Three times three times three

Hello all!  I'm delighted to be here today to share a project created for a Guest Designer spot at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog.  I was honoured that my journalling page for the wonderful Time challenge was chosen as their winner, and I'm honoured to be guest designing for them today.  The current theme is one that made my heart sing when I heard about it... Triple the Heat - not for the heat, but for the tripling!  I love working in threes and trios and triptyches, so here's what I came up with...

The host, Suzz, is using the number three as the inspiration (you can read all about it over at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog), and I've got lots and lots of threes going on here, not just the three ATCs themselves.

There are three different insects, courtesy of the Tim Holtz Collage Paper glued on to the ATC backgrounds (and lightly gessoed over to soften the look).

There are three different mediums involved in making these... texture crackle paste, paint and ink.  Soft washes of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish chalk paints in soft purple (Wisteria, Forget-me-not and Lavender) and vibrant green (Lawn) bring colour.

There are splatters of the paint colours as well as washes.  The Ranger Opaque Crackle Texture Paste obviously brings the texture.

And DecoArt Quinacridone Gold mixed with Payne's Grey to create one of Andy Skinner's "dirty washes" soak down into the crackles, followed by a quick burnishing with Sepia Archival ink for an extra rusty look.

The most obvious of the "three of a kind" elements are the lavender stems, one to each ATC.  I picked them from the garden, but since they were already going over, I used the same Fresco paints to give them a fresher look.

And each lavender stem is accompanied by two inky/painty green stems, cut with one of Tim Holtz's Wildflower Thinlits dies, so that makes a total of three stems per ATC.

There are also three additional decorative elements on each ATC... a strip of Design Tape, a strip of lace, and a postmark label, stamped in Leaf Green Archival (from the TH Field Notes stamp set) and cut out.

Finally, and for me just as important as all the rest, we have the words.

The phrases are each three words long (but of course!), chosen from the Tiny Text stamp set.

They're stamped again in Leaf Green Archival to coordinate with everything else going on.

So, that's about that.  Many, many threesomes all built in to a trio of ATCs.  I like each of them individually, but best of all for me is how they work as a set, with the composition shifting slightly as the eye moves from tiny artwork to tiny artwork.

I hope that gives you some additional inspiration for the Triple the Heat challenge theme.  The design team have, of course, offered up glorious projects for you too, and you can see them all, read the challenge details and join in over at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Challenge Blog.

Thanks so much to the team for inviting me to guest design with them this time around, and thanks to all of you for stopping by today.  I hope you're having a relaxing and enjoyable August.  Stay safe, and happy crafting all!

Three things cannot long be hidden - the sun, the moon, and the truth.
Confucius

Love this Life

Hello all!  I'm absolutely delighted to be featuring over at The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog today with a trio of bright tags for their Celebrate theme.  They're looking for bright colours to celebrate with, and they don't come much brighter than Crackling Campfire and friends!

I'm celebrating building a whole new life in a new country, a new adventure, and the ongoing creative journey I'm on. (Hopefully the celebrations are not premature - moving date is Monday 23rd November, and then I fly the next day - keep your fingers crossed for me!)

So yes, there's Crackling Campfire and Rusty Hinge in that wrinkle-free distress background and there's some Speckled Egg and Stormy Sky Oxide splotching around too.

I think there's Seedless Preserves and maybe some Ripe Persimmon too (and don't tell anyone, but there are definitely some browns tucked away in there too... but you have to have the earth beneath your feet if you're going to find the traction to take off, don't you?!).  

I was really just playing with lots of bright colours, not paying attention particularly but following instinct, so I'm afraid that list might not be comprehensive.  But I do know that if I'm going to celebrate I'll be reaching for my favourite Lin Brown grass stamp by PaperArtsy.

It's stamped in brown for a shadow effect (again, if the light is bright, there are always going to be shadows) and then stamped and embossed in Bright White (there you go, back to the brights) in a slightly different position on each tag.

The Quote Chips are full of positivity and celebration, mantras for the journey ahead, and some of them I need to deploy before I even get there.  I've definitely needed bravery to make this decision, and to pack up the craft room.  

Well, it's either courage or foolhardiness!  In any case, there will hopefully be plenty to celebrate eventually, though I'd be lying if I said the path has been entirely smooth so far, or that it's looking entirely smooth immediately ahead.

But everything worthwhile in life requires some hard work, and I'm ready for the next challenges and ready to celebrate each accomplishment as I tick them off.  Packing is almost done.  Loading next.  Then travelling.  Then unloading.  Then - gradually and once the floors are down - unpacking and sorting.  Then living and creating and exploring and growing and learning... those are all the really good bits and well worth celebrating.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and thank you to Cec and the amazing team at The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog for rewarding my fall foliage watercolours with the honour of a guest spot.  I hope you'll be inspired to create something in bright colours to celebrate whatever you need to celebrate and share it in the Celebrate challenge over the coming week.

Happy crafting all!

Whichever season you’re in, rejoice and celebrate your life as you might not experience it twice.
Joan Ambu

#newbloggersucks

Sew far, sew good

Hello all!  I'm delighted to be putting in a guest appearance over at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog today for their new challenge Sew Sweet.  I was honoured when my Even Tinier Houses were selected as their winner a month ago, and that led to this invitation.

I say "delighted", but I have to confess the theme gave me a moment's pause.

Sewing is not one of my comfort zones... I'd happily leap in to ceramics, woodwork or even metalwork, but sewing machines break when I sit down at them.  (Yes, sewing machines plural - twice in my life it's happened when somebody's tried to teach me to use one.)

I used to put up my skirt hem with double-sided sellotape if it came down.  I also reduced my sewing teacher to tears in primary school when we used to do embroidery for half an hour each week.  (I'm starting to date myself there... visiting embroidery teachers in state schools these days, anyone?!)

But I do love the look of stitching on papercraft projects, and I would also love to be able to stitch a book spine or even knock up the occasional fabric project, so my motto as far as sewing goes appears here on this tag... never give up!











And of course there wasn't any actual sewing required for this challenge (though I'm sure you can if you'd like to) - just sewing-related stamps, ephemera and embellishments.  So once I'd located some PaperArtsy stamps in my stash that fit the bill, I was good to go.












I can't tell you much about the background here, I'm afraid - it's one I made a couple of weeks ago when I was playing with various embossing powders and inks and sprays.  (There was a whole flourish/embossing powder thing going on at the time.)

Frankly, your guess is as good as mine as to exactly what's going on back there!











I stamped the dress form from PaperArtsy's Hot Picks 1215 set onto tissue paper and glued it down so that it became part of that mixed media background.

I love how your eye suddenly notices it emerging from the swirls and flourishes.













I added a bit of script stamping in white Snowflake Fresco paint - it's the text from the same stamp set so the words are actually all about Victorian dressmakers.















There is definitely some gold powder involved in the background...















... so I brought that to the fore when I identified this object as a needle threading tool on the PaperArtsy Hot Picks HP1215 set.












I embossed it in gold, fussy cut it and mounted it on padded tape as one of my embellishments.















I promise you the tangled cotton thread is actually threaded through the slit I cut in the blade of the tool!















There is more thread providing a white accent and extra swirls and flourishes over the top of the background.














And I wound some of the same cotton around a tiny reel to add to the 3D collage.

The twist of lace is pinned in place with an Idea-ology Memo Pin.

Another twist of lace at the top and some distressed edges provide a nice shabby chic touch. 














The sewing packets tucked in behind are from another Hot Picks set HP1212.

I stamped them in either Coffee or Sepia Archival ink onto some card I'd inked with Antique Linen and Old Paper Distress Inks.











And here are those words, from one of Tim's sticker sets... affirming my determination never to give up with trying to get a sewing machine to play nicely with me for my crafting creations.












The tissue paper dress form had obscured some of the golden embossing powder in the background, so I used Tim's Resist Spray to create some more gilded droplets.

I think it's Ranger's Queen's Gold, but don't hold me to it!










I hope you've enjoyed this little sideways step into a different theme (what, no meadowflowers?!), but you'll notice I stuck pretty closely to my colour comfort zone to stay happy!

Thanks so much to Cec and the team at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog for having me as a guest, and I hope you'll check out all their amazing Sew Sweet projects and be inspired to join in over the next fortnight.











Thank you for dropping in today.  The weather is less sunny here, so my mood is a bit less sunny than it has been, but I really don't have much to complain about compared with many.

I hope you are staying safe and staying well, and finding ways to make the best of the strange times we are living through.  Take care, and I'll see you again (very) soon.








Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.
From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Not this woman!  I'm far more in tune with this second quote...

I couldn't sew on a day like this. There's something in the air that gets in the blood and makes a sort of glory in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I'd sew a crooked seam. So it's ho for the park and the pines.
From Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery

The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is to make something which is Not A Card
At Tag Tuesday they are playing Anything Goes for this fortnight
The More Mixed Media Challenge is playing Anything Goes + Optional Yellow - well, there's Gold and there's Antique Linen, and that's pretty yellowish for me!

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

Hello all and a happy December to you!  I'm delighted to be here to share a project created for The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog.  The new challenge is a festive one: It's the Holidays!  It launched yesterday with wonderful inspiration projects from the fabulous FJB team, so do check out all the details over there.

I was invited to be their guest for this theme after my Sunrise, Sunset book cover was the chosen winner last month.  That was one of my more complicated creations, but at this time of year when we're all so busy, it's often best to keep things simple.  So to fulfil the brief of making something I can use over the festive season I've created some gift tags to go on the presents I'll be wrapping.

I've used brown parcel paper for my Christmas presents for decades, each year with slightly different decorative features - sometimes a few berries, sometimes some real greenery, sometimes ribbons or more recently even some stamping or stencilling.






These tags will provide the main decoration on some brown paper packages tied up with string (string to match the string on the tags... I've got a huge great ball of the stuff.














They're really very simple.  I used some pre-cut tags (also pre-strung, though I've changed the string so that it will match the stuff I'll be using on the parcels) and stamped some of Tim Holtz's beautiful ornate festive greetings on them.














They're embossed with Wow Bright White embossing powder.  I think it looks great against the kraft, and the touch of texture and slight glossiness is so effective against the rustic look of the sepia background.














I spritzed a whole sheet of A4 card with various green Distress Sprays and Oxide Sprays (it's part way through the spritzing stages here, but the camera didn't keep hold of the next few process photos)...











... and then used the TH Holiday Greens Mini Thinlits to cut my fir fronds and branches.  (I've got plenty of inky green card left over to use on more Christmas creations, time permitting.)














Then it was just a case of layering up the greenery - trying to keep as much of the stamping visible as possible!
















Each tag has a little cluster of sparkling berries too.














I seem to have taken these photos before the berry glue was properly dry... apologies!














I really knocked these up very quickly.  The most time-consuming and fiddly bit was poking out all the tiny detailing in the die-cuts.
















Oh, and deciding where to position some of my ivory sequins for some extra light-capturing gleams.  But once that was all done and stuck down, I was able to finish off with my favourite snowy spatter.














Now all I need to do is buy some presents for people so that I can wrap them up and label them!














I hope this has given you some inspiration for ways to zhuzh up your gift-wrapping this Christmas.














If you're still after more festive creativity, do hop over to The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog and see what the team have been making, and then come and join in with the challenge.








Many thanks to Cec and the amazing FJB team for inviting me along to be their guest, and many thanks to all of you for stopping by today.  I hope that your Advent countdown will go smoothly and that all your to-do lists will soon be done.  Happy crafting (and Christmas prep) everyone!

The ribbons! The wrappings!
The tags! And the tinsel!
The trimmings! The trappings!
Dr. Seuss

I'd like to share these at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the invitation is Let's Sparkle - there are the berries and although the sequins are subtle, they definitely sparkle too
At Tag Tuesday, Joan's theme is White Christmas - I've got lots of snowy spatter to offer