportunity that I remembered!  We were a small group as we'd had a couple of cancellations, and Helen had had to leave to collect her children, but here are a few pictures of the day.

Sylvia's done this workshop before but used a tiny weeny book to work in.  She's filled a couple of them so Paddy challenged her to work on a larger size (8x8).  What a difference in confidence since the first class she did.  And her backgrounds are amazing (check out the piece of card next to the pink heat gun; I encourage everyone to wipe off their brush, stencil, sponge.. on it, and stamp off any remaining ink from their stamps.  It produces a wonderful collaged piece which can be cut up and used in your journal)...

I love the peach tones with the teal here, colours I wouldn't normally choose but LOVE so will be choosing them for a journal page soon!

Sylvia has a corner shop so had to nip out at lunchtime and 'hometime' (school) to tend to it.

Sue thoroughly enjoyed her day with us.  She wanted to be free-er in her artwork (something I aim for too!) and had a great time laying down colours for her backgrounds before working on a few pages with images. Sorry, I forgot to take those pics!!

I made a few pages up whilst demoing various painting techniques.  Non finished yet; some I have plans for, others will be there when I need them! 

[note to self, colour seeps through cartridge paper when you make it very wet!]

Sue shared a rhyme with us when we were discussing colour so I decided to start some journal pages around that theme...

blue and green

should never be seen

except with something in between

red and green

should never be seen

except upon a donkey!!! :)

didn't we have a lovely time, the day we went to Paddy's!

Look! I don't think there's an inch of clear space on that table!!

I spent the day teaching my Art Journalling 1 workshop at Paddy's and some great art was made by all, with lots of laughter along the way :)

I love the contrast Emma's green leaves have against the rest of the page.  Her friend made some beautiful pages in autumn colours...

Love that punched hand!

Amy, Paddy's daughter, made this fab page using the artful stamper stamp I used for this week's pdcc. She made some other gorgeous pages using torn paper circles.

Carol used the same stamp with a completely different effect. And look how those leaves in the background shine! Audrey used the same paint [Stewart Gill Byzantia Illuminata] in her journal. It made me think of illuminated manuscripts when the light caught it...

Audrey and Glo both made beautiful 'girly' pages:

Audrey

Glo

Then we all had a bit of a chuckle when they both produced these pages:

Audrey

Glo

What a contrast!! What deep meaning do these dark black and red pages reveal? Especially with those praying skeletons! LOL

This is what is so great at taking time to play in an art journal. You produce art that you probably never would in any other place, and enjoy it! Just like children play with new colours and just have fun, so should we! It's good for you you know :)

Repeat of this workshop:  Thursday 28th January 2010
2 spaces remaining
Contact Paddy on 0161 798 5115 to book.

Art Journalling 2 coming March 2010!

a dream come true! ;)

It's a good job I consider Paddy a good friend!!!  Look at that mug she gave me today ;)  The really worrying thing is it's true :)

I was on Sue Roddis' 'Trees and Angels' workshop and had a fabulous time.  I won't say too much as I know some people who read my blog are booked on the workshop on Weds.  You're in for a great day.  The techniques are very relaxing, just what I needed today; and Sue's samples are stunning as always so you'll really be inspired .  And I realised a long held dream!!!

Since taking a journal with me to Julie's Art Stamp Cafe eight years ago, I have wanted to work on a journal page whilst taking a workshop.  Normally I make notes and splatter paint etc in my ideas journal but today I took my play journal and painted a few pages with the colours I used on my trees and angel.  YAY!  And it only took eight years, how embarrassing!!

Not a great photo I'm afraid, and it's not finished, but here is the most complete of one of my trees.  It is possible to finish pieces in the workshop, as long as you don't work as slowly as me and keep stopping to talk :)  Thanks for a great workshop Sue, and I'll definitely be playing more with these tomorrow :)

what fun!

I was teaching a card making work shop today at Paddy's Stamping Place. All the cards had some kind of movement eg slide, twist, turn. This is a slide card.



I met some new people who hadn't been on my workshops before and we had a great time. Workshops are great aren't they? Spending time doing what you love, catching up with old friends, meeting new ones :)
Paddy was away as she has had a bereavement in the family which meant I got to be 'shop girl' this afternoon. I love doing the till. It's like playing shop again :) But locking up isn't quite the same as being locked in an unfamiliar stamp shop!!!!!!!

Next workshop is on Wednesday :) although I may 'play shop' again before then; I've been meaning to do a window display for ages!! Have an idea, will let you know if it works out!

holiday journalling

This is the first time I've been away and packed fairly succinctly craft wise! I usually take loads of stuff and never use it all. I took my A5 moleskine notebook I received as a birthday pressie last year, paints, selection of stamps, couple of masks and stencils and a bottle of autumn gold spray ink. The acrylic paint goes onto the paper in the moleskine book very differently to on watercolour paper. For some reason, maybe the hot sun didn't help, the paint doesn't move around much on the paper. This page has blues and reds and yellows on, then I decided to be brave and experiment and sprayed the autumn gold over, using the mask. I like the result, which was a bit of a relief!!

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 :)