A room of one's own

A Room of One's Own - it's a quote by Virginia Woolf - in fact the title of an essay extended from a speech she gave at the women's colleges at Cambridge - which has always resounded for me:  A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.  Not just to write fiction of course, but to be creative on any front (and not just women either - it's just that men have, in the past, had far more access to exactly that).  It hits me every Wednesday as I catch some of the WOYWW hop, and it hit me again as I browsed around the fourth annual Where Bloggers Create party: to have a space (mental and emotional as well as physical and geographical) is so utterly vital, and people's craft spaces are endlessly fascinating in what they reveal of the individual artist.

That's all by way of introduction to 'A room of one's own', a project inspired by The Shabby Tea Room's glorious challenge this week, Elegance and Lace, and particularly by the photo prompt provided...

It's also something at the centre of things for me at the moment because (alongside the trauma of preparing to clear and leave the family house which has been the only constant in my somewhat peripatetic life for the last forty years) there is the positive path towards somewhere new to live and make my space.

Part of that new life will be here in the Czech Republic, and this week we were looking at the plans for the attic room I aim to create here above the barn of my mother's brilliantly rescued and restored village house.

So this picture really took off for me.  The architectural features and materials (I'll definitely be on a blond or white wood trail!) went straight to my heart; and whilst the main requirements were to include White/Cream + Pink + Kraft + Lace, these elements in the photo have also seeped into my project.

Okay, time for a picture.  (Sorry, there are LOADS of photos today, but it's a complicated piece!)

But, "hold on a cotton-pickin' minute!" I hear you cry... "where are all these architectural elements she promised us?".








Ah, well, you see - the whole thing opens up to this, with the sentiment right at the heart of the home:

This project was hard-fought: things wouldn't stay where they were put; bits kept not turning out as I planned; the lace wouldn't behave!  But overall I'm reasonably happy with where it ended up.  I would have loved to include some of the soft, wide fabric ribbon I've seen adorning projects on my blog trawls for some added opulence, but I haven't managed to locate any here.

Let me take you through some of the details, starting again from the outside and working our way in.

The paper for the outside is from Prima's gorgeous Botanical collection, which I have in the A4 version.  I think this particular paper is just lovely.  The subtle colouring appeals to my current Shabby Chic obsession.


(By the way, there's a project under construction which will give us all a break from the S.C., so do bear with me if you're utterly sick of the hearts and flowers!)


Obviously I needed some lace for the Shabby Tea Room challenge, but by now I'd also decided to play a couple of the lovely Bingo challenges around.  Nine elements to be included in a project are placed in a bingo grid, and you can 'play' a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line, four corners, or - for some - a full house of all nine elements!

Try it on Tuesday's Bingo had a vertical line of Flower, Two Background Papers, Lace with an extra twist of adding a butterfly - well, I already had two of those elements on the go, I'm never averse to adding a flower, and with my nickname...  

Creative Inspirations had a Bingo line of Pink, Charms, Ribbon - so it wasn't hard to see that this project could also qualify for that.

Hels Sheridan's Sunday Stampers this week is looking for Embellishments, and there are plenty of those in one form or another!



The butterfly is cut out from one of the papers in Tim Holtz's Crowded Attic Paper Stash, inked with some Antique Linen and Bundled Sage blended together, and then UTEE'd both for the gloss of it, and to provide some protection for the very delicate antennae (get that fussy-cutting!).  

The rustic heart is reminiscent of the wall hanging at the back of the photograph room.

The charms came from The Works (fab place to pick up crafty stuff on the cheap every now and then).  I love the little heart shape in the key!

Since Kraft was also required for the Elegance and Lace challenge, the whole thing is made out of a piece of 12x12 Kraft Cardstock, and I made sure to leave parts of that on show as frames and borders throughout the card.  I wanted to draw attention to it, so used the great little wood texture stamp from the Tattered Angels Architectural set in Vintage Photo wherever the Kraft was visible.


When you lift up the first flap, you can get a better look at some of the lace, bought in brilliant white from a Czech department store and attacked with some Antique Linen Distress Ink and a blending tool!


The next stage of unfolding reveals a set of 'double doors' as well as your first glimpse of the floor and ceiling:




The ceiling paper is from K&Company's Best Of collection, a glorious shabby moulding captured for our scrapping use.

The floor (close-up follows soon) I created myself.  I loved the ceiling in the photograph, and had great fun remembering from junior school how to make sure lines of perspective had the right angle on them.  Because I hand-painted the floor in my real room at home (another attic space) to look like weathered white wooden planks, I wanted to have my wood on the floor rather than the ceiling.



I fussy-cut one of the birdcages from Prima's Nature Garden collection and UTEE'd it (again to protect the extremely fragile bit, the handle).




I added a loop of ribbon to open the door with... it also adds a touch of teasing suspense, as you realise there's more to discover.



I had to put an extra bit of cardstock in to strengthen the top folding hinge which opens the ceiling so that it would stay upright once opened.  You do have to give it a bit of a tweak as you open it so that it will stay put.




And finally you arrive in the 'room'.







You can open it so that the walls form an enclosed space, as here, or open it right up as in the main photo near the top of the page.

I do quite like the enclosed view, but it means you have to get an angle on it to see the corners and side walls:

 
The quote by William Morris is one I try very hard to live by (although I'm a crafting newbie, I've had a crafter's hoarding tendencies most of my life), and certainly my surroundings are very important to me.

It's done on the computer (none of my stamping alphabets were 'elegant' enough), and then distressed with Antique Linen and a hint of Tattered Rose, and the Stampology Silhouettes branches are stamped in Bundled Sage.








I've let rip with the TH Paper Distresser and the tearing and rolling again on my layers of backing papers (from the quote: my own, K&Co, Prima, my own, K&Co).  

To return to the sentiment - I believe it to be beautiful!

The other prominent architectural features in the photograph are obviously the columns and the glorious light-providing door and window at the back. 

I played for a while with the idea of cutting the holes for the windows right through these flaps, but decided I really didn't like the effect it would create on my 'outer' doors.  

While it would be magic to have a room with a view once it's completely open, sadly the 'view' in the folded state would have been of partial words and bits of quote... not so good.  So in the end I went with an abstract view, using the Prima paper again - the leaves and flowers of the 'outdoors' of the project rather than the actual outdoors.

The blinds are K&Company paper, with another of the bits of lace bought at the Haberdashery counter of the Czech department store.  (My mother made me ask for the two metres of each I wanted - scary - but the woman serving was thrilled with my "beautiful Czech" - hmm, 10 words does not a fluent speaker make!)  This one is slightly more delicate, and was also white.  I figured if it's white, I can always alter it to suit whatever I'm working on, as I've done here with the Antique Linen Distress Ink.


The metal 'lacy' corners were originally bright white too, but I've embossed them with some Ranger Weathered White and then sponged on some Tattered Rose.

The columns are made of quite thick card strips (which came out of a packet of new clothes pegs; all the pegs were clipped on to them within the packaging), gessoed for texture, then painted with acrylic white to which I've added weathering marks using the Distress Markers in Weathered Wood, Pumice Stone and Antique Linen.  I then used a water brush to soften the edges of the pen/brush strokes.

I'm not sure whether you can really see on the picture, but the 'mouldings' at top and bottom are covered with some textured modelling paste, which feels really like stone to the touch.  (I bought it to play with some of the stencilling techniques I've been admiring on various blogs, but - what the heck! - I'm making stone, why not try using some 'stone-effect' material to do it?)




There's another of the Nature Garden birdcages fussy-cut and UTEE'd inside the room - one of the 'beautiful' things from the quote... serendipitous that that is the word it sits right next to.




And, lastly, the floor, with which I'm very pleased.  As I mentioned, it's something of a recreation of the actual floor I painstakingly hand-painted (back and forth on my knees across the 20 square metres FIVE times for the various layers of paint, fake planks, wood effect and varnishes) back at home in the UK.


Deliciously, the appropriate perspective point for my lines turned out to be the very peak of the 'roof'.  An enjoyable coincidence, or maybe it's one of those geometrical 'truths' I never really got to grips with!




However much I like my wood effect (Pumice Stone, Weathered Wood, Antique Linen Distress Markers again, and the water brush), it still needed some adornment.

So the UTEE'd hearts left over from 'Only You' got their day in the sun - glossy!





And I cut the Memory Box Madera Corner into some kraft cardstock and stamped it with the wood-effect stamp again in Vintage Photo for extra texture.  

So, yes, the floor pleases me, whatever reservations I may have about some other bits!

Well... as promised/threatened, that was a very long post with A LOT of pictures.  Thank you so much if you've stuck with me this far, and if you've any time left, I'd love it if you left a comment to let me know what you made of it all.

I'd also like to say a big thank you to everyone who has joined up as a follower so far - it's so lovely to have your support, your visits and your valuable feedback.  

I hope to see you here at Words and Pictures again soon, whether as a follower or not (but, you know, why not?!), and in the meanwhile I hope you all have a peaceful, joyous time doing whatever it is you love to do.

I'm entering this for:
The Shabby Tea Room's challenge Elegance and Lace
The Sunday Stamper over at Ink On My Fingers who'd like to see our Bits and Pieces
Try It On Tuesday's Bingo Challenge playing vertically Flower, Two Papers, Lace
Bingo over at Creative Inspirations playing vertically Pink, Charms, Ribbon
Gingerloft's current challenge which is Fancy Folds
Although my sentiment is not on the front, it's certainly the centre of the piece, so I'm also entering this for The Corrosive Challenge which this fortnight is Sentimentally Yours
And one more for the Anything Goes July challenge at The Crafty Bloggers

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Goethe

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Benjamin Franklin

In an English country garden

I really enjoyed creating this card... and telling myself stories as I went!  From the moment I saw the colour challenge inspiration photo on the Daring Cardmakers challenge site, I knew which papers I would be drawing on - the 7 Gypsies Conservatory collection.

And it wasn't only the colours which led me there; the eggs are also a featured element within the papers; they have an Edwardian nature-collector theme, so there are botanical drawings, fauna and flora, and plenty of birds and eggs around all over them.

None of my Distress Inks really tone precisely to these colours, so I ended up playing lots of blending and layering games, to get combinations of colours which would relate to the challenge colours.

Over at Sir Stampalot, they want to know about my 'crafty passion'. Well, anyone who's visited recently could tell them I seem at the moment to be fairly firmly lodged in the world of Shabby Chic, so what with that and the feel of the Conservatory papers, it was pretty clear, pretty quickly, how the style of the card would develop.  So here it is:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted the green ribbon tab at the bottom - you lift up the front to get a form of what's called, I think, an easel card...


The inside has a more turquoisey feel to the bluey-greens, and some memorabilia.


The story in my head is of the woman in the garden remembering an affair of her youth, and all the mementos she's kept from those halcyon days.


I found both the photos on a Google image search trawl.

There doesn't seem to be a record of the garden lady's identity but Lily Elsie (on the right) was a hugely popular Edwardian actress and singer, renowned for her beauty and charm.

I fell in love with this photo of her, but that of course didn't stop me from taking my inks to both photographs in order to get the newly-printed images from a very 21st century printer to look a little more Edwardian.  

In addition to inking with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo Distress Ink, I did some paper distressing on the edges, as well as giving Lily a good old inked crease too (as though it might have been folded close to someone's heart in a breast pocket; though she demanded the return of her picture in the heat of the break-up!).

All the blue-green papers I created myself, blending Bundled Sage, Tumbled Glass, and occasional touches of Forest Moss and Weathered Wood (Broken China is top of my shopping list when I get home to the UK).

And I've used the little Prima stamp (I think of it as 'the wallpaper stamp' but I think it's actually known as 'Alla Prima Floral 550950') on those papers, including the tag, as well as on the music paper (from an old music book) which forms Lily's background (blending the same colours straight onto the stamp), and as added texture on the front of the card.

As well as the 7 Gypsies, there's a couple of appearances by papers from the Prima Printery collection which I've got in the 8x8 size.  It's a lovely collection of ledgers and text-based papers mainly in neutral creams, some with a hint of green.





I used the Tim Holtz Decorative Strip Die Vintage Lace to make the lace edging for the flap and for the tag inside.  I love this die and, unable to get hold of any actual lace at the moment, I think it provides a really pretty alternative.  I fussy cut (or decoupaged?!) the eggs from the 7 Gypsies Conservatory paper to adorn the tag.  


In my head, this affair grew up around a collector's butterfly net, the naturalist sharing his discoveries with the actress taking a quiet holiday away from the whirl of her West End life.





The internal pocket I made from one of my handmade papers, and used some broad cream chintzy ribbon to decorate it.  The script underneath is the back (yes, the B side!) of one of the Conservatory papers.  You can see why I like them, if this isn't even the primary side!









Amongst the memorabilia there's also one of my mini-postcards (made with the TH postcard and script stamps, and the Prima wallpaper flowers again)...











... and an accommodation invoice (surely they did not share a room, did they?!) cut from one of the 7 Gypsies papers and edged and aged.



And her own final reminder to herself:

When it's meant to be, it's meant to be... they could surely have overcome all the differences between her glamorous life and his studious, academic one.  She shouldn't have been so hasty in bringing the affair to a close.  And now she looks back and knows that what matters is that you Listen to your heart.

Back to reality, and back to the front now, as it were, just for a last couple of details.

The Special Moments text is from one of the Prima Printery papers I mentioned, die-cut with the centre of the TH On the Edge Brackets die.

 

And of course, with Lily being in a garden, remembering her salad days, I had to add some of the little mulberry paper flowers.  The roses seemed too formal somehow, though, so I used these lovely cream and ivory gypsophila heads - an informal bouquet, picked in the meadows one afternoon as they walked, and carefully preserved with the other mementos of a long lost love.

Oh, come on... I've already confessed to being a hopeless romantic - you're surely not surprised!!


In the hope that perhaps they're being judged by fellow hopeless romantics, I'm entering this in the following challenges:

For the Daring Cardmakers, I've been following their Colour Combination
Sir Stampalot would like to know about 'My Crafty Passion' - for now, at least, very clearly Shabby Chic! - but particularly the layering, Distress Inks, and paper-distressing
The Vintage Artisans have a brand new Challenge Blog, and their first theme is Vintage Shabby Chic
I'm offering another entry to the Crafty Bloggers July Anything Goes challenge
I'm taking a plunge on Crafty Boots, playing their Bingo Challenge - with a vertical win on Blue, Ribbons and Lace (I know you can argue the whole blue - turquoise - green spectrum, but given the fight I had with my mother, you can call it both ways on this card!!)
And I'm adding it as my third and final entry for the lovely Danish site Vintage Urfordring's July challenge Anything Goes (as long as it's vintage)
And there's a Shabby Chic/Vintage challenge at the lovely site Paperminutes (it seems right to be doing all these European challenges as I sit here in the Czech Republic)


I'm so pleased you were able to spend some time here at Words and Pictures today.  I really hope I'm not the only one who creates stories at the same time as creating crafting projects, or you'll all think I'm completely barking!  

In any case, I hope your own story takes a pleasurable turn today, and I hope to have your company again soon.

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
James Douglas

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
D.H.Lawrence

Only you...

Hello, thanks so much for dropping by here at Words and Pictures.  I've a new project to share with you:

And when you open the door...

                             

... you get to see...

            

              ... what's inside!

Today's card was kicked off by the colour challenge over at the Play Date Cafe, which was to use Gold, Nude and Silver.  I had some trouble at first getting to grips with the colour 'Nude'.  I looked at it on a couple of different computer screens, and it was completely different on each - I guess your 'nude' also slightly depends what colour your skin is!  Anyway, it seems to be a gentle light brown with a hint of blush.

I gathered some papers which seemed to fit the bill: the frame and door panels use a paper from Prima's Nature Garden A4 pad; the door itself (2 different papers, front and back) is from the Prima Almanac collection, 6x6; and the music inside is a sheet out of a real old music book, stamped with the gorgeous little Prima wallpaper stamp (romantically titled 550950!).

So, it's a pretty strongly Prima piece, paper-wise.  The embellishments are almost pure Tim Holtz, however, and they provide the silver and gold elements.

I was also following a recipe from Crafty Creations to use 3 patterned papers, 2 buttons and a partridge in a pear tree... no, sorry, no partridge... it's really 1 ribbon plus 1 sentiment, which was really fun to incorporate.


The doorway became inevitable at the point when I decided I wanted to use one of the TH Idea-ology door-knobs to be one of my main silver focusses (they're too cute!), and everything else seemed to tumble forward from there.

On each door panel, there's a Grungeboard letter from the Mixed Minis set (TH), spelling the word 'only'.  I gave them a coat of acrylic (mixed from a sandy colour and a very pale rose), and then spritzed them with some Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls Mist. 

I wanted a shabby chic, patchy effect, not total coverage, and I like the antique-y look I ended up with.  Rather than out and out bling, it's got an old-fashioned lustre.

Also, in pursuit of shabby chicness, the papers all got a wash of Picket Fence Distress Stain to get that white-washed look.

The layered paints and mists on the letter are then layered onto the door panel with its layers of paint and paper, layered onto the door itself, with a whole hidden layer behind the door!




Over the top of the doorway, I've attached a lovely wooden carving (part of a whole bagful of various shapes and sizes which have been sitting around the family house for almost the entire 40 years we've been there).  Again, it got a coat or two of acrylic, and then a spritz of the Heirloom Gold to get that subtle gleam.

The other embellishments on the outer frame include one of my regular scroll creations (this time using the leftover scraps from the Almanac paper, with a glimmer of Perfect Pearls Mist, Heirloom Gold), with one of the pen nibs I got on ebay;




the lovely TH buttons, again spritzed with Heirloom Gold (magical stuff!);








and some Idea-ology flowers and leaves from the Foliage set, two of them silver and two gold, and edged with a bit of the Ranger Weathered White embossing powder to add to the shabby chic look.






Inside, the sentiment is completed: Only... you hold the key to my heart.

I wanted to ring the changes with the text, so I picked the three important words and decided to do something different with each of them, trying to pick out the three challenge colours again.  Gold and Silver are also required over at the So Artful challenge this week.






The gold safety pin (TH Idea-ology) holds the three letters of the word 'you', made from stickers from the Tim Holtz Salvage set, backed with the flesh/nude (whatever you want to call it) paper on which the in-between words are printed, and attached with jump rings to match.









The silver key is one of a set of jewellery findings I got ages ago, and has the nude ribbon tied through it.

The heart is in what I hope counts as a 'nude' paper colour (I like the notion of a nude heart - naked, vulnerable - just as it is when in love), die-cut and then enamelled with UTEE for that great, glossy, dimensional look.

So, I'm entering this in the following:

The Play Date Cafe colour challenge, Gold, Nude, Silver

Crafty Creations Recipe challenge

So Artful's challenge All That Glitters

The Craft Barn, where you need to use Frantage, mica flakes (not in the stash yet) or UTEE (so in the stash!) for their Embossing and Mica Challenge

That Craft Place Challenge are having an Anything Goes fortnight
Since I've just found out (with 26 minutes to go!) that you can enter Simon Says Stamp and Show more than once, I'm putting this into their Layered challenge (as I like it much better than the other one I entered!!)

I hoped you enjoyed going through the doorway with me.  Leave me a comment if you did (and if you have time!) ... and do join up to follow if you'd like to see more.

I'm going to leave you with a poem I  particularly like - it so happens that it's by a Czech, but that's not why.  As you'll see, it seems appropriate!

Go and open the door.
   Maybe outside there's
    a tree, or a wood,
    a garden,
    or a magic city.


Go and open the door.
   Maybe a dog's rummaging.
   Maybe you'll see a face,
    or an eye,
    or the picture
    of a picture.


Go and open the door.
   If there's a fog
    it will clear.


Go and open the door.
   Even if there's only
    the darkness ticking,
    even if there's only
    the hollow wind,
    even if
             nothing
                         is there,
go and open the door.

At least
    there'll be
    a draught.

Miroslav Holub   trs. Ian Milner