Nothing rhymes with Orange!

Orange?  Yes, Flaming Orange... that's the challenge the fabulous Julia has set us to play with this month over at Our Creative Corner.  Well, no actually it's called Flaming June, and Julia has provided some beautiful picture inspiration too but, for me, it's about the most challenging colour she could have offered up!

Before we get into all that - if you're only just up, you might have missed my earlier post today, with my very exciting Country View Challenges news and a very masculine metallic tag... I'd love it if you had time to check that out too!

So, back to flaming orange...  Having struggled with the idea, I found that once I started, I actually had a really lovely time with it, and this is the tag which arrived on the craft table.

Of course, I was also inspired by the painting Julia provided for us (check out her challenge guidelines here, and be sure to follow closely if you want to qualify for the prize draw).





This is Flaming June, painted by Sir Frederic Leighton in 1895.

There's something about how she's thrown herself down that makes me feel she simply doesn't want to be awake... that she's curled up there in order to hide in some way.  Sleeping is a refuge.

So my tag became a sort of reassurance that there is beauty and joy and love to be found in being awake.













She's stamped in Sepia, and her face is softly tinted - with mop-up paint, and an orange blush of pleasure!













This is the tag I used to mop up my Distress Paint marbling when I was making butterflies for Fly Away, and since it had hints of orange, I pressed it into service here.












The book page clouds striped across the "sky" were dipped in melted beeswax and stuck on with the same.  It gives a lovely translucence to the text, and a really interesting texture.

Julia wants to see orange as the main colour, so I needed more of it.  Using the Latticework stencil and a mask I added lots of Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade and Rusty Hinge to the background around the woman.

I also stamped one of the glorious new flourishes in Spiced Marmalade, just around her face, to add extra detail and texture.  I also love how it really brings her face into the foreground - I never tire of how using a mask does that!

I think my subconscious must have picked up on the small vase in the corner of the painting.  It became a lot more prominent in my response.

If you buy the "story" of the poisonous oleander branch in Leighton's portrait, there could be an even more ominous touch of death about her sleeping.

But my flowers are a contradiction of that, bursting with life and colour.









Some have been altered with just a touch of Distress Ink - same colours again, Spiced Marmalade and Rusty Hinge.












Others seemed to work well straight from the packet - Wild Orchid, I think the large ones of both sorts are; the little ones are maybe Petaloo?












And they're tumbling out of an ancient stone urn.  Well, no, they're tumbling out of a UTEE urn, made with one of my Katy Sue Designs moulds from Artistic Stamper.  

Once it was out of the mould, I messed around with some paint until I liked the look of it.








And I couldn't have an urn without some ivy, now could I?  

So it was out with the Spring Greenery decorative strip die again, cut in kraft core, sanded and given a rub down with some Spiced Marmalade to warm up the green so that it would tone in with the rest of the tag.











I'm so delighted by this froth of ribbons at the top!  Same Distress colours again, applied to some seam binding and doubled over to create lots of lovely soft ripples of colour.







And that, I think, is pretty much that... and I'm amazed to find I really like it - despite it being orange!!  It makes me unexpectedly happy.

So thank you, Julia, for taking me out of my comfort zone.  I've had a lovely time!  Do hop over to Our Creative Corner to see what my fabulous team mates - including three brilliant crafters new to the team - have created to inspire you.  Hope to see you playing along in Flaming June soon.

And if all that is just too orange and flowery for you, don't forget you can find me in a more usual colour palette with my earlier post - my steely blue Manly tag for Country View Challenges!

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

There is no blue without yellow, and without orange.
Vincent Van Gogh

Orange is the happiest colour.
Frank Sinatra

I'd like to make this my second entry in the Florals challenge over at Pan Pastel UK.
I think the beautiful woman qualifies as an Artsy Stamp so I'd also like to play along at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.
At Live and Love Crafts the June Challenge is Summer Garden.
And I think I'm just in time to play along with Ribbons and Bows at the Vintage Stamping Challenges.

Garden of Dreams

Hello everyone!

I seem to be in a flowery phase round here at the moment.  I blame all those gorgeous Wallflower releases and projects at CHA... and my new Spring Greenery die too!

I've another small canvas for you today featuring an Artistic Outpost quote (not quite as small as the last one).

Although I haven't usually been much for using 3D flowers (though there are always plenty of stamped ones - meadow grasses, anyone?!) it's a whole different outlook now that I've got lots of leaves to play with.













Lots of layers, as usual... starting with tissue wrap over the 6x4 inch canvas, multi-medium, some torn paper napkins and a couple of washes of Light Buttermilk paint.

















Then texture paste - but of course! - through a damask stencil, and some Walnut Stain ink to highlight it.











I cut the Tim Holtz Distressed Doily once out of paper and once out of thick card.  

The top paper layer just had some gesso and some inking.












The card layer is underneath and it's had a coat of thick gesso, and a combination of glass beads, Verdigris and Peeled Paint Distress embossing powders for a mossy look.















The quote, from the Chalkboard Wisdom plate is stamped in Versamark on kraft card, and embossed with Wow Vanilla White.  

I stamped it inside one of the frames from the Chalk It Up plate which has had the same treatment.

Then I blended Walnut Stain ink on from the edges.





















I'm very happy with my glass bead embellishments.  

They're just those pebbles you buy for putting in vases and suchlike.  














I bought them ages ago, thinking I'd stick them on some pretty papers, but then I saw the amazing Matilde over at 100% Handmade using something similar on book pages and the lightbulb went on... book text - my favourite thing!











I spritzed a couple of pages with various shimmery sprays and stuck down lots of glass pebbles with gloss multi-medium.











Once dry, you can just cut them out.  I love the magnifying effect on the text - I might be more careful about what words I stick them over next time!!

I didn't want anything too turquoise for this canvas, so tried to get ones that were stuck over less spritzed or greener areas.










The flowers are by Wild Orchid, and they've had just a touch of gesso to shabby them up (down?).














And the metal heart is from Calico Crafts, and has had just a fingerful of paint smeared onto it.












I added some tiny wooden hearts - confetti from the fabulous UmWow Studio...















... with just a dusting of gesso added.













And, of course, lots and lots of leaves cut with the new Spring Greenery decorative strip die...














I promised you more ivy, and you've got some of the other leafy bits here too for good measure!













So that's my springtime canvas for you today.  I wonder how long this flowery kick will last - could be a whole new Words and Pictures vibe for 2014!

I'd like to enter this for the Wild Orchid Challenge where I've been inspired by the flowers on their Springtime Photo Inspiration, and using all the colours except the pink which has pretty much disappeared under all the layers!

I'd also like to enter it at the Inspiration Emporium where they are Dieing for 2014 - my dies are the Distressed Doily and the Spring Greenery.

And at Pan Pastels, it's Anything Goes.

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask?  A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
From Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

An Impulse to Soar

Hello and welcome all, with an especially big welcome to the new followers - it's lovely to have you here!  It's time for the monthly Artistic Outpost hop today.  It's a Designer's Choice theme, so there's all sorts of inspiration from my amazing team-mates on your way round... Here's the full itinerary:

Gerrie Johnnic, Lisa Somerville, Suzanne Czosek, Tracy Evans

Linda Coughlin, Alison Bomber, Terry Horrall, Kate Yetter

I've another make for you today which didn't turn out as planned - it changed direction part way through.  

That always happens when I have a plan - I'm better off starting with no idea where I'm going - but the change of direction was definitely for the better, so I'm happy!























The little girl from the Think and Wonder would pretty much always be my Artistic Outpost stamp of choice - there's just something about her.














And the Helen Keller quote from Quotes & Quotables was just crying out to be included.  

They're both stamped in Watering Can Archival onto Specialty Stamping Paper.  And I did some inking, spritzing and flicking with Pumice Stone DI and water.









So, the original plan was to mount my stamped panels onto a small canvas.  

I played with the layout until I was happy, and then - just to keep it all in place while I created the background on the canvas - I scooched it all across to a piece of painted corrugated card which was hanging around on my craft table.












Well, that was that for the canvas... the corrugated card was clearly where they were meant to live!













I added several stampings of the tiny flourish from the Serenity plate, stamped in Pumice Stone.  I love how it's almost the same colour as the unpainted cardboard.













If you saw my recent flirtation with pink (and I should just own up and say that I do quite like pink - some pinks, not Barbie pink!), you may recognise the colours on the flowers.












It's the combination of Hot Cinnamon and Spiced Pumpkin Primary Elements powders from Luminarte - made into sprays by my own fair hand and applied so as to keep some of the original creams and ivories showing through. 









The larger flowers are by Wild Orchid, and the little ones are from a pack of Petaloo flowers I picked up very cheaply.  

I love that with a spritz of colour you can customise them to fit whatever you're creating.









The butterflies are from the same Petaloo set.

The glitter continues to show through even after the spritzing...














... but I did tone down the bling factor by adding a bit of gesso to the pearls on the butterflies and in the centres of the flowers.

A couple of eyelets, also painted with gesso, and some twine to hang it up by, and there she is, ready to soar (which she almost did in the windy conditions during the photographing).

Thanks so much for dropping in.  I hope you'll have time to check in with the rest of the Artistic Outpost team - they've some real beauties in store for you.  

If you get lost along the way, you can find all the hop details here at Artistic Outpost.

See you soon!



My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving and then buried in mud.  And why?  What's this passion for?
Virginia Woolf





I'd like to enter this for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where A is for... well, Artistic Outpost, obviously - the stamp company I discovered second only to Tim Holtz at the beginning of this crafty journey, and for whom I'm extremely proud to be a designer.

Fir Tree Christmas

Hello everyone... so glad you loved the Blissful Baubles - it's so lovely that you took the time to say so when we're all so busy.  Jeepers, it's getting close now - and I'm really not on top of things.

But I am slowly but steadily catching up with the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas (hmmm, maybe I need to check my priorities).

This is my take on Linda's fabulous tag number 5 which you can see here.  I was inspired by the beautiful, delicate stamping in the background, and have also cased the composition pretty closely, with the corrugated framing of Father Christmas at the centre and the large flower and lace.

As you'll notice, I'm poinsettia-less.  I have neither a stamp nor the poinsettia die (I'm not wild about them as flowers, to be honest) so I've had to go in slightly different directions.

And the other main difference is the colour scheme.

My alternative to the poinsettia stamp that Linda has in her background was to go for another plant-based image, and use the fabulous fir branch from the Artistic Outpost Snowy Woods plate.

So that pretty much governed my choice of colour...

I love Iced Spruce, and I always forget about it for some reason.  But this tag is very "woody"; it's all over fir trees... what with the fir branches and the pine cones, the wood-look corrugated card, not to mention the Snowy Woods stamps, so Iced Spruce was the obvious choice for the background colour.










My Father Christmas is also from the Snowy Woods set - a slightly more genial chap than this rather stern fellow on the previous FJ tag - a proper old man of the woods.

He's stamped on Specialty Stamping Paper which has had a delicate blending of Iced Spruce DI over it.











The sentiment is from Snowy Woods too (best Christmas stamps ever!), stamped in black Archival.

And the fir branches themselves are stamped in Iced Spruce, to keep that subtle tone-on-tone look that Linda had.









The flower is by Wild Orchid. I've yet to join the handmade flower crowd - especially at this time of year... no time, no time!!

I do occasionally make my own, but for this tag, I stuck to altering this rather beautiful gardenia.

It was a bit too yellow, so I went at it with gesso and all sorts of white sprays (Dylusions, Tattered Angels Chalkboard) until I'd muted it a bit.














The pine cones came from Live & Love Crafts, and have also had a touch of gesso for a snowy
look.














I cut the holly leaves from patterned paper using Tim Holtz's Festive Greenery decorative strip die, and inked around the edges with Gathered Twigs (seemed appropriate given the woody theme).













Rather than the label, I used the Cabinet Card die to cut my frame - I think F.C. looks rather splendid inside.

There's another fir tree cone and holly leaf up at the top of the tag, with a bit more lace, tied together with some tea/coffee stained seam binding (ultra high-tech!).









Thank you, Linda, for another cracking piece of inspiration.  If you manage to get all 12 Christmas tags plus the two bonus ones done by January 8th, you'll get an even bigger discount at the fabulous Funkie Junkie Boutique... and three lucky winners will get vouchers to spend there.  A chance not to be missed.

I'll leave you with Father Christmas in the position I think we'll all be in in about a week's time... flat on his back!

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you out there in Craftyblogland soon.

Today's quote is the full version of one of my favourite poems.  Its last verse also appears on the Snowy Woods plate - are you starting to get that I like these stamps?!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

I'm entering this as Tag 5 in the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas, sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique.
With background stamping, focal image stamping and sentiment stamping, I'd like to pop it into the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge which is to Stamp Out 2013!
And let's also make it a third entry to the Stampotique Designers Challenge where Anything Goes this month.