A thing of shreds and patches...

Hello all and welcome back... for the third time today perhaps!  I'm a mad March hare today at Words and Pictures with treble trouble - a trio of posts all due today.

The first of the trio is my inspiration offering for the Artistic Stamper March challenge.  But there's also my latest project for Calico Crafts to be seen.  I'd really love it if you had time to check them out.  Not forgetting yesterday's exciting announcement of course...

But right now, I'm here to share what I've created for the brand new challenge at Our Creative Corner.

The marvellous Linda Coughlin, a.k.a. the Funkie Junkie, is our host for March, and her invitation to us is "Let's Get Scrappy"... 

She'd like us to use scraps and leftovers from previous projects - those pieces of paper, scraps of ribbon and embellishments made and never used, that none of us can quite bear to throw away.  

Well, now it's time for them to take their turn in the limelight.

I used some of the many, many, many inky painty scraps of paper which accumulate every time I'm crafting, and the left over bits of patterned papers, as well as some of the extra glass pebble embellishments created all in one go and now waiting around to take their turn.

Here are just a few of the bits I gathered from the craft desk and the floor round about before starting.

I also grabbed a couple of larger leftover scraps from the box which, rather than being sorted, came from the old house intact - full of scraps and half-finished tags.













I'm now very glad that it did, since the scrap at the top left of that first photo came out of it, and ended up taking centre stage as the word panels on this piece.

I glued down torn strips of some of these papers onto a piece of mountboard.




I gesso'd over the top of them, and then splodged down various colours of Distress Stain over the whole thing.





A couple of spritzes of water and some heatgun action later...

I'd kept the gesso quite thick around the edges, stippling it on with a hard bristle brush, so that you get lovely textures showing through the translucent inks.













But now I was after some more full-on texture... Wendy Vecchi's translucent embossing paste applied through a stencil.  

Here, it's already had some more Distress Stains applied over the top.










By the end it had been spritzed with all sorts, with some Shimmerz paints in the mix too, I think.










Time for some stamping - all Unity stamps in this particular creation.  

There's a bit of SheArt Print Texture layered into the background in Aquamarine.










The text echoes the book page strips beneath...

And being free to play with whatever I wanted in the stash, I reached for the fabulous Donna Downey Delicate Wildflowers.











Perhaps that other meadow flower panel in the scraps crept into my subconscious, or maybe I'm just obsessed with meadow grasses.













I think this is the smaller size, from the Insightful Meadows plate.

They're mainly in Olive but there are also a couple of Aquamarine shadows.















And then we have our three main word panels. 

I was so thrilled to find that Donna Downey's "Inspire" Words fitted perfectly across my inky panel (no idea what's on there any longer - I suspect Distress Stains over gesso or ground).





















And so three out of the four words made it on (you also get "believe" in the set)...
















... with the 'handwriting' scrawling on from one end...














... and trailing off at the other...













And then, of course, there are the glass pebbles... 













I made them for a particular project, the Garden of Dreams (and you can see how by visiting the garden)...









... but I thought I might as well make lots while I was at it, so they should keep me going for a while!














So, I was pretty happy with where I'd got to so far, but it just felt like it needed something more.














The frame was just another leftover - one of many, many I altered for the Handmade Wedding in 2012. 

With some more of that leftover music manuscript whitewashed in the background, it seemed like the right setting for my scrappy make.

Do hop over to Our Creative Corner for lots more inspiration, and come and share your scraps and leftovers with us this month - and don't forget my other mad 1st March posts here and here if you're interested!

A wand'ring minstrel, I,
A thing of shreds and patches,
Of ballad songs and snatches,
And dreamy lullaby...
From The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan





I pasted on the scraps, used the gesso as a texture paste and I couldn't resist adding some translucent embossing paste too, so I'd like to enter this in the Paste challenge at Simon Says Stamp's Monday Challenge.
I'm slightly uncertain as to whether it qualifies for the Monochromatic challenge at the Stampotique Designers Challenge, but I'm going to give it a go!

And now I'll leave you in peace for a few days!!

Be transformed

Hello everyone.  I hope you're having a lovely weekend, even if you're not at CHA (major event envy here!!)...


From my Artistic Stamper hanging, we move to Artistic Outpost time here at Words and Pictures, and a mixed media tag.


It's been on my desk for a couple of weeks, being used to mop up ink and paint remainders and spillages, so I can't be precise about all the ingredients I'm afraid!

I know I started by putting a thick coat of gesso onto the tag and pressing an embossing folder into it to create the texture.

Then I just set it aside and grabbed it any time I had some blue-greens that needed mopping up!

Today it was finally time to let it take centre stage...













There are Distress Inks and Stains, Fresco Paint, a touch of Gelato, maybe even some Dylusions, and probably some other stuff too.












There even seems to be some crackle in there - no recollection of that at all, so maybe the gesso just cracked under the strain!












I added some background stamping using the text from the Bluebird plate.  You can see it just hovering in places...














Now to the words at the heart of this tag.

I stamped this wonderful sentiment from the Chalkboard Wisdom plate onto some plain white tissue paper using Cornflower and Aquamarine Archival inks blended on the stamp.  Then I glued it down with matte medium.

I think this could pretty much stand as my life motto - I've never quite fitted in (or much wanted to most of the time), and unexpected life transformations seem to occur pretty regularly - so it seems an appropriate New Year's thought... a reminder to continue the processes of transformation and renewal in life and in crafting.

The mixed media layers and randomness are something I'm keen to pursue further this year craft-wise - less control, more excitement (as with this week's icon which took such an unexpected journey), so that crafting resolution is pretty much built into the tag too.




I think that makes this a perfect entry for the New Year's Resolutions challenge at Frilly and Funkie.  I don't seem to have time for many challenges any more, but when there's such a good fit at one of my favourite challenge sites... well, it would be rude not to play!





As well as the quote, there are some delicious little wooden butterflies - the larger ones are by Studio Calico, the tiny ones from the fabulous UHK Gallery, a Polish site well worth a visit.











I painted them white, stamped the Bluebird text again, in Olive Archival this time, and then inked and chalked the edges until I liked how they looked.

I debated zhuzhing them up with some Glossy Accents, Shimmerz, or Dry Glitter, but in the end decided I'd rather stick with the shabby chic matte look.









Lots of seam binding at the top, coloured with Distress Paints as well as some Distress Ink.  

I love using the Distress Paints for dyeing the ribbon - it gives it a chalky opaque look rather than the usual translucent effect of just the Inks or Stains.







And that's really pretty much that.  It does please me as a finished piece... mainly because it pretty much made itself, so now I can just enjoy it.  Hope you do too.

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Hope you have a great week ahead and I'll see you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

Do not conform to the pattern of the world.  Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
From The Bible, Romans 12:2

Good resolutions are like babies crying in church.  They should be carried out immediately.
Charles M Sheldon




I'd like to enter this as a New Year's Resolution over at Frilly and Funkie