Calico Autumnal ATBs

Encore Posts

I'm away again for a month or so.  There are some scheduled posts with new creations coming your way, but I'm also taking the chance to do some catching up here at Words and Pictures.   Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook.  I'm calling them "Encore" posts and they're formatted differently (all the way down the centre), so you can spot them easily.

Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

Hello all!  I've another scheduled Encore post for you, so that things don't go completely silent here at Words and Pictures while I'm away.  It's an autumnal creation made for Calico Craft Parts, and it's definitely one of my favourite autumn projects I've made.  Here's what I wrote about it on the Calico blog back in October 2015.

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Hello all, Alison here with some Autumnal ATBs (and a very alliterative post title) for you today.

One of my (pleasurable) problems with the Craft Parts is I'm always torn between altering them and not altering them.  There are so many options for altering, and it's great fun, and they look fantastic... but then they also look so completely beautiful "naked" too.

With this project I think I've found a medium which gives me some of the best of both worlds - Pan Pastels.  By shading only partially, you get the colour but you can also keep some of the natural earthiness of the Craft Parts surface too.

I've used a complete set of all three sizes of the Plain ATBs (they also come with various apertures) and a just some of the wide range of glorious Leaf & Twig Shapes, and Fungi & Mushroom Shapes to create my autumn tower.

Putting the ATBs together is made very easy by the labelling and letters engraved onto the inside surfaces - just match them up and glue.

There's some full-on altering on the ATBs themselves.  I've used the DecoArt Americana Chalky Finish paints and crackle medium.  The base coat is a combination of Relic and Rustic, then I applied the crackle glaze - quite thickly so that I would get a good chunky crackle with lots of texture - and then some of the warm-white Lace colour over that once it was dry.

I shaded an autumnal sky downwards on each side using various pastels, and an earthy mulch upwards, leaving some white space available to give a cool light to the autumn day.

I combined more greens, browns and purples onto the leaves, starting with one layer of colour...

... and building up the layers until I liked the look of them.

And, as I said, I tried to make sure I didn't "colour" the whole piece each time, so that there would still be some "naked" Craft Part visible too.  It's such a lovely warm brown that it doesn't need covering up.

Since the leaves come in all sorts of sizes, you can get them to fit every size of ATB (or layout or card or tag, or whatever project you're working on).

The large ATB is 10x10x10cm, and so I've used the larger sizes - the Sugar Maple Leaf & Twig in large...

... the large version of the Mushrooms Style 9 (this little clump of fungi puts in an appearance in all three sizes)...

... the large Red Oak Leaf & Twig...

... and the Maple Leaf & Twig.  Since most of these are about 12cm at their largest point in the large size, they extend over the edges of the ATB in a way that really pleases me, but meant I had to be a bit careful about juggling them so that the ATBs could still stack properly.

The Ivy Leaf Garland puts in an appearance in its small, medium and large versions, draped across the top of each ATB.  There's also an Extra Large which, at 15cm, is too big for my ATBs but would be brilliant for a layout or large journal page.

The medium ATB (7.5x7.5x7.5cm) has the Maple Leaf & Twig,

the Red Oak Leaf & Twig

and the Mushrooms Style 9 again, all in medium size this time...

... but also has the Chestnut Leaf & Twig for a bit of variation.

And on the smallest ATB (5x5x5cm) you can see the Mushrooms,

the Sugar Maple Leaf & Twig,

the Chestnut Leaf & Twig...

... and, to ring the changes just a little once again, the Pin Oak Leaf & Twig in its smallest size.

Some tiny pine cones sit on the very top (having just tumbled off the tree and landed serendipitously!).

And I added some words (of course) to tickle the brain and heart into action as you revolve the tower.

I'm not going to lie... this creation makes me very happy!

I hope you like it too.  (If you love these leaves and fungi as much as I do, you may want to hop over and go shopping - no problem, just click on the links in the text!)  Thanks so much for stopping by today and I'll see you again soon.

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Thanks so much for stopping by today - I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane.  There's something new up next, so I hope you'll be able to drop in again soon.  In the meantime, happy crafting all and have a great weekend!

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.
Thomas Carlyle

When butterfly met Papillon

Hello all!  I'm dredging up some fairly Ancient History again.  Recently I shared the altered book made during a fabulous weekend workshop with the amazing France Papillon back in November 2014, and in that post I mentioned that we'd done lots of other things with her too and that I'd try to track them down.

Well, by chance, the art journal I grabbed to bring with me to Columbus, Ohio, as part of my travelling stash is the one we got at that workshop and did some experimenting in.  It's the Ranger/Dylusions small journal, 8x5 inches.

While I was playing in it today, I thought I might as well grab some photos of some of the exploring we did over that weekend, so this post has more of what happened when butterfly met Papillon (which is French for butterfly, in case you didn't realise!).  I like some results better than others...






France explained how she often uses her journals just to find out how products will work together, so the early pages were our chance to mess around with some of the sprays and pastes and other toys she'd brought for us to play with.

(The trouble with sharing this now, of course, is that it's making me crave access to the many and varied products I have at home, whereas I've got to make do with my limited Ohio craft kit!)











There's more shimmer around than I'm used to working with, but it made such sense to play in this way - trying out some of my favourite colour combinations but in three different colour mediums over one page spread, and with different finishes.










Whilst I like the mysterious look of some of that shimmer over black gesso, especially with the added texture, it doesn't feel very me.

I'm an occasional user of black gesso, for sure, but in limited amounts, and it usually vanishes under layers and layers of other stuff.






This page spread feels a bit more like a butterfly one - from grass to sky, texture, crackle and text...

This was a chance to create with the products or effects we'd enjoyed the most so far, and I leapt at my often-favoured blue/greens (second only to the blue/browns here at Words and Pictures).






I enjoyed "messing up" the clean edges of the harlequin crackle texture - I think I was going off-piste with that, as is my wont in classes.














I really love the script stencil - might have to track that down and put it on the Christmas wishlist, I think.  And the spattery water droplets in the background do make me very happy.














I find myself quite taken with the level of shimmer here - as you know I love things that catch the light... I'm just not used to so much mica.  

I was in two minds about whether to share this next page - it took me a long way out of my comfort zone and I remain pretty ambivalent about the results.












France set up the process deliberately to take away our control.  On each table of crafters, we had to take it in turns to say what would be the next element added to the page, whether that was to use a specific colour, technique, or even a particular stamp.












As I've just mentioned, I really don't go for black in my crafting very much (it's even rare for me to stamp in black), so I was very resistant when somebody required the addition of the black stencilling.  I do like the spatter though.










We happened to have the lovely Magda Polakow at our table and this little Nina figure had just been released by Stampotique as part of her range of stamp designs.

It's not an image I would usually go for and again I was aware of a crunch of resistance in my spine, but what's a workshop for if not to try new things?  And I do now think she's pretty cute - if still not very me!











Orange is, if anything, even rarer than black here, and I nearly went nuts when I was only allowed to add my fabric texture to one side of the spread, which upsets my sense of balance.  So overall, this page feels a long way off from conventional "butterfly" creativity.  I don't know... what do you think?

Actually the quote on this page is very apt because, in being made to do this, I learned a lot about myself as a crafter.  My heart spoke loudly throughout, and I took good note of its protests for future reference!!









For the next page, France herself called out the stages.  She kept it much vaguer - add texture, add colour with sprays, add some stamping - so it was possible to be both out of control of the process but also make it feel like one's own work.












Given I'm known also as butterfly, and given the workshop was being run by France Papillon, it seemed only right that they should be my featured theme on these pages.














Lots of my other usual suspects are here too - lots of texture, as well as lots of text...












...tissue wrap, lovely inky blues and greens...

(I love these Stampotique hearts, which I do actually own, but they're only rarely inked up - time to change that when I get home eventually.)












... some metal and some book page scraps...

Definitely a good sentiment for the weekend!












And the tiny bright red heart is a deliberate homage to France's own work - she very often uses one as an accent in her beautiful journalling.

Sadly my train home was booked at a time which meant I had to leave before the very last exercise of the day, in which France was making the group create to classical music without any chatting at all - something I'd have loved to do... though, of course, to be honest, it's how I create almost all the time, so it would hardly have been new to me!!









It was an absolute joy to meet France Papillon in person.  She's been a huge inspiration to me online, and the chance to take part in a whole weekend of playing with her was fantastic.

There are some (as yet unfinished) ATCs hanging around somewhere in my craft room from the same workshop.  If I ever get them done, I'll share those too!




Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll be back in a few days with the new page spread I've just been working on in this same art journal, and then at some point I hope to catch you up with some more of my real-life travels.  Shanghai (from back in February this year - I'm a long way behind!) should be our next port of call for that, so I'll hope to see you again soon.

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
Kahlil Gibran

Autumn at Calico

Hi all!  I seem to be moving into full autumnal mode with the crafting lately.  I think it's maybe because I missed all the autumn crafting last year as I was working away from home at the time... I'm so happy to be playing with leaves and all the earthy colours in which autumn paints the world.

Today I'm over at the Calico Craft Parts blog with a lot of autumn leaves (and fungi) to share.  Just don't go crunching them under foot please!

I had a wonderful time with this creation - I've found a way to have my cake and eat it when it comes to choosing between altering the Craft Parts and leaving them "naked".  The secret?  Pan Pastels!  I hope you'll have time to hop across or see the full reveal here at Words and Pictures.

Thanks for dropping in.  I'm mostly in airports and aeroplanes today, but I'll be hopping round to see you all soon!

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn - that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness - that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
From Persuasion by Jane Austen

As long as you don't mind hopping over to Calico to see the complete project, I'd like to share this...
Over at Frilly and Funkie in the Autumn Splendour challenge
At Stamps and Stencils where they'd like us to Make It 3D
They say Autumn is in the Air at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
With all those Pan Pastels, it really has to go in to Anything Creative/Mixed Media at Love2Create
And at Try It On Tuesday they are also celebrating Autumn

Perching on a branch...

Hello everyone, and welcome.  I seem to have the bit between my teeth with springtime makes... and with a new Artistic Outpost set to play with, there'll be no stopping me now!


This tag uses the wonderful Birds of a Feather set (I blame the brilliant Tracy Evans and her beautiful makes with these stamps for me giving in to my "need" for them!) as well as some fir branch offcuts I picked up on a recent outing to some beautiful woodland gardens.


I was inspired by these amazing creations by Rachel Dein of the Tactile Studio, which some of you may have seen on my Pinterest boards... but while hers are created as plaster casts of natural elements (probably more long-lasting), I've got the real thing under mine!












I started by gluing the fir fronds onto the tag with lots of multi medium, adding a good coating over the top too, and then covering the whole thing with thick gesso.














I dabbed on the gesso, creating a textured look over the whole surface of the tag, and also making it easier to get right down into the textures of the fir. 










Next step was to add some shading with Pan Pastels and, before I knew it, I'd returned the fronds to green...  














Didn't really mean to, but there we go!

The bird is stamped in Potting Soil archival...















... and I added some of the Gothic font text in Olive around the edges (Gothic book print - another reason I was besotted with this stamp set!).










With the words "feathers" and "perches" involved, the Emily Dickinson quote from the Quote & Quotables set was an obvious addition, but I'm afraid I had to cut off her name in order for it to fit on the snippet of rusty mesh I had in my offcuts box.










The little wooden hearts are by Studio Calico, and I think the tiny buttons came from the UHK Gallery.  No rhyme or reason to them really, they just felt like the right thing.













Lots of crinkly seam binding to top it off, with a touch of Walnut Stain and Gathered Twigs Distress Ink... 









... as well as a little touch of inking around the edges, and another springtime tag takes its place in the world.

I fear it may be a rather ephemeral creation - I've no idea at what rate the fir branches will rot, or indeed whether they will or not.  So enjoy it while it's here... a pretty good motto for more than just this tag, wouldn't you say?!

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
Somerset Maugham



I'd like to enter this into the Textured Backgrounds theme over at the Stampotique Designers Challenge, where I was thrilled to be honoured as a favourite pick for my monochromatic shreds and patches last week.

And at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge they're playing Tag It, so I'd like to drop it in there too.