Smashing Fashion

Hello all!  It's fantastic you've been able to drop by, as I'm thrilled to be able to share a piece of news with you today.  

I've been invited by the fantastic Caro (a.k.a. cbee) to join the Design Team at Fun With ATCs, and today's the first chance to share some ATCs with you, and for you to find out about my new team members.  I'm sharing two ATCs today... and I'll explain why.  WARNING: what follows is not in my usual vein (though normal service is resumed further down the page).

The challenge of the discipline of the ATC format - Artist Trading Cards, 2.5 by 3.5 inches in size - is a really fresh and exciting one for me.  However, I did feel a slight sinking of the heart when I found out that the first theme I'd be involved with was to be Fashion.  It's really not my world... and although I was mainly thinking about it in vintage terms (of course!), I still kept getting caught up in my internal response to the word "Fashion", which is a politically pretty angry response.  A lot of ATCs ended up in the bin, simply not working out.

In the end, to get it out of my system, I decided to put that response down in black and white, on an ATC, in the hope that it would free me up to do something a bit more fun and 'challenge-appropriate'.  So, those of a nervous disposition, you're welcome to scroll past this one straight to the 'vanilla' vintage version of Fashion further down the post... but this is what the word really triggers in me:

I offered this up on the Fun With ATCs Design Team forum, to let them know I really was trying to come up with something (and where, to be honest, it went down pretty well), and then also uploaded my lighter take on the theme later in the day.  To this moment, I'm still not sure which of the two the lovely Caro will choose to feature amongst the DT projects over at the Challenge!  

(I ought, of course, to give you the lowdown - perhaps I should say "the skinny" - on the stamp: my skeletal model is from Oxford Impressions' Dr Coffin's Apothecary set.  I hadn't previously noticed how provocatively he was posing...)

So, in a return to usual business, here's the vintage fashion ATC I finally came up with once I'd got that all off my chest!

The stamps are from Indigoblu's Yorkshire Evening Post set, stamped in Coffee Archival, and I've used Distress Markers to rough in some colour - Tumbled Glass and Bundled Sage (ooh, that pairing is doing wonderful things to my Word Coach brain).

They are edged, of course, with Vintage Photo and the Tim Holtz paper distresser.

They're backed onto some leftovers - the trimmings from the embossed panel in my gingham tag, using a TH embossing folder. 

Here, the embossing has been shaded with Antique Linen, Vintage Photo and some lovely Sea Breeze Versamagic Chalk Ink.  There's also a touch of that on the image edges.  I love its chalky opacity and, of course, the colour!

 





So, ATCs make for pretty short posts (for me)... so I really hope you'll take the time saved here to visit Fun With ATCs and see what my amazing DT compadres have cooked up - there are some familiar faces amongst them that I think you'll enjoy!  We would love it if you played along with the Fashion challenge - and, as you can see, whatever you come up with will be fine by me!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I look forward to seeing you again soon, perhaps with an ATC for me to visit...






Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
George Bernard Shaw

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.
Quentin Crisp

I'm going to stir the pot a little further by offering up my fashion smashing ATC to the Anything But a Card challenge which is to Incorporate Black on, of course, anything but a card

A Gatherer of Simples

Hello all, and welcome to Words and Pictures, with an especially big welcome to the new followers... it's great to have your company on the journey.

I'm sharing some white witchery today - a different angle on the denizens of Halloween - the pocket book of a herbalist, or gatherer of simples.


I love some of the witchy images I've seen around Craftyblogland as we approach Halloween - there are some dead glamorous ones, and thankfully very few of the traditional warts and hook-noses variety. That version of a witch is simply another terrible piece of propaganda...


Who knows how much natural wisdom and knowledge of the healing powers of plants was lost in the culling of so-called 'witches', as the Church sought to eliminate the influence of the wise women?


The cover is made of calico, stuck onto thick chipboard, stamped with a Tattered Angels flourish, and frayed at the edges.
It's been aged with blendings of Antique Linen, Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs Distress Inks.










The twine has also had some weathering with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Stains.  Lovely, messy job, swirling it around in the ink on the craft mat!














The label has been stamped with some more Tattered Angels flowers - I thought the one on the left was deliciously medieval - and then hand-written (ooer - the handwriting is back, and for the first time I don't hate it!).






It's made from one of my tea-stained tags... If you saw What was On My Workdesk this Wednesday, you'll have seen all the experimentation.  I was inspired to give this a go by the wonderful work of Lynne over at Adorn.  She creates beautiful vintage pieces using tea and coffee stained elements.  I've used some more of the tags for the inside too.

When I said, on Wednesday, that all the tea and coffee soaking reminded me of a school project, I  wasn't joking.  It's one that I remember incredibly clearly (even though it must be nearly 35 years ago!): we had to create a witch's spell, and were told that we could age our paper by soaking it overnight in the afore-mentioned drinks.







I still remember the refrain from the spell I wrote: Arony, Briony, Rosehip, Thyme, Lend your power to this spell of mine... and that was really the spark for this little pocket-book.  It seemed only right to use some of the tags to revisit that phrase!












And I now have the most beautiful stamps to do the work for me - instead of my own hand-drawn efforts at decoration.  These are mainly a mixture of the Oxford Impressions set Dr Coffin's Apothecary, and Artemio's Hedgerow Plants... and again with the handwriting!

In the background there's the absolutely gorgeous script from Tim Holtz's Apothecary set... now that's what I'd like my handwriting to look like!









I was playing with Tim Holtz's glorious stamping techniques (which you can see him demonstrating here), in terms of applying the ink to the stamps differently for different effects.  All the stamping here is done with Coffee and Sepia Archival Inks (oh, and Black for TH's Apothecary script behind).







I've never been able to draw in the way I would like - and stamps offer a wonderful alternative, I think... it's like the drawing I could never do. I'm so happy to have found stamping as a pastime - it feels like coming home.


And one of the things I adore most about discovering Distress Inks is the capability it gives me to create things that seem to be full of history and character, having travelled through time, and that is what I've loved playing with here.  It's a simple piece, but I love it... I'd love to know what you think too.


I'm very glad you found time to drop in today, and I look forward to seeing you again soon - either here, or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

Medicine is mine; what herbs and Simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know.
John Dryden

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities.
From Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

She led a peaceful, innocent life, with her green herbs for companions; she associated little with the people around, except in a business way. They came to see her, but she rarely entered their houses. Every room in her house was festooned with herbs; she knew every kind that grew in the New England woods, and hunted them out in their season and brought them home. She was a simple sweet soul, with none of the morbid melancholy of her parents about her. She loved her work, and the greenwood things were to her as friends, and the healing qualities of sarsaparilla and thoroughwort, and the sweetness of thyme and lavender, seemed to have entered into her nature, till she almost could talk with them in that way.
A Gatherer of Simples from Cinnamon Roses (1908)
Mary Wilkins

I'm entering this in the following:
The Fashionable Stamping Challenge are offering a Halloween theme
Try It On Tuesday are having a Halloween challenge
And Top Tip Tuesday are playing with Halloween too.  And as a tip: for really natural (and gently scented) aged paper, try soaking in coffee and/or tea for several hours
A third and final entry at the Vintage Stamping Challenge's inaugural Anything Goes challenge
Hels Sheridan at Ink on my Fingers has a post called Harvest Moon, offering the Sunday Stampers Autumn as the theme, and my colours are pretty autumnal I think... and my white witch has been making her very special harvest

Companion Piece

Hello all, welcome to a brand new week here at Words and Pictures - thank you so much for stopping by!
A pair of tags for you today, companion pieces that "speak to" each other:

Okay, okay, yes... I succumbed: I gave in to the lure of the newly released Distress Colours!  But, you see, I wasn't even crafting last Autumn when the Fall Seasonal Release happened, and although you can still get hold of the other trios, the Fall one was nowhere to be found.  

And given that I've discovered I love autumnal crafting, and that I'm even (contrary to my expectations) starting to get sucked into Halloween-y things, the Gathered Twigs, Ripe Persimmon and Seedless Preserves were calling... loudly!  Okay, enough excuses - back to the tags.


Those are basically the colours used here, with some Archival Coffee used for the stamping.

I had a glorious time swiping the inks onto the craft mat, and then doing Tim Holtz's wrinkle-free distress technique.  I kept one tag quite delicate, but used more full-on colour on the second.

I also added some metallic Distress stain - the Tarnished Brass - to the mix for the second one, which gets you a touch more opacity and that delicious sheen.

For the second tag, I also blended some ink onto the tag to get that much richer combination - but other than the Tarnished Brass, it's exactly the same colours for both.  


I can't tell you how much I enjoyed playing with these vibrant intense colours... and as you blend them on the mat, you get whole new shades - just glorious.

I'd originally intended to use the second - let's call it Tag B - in the die-cutting machine to make flowers to go onto Tag A, but once they were both sitting there, I knew I wanted to keep both of them, and work them as a pair. So I had to make a whole new wrinkle-free distress sheet to cut the flowers out of!

I'm back to my musings on mortality, I'm afraid - well, that's pretty Halloween-y, isn't it?  31st October is the night of All Souls, after all, and a time for the contemplation of death.














So the journey is from youth and beauty to death and decay... and I tried to echo or mirror the images from one tag to the other.

And Shakespeare's back... another sonnet, this time number 65, asking whether or how it's possible for beauty to hold out against the inexorable passage of time.

(Shakespeare ends the sonnet by suggesting that the subject of the poem's beauty may live on through his, Shakespeare's, own verse... He wasn't short on a sense of self-worth, old Will!)












The main image on Tag A is one of Graphic 45's images from their Ladies' Diary stamps.  And her 'opposite number' is the skeleton from the Oxford Impressions set called Dr Coffin's Apothecary.


Generally I prefer to use mainly one make of stamp on a project, to keep to a specific style, but I felt these complemented each other well - they're both quite delicate.


They're both stamped in Coffee Archival, and then - to give a bit more zing against the background, I embossed them with Detail Clear embossing powder.


The point when I realised I might be onto something, was when I worked out they had their feet in the same position - so it really connected the two images.





As I've already mentioned, one of the early elements in the game were the flowers... that was really what I started out playing with.  Don't ask me how the whole thing ballooned into this - it just sort of happens!

You see handmade flowers everywhere in Craftyblogland, and while I've made the odd one or two, I thought it was time I got a bit braver.  These are cut using the Tattered Flower Garland decorative strip die.  

I'd coloured the card on both sides using the wrinkle-free distress technique, and then spent some time arranging the layers and tweaking petals into life.  They're attached with Idea-ology long attachers.  I think they were gold to start with, but they've had a little dab of alcohol ink (Ginger and Rust mixed).  

So with the flowers on the side of youth and beauty, I needed something on the side of time and decay. I remembered some skeleton leaves I've had for - oh, I don't know - certainly a decade or more.  

I got them just because they were lovely, with no idea what I might ever do with them!  Thankfully I was able to lay hands on them, and they also had a little brush of alcohol ink to deepen their creamy colour to a rustier tone.  

I applied the glue only at the base of the stems so that I could curl the tips of the leaves away from the tag for extra dimensionality.










The final pair of images has two of my current favourites - the haunting little girl from Artistic Outpost's Think and Wonder set, and Tim Holtz's fantastic skull from the Apothecary set.  

Could there be a starker contrast?!  








Bones are at the forefront of my mind at the moment, and not just because of Halloween.  On Saturday, I found myself at the most extraordinary little museum - the Grant Museum of Zoology, which is essentially a Victorian gallery of skeleton specimens, from dodos to chimpanzees, from dugongs to elephant skulls.  

My friends and I wandered around in state of spellbound wonder at the intricacies and variations of life displayed in these bones.  When you get down to the essence like that - we're all really very much alike!

 


A last little look at the ribbons - dyed with the same range of colours to tone in with the tags, except for the pale pink one which was a little freebie with an order from the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  



And I added two Idea-ology tassels to match the jump rings attaching the words at the foot of the tags.  I love the look of these divided tags - I picked the idea up a while ago from the hugely talented Redanne - and it pleases me greatly!

Thank you so much for your company today... every visit is truly appreciated, and I'm constantly blown away by your warmth and support.  Craftyblogland is a really special place.  

I'm entering this in the following:
Fashionable Stamping Challenges are playing with Halloween or Halloween Colours
Simon Says Stamp have some Eerie Inspiration in the form of a photo board - I'm playing mainly in the bottom row 
Art With No Boundaries are playing October and Halloween
The Anything Goes Challenge Blog would like us to Make Your Own Embellishments - that would be my flowers, and I hand-dyed the crinkle ribbon too
At Anything But a Card they'd like to see Autumn or Halloween themes and/or colours
And with the AO stamps and the metallic Distress Stain (not to mention the freebie ribbon!) all from the Funkie Junkie Boutique, I'd like to add this to the Sunday Share over at Frilly and Funkie

And I feel I should leave you with the chance to have a read of the whole of Sonnet 65, should you feel so minded...

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
   O, none, unless this miracle have might,
   That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
                                           William Shakespeare

He's behind you...

Hello and welcome... I'm so happy to have your company for a while today, especially if this is your second visit (after WOYWWing earlier)!

I'm sharing a tag inspired by the House of Bears' literary challenge.  This month, it being October - leading us towards Halloween - they have selected Dracula as the inspiration, with some suggested recipe ingredients too.  Hop over for a look... perhaps it will inspire you to play along.

You can really run with the challenge in lots of different directions, but I've taken a purist's route, both in technical and artistic terms.


As far as how it's made - it's really my favourite thing to do... inking up a background and stamping.  Simple but so effective, and so flexible.


The stamps are a combination of Tim Holtz and Oxford Impressions, and are built up in layers using masks I cut - one of the beautiful girl, and one of the skull.


Each of the images is stamped in Archival Ink, and the blended background is, of course, Distress Inks all the way.


The edges have been distressed using the Tim Holtz paper distresser, for that added texture.


And you'll get a closer look at the laces, top and bottom, later on...

As for the story inspiration: the central focus for my tag is the character of Mina Harker.  It's always seemed to me one of the weaknesses of the book that, despite their knowledge of the Count's activities, and the course of the sickness and demise of Mina's friend Lucy, it still takes everyone ages to work out that the same thing is happening to Mina.  

The poor woman gets paler and paler, and more and more ill, and the reader spends the whole time wanting to yell at the useless men to pay attention to what's under their noses!



That's what our Victorian gentleman (otherwise known as Dr Coffin from the Oxford Impressions set Dr Coffin's Apothecary) is doing there down in the corner, almost wilfully looking in the other direction.

As with the pantomime tradition of the audience yelling, "he's behind you!" at the characters, we the readers have more insight into what's going on than the characters.  So there's the skull - the symbol of death, hovering behind Mina.  

One of the pleasing accidents of this tag is that his looming brow almost doubles as a moon in the midnight sky inking.

And Dracula's alter-ego, the bat, creature of the night is hanging right over her head... so really, the poor girl hasn't got a hope!

He's another of the Oxford Impressions stamps, and as well as Archival Black, I stroked some Platinum pigment ink onto his fur before stamping, to try to get a silvery tinge.  In some lights it is visible, but it's very much a "now-you-see-it-now-you-don't" affair.

The lace on top was plain white, and has had a touch of Antique Linen and Chipped Sapphire Distress Inks blended onto it, to tone in with the tag colours of midnight and bone (ooh... good band name - Midnight and Bone).  

The Gothic roofline is another Oxford Impressions stamp, stamped while I held the mask over the skull to keep him in the foreground.

The lace at the bottom takes its inspiration from the brilliant Julia S-W over at Julia's Stuff.  She does amazing things with lace and UTEE, and I've wanted to give it a go for ages (though I haven't yet tried stamping into the UTEE as she does - seriously, check it out!), and finally found the perfect project for it.  

It's cut using the Tim Holtz Decorative Strip Die out of a book page.  

Then I gave it a tiny edging of Chipped Sapphire and got going with the UTEE.  Love the effect... spot the upside-down text, though... bah!!  I still think the lace is the perfect Victorian touch to top and tail the tag.


So that's it for my double trouble today; thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.  I've a very special post coming up tomorrow... be great to have your company again!  But for now, have a wonderful day, crafting or otherwise.

"Listen to them - children of the night.  What music they make!"
Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula

I'm entering this in the following:
The House of Bears' October Challenge of Horror, with the novel Dracula as its theme, adding midnight, bats and gothic architecture
Simon Says Stamp and Show want to see our Favourites - mine are techniques: stamping and inking, basic but so full of potential
At the Happy Daze DT Blog, they're playing Something Wicked This Way Comes for October - you can pick up Distress and Archival Inks at the Happy Daze shop
And at Simon Says Stamp, there's some Eerie Inspiration - I'm playing with the photo in the top left of the board...

Alas, poor Yorick!

Hello all, and a happy weekend to you.  Welcome to Words and Pictures - with an especially big welcome to the new followers... it's great to have your company.

I set myself a challenge today... to break away from my comfort zone of blues and browns!  I've not had a lot of craft table time recently, so when I have had a chance, I've mostly been playing with my favourite colours.  If you don't want to click the links, just scroll down to some previous posts, and you'll see what I mean!

So when the Tando challenge was announced for October - to use Purple, Orange, Green and Black - I wrote it off immediately (I may even have snorted with laughter).  But clearly something was bubbling deep down in the subconscious because when my new stamp set arrived (I gave in to temptation on the amazing Oxford Impressions stamps - largely under the influence of the amazing Lynne over at Adorn) I found myself playing in exactly those colours.  And a couple of tag experiments later, this pair arose:

Of course, the colours are also influenced by the Halloween-y nature of the set, called Dr Coffin's Apothecary.


I've been avoiding getting too seasonal so far (though I'm finding it harder and harder to put my foot down about restricting Christmas to December - it's going to leave me a lot of catching up to do, very rapidly, on the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags for instance!), but this set appeals to my vintage inclinations, and I can see wider applications for the stamps than just Halloween in the future.

The tags are also decorated on the back - another experiment with Rustification for Simon Says Stamp and Show, simpler than the last, but still pleasurably textural... and the decay of rustiness seems a really appropriate texture for Halloween.


The stamps are largely from the Oxford Impressions set, but there are also some Tim Holtz ones mixed in - the large skull, the handwriting in the background behind it, and the embossed Happy Halloween on the reverse sides.


The ribbon is from some packaging - I forget what - deliberately frayed and decayed at the ends!





I'm very happy with my little bottles... they're stamped in Staz-On black onto some acetate packaging (from some TH Idea-ology as far as I can remember).  I then used Pesto and Oregano alcohol inks to colour it, heated it to make it pliable, and curled it into 3D.

And this meant that they had to be a "pair" of tags - it was the only way to get the whole of the lovely Witch Hazel label on display.  And, you know, it says Witch Hazel on the bottle, but I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable using it...

We won't talk about trying to get them glued down if you don't mind!!

Some time ago, I picked up a bagful of copper clasps for £1.  I'm not sure, but I think they're probably some sort of bead or jewellery clasp - but they were perfect for an extra little metallic rustiness on each corner of the tags.  I squeezed them together using my eyelet fastener.


These close-ups also give you a chance to get a closer look at some of these amazing stamps and the backgrounds I inked and painted in various ways.  There are skulls galore - hence my reluctance to sample the Witch Hazel - with a name like Dr Coffin, this apothecary may just be hiding some dark secrets, it seems to me!.










At the top of this tag (right), you can see the streaks of paint I brushed on.  After painting the reverse with its first coat of acrylic paint, I basically dried the brush in rough strokes in the corners of one of the tags.  

I love the murky texture of it under the blended Dried Marigold Distress Ink.



And I also like the bruising of the colours around the cat below...  the handwritten script you can see is the TH stamp, and may be my new favourite writing to put onto a project.  I cut and used a mask of the large skull, so that I could get the writing all the way round him.

Down near the foot of each tag, you have the witch's familiars - the black cat and the raven - one with fur, and one with feathers, and each guarding their respective bottle.

See... see!  Why does it need to be guarded if it's just plain old witch hazel?!?


A quick look at the textures of the rusty background, and then I'll leave you in peace for today!


I painted the tag with various layers of paint, and then gave them a good scratching in lots of directions for some texture before applying a wash of Transparent Iron Oxide acrylic.

I stamped the Happy Halloween in clear embossing ink, and used some Stampendous Detail embossing powder in black to heat emboss it.  I love the glossy dimension you get - and it needed something strong to show up against the dark rust background.

Then I swept embossing ink over the tag surface very roughly, and applied Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder - which retains its lovely scrubbly texture even after heating.

Once embossed, you rub over it lightly and that releases more particles to give an even rougher texture, so it's perfect for this kind of rusty effect.

So that's me for today... I can see I've probably started out at the top of a very slippery slope with the whole Halloween thing.  Quite apart from anything else, I think skulls and skeletons are extraordinarily attractive objects - fascinating and uncanny at the same time.

Thanks so much for taking the time to drop in today.  It's always great to feel you're not just typing away to the empty ether! Every comment is so much appreciated, and I'll always do my best to return the compliment...  Happy crafting (or whatever else-ing, obviously)!

I'm entering this in the following:
The Tando Creative colour challenge to use Purple, Orange, Green and Black
Artful Times are playing with Fur and Feathers this fortnight
Simon Says Stamp and Show are still looking for signs of Rustification
The Crafty Bloggers Network are playing Anything Goes this month
Heck of a Challenge are having a Spooktacular challenge

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw