Those who wander...

Hello again, and welcome to the second wandering post today.  It seems a long time since we've had anything which I've made just for fun... Deadlines and DT makes and flattering GD offers pile up, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities, and so happy to be on the teams, but I think one of my New Year's Resolutions is going to have to be about being careful how much I say yes to!



Anyway, I spent much of Thursday and Friday last week trying to bring some order back to my craft room where chaos was taking over.  I finally bit the bullet and chucked out almost two cratefuls of scraps and snippets and half-made tags which have been gathering over the last three years.

Many of the scraps made the move along with us from our old house more than two years ago, and I haven't so much as looked at them in that time.

In the end, I couldn't bring myself to just tip the whole lot in to the paper recycling without sorting through it, and I ended up keeping enough to fill a couple of A4 plastic wallets... so it did still gain me some much needed storage space.

This tag is made from some of the things I fished out.  It was really almost done - it just needed a few additions gathered from some of the leftovers sitting around the craft table.  And I rather like the result.








As I say, most of the main elements of the tag were already in place when I pulled it out of the scraps crate.  It looks like a wrinkle-free distress background to me, with some ink blending, and then there's the stamping of some of my perennial favourites in Jet Black Archival.

I put it straight on to the craft table, knowing I'd want some play time as a "reward" for all the sorting and tidying.

The girl also turned up in the clear-out.  I'm pretty sure she's a Nicecrane Designs image, dating back to when I was working on that design team.  She's printed on acetate, so I'd obviously had some idea for using her which never came in to being.








Now, though, she seems right at home on this tag.  The slightly haunted, yet quietly determined look in her eye seems to reflect the words of the quote printed at the foot of the tag.













Ah yes, those words... so powerful (and I guess I have wandering on the brain a bit at the moment!).













I trimmed her edges a bit before deciding on the precise placement.  And of course the main thing I love about the acetate is it gives her that now-you-see-it, now-you-don't effect which I love about light-reflecting elements.  It's why I so often go for clear embossing - there's something about the tantalising changeability of it which delights me.












Bare branches are a definite theme here this week, as you'll see soon... but I don't think any other versions I have beat this Tim Holtz stamp.  I love those delicate intertwining twigs.











There's my absolute top favourite script stamp in the background - love how you can see it through the girl's skin too - the one from Tim's Apothecary set.














Its spidery antiquity is perfect for the feel of this tag.














The leaves were hanging around as leftovers from another project - you won't see that until later in the week, though, I'm afraid.  They're kraft card with a hint of alphabet stamping on, and some inking to warm them up.

My favourite birds are heading off to wander in search of warmer climes... and I noticed when the sun came out as I was taking photographs that there seems to be a touch of sparkle, probably Perfect Pearls, in the background too.

Of course there had to be rusty wire too...













I added a Big Chat sticker to a little kraft tag and inked over it because the bright white text was a bit too in your face.  I wanted it to be strong, but not that strong!!










So just a quick bit of leftovers playtime, a reward for all the hefting and clearing and gritted-teeth disposal of unneeded clutter.  I hope you like her.

As I say, I'll be back later in the week... in fact, I'll be back several more times!  Sorry, it's just one of those weeks, but I couldn't resist sharing this one with you as soon as she was ready.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

She was free in her wildness.  She was a wanderess, a drop of free water.  She belonged to no man and to no city.  She knew nothing of borders and cared nothing for rules or customs.  "Time" for her wasn't something to fight against.  Her life flowed clean, with passion, like fresh water.
From The Wanderess by Roman Payne

Nicely does it...

Hello all... I'm not really here today.  That's to say it's a only sneak peek here at Words and Pictures.  You can find me in full flow over at Our Creative Corner turning the spotlight on our sponsor this month, Nicecrane Designs.

For this Nicecrane Sponsor Spotlight I've played with the fabulous printable images in several different ways, trying to throw some light on how they can fit into mixed media work, not just scrapbooking or card-making.  Take a look here at what I came up with. WARNING: there's pink involved!!

I hope you'll pop over to Our Creative Corner, and that it will inspire you to explore Nicecrane's amazing range of pictures and images, all available at incredibly reasonable prices.  

I'll be back tomorrow, but for now I'll love you and leave you, and wish you happy crafting!

There are two kinds of light: the glow that illumines and the glare that obscures.
James Thurber

Oh, and anyone who's interested... you can check out some photos from Tamburlaine, the show I worked on in New York, on Pinterest.  There are rehearsal photos, and production photos, as well as photos about some of the blood effects.  You have been warned... it's gory!

Invisible Bars

Hello all, and welcome to Words and Pictures on another grey, wet, dreary day here in the British Summer.

I'm here with one of those makes which drew its breath from several sources, came to life somewhat grudgingly, and with many coats, re-coats and re-re-coats of paint, and I'm still dissatisfied with it, but in the end it does tell a story I rather like.

The starting point was the literary challenge set by The House of Bears for June - a number of quotes from Jane Eyre, from which we could spring off according to inspiration.  Well, you know by now how much I love starting with the words...

And the pictures for this one come from the lovely images available at Nicecrane Designs, drawn from several different sheets.

And then it got all caught up with the Stripes challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show.

  

My stripes are the bars of the cage keeping the birds imprisoned, and the bones of the corset, the pleats of the skirts and blouses which, for all her declaration of independence, are keeping the woman imprisoned (and there are some more literal stripes to add to the cage and corsetry: streaks of paint and some corrugated card, naturally).

And that got me to thinking about the bars we take for granted, or sometimes don't even notice - the metaphorical bars which keep us caught in a place or a job or a mindset, and how the first step to escaping those bars is to become aware of them.

They might not feel like bars to us at all; they might seem to be positive things - but in one way or another they are keeping us from being truly free.  No matter how gilded the cage, it's still a cage.  

And yes, you'd be right in thinking there's some stuff going on for me right now!!








So, the tag, then - another extended tag, because I needed space for the words to sit independently of all the other action going on.

I started with a jumbo tag, some texture paste and the Crafter's Workshop Damask mask.  And then I started in with the painty layers... I'm not even going to try to add up how many times I painted and repainted it. 

There is some crackle glaze in there somewhere, and I used a hard bristle brush to get the strong striped texture into the paint, and also some baby wipes to knock it back, also creating distressed streaks.









There were many different versions of the texture highlights too - ink, paint, and there's still some of each of those in places... 

But the main highlighter that you can see by the end is the fabulous White Fire colour of Treasure Gold - applied partly with fingers and partly with a brush for extra textural effect.









The woman is from the Nicecrane sheet: Muse of Poets.  (You may have seen the utterly beautiful tag the amazing Astrid made with the same image recently.)













Once she was printed, I inked with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo Distress Inks, adding some inked creases for an aged look, and some brush strokes of gesso.  

I rather like the effect of the gesso - it gives it a definite sense of age and incipient mildew!









The beautiful delicate birdcage is by Crafty Emblies.  It has also had a touch of gesso and a touch of Treasure Gold - well, if we're talking about gilded cages...

If you saw my krafty birds' nest cards the other day, then you might recognise the little guys inside the cage.










They're from the Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady.  I've used the sketch version, though you can also get the same set pre-coloured (hopefully making an appearance here some time soon).  

This time rather than printed in black onto kraft paper, I've altered the image so that it's sepia and printed it onto white paper.







The third Nicecrane set being used here is the wonderful Vintage Fashion Pages, a brilliant sheet of ephemera - eight different magazine pages with columns of adverts and illustrations...

These were perfect for my purposes - pictures of the constraining corsetry of the period, the rigid pleats of the skirts and blouses, as well as the columns of newsprint giving me yet another version of stripes.









These too have been inked and gesso'd for that aged look, and I'm happy I remembered to grab at least one picture before they got layered into the tag and covered up!

I was very fortunate that with the Crafty Emblies order there arrived a little grab bag of extras.  (This was an order from a while back - I know there have been some problems, and don't know anything about where things are at now.)













I probably wouldn't have chosen a dress form for myself (being a needlework-ophobic), but it makes a perfect echo of the bars of the cage - shaping the bones of a corset to create a "Tapering Waist" - a form of imprisonment of which she's not even fully aware.











The topping for the tag is some inked lace snippets tied together with dyed seam binding for a full-on feminine vintage look...

... but, as I hope has become clear, this is as feminist as it is feminine.  You have to do some reading between the lines (look, more stripes!) for this one.  Don't take the quote at face value.






Speaking of the quote, it's stamped with my little Hero Arts alphabet onto plain white paper which I then inked with Antique Linen, spritzed with water and then edged with Vintage Photo.  

The background is very fine corrugated card which has been painted, inked and gilded to match the tag above.








(Anybody spotted it? shhh... evil corporate empire cupholder, and my only excuse is it's been sitting around here forever!) 

The eyelets have been White Fire'd to take away their overly brassy golden colour, and some more ribbons tie the two sections together.







And I roughened the edges of the tag with the Paper Distresser, partly to get the Vintage Photo DI to take better.  

The surface of the tag is so rubbed and buffed by this point that the inks tend to slide off it a bit. 

Ooh, nearly forgot the paper flowers (from Wild Orchid Crafts - life doesn't allow for handmade flowers at the moment, sorry).  

They have also been altered, of course, to tone in with the overall look of the tag, and then I think we're pretty much there...







There have been some nice short posts lately, but I seem to be back on form with this one!  Thanks so much for seeing it through (if you're still here), and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Here's the quote in full, as well as some more food for thought:


I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.
From Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Mary Wollstonecraft

Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds.
Franklin D. Roosevelt


I'm entering this for the following:
The literary challenge at The House of Bears using Quotes from Jane Eyre
Stripes at Simon Says Stamp and Show
The inaugural Ali-Craft Blog Challenge which is an Open theme

Krafting a Nest

Hello and welcome everyone.  I hope you're finding some time to play this weekend - at whatever it is that gives you joy.

I'm here to catch up with some long neglected duties and pleasures.  Owing to the absence of a working printer, I've fallen behind with offering you any inspiration pieces using images from the fabulous Nicecrane Designs.  Well, I'm now back up and running, so I'm here with a pair of cards (and matching envelopes too!) in the hopes that doing the double will at least partly make up for it!

It's also been far too long since I managed to play along over at Frilly and Funkie - life just keeps getting in the way - so I'm delighted to offer these up for the Birds and Nests challenge there, as well as having "krafted" them so that they'd fit in with Simon Says Stamp and Show's Kraft challenge.

There is also a challenge over at 13arts where the theme is A House, with a recycled element involved, and at least two different media.  There were lots of birdhouses amongst the amazing DT inspiration - but I've taken it a step further: these nests are the houses for my birds - so I'm hoping this will fit there too...

I started with some images from the beautiful Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady.

The lovely Ignacio of Nicecrane has produced these images both in pre-coloured and the non-coloured versions I've used.










That means you can choose to colour them yourself or, as I have, leave them in sketch form.

I printed two of the bird images onto kraft paper and tore and inked the edges.













The next layer is of watercolour paper, again torn and inked to provide a lighter frame before we get to - guess what! - yes, corrugated card!








I'm going to own up here - I had "finished" these cards once already, but I just wasn't happy with them - but then I never am with cards... I find them really hard for some incalculable reason.  So I thought I should call it a day and get on with something else.

But then I suddenly remembered the birds' nests I won in some fab candy from the lovely Miss Danielle Renee way back when.

So the cards went back to the craft table, got ripped to pieces, and I started to layer in some extra elements.






It seems fitting that one year on from when this blog started, with a complete obsession with the colour combination blue & brown, that I'm back there this week!

One of the nests had some very pale turquoise eggs, and another had some that were a deeper shade.







So I grabbed the Broken China and Salty Ocean Distress Paints and added some colour to my corrugated card.














While the paint was still wet, I dipped it into clear UTEE and heated for a wet-look, textured finish.











The Salty Ocean turned out to be slightly less greeny than the eggs themselves... solution - give the eggs a touch of paint, obviously.













In my pile of half-makes and leftovers was a sheet of kraft on which I'd used up spare Picket Fence DP when stamping the wooden rulers to make my Tools of the Trade tag.

There was just enough to tear into two additional panels to insert between the corrugated card and my white background.









The borders are done with a stamp from the Autumn Leaves Stampology On the Edge set, and then given just a hint of the Distress Paint colour for that card.

I also edged a couple of bark hearts with the appropriate colours and added them to the mix.

The matching envelopes each have a slightly larger version of the images. 

They've also got the border stamp and are edged with the matching DP.













Again the images were printed on kraft paper -which I really like against the white, especially with that edging of Vintage Photo Distress ink.

The sentiments of course are by Tim Holtz - a couple of my favourites!

I'm still not entirely convinced, to be honest, but I quite like them - given they're cards, and I really don't get on with making cards - and they're certainly an improvement on the first version.  

Who knows, I may end up ripping them to pieces again and adding more!

The thing I do know is I love the images themselves, and there are thousands more where they come from.









So I really recommend paying Nicecrane Designs a visit - not only lots of beautiful images, of so many different types and styles, but at a really great price too...

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  Looking forward to seeing you again soon either here, or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
Robert Lynd

I'm entering this in the following:
Frilly and Funkie's challenge Birds and Nests
Kraft at Simon Says Stamp and Show
At 13arts they are playing the theme House - my birds live in the nests, so that's home for them, and my corrugated card is recycled from a packaging box, and I've used paints and inks.