Christmas Countdown Tags Part II

Hello all!  Sorry, I'm behind again... I've got another eight tags for you today (and we're almost at the final eight already too!).  I know how busy everyone is at this time of year (I am too, hence the delay) so I'm not going to hang around here.  Here are days 9 - 16 of my Christmas Countdown tags...

So there you are... eight more tags to get you in a wintry mood, and possibly even a festive one.  I'm just about ready now.  Tree-decorating tomorrow (and vases of ivy etc to do), and we're pretty much there.  I hope you're feeling ready to either rest or play, but above all that you are staying safe and well.  Happy festive crafting all!

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind.

Calvin Coolidge

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

Family Trees

Hello all!  Thank you so much for the feedback on my first Wanderlust pages - creating them gave me great joy, so it's lovely that you enjoyed them too.

After the bothersome news this morning, I've a bit of fun for you now - a tag playing with a couple of Stampotique stamps I treated myself to.  I know the quirky Daniel Torrente images are not my usual thing, but I've had a soft spot for them since I discovered them.  I do have Moth Fab, who has put in an occasional appearance here, and a couple of others and another resolution this year is to make sure I ink them up more often.

These two snowmen delight me... and I wanted to give them a nice snowy forest landscape to live in.





Family, eh... you can't choose your family, they say.  And some of them you really can't take anywhere...  (Don't get me wrong - I love my own family dearly.)

With the look on the little snowman's face...











... I couldn't resist this Small Talk sticker.

The whole thing started with me smooshing the tag into a combination of Distress Stains and Paints on the craft mat - but deliberately keeping the blues and whites separate to create sky and snowy ground.










The snowmen are painted with the same mixture of Distress Stains and Paints, with some detailing added with Distress Markers, and I mounted the one in the foreground on padded tape to add to the illusion of depth.












In the sky I stamped my favourite snowflake stars with Picket Fence Distress Paint, and I added shading to the landscape, creating billowing snow drifts, and of course there are lots of lovely trees for the forest.










They're looking for projects including trees at the Stampotique Designers Challenge, and it's so long since I've managed to play along, so I'm entering this tag in the Trees theme at the Stampotique Designers Challenge.

That's it for today.  I hope you enjoyed this bit of light relief, and I'll see you soon.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.
Jim Butcher

With the bluesy colours and the little snowman feeling so blue, I'd like to enter this in Oh So Blue at Stamps and Stencils too

Being a Boy

Hello all!  So happy you enjoyed yesterday's melancholy musical creation.

I've a tag slightly out of my usual style for you today.  I've been really enjoying the Stampotique Designers Challenge themes lately, and am so honoured by being picked as a favourite too.

But I am slightly ashamed that none of my projects has used a Stampotique stamp (though it's not compulsory)... well, here's one that does!

The theme this week is Masculine.  I suppose this tag probably lies towards the gentle end of the testosterone spectrum, but I really wanted to take this little boy out for a spin.

I was so excited recently to win some fabulous blog candy from the brilliant and lovely Kay Wallace, and this Daniel Torrente stamp, Heart Boy, was part of it - so he needed inking!













For the background I spread some texture paste onto a tag, then laid another tag over the top and pressed them together firmly before peeling them apart to get this lovely textured look.













I inked over the top with various Distress Inks - Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, Peeled Paint and Shabby Shutters, I think.











I love the variegated tones you get as the ink takes differently according to whether it's over the paste or direct onto the card.













Heart Boy was stamped on a separate piece of card, then stamped again and cut out as a mask.  I inked around him with the same colours, and used my (very few) Copic Markers to colour him in.












I stamped the "recipe", adapted from the nursery rhyme (it's down below, with some extra verses I never knew existed), on some more leftover card.











I inked the words, sky and grass, top and bottom, and mounted both them and Heart Boy on padded tape.













I used one of Darcy's new PaperArtsy border stamps around the edges - it seemed just right for this tag.













(Oh, and those tiny red spatters you can see... an oversight on my part.  He was lying too near something else that was going on!)












It's all topped off with some dyed seam binding and curled paper string - keeping things simple, for once.











As it's Tuesday, you'll find me over at Artistic Outpost today too... with my tag using real life fir fronds - so if you missed it last time around, do check it out.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you soon either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.











What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails,
And that are little boys made of.

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice,
And that are little girls made of.

What are young men made of?
What are young men made of?
Sighs and leers, and crocodile tears,
And that are young men made of.

What are young women made of?
What are young women made of?
Ribbons and laces, and sweet pretty faces,
And that are young women made of.
Traditional

Originally by Robert Southey, but with many alternative versions down the years, including some with even more verses!

I'm entering this highly Masculine tag (!) over at the Stampotique Designers Challenge