Even More Ancient History

Having finally got around to sharing one lot of Ancient History with my France Papillon altered book, here's another piece made in a class from ages ago.  This 8x8 canvas was made in a fantastic day exploring Gelatos at the Craft Barn (when it was still in its former home) with the wonderful Chris Dark of Sketching Stamper.  This was way back in November 2013 - yup, even longer ago than the France workshops!

It's a bit of a hop out of kin for me, but it would have been even more of a hop if I hadn't done my usual classroom thing of going slightly my own way with it!

The finished workshop piece was meant to be much brighter in colour, and with bolder black outlines to everything, but I couldn't resist softening to these more natural tones and subtle shading.












It was brilliant fun though, and of course I meant to come straight home and make something along similar lines.  Funny how that never quite happens, eh?!













As you can probably guess, I loved creating the texture and dimension, with the tissue wrap background complete with stencilled texture amidst the wrinkles.













Though I don't go for girl figures much, I do enjoy the light carefree attitude she has...












... wandering through the poppy fields, garlanded with flowers!

Chris's idea for the pleated skirt was great fun to follow - again all that lovely dimension.











I surprised myself by really enjoying creating her hair (not dissimilar to my own frizzed curls, though not the same colour!).












I love how we created such a dimensional look just with simple card die-cuts and some shading.










I think it may have been this workshop which started me off on shading around things a lot.  That's definitely continued into my onward crafting.  And though red puts in only a very occasional appearance around here, it feels fine on this occasion because it's poppies...

Well, at least they're poppies in my head (though I'm aware they're not quite the right shape) and I do love my wild meadow flowers after all!  (Click on the photos if you'd like a larger view.)









Can't do without some words of course.  ChitChat stickers fit the bill nicely (these were the days before the Small Talk phrases).














And what would a summer meadow be without some butterflies, large...











... and small?!

So that's another piece of Ancient History dug up for you to examine.  













What with these projects from workshops long ago and all the Encore posts, it's quite a "historical" year here at Words and Pictures.  










It's all because I'm spending so much time out of reach of my craft desk, busy with other things in other countries so there are very few current projects.  Not to complain, but I do miss both my crafting and being able to visit all of you regularly.  Ah well, you can't have everything, can you?!











Just a quick reminder about my blog candy... There's just over a week left to put your name in the hat by leaving a comment here - my way of saying thank you for your company over the last four years as well as today.  Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you again soon.

Through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze most softly lulling to my soul.
From Endymion by John Keats

Putting Pen to Paper

Hello all!  Thanks so much for stopping by.  I've something a little different today... I'm taking a deep breath and sharing some of my first experiments with dipping pen and ink drawings.

It's all very doodly at the moment - the start of a journey - and a long journey, I suspect, since I know daily practice is the key to developing new skills, and it's a good month and a half since I last managed to put pen to paper!  Must do better at carving out a few minutes each day despite busy rehearsal schedules.

So, here are some spring flower tags that came about as a result of my first playtime...

These were done way back in February (you can see the ivy's only just starting to get eaten - it's pretty much completely gone now, very sad).



The nib on the dipping pen I got is very fine so that you get a really delicate line.

I thought I'd try out some meadow grasses, since they're my favourite things amongst my stamps, and somehow that led to flowers (not botanically accurate, I hasten to add - just figments of my imagination!).

I used Distress Stains and Gelatos to add my colour.  That sheen on the red flowers is all Gelato!

With the pink flowers the colour came first and I added pen work afterwards.

For the golden ones, the pen work mostly came first and then the colour.

I tried to keep things loose and fluid - no colouring inside the lines here - in a deliberate attempt not to freeze up by trying to get things "right".

And it's all on watercolour paper tags (by Prima), so you get a lovely softness in the colours to balance the fine, scratchy lines.












I even tried out some green drawing ink for some of the stems and leaves - rather like that!

I've got quite a few drawing inks for messing around with in Mixed Media work, but I usually forget they're there.











Hopefully using them for this will move them nearer the front of my brain, and I'll remember to reach for them when I'm playing with other mediums too.









I was just experimenting, so I could have left off once I'd done the drawing and colouring, but I thought I'd be kinder to my first poor efforts.  So I added some background stamping, some spatter and hints of Treasure Gold, doodled some frames around the edges of the tags and mounted them on cardboard packaging (an Amazon envelope, if memory serves).

I dyed some crinkle ribbons to create co-ordinating toppings.









Got to have some words of course.  My own writing... eek!










I also added some Idea-ology Muse Tokens, attached with rusty wire, naturally.



And while we're on the pen and ink, here are just a few doodlings from my "pen and ink journal" - the place where I'm supposed to be doing at least something daily, though these are again from back in February.  I'm hoping that by sharing the intention of daily work here, I'll maybe actually put it into practice (like when you tell people your resolutions to try to encourage yourself to actually do them!).

It was hard to break the virgin beauty of the page, so I started with words - my comfort zone - "The tiniest steps in mark making," and a command: "Begin...", then literally some mark-making - cross-hatch work to stop the page being so bare.  Then I set off again with the meadow grasses, and a slightly fantastical woodland dwelling.

Trees, of course... (these were inspired by the ones outside my window at a song weekend I went on - which is how come I know when all this arrived on the pages).

This tree happened as a bit of an accident - too much ink on the nib blotting onto the paper, so I turned the nib over and used the back to start spreading it into a tree shape.  As so often with accidents, I think this might be my favourite little sketch.

And faces...  I've doodled faces like this in the margins of scripts for years, always in pencil though (and only while discussions turned to fight/dance considerations so that my attention wasn't required!).  Feels a lot more committed in ink...

So, just the tiniest steps in putting pen to paper, and it's bizarre how much scarier this feels than most of what I share on here. And even more scary because I'll be out of internet reach for much of the weekend, so I won't even know what you're making of it all.

But if I'm sticking to Words and Pictures as a record of this journey, then here is where they need to be.

Now all I have to do is convince my fingers to hit the Publish button!!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.



The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
William Osler

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.
Lee Iacocca

He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
James Huneker

I'd like to enter my floral tags into the Spring Blooms challenge at the Inspiration Journal, sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium
And as another entry in the Anything Goes theme at A Sprinkle of Imagination

A Chalky Christmas

Hello all, lovely to have you stop by.  I'm here with my creation(s) inspired by Tim's fabulous November tag.

Yes, I know that's a canvas, not a tag... this is a tag! 

But once I had the bit between my teeth with the chalk technique, having lots of fun, I found it taking on a life of its own and demanding a larger canvas, so that's what I gave it.













And it was weird but rather nice, when I went blog-visiting at the end of the day when I'd been making my carollers, to find that the fabulous Brenda over at Bumblebees and Butterflies had been up to something very similar with them!  Great minds, you see...











First up, though, the tag which started the whole thing off - and I pretty much played it straight with this.  I don't have any of the stamp/die sets so I went with one of my all-time favourite Tim stamps which also has that lovely writing around the outside, similar to the blueprints.












Love the effect of the layered wings - and the new Idea-ology linen ribbon seemed like the perfect simple finish.






Given the time of year, though, my brain immediately went to the snowy possibilities of this chalk technique, so I grabbed some black card and started cutting wintry dies with the BigShot.

The carollers got the full stamping treatment, using the lovely handwritten music from the Joyful Song set.














But for the lamp post and the house I used a paintbrush to scoop excess embossing ink from round the edge of my pad and apply it just where the snow would sit...













...on roofs and ledges and sills and edges.

Then I chalked it all up - and I love the snowy results.








I needed somewhere for all my chalkboard elements to live so I grabbed an A4 canvas and glued some tissue wrap over the whole thing.




I used Gelatos to create most of the sky and snowscape.  (I was lucky enough to go and play with them for the first time at a Craft Barn workshop with the lovely Chris Dark of the Sketching Stamper recently - more of that and what I made then another time.)










I added some of Tim's little trees, stamped with Cobalt Archival so that they would stay put whatever else I decided to do later.













I did have to slightly remove the trunks with another wash of paint.















And regulars will understand that I simply had to carry them on round the sides too, of course.

Up in the sky I added some white embossed snowflakes, later giving them a dusting of Rock Candy Dry Glitter too.

I've only just started catching up with some of the CC102 techniques (stupidly timed house-moving!), so it's lovely to get this chalky one under my belt via this November tag - but I knew I had a use for another of them.

I'd seen the crackle-glazed glass turning up around Craftyblogland, and wanted to use it in my lantern glass.









I used some leftover acetate packaging for the technique, and coloured the card behind it with Gelatos to give the idea of the glowing flame.

Once it was all glued in place, I added a thick coat of Glossy Accents over the top of the "glass" to give it a bit of extra dimension.









I do rather like the echo of Narnia with the lamp post among the trees!  

And I'm pretty pleased with the white Gelato shading to show the gleam of the light its giving off.











There's also Glossy Accents doing the job of glass in the windows of the little house.  And Gelatos again to create the warm golden glow from inside.













Some of that glow spills out onto the snow and the garden "path" of Chitchat stickers... 












... so that they are warmed by the light too.













I did lots of shading using Distress Markers around the carollers and the other elements, to try to embed them into the landscape.



















I do love these two - and given that I love creating things inspired by music, I hope they'll put in appearances year round, not only at Christmas.




















The panel at the centre uses one of the Mini Holidays stamps (I now "need" the large version!!), stamped on Specialty Stamping paper and then covered over with Rock Candy Dry Glitter.  I'm not a glittery type in general, but this stuff... lovely!

I added some more music stamping to the snow too...













... as well as some flourishes stamped in Weathered Wood and embossed with the Frosted Crystal powder.  

They're so subtle as to be almost subliminal, but I rather like them swirling in the snow drifts.






There's a dusting of Rock Candy Dry Glitter over the snow and throughout the night sky, so that the canvas really sparkles as you move it in the light - not so easy to catch with a camera, but I hope you get the idea from some of the photos.

So there you have it... my chalky Christmas.  I hope you like it.  Thank you, Tim, for the inspiration that took me off on this unexpected journey - not my usual thing, but so much fun to play! 

I'd like to enter this as my November "tag" in Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2013 - can't believe there's only one more.

I'm also thrilled that this can double as my first contribution to the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas, sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique; inspired as it is by the chalkboard technique on Tag 1, by the fabulous Linda Coughlin.  A canvas, rather than a tag, but the rules do say it can be any kind of Christmas creation. I don't know if I'm going to make it to all twelve, but I'm going to try!! 





And the Christmas Carol service is the real start of Christmas for me, so the rehearsals are one way of counting down the time left to go - as well as counting the beat of the music, of course! - so I'd like to pop this in over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme is Countdown to the Holidays.







Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.
From Song of Years by Bess Streeter Aldrich

There is a Christmas song upon the air,
There is a joy innate within the heart;
An inner sense of peace, a holy light
Illumines life and sets these days apart.
From A Song Upon The Air by Edna Greene Hines