January Joy in Fodder School

January in Fodder School has been glorious... and that's not an adjective I often apply to January!  The wonderful Megan Quinlan shared some classes which were definitely up my street, and I had a fabulous time shopping my stash for stencils and stamps which had been neglected for far too long, as well as current favourites.  Here's the inspirational deck that emerged on my craft table...

Amongst other things, Megan encouraged us to create a deck whose theme would have personal meaning for us.  

You won't be surprised to learn that I dived straight into nature.

These cards will be a reminder to me of how important it is to keep sacred the moments of stillness, solitude, and heart-opening beauty which nature offers. 

Time spent in nature is what allows my creativity to breathe and flow, despite the troubled times we are living through.

These were the backgrounds, created in the Make Fodder sessions, before adding the Use Fodder detailing which came later.

There are 32 cards in total in my deck, so here they are broken down into groups of eight so that you can see them more clearly...

You'll spot plenty of my own PaperArtsy quotes in action, as well as some of my botanical stamps, mostly from the Fodder Berry and Rosemary Editions.

There are other PaperArtsy stamp sets, as well as some by Seth Apter for Impression Obsession, and lots of Donna Downey stencils, as well as some of her stamp designs for Unity Stamp Co.  

The paints used are almost all PaperArtsy too - mostly from my Background Blues collection - with some added Daniel Smith Moonglow providing those haunting purple tones. 

If you want to see individual close-ups, I'm afraid you are going to have to visit me on Instagram for that.  It would be a massively photo-heavy blogpost!

It really has been an extraordinary month in terms of creativity - with phenomenal inspiration decks appearing from my fellow Fodder School teachers as well as the participants... so much beauty on Instagram and in the Fodder School FB group, which is a really supportive and informative environment (hate to say nice things about FB - but this is down to the people in there!).  I offered up a little bonus session to add to Megan's classes, as did several other teachers.

If all this tempts you to join in the fun (there's still so much more to come, including my own teaching month!!), then just follow this link to find out everything you need to know about joining up for Fodder School.

I hope January has brought you some joy too.  I know it can be a hard month, but I have found real solace in creating my deck, and I know it will continue to bring me a sense of calm and beauty throughout the years.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you again soon.

Feeling a little blue in January is normal.
Marilu Henner

January is the month for dreaming.
Jean Hersey

January, the first month of the year. A perfect time to start all over again, changing energies and deserting old moods, new beginnings, new attitudes.
Charmaine J. Ford

Winter Sun

Hello all, and a very happy New Year to you!  I had planned to be here before now for some slightly more timely well-wishing, but it didn't work out.  But today it's time to start a new challenge at A Vintage Journey, so I'm here with some inspiration for you.





The lovely Deb is our host this month, and her theme is all very straightforward... she'd simply like you to Put Your Stamp On It.

All the details are over at A Vintage Journey, along with some brilliant inspiration from my wonderful fellow Creative Guides.

I decided to keep things as simple as possible, and let one magnificent stamp take centre stage.

Actually, I lie - there are two stamps involved because, of course, there are also the words, taken from one of my own PaperArtsy quote sets.

But either way, this tag is pretty much all about the stamping.














Of course, that's not really true either because if I'm going to "put my stamp on it", I need something to put my stamp on.

I created the background with some PaperArtsy Fresco paints and a natural sponge - one of my favourite ways to apply paint for a soft, blended look which still has some texture to it.















There's Snowflake for the brightest sunlit part of the sky...
















... a touch of Sky (of course! but sadly discontinued, I think) blending out to the richer Turquoise, for that vivid winter blue sky.














Down amongst the undergrowth there's the rusty Cinnamon (also discontinued) and the darker shadows of French Roast (which I hope and pray they never discontinue!), with just some specks of Snowflake sponged lightly on top for a frosted look.

The birds perched on their branches are just one side of a 6x6 inch stamp by Impression Obsession. 












It has made the occasional appearance before, but I really must ink it up more often - it's gorgeous.  Here, I've stamped it and then embossed with the wonderful Primary Bark embossing powder by Wow.











There's some worn rusty mesh framing the quote in the bottom corner.  It's from EAB05 The Winter Edition.  I cut off poor Henry David Thoreau's name from underneath, as I wanted a smaller panel so as not to cover up too many branches.













And some bare rusted wire forms the topping - bleak and spare like the branches stamped below it.











And that's your lot... unless of course you head over to A Vintage Journey to check out the fabulous projects there, created for your delectation.  We hope you'll decide to Put Your Stamp On It and join us on the Vintage Journey some time this month.  We'd love to see you there.

In the meantime, happy crafting all, and I hope 2019 will be kind to us all.

And now we welcome the new year.  Full of things that have never been.
Rainer Maria Rilke

"You can't get too much winter in the winter."
From Snow by Robert Frost




UPDATE - For all those coveting this stamp, it's Impression Obsession Birds On Trees CC102.  Thanks for the lovely comments so far, and happy shopping all!

Winter Light

Hello all!  It's Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey... that extra Friday in the challenge month where the Creative Guides get to take a tag out for a spin and see where they end up.  I've found myself at a rather wintry destination, partly because I've been so embedded in my new quote stamp sets, and EAB05 The Winter Edition grabbed my mojo with these words.

Yes, there's a chill wintry air blowing across these tags, and that magical winter light which lays bare the bones of the natural world so that they can shine with their own particular beauty.






To be honest, I'm not really certain exactly what went on here.  I'm pretty sure that's some gesso, or it could be white acrylic, scraped on to the tags with a palette knife.  And I think it's Weathered Wood Distress Spray dribbled on from the sides, though it does look very dark.









There are layers of stamping - the Gothic book text background stamp by Wendy Vecchi, one of Seth's fabulous new large word stamps from Impression Obsession, and the glorious grasses are by Penny Black (a lucky Ebay win).

And I'm pretty sure everything is stamped in either Watering Can Archival or Hickory Smoke Distress Ink.











Last but not least, I blended on some Weathered Wood Distress Ink, so you have that lovely icy tint in the air, and I decided the pair of tags needed to live the other way around for a more balanced look.













There's plenty of spatter, both Weathered Wood Spray, flicked from the end of the inner tube, and white paint, spattered with my preferred spattering paintbrush.













And that's really almost the full picture... apart from the words of course.

They're almost all about magical winter light, so the choice of large word from Seth's set was pretty easy!













These are words by L.M. Montgomery, but from The Blue Castle rather than the much better known Anne of Green Gables books.

I love that you could use any one of these phrases by itself, or put them together in any order you like.














I've kept things very loose and informal here.
















They're stamped in Watering Can Archival, and I used a grey pen to add the doodled frames.














Then I played with the arrangement of the phrases until I was happy with how they carried my eye across the tags.














I used the grey pen to add some subtle frames around the tag edges (you can probably tell that I was still slightly under the influence of my Singing Zinskis!).

And I finished things off very simply with some cheesecloth and rustic twine for the toppings.














You can probably guess that the phrase about the moonlight on the birches will get to come out and play soon with the beautiful Tim Holtz birch stencil, which is one of my favourites to use.















And I'm looking forward to experimenting with creating some icy ferns too - maybe on a dollshouse window or two - we'll see how that goes!

For now, I'll wish you a happy Tag Friday (do hop over to A Vintage Journey and see the tag trips my fabulous team-mates have been on) and a wonderful weekend.

Can you believe October is almost upon us?  Happy autumnal crafting all!



Nothing can match the crystal clear silence of a winter morning or the sea smoke rising off a bay in soft tendrils. There is a special quality, not only to the scenery, but also to the quieter pace of life. Winter's peace is incomparable.
From Maine's DownEast & Acadia Regional Tourism information - they've snagged a decent writer there!

With lots of layered stamping, and some of them being inked for the first time, I'd like to share this at Frilly and Funkie where the theme is Show Us Your Stamps

A quick burst of birdsong

Hello all!  Apologies that I've been MIA again - there's a lot going on behind the crafting scenes at the moment (not to mention preparing for some high-pressure day-job workshops coming up).  All will be revealed in just a few days.

But so as not to leave the blog in complete silence, I'm offering up a quick burst of birdsong today.

There's nothing complicated about these tags.  In fact, they were the result of some joint experimentation with a friend at the craft table, demonstrating some of the differences between Distress Inks and Distress Oxides.  We did some wrinkle-free distressing on some other tags, but these two were the results of our blending and stamping efforts, with some spritzing and flicking too of course...

The colours were her choice - hence the slight departure from the normal palette around here! - but I ended up really enjoying them.  There's a sort of burnished rust and verdigris look which pleases me a lot.  The tag on the left is all Distress Inks, the one on the right is all Distress Oxides (until the very final inking around the edge, that is, and then it was DI on both).






The words are taken from my EAB02 Darkness and Light set.

The phrases are all part of one longer quote (as you can see if you take a look at the whole collection - it's the quote at the bottom of the plate).










But I've used different parts of the quote on each tag to create slightly different thoughts.

They're embossed with Ranger Antiquities Rust powder - which is quite cool up close.











There are things I enjoy about both tags... 

You can't get away from the delight of that Oxide stamping - with such presence and clarity.

Those rapturous birds are an Impression Obsession stamp.














But although the birds are subtler, I do love the translucence of the layered DIs - they have a special depth about them which always makes me happy.

So I'm not going to keep you for long, as you see.  Short and hopefully sweet today.









If I get my workshop planning done in good time tomorrow, I hope to spend some of my Sunday catching up with what you've all been getting up to in Craftyblogland... and if I get bogged down, the visiting will just have to wait a bit longer!

I hope you all have a lovely Sunday, and do come and visit early next week for some big news.  Happy crafting all!

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.
Pete Hamill

I'd like to enter this pair of tags at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where, in celebration of Stamptember, the challenge is simply to Stamp It!
Though there's only the tiniest bit of rust involved through that Rust embossing powder (well, and plenty of Rusty Hinge DI!), I'd like to share these in the Rustica theme at the That's Crafty Challenge Blog
And they're also feeling A Little Rusty over at Frilly and Funkie so I'm taking my tags to play along there too