Summer Songbird

Hello all, Alison here with an early summer tag to share with you, inspired by some of Artistic Outpost's lovely stamps.  (It's from a couple of months back now, but we got interrupted by the fabulous Boardwalk release.)  I'm very happy with how it's captured those vivid greens you get at that time of year when the trees are working their way towards their full summer glory.

It uses the lovely stamp from the Serenity set, which incorporates one of my favourite sentiments.

Lots of inky loveliness for the background, and some background stamping using the music manuscript from the Ephemera Backgrounds with Olive Archival ink, and the flourish from the Serenity set stamped in distress paint.












I stamped the main image in Olive Archival and used Detail Clear powder to emboss it - it has such a lovely shimmer when the sun hits it!











I gathered lots of mulberry paper flowers, and die-cut the Memory Box treble clef out of a stamped tag I had lying around and had decided I didn't want to continue with.












And the white gauzy, satiny ribbon is tied with some seam binding dyed with Distress Inks to tone in.

I hope that's given you a taste of summer - it's still being slightly reluctant round our way... I was back on two hot water bottles a couple of nights ago, and I think I'm off to get one ready now too...

Hope you're getting to enjoy some sunshine, or at least some crafting wherever you are.





Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
Alma Gluck

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Hello all, thank you so much for dropping in today... It's Friday, and time for a new challenge over at Fussy and Fancy.

I'm a little sad, as this will be my last project as part of the Design Team - it's been a fantastic six months (Six months?  Seriously?  Where did that time go?!) but both in real life and in crafting terms there's so much on my plate at the moment that something had to give.

But I'd like to thank everybody at F&F for the fun and friendship and inspiration, and lots of great challenges... I'll definitely be back to play along in future.

But enough of that... time to play!  We're looking for Circles from you this fortnight, and here's my offering for inspiration, using some papier-mâché hanging circles bought very cheaply at The Range.




Any WOYWW-ers out there may remember this trio of frames from my desk a couple of weeks back - I really went through the mill with this one.






The circles have been at least four different colours, and had several different stamped designs over them, then got covered in texture paste and repainted - each time pleasing me less and less.

Eventually I just lost patience and painted them white to give myself a whole fresh start.

At that point, Our Creative Corner offered up their latest challenge - to create something all White with a Decorative Edge... and at last I began to see a journey ahead.






Step number one was the brainwave of trying out some of the gorgeous Memory Box diecut Catalina Wreaths on top of the frames.

I don't actually own this die, but had bought some pre-cut ones from eBay.

To my delight, they were exactly the right size, so I started gathering other flowery bits and pieces.  I don't do flowery that often, so I thought I might as well do it properly while I was at it.









As well as the Catalina honeysuckle wreaths, there are some of the tiny mulberry paper roses, and some of the larger ones also bought for pennies at The Range.












As I looked at all the bits lying on my craft mat, it quickly became clear that "white" is a flexible term...  Even though all the flowers, the die-cuts and now the frames were "white" - they were all completely different shades.  I decided to paint everything to try to get them to match better.








So I tried a coat of gesso - still all completely different. I added a coat of Titanium White acrylic... still all looking pretty different, but now there was at least a sort of continuity of shade.  

I really like the look of the paint on the paper flowers and the rough brushstrokes visible on the delicate diecuts.










I decided to add some of the wooden flourishes from Crafty Emblies into the mix.  I love these, they're so delicate and intricate.  They look beautiful already in their dark wood finish, and of course you can also alter them, as here.











They got the same coat of gesso and paint as everything else, but I kept it only to the top surface so that you get the dimensional definition of the shape of the flourish.











So we were now pretty much all white - and according to the Our Creative Corner rules, the sentiment can be any colour you like.


At first, I stamped individual words on tissue paper so that I could try out the look of them in the circles, but they didn't have enough punch somehow.


So I turned to my favourite Idea-ology Alpha Parts, this time the Newsprint font.


Usually I mess around with them, altering with paints, and/or DIs, and/or alcohol inks to suit whatever project I'm working on (yup, those links all lead to projects I've used them on - and that's just some of them - I use them a lot!).







As I started to get the letters ready, I was thinking about painting their top surfaces white, as with the flourishes.  However, as I tried them out in the circles I decided I really liked the drama of the black.

So for once, I've left the Alpha Parts in their basic state!!

So there you have it, a shabby chic, romantic, all-white, circular extravaganza - probably about as flowery as you're going to see it get round here!




Be sure to pop by and see all the great projects my fellow DT-ers have created over at Fussy and Fancy - they're well worth a visit, and of course, we'd love to have you join in with our Circles challenge this fortnight - can't wait to see what you come up with!  For now, thank you so much for your company, and see you again soon.

Black and white are absolute... expressing the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquility, and unlimited profundity.
Shiko Munakata

White covers a multitude of sins.  (After four different goes with these frames, I couldn't agree more!)
Jonathan Milne

I'm entering this in the following:
Our Creative Corner are playing White with a Decorative Edge
At Craft-room Challenge they are looking for Monochrome projects
Allsorts are having a Flower Power challenge

The Dollshouse Collector

Hello all, and a warm welcome to a snowy Words and Pictures today (for the second time, if you've already seen this)...

I'm sharing with you one of the gifts I made for my mother's birthday at the weekend.  It's a small book of words and pictures (surprise, surprise!) about dollshouses.

Some of you may know my mother as Cestina, and have visited her blog about creating a museum in the Czech Republic out of her dollshouse collection.

So as soon as I saw the amazing Our Dollies images from Nicecrane Designs, I knew it was a perfect fit to make something for her with.












Well, almost a perfect fit... Cestina is a big fan of the neutral projects (she's not so keen on my recent turquoise kick), and the images were all very brightly coloured.  So I decided to see whether I could alter them in my photo software and happily ended up with all the images in a gentle sepia.












I hope the lovely Ignacio of Nicecrane won't mind that I've altered his images, but it's good news for fans of neutrals to know that the option exists, I think!











I used my new Tim Holtz Cabinet Card die (happy find in the Christmas sales - I used the mini-version to make my Good Old Days project, which Cestina requested - demanded, perhaps, is a better word - as another birthday present) to cut the pages from chipboard.

To start with, I gave all of them a couple of coats of gesso and white acrylic paint.







For the front cover, I used the Tim Holtz book cover stamp (love this stamp), edged it with Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder for a textured look, and added some highlights with Treasure Gold in White Fire.











The Idea-ology flowers and bookplate also got a little touch of White Fire, and I used the Hero Arts alphabet stamps to stamp the title.












Ah yes, the title is the title of the poem by Jacob Polley which forms the "words" element of the book.  It was found by a friend of ours (amazing Andrea who shares her musings at Eclectic Meandering) who wrote it in Cestina's Christmas card this year, so I borrowed it for this project.

Fortuitously (since I didn't check before I started) the poem has four verses (the whole thing is at the foot of the post as today's quote), so that meant one for each page for the four images I'd chosen to use.



And since my printer is playing up at the moment - I'd had to beg another friend to print the images for me! - I'd've been really scuppered if I'd suddenly needed another picture!

The inner pages were all stamped with my favourite Stampology flower corner, and inked with Vintage Photo, and on each of the the poem pages, I added one of the tiny chipboard windows from Retro Café Art and did some doodling by hand in the remaining space.






For the picture pages, I layered up inked paper doilies, frayed cheesecloth, and the beautiful Memory Box die, Madera Corner, cut from some Basic Grey paper from the Serenade collection.













I tried to get the Madera Corner into a different place on each layout, which meant working out where it caused least obstruction to the picture underneath in each image.









I added corners from the ATC and Corners die to all of the verses and pictures, to look as though they're held in place in an album, and I used some Idea-ology bead chain to "bind" the book.

Nearly there... this is the last verse!  (And don't forget you can click on the photo if you'd like a closer view.)

For a finishing touch, I added some brown gingham ribbon to the bead chain at the front.

As you can see, I had to clear the snow off my favourite tree in order to take the pictures today!

I hope you've enjoyed having a look at my mother's birthday book...  I was so happy to find such perfect pictures for a dollshouse collector.

You can go direct to Our Dollies here, or hop over to Nicecrane Designs for a browse of all the amazing images - there are so many wonderful sets, you're bound to be able to find something appropriate to make cards or gifts for even your most particular friends!  And they really are great value.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today - I so appreciate your visits and your feedback, and though I've been a bit behind with my visiting in the last couple of days, I'm hoping to get back on track as the week goes on, so with luck I'll see you again soon!

I'm entering this in the following:

At Simon Says Stamp and Show they're asking the question What Are You Known For?  Well, very long posts, for one thing... but as much as anything else, I hope it's the combining of words and pictures (hence the blog title), and I guess most people who visit would also recognise the shabby chic vintage look, the distressing and stamping, Vintage Photo Distress Ink overload... and also many of my favourite projects have been handmade books of one kind or another - so this is a pretty good example of all that!

Ah, go on then, a third and final entry for Frilly and Funkie's challenge to Follow Your Muse (see all of the above!!)

At Anything But A Card they've asked us to Tie It Up... in another adventure in "book-binding", I've got the chain tying my pages together as well as the ribbon bows decorating it 

And Out of a Hat Creations want us to show off our Most Useful Stamp - the Stampology Autumn Leaves floral silhouette gets rolled out here at Words and Pictures time and again to add that little touch of magic... it simply delights me!
At Vintage Stamping Challenges the challenge is Vintage, and I'm making this a second entry there

Doll's House by Jacob Polley

A table set with tiny plates,
the chairs around a paper fire:
diminishment has simplified
the aims and objects of desire,
while blinder faith must still provide
the mincemeat in the wooden cakes,

the creaking stair and wind outside.
For you have held your breath to peer
along the shelves of depthless books
lining a room where nothing's read;
and now, effortlessly giant, look
up to the eaves and in at the beds.

Be brave. To live is not to fear
despite the scale of what's at stake.
Two children lie in matchbox cribs.
Next door a couple, stiff as pegs,
are tucked together, rib to rib,
the bedsheets bound around their legs.

What happens if you turn away?
Every god has asked the same,
crouched at a sideboard, just in case
sudden little laughter shakes
a heaven like an empty house
where not a plate nor day will break.

Butterfly's butterflies

I'm sharing a quick tag today, one of the first things I made with my current colour obsession... I just hadn't had a chance to share it yet.


I've been playing with the new Distress Stains and Cosmic Shimmer sprays I got for Christmas and here's where they got me to.


It was so nice just to play with no particular end in mind...   I had no idea where I was going when I started, and though it's not a very complicated piece it really makes me happy: I smile when I look at it!!


So the new stain colours are Mowed Lawn, Salty Ocean and Iced Spruce.


I splodged some of each onto my craft mat, along with a spritz of Patina Cosmic Shimmer spray, and played around with Tim's wrinkle free distress technique until I liked what I had.










I had to wait for some sunshine to photograph this tag, as it was impossible to get any sense either of the gorgeous shimmer in the tag, or of the embossing I'd done without sunlight.


So please excuse the shadows in places... the penalty for using Mother Nature as your display case!


Also the colour varies a lot according to the light, so it changes shade from photo to photo, but it happens in real life too, and that's one of the reasons it pleases me.













I took one of my ebay-bought Catalina wreaths by Memory Box, and dipped them in the Distress Stains, but keeping more colour separation for a brighter hit of colour.

Once the stains were in place, I spritzed it with the shimmer again to blend the colours... the stains are reactive with water, so they move with the liquid spray.









You can see the glimmering lustre in this picture...

I cut up the wreath so that I could position it around the tag rather than in one solid circle.












I got out some of my favourite Tim Holtz stamps, from the Papillon set, and blended a mixture of Archival inks onto the stamp: Aquamarine, Library Green, Cobalt and Olive.











I used the Olive again with the little TH grasses stamp, randomly scattered around the edges of the tag.










The Aquamarine came into play again with my absolutely favourite script stamp from the TH Apothecary set...










... rolled on and off the tag for additional layered texture.














The sentiment is stamped in a mixture of Archival inks, but focussing on the Cobalt to give it definition.  I clear embossed it to give it a sheen and some dimensionality.














The same stains as on the tag background were used on the crinkle ribbon, but keeping it nice and light and delicate, and the Paper Distresser did its work around the very edges.

I dyed plenty of ribbon, so that there would be enough for a double bow, plus some extra to hang the tag up by.

As I said, I had an absolutely lovely time making this.  I do hope you've enjoyed having a look, and I'm so grateful for your visits and support - it's always such a joy to read your comments... each and every one is so much appreciated.








I'm entering this in the following:
The Artistic Stamper would like to see our Favourite Stamp this month - I'd have to say it varies with time, but the Papillon set has always been at or near the top, and it was love at first inking with this TH script stamp
Simon Says Stamp are playing New Something - my new Distress Stain colours
The ABC Challenge is playing E for Embossing
At Simon Says Stamp and Show there are No Rules
Anything But A Card are looking for Things With Wings
Hels Sheridan is also looking for Things That Fly for her Sunday Stampers over at Ink on my Fingers (although I suppose it's possible that you could have something with wings that didn't fly... but it's limited)

Some colors exist in dreams that are not present in the waking spectrum.
Terri Guillemets

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
Erich Fromm

Bewitching White

Hello all, delighted to welcome you to Words and Pictures today; it's great to have your company.

I'm sharing a card with you today which is inspired by The Stampsmith Challenge this month, which is to work in Monochromatic White (using at least one Stampsmith stamp).  

This was a real challenge, and I'm not sure I've cracked it yet - so I hope to play again before the end of the month!  But for now, here's my White Witch...

It's stated in the challenge that of course you will need to stamp in a colour other than white, but I'm not generally inclined to meekly do as I'm told!

So I had a couple of goes at using white embossing powder on the bewitchingly beautiful Serena.  I thought it looked pretty cool, but then of course you need to stand there altering the angle of the card the whole time in order to be able to see it.

In the end I conceded that they were probably right about using a colour to stamp with - and I stamped her using the blue from the  Colorbox Archival Coffee House set.  

Much better - now you get to see her properly.  I find this stamp absolutely enchanting - I'm serious about Serena being bewitching!








The sentiment is stamped in the same ink.  And one of the things I'm really pleased with is the subtle sparkle in the background.

It's a simple spritzing of Tattered Angels Chalkboard Glimmer Mist in Chalk...

... and you'll spot that the Tim Holtz paper distresser has been in action on the edges everywhere!

The next layer up is white card embossed with the Tim Holtz Distressed Frame folder - and here's where my monochromatism started to get in trouble.

I just couldn't make it work in pure white... so I put some of the same ink onto the craft mat and, using a water brush, I added an extremely diluted wash of it onto the frame.  It really is almost white...








I've used the delectably delicate Madera Corner die from Memory Box and glued only in places so that you still get some extra dimensionality from the branches.





Between Serena and the Distressed Frame, there's a little paper doily and some frayed cheesecloth.



Those who know me and my work well will be able to imagine how hard it was to refrain from getting out the Vintage Photo - or at least the Antique Linen - to do some edging on the doily, but I decided to be firm with myself, and left it in pristine white.








I do like what I've ended up with... but I have to admit, I'm not quite sure whether it counts as white on white.  Having really enjoyed the challenge, though, I'm willing to give it another go, and see where it takes me next time!











Thank you so much for stopping by... I hope you've enjoyed my White Witch, and if she's now got you in her thrall too, hop over to The Stampsmith and have a look at all their beautiful stamps.  I promise you'll find plenty for your Christmas wishlist!

I'm entering this in Monochromatic White, using at least one Stampsmith stamp, over at The Stampsmith Challenge.

The first of all single colors is white ... We shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no color can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness.
Leonardo Da Vinci

White...is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.
G.K.Chesterton

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
Mae West