Starry, starry night

Hello all, and welcome!  Another quick sample post for you today, catching up with some of the ATC gift envelopes I created to show off my latest quote stamp releases with PaperArtsy.  In between, there have been some lightly dancing art journalling pages using one of the quotes from EAB19 Life & Living, but today I'm here with a couple of quotes from EAB20 Night & Day.

This pair of not-quite-ATCs are created on some very cheap cash envelopes.  You can usually pick up packs of 200 or so in a pound shop.  That means that, as long as you keep the top flap open and operational, you can use them for gift vouchers or cash gifts with a little bit of artwork attached.







There's lots of embossing powder involved here - both for the quotes themselves, but also on the background stamping, which is clear-embossed for that fabulous light-catching quality.












They started very simply with some gesso scraped onto the envelopes pretty randomly.  Rather than the 3.5 x 2.5 inch ATC standard, they're actually 4 x 2 and three quarter inches, if you don't count the flap.













Then I added Fresco paints in shades of night blue... Blueberry, Midnight, Twilight and Sky.  There may have been a bit of Purple Rain involved too.














I added the paint in watery washes and spritzed with more water to let it move on the surface, and finished by splattering with whatever was leftover on the craft mat.








Seth Apter's fabulous minis make wonderful "orbits" or rings like the rings around Saturn... the perfect framing for the dimensional white stars. 

The minis are stamped in Cobalt Archival and then clear-embossed, as I said.  This means they have that now-you-see-it, now-you-don't quality which always makes me happy.

The stars are moulded using one of the Finnabair/Prima silicone moulds and some paper clay.  Then, so that they would match the quotes in gleaming whiteness, I pressed them down into the squidgy embossing ink pad, and embossed them with Wow Bright White.







And yes, that's what I used for the words too.  As always, I stamped in Archival ink, so that you get a sharper stamping edge than with (squidgy) embossing pads.













This is really important when you're embossing fine-detail stamps like these words, if you want to be able to read them clearly in the end.  Given one of the quotes is by Vincent van Gogh, I really had to call the pair, "Starry, starry night"!











The white thread adds movement and interest, almost making the stars into shooting stars leaving trails across the sky.

And I really like the kraft framing you get from the cash envelopes as the substrate.







So there you go... a couple of mixed media ATC envelopes celebrating the stars and how we endure even the darkest nights.  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope your weekend will be wonderful, and I'll see you again soon.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'd like to enter this at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme this week is Shoot for the Stars

Snow had fallen

Hello all and welcome to Words and Pictures... welcome back if you've already seen What's On My Workdesk this Wednesday!  I'm sharing a card today (slightly later than I'd hoped - Ikea trips for candles and Christmas trees, and traffic jams etc.) and it's doing double duty.  

I created this to enter in the MoneySupermarket Christmas Card Craft Off.  There are some amazing prizes on offer, and you've got until 24th December to enter... so why not give it a go?

Regulars will know I don't make cards very often - and I have to say, I found it pretty tricky for some reason - but the solution came thanks to my favourite carol again, and one of my Design Team positions.

I'm delighted to be on the DT for Nicecrane Designs, and today I've used one of the fabulous It Is Christmas Time set, so I hope it will inspire you to pop over there and see what amazing images the lovely Ignacio has to offer...  and in the end, I'm pretty happy with the result.

I LOVED painting the image!  I printed it on Canvas Photo Paper - you can see the initial stage here in this photo - and then used Distress Stains to paint it.

I squished some colour onto the craft mat, next to a spritz of water, and then used a paintbrush to apply it to the canvas.











I'm tickled pink with the subtlety of the effect and the texture you get, and because the canvas drinks up the ink very quickly, it means you've less chance of straying outside the lines!










Because the image has all the shading in place already, and the Distress Stains are translucent, you keep the benefit of all the detail of the drawing even after the tinting process.  And it is such a wonderful image.










When I look at the little boy, I think he's my favourite bit; then I look at the barn and prefer that; then I love the mother and daughter on the little sled, and then that fabulous pair of houses in the background - so many gorgeous details!










I stuck to a limited colour palette, using only the Gathered Twigs, Vintage Photo, Pumice Stone, Frayed Burlap, Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky Distress Stains.  For the skin areas, I put a tiny bit of Antique Linen and some Spun Sugar onto the craft mat using the Distress Markers (don't have those colours in Stains).








It was slightly terrifying tearing it out of the sheet of canvas.  Although it does seem to rip quite happily in straight lines, I was having conniptions that one false move might see me ripping my carefully painted image right down the middle!!











It's backed onto torn corrugated card (insides of a package that arrived) that I inked with Gathered Twigs Distress Stain and then added some Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder to.  Finally, I gave it a frosty dusting using the Versamagic Chalk Ink dewdrop in Cloud White.









The background uses the Artistic Outpost snowflakes from the Sleigh Ride and Snowy Woods sets.  They're embossed in clear embossing ink and powder onto the white card (a piece of A4 folded in half incidentally).

I then used a blending tool to apply Weathered Wood and Pumice Stone DIs and, at the very edges, added some Gathered Twigs to which I also applied some clear embossing powder to give some depth and gloss to the framing effect.






The gorgeous wooden flourishes are from Crafty Emblies - the first thing I've had from them... they're so delightfully delicate and, for this project, I decided to use them in the natural wood finish they came in.

I had some ivy leaves left over from my Holly and Ivy tag.  If you'd like to know how I made them, hop there for a quick look - I won't bore you with it all over again here!  

I used some Gathered Twigs DI to darken them a little further from their golden Vintage Photo hue, so that they would tone in with the slightly bleaker colour palette of this piece.

The lyrics from my favourite carol (you can listen to my favourite version here) are from an Artistic Outpost stamp again, and edged with some more Gathered Twigs.

There are lots of lovely images in this It is Christmas Time set... I enjoyed painting on the canvas so much that I'm planning to do the same with all the others.  If you'd like to look at this, or any of Ignacio's other images, just click here.  So many tempting treats...

So that's my Christmas card for today, only my second in total.  I don't know how all of you do it, the whole making-all-your-own-cards game - I'm full of admiration...  

Thank you so much for stopping by.  And do check out the MoneySupermarket Christmas Card Craft Off - mini-iPads and HobbyCraft vouchers to be won!!

I'm entering this in the following:
MoneySupermarket's Christmas Card Craft Off
The Stampman's challenge this month is In the Bleak Midwinter
The Happy Daze December challenge which is In the Deep Midwinter
Top Tip Tuesday are playing Anything Christmas
Simon Says Stamp's challenge this week is Merry Christmas - for anything Christmassy
At Craft A Scene they are looking for a Winter Scene

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl.  But it warmed more than your body.  It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.
Bess Streeter Aldrich

The Holly and the Ivy

Welcome to Words and Pictures... I'm celebrating today!  

No, it's not Christmas yet, but I've got myself to the finishing line on the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas with time to spare.  

In fact, I finished this tag yesterday, but wanted to wait for daylight to photograph it... and patience paid off - we have sunshine!!

If you've no idea what I'm talking about, you can check it all out here, and it's worth going to have a look just to see the extraordinary inspiration tags Linda Coughlin (yup - she's the Funkie Junkie) has been offering up... and to check out the amazing entries too.  

As for qualifying for the prize draw, generously sponsored by the Funkie Junkie Boutique - well, you have to have all 12 done and posted by midnight (U.S. Eastern time) tonight so, to be honest, unless you can manage one tag an hour...

So, it's my last tag, but it's not the 12th.  I did that one a couple of days ago... No, I'm finishing on number 11.  Check out Linda's original here - it's absolutely gorgeous and, although I've wandered wide and far with some of my tags, I wanted to stick quite close to this beauty.

So my background is done very similarly, but I've chosen to use a music stamp rather than text (and I don't have the same flourish stamp).  

And I've used lots of holly leaves, made like Linda's, but what I've done with them is slightly different.










I loved Linda's colour palette, and I seem to be having something of an obsession with neutrals just at the moment, so I stuck to it, inking the background with vintage photo over the clear embossed flourish (TH), and Black Archival music manuscript (Wow).











Most of the leaves, branches and flourishes are cut out of white card using the Tim Holtz Festive Greenery Decorative Strip Die.  

They've been edged with vintage photo, (fingertips still looking like those of a hardened smoker), and laid out in little festive bouquets around the tag.

But if you say holly to me, it automatically triggers "and the ivy" - not only because of the carol, but because ivy is my absolute favourite of the Christmas foliage choices - pretty much my favourite all year round, in fact.  

I love the long traily tiny-leaved sort; I love the big branches of more rounded leaves.

One of my tasks each year around this time is to create the Christmas vases - great branches of holly and ivy, decorated very minimally and stowed around the house to bring Christmas into as many corners as possible.  So I can't have holly without ivy...





When we were at The Range recently, I hesitated over whether to buy some Das, the air-drying clay (hadn't used it for literally decades), and what decided me was spotting - in the baking section - some little ivy punches, a set of 3 in various sizes, intended for decorating cakes.  

They not only cut out the leaves, but have a press which debosses the little lines onto them too.  Well, I don't really do cake-icing, but I couldn't see any reason why they wouldn't work with the Das - so it stayed in the basket, and they joined it.  And here's my first little go... and I LOVE them!!








I rolled out the clay - using a thick straw as my rolling pin! - and cut and punched to my heart's delight.  

I'd bought white Das, so once the leaves had dried (I did help it along with the heat tool - sheer impatience, and deadlines looming too, of course) I didn't need to do anything more than what I'd done with the card holly leaves: ink them with Vintage Photo DI.  To really get the debossing to show, I went darker with the ivy than with the holly - and I love the look of them together.



The final element in the arrangements was the holly berries.  These are also made of Das, inked in Vintage Photo and then given a coating of Treasure Wax, in White Fire.  

Because they were quite small, it turned out the easiest way to get the wax onto them was to put some on my thumb and forefinger, and roll the berries between.  My "smokers'" fingertips now have a very lustrous shimmer to them too... and you can see fingerprints on some of the berries!




By now it was clear that I wasn't going to have room to get the greeting onto the tag itself without covering up lots of loveliness that I wasn't willing to cover up.  

So I decided to make it into one of the hinged tags which I first met over at Redanne's fabulous blog - I've made them several times before, and love the extra movement and interest the extended part brings to the tag.







The greetings stamp is from the Graphic 45 Christmas sets, stamped onto one of my tea-stained tags, and it's attached with two of the Idea-ology jump rings.  

A couple of bits of crinkle ribbon, dyed with varying amounts of vintage photo, and I decided I was done... yup, done!  If you don't believe me, look...







And if you'd like to go visiting, all the links are at the foot of this post, and you'll get to see the full dozen in all their glory.  Sorry... can you tell I'm feeling quite un-Britishly pleased with myself?!  


And I know I'm only playing for the fun, as I couldn't quite bring myself to work on the Christmas theme way back in September, but it has been some of the most fun I've had crafting, not to mention visiting many of the other players and seeing how they've been inspired by Linda's amazing work.


Thank you so much for visiting today (and for putting up with me in jubilant mood), and I look forward to seeing you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland!


Here's to holly and ivy hanging up, And to something wet in every cup!
Traditional toast





I'm entering this in the following:
As Tag 11 (but did I mention it's my last one?) in the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas
At Top Tip Tuesday the theme is Christmas, and I'm offering a tip: if you're working with modelling clay of any sort, be sure to check the kitchen aisle for cake-decorating tools and equipment!
Simon Says Stamp are playing What's Your Favourite?  I'm sticking with stamping, embossing and neutrals
Anything But A Card are playing Celebrate the Light or Seasonal Holiday - well I celebrated the light last time around, so this time I'm going with the seasonal element
This is my third and final entry for Make a Tag at the Craft-room Challenge
Crafty Boots are also playing a Christmas theme
Out of a Hat Creations have Winter as their current challenge
ABC Challenges are on D for Deck the Halls... how about "with boughs of holly"?
At Pile It On they would like us to Pile on the Embellishments
And over at Ink on my Fingers (and how?!) Hels Sheridan has fortuitously selected Holly as the theme for the Sunday Stampers this week (with the very same post title as mine!!)

My versions of the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas;
Tag 1 - Love's Light Wings
Tag 2 - Work in Progress
Tag 3 - Dance in the Rain
Tag 4 - G is for Gingham
Tag 5 - Every leaf speaks
Tag 6 - Seeking Illumination
Tag 7 - Home Sweet Home
Tag 8 - A Romantic Postcard
Tag 9 - A heart full of love
Tag 10 - Toys, toys, toys!
Tag 11 - The Holly and the Ivy (you're already here)
Tag 12 - Star of Wonder

Golden memories of home

Hello all... hope you're having a lovely Sunday, wherever you are in the world.  Despite a slightly sluggish sense of mojo, I've been at the craft table, and battled my way through to a tag which I'm finally happy to share!  And it's full of personal connections.

Shortly after Christmas, we'll be moving out of the family home of more than 40 years.  We'll be spending our last Christmas in this house full of golden memories.  Houses and homes, and what they mean to us, are very much uppermost in my mind at the moment, so I really wanted to play the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge House Rules.  But every time an idea started to form, I'd be doing some catching up in Craftyblogland, and find that somebody had already done it - brilliantly... so at the same time as loving the projects I was visiting, I was getting slightly disheartened!

In the end, I decided to stop fretting and just let my fingers do the walking (Yellow Pages ads from the 1970s, anyone?!), and here's the jumbo tag which turned up:

The starting point was the little houses of Tim Holtz's Artful Dwellings die, which I cut out of some white corrugated cardboard from the Funkie Junkie Boutique.


I inked them with some Gathered Twigs, and stamped them in Coffee Archival with the text from TH's French Marketplace set.  You just get a bit of texture, rather than whole words, but I love the look of it spidering across the ridges.

So I had four pretty but fairly plain little houses and, at that point, I was thinking of hingeing them together somehow, or joining them with jump rings... but a jumbo tag that was lying on my craft desk had other ideas.


As I glanced down, I saw that it would be the perfect size to form a background for the houses, so I started to play with it.

I used the TH wrinkle-free distress technique, with some Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs and Frayed Burlap DIs on my craft mat, along with some powdered Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls dotted around amongst the inks.


I gave it all a good spritz of water and started smooshing the tag around, drying in between smooshes to give the layers a chance to build up.

I inked up the TH sun ray stamp with some Tarnished Brass distress stain, and then the text stamp in Coffee Archival again to add some more interest to the background.


It was already looking pretty tasty, but I wanted to zhuzh it all up a bit, and get some more texture going.

So I mixed some Vintage Photo distress embossing powder with some of the Stampendous Frantage Aged Gold embossing enamel.  I brushed clear embossing ink onto the edges of the tag and added my mixture and heated it... I loved the combination so I did it to the edges of the little houses too... Now we were cooking!


My subconscious had been at work and had already worked out that four houses matched four letters in the word HOME.  I've got the WordPlay die on my Christmas list (though more in hope than expectation - since it's pretty pricy here in the UK), but not in my stash.

I love using the AlphaParts, but the letters would be too small and get a bit lost on the Artful Dwellings.


I was starting to think I'd have to handcut myself some letters when, thanks to some twisted burlap lying on the desk, a better idea started to form (oh, the advantages of not tidying up the craft table!).


Each letter would be made out of something different... I had had one idea about a Three Little Pigs style project with a house of straw, a house of twigs and a house of bricks - so I think the remnants of that probably surfaced here too!!


It was quite a headache gluing the burlap so that it kept its lovely twistiness!











The clock stands for the years spent here, for the happy and sad times, for the layers and layers of memories built up over those years.

I had a lovely time playing with Gold and Ginger alcohol inks to colour the Idea-ology clock and game spinners to tone in with the background and all the yummy golden embossing.

















A while ago I bought a mystery grab bag of stamps from the amazing Astrid and when it arrived she'd included a couple of extras - a beautiful tag of her own making, and some lovely moulded embellishments made - I think with either Fimo or some other form of modelling material.

I used to do a lot of work with Fimo and Das, making things for my mother's dollshouses - which I grew up surrounded by, and which have already made their journey to their new home in the Czech Republic where they will form a museum.  You can find out more about all of that over at my mother's blog!


But those little embellishments of Astrid's made me realise I should be thinking about incorporating those long-dormant skills and long-ignored materials into my new crafting obsession.


Then, even more recently, my sister-in-law gave me a further kick into action when she made these gorgeous "stone" hearts.


So, when it came to the M, I was ready for action.  I rolled some Das (air-drying clay) into a sausage, and formed my lower-case M.  I spritzed a little stamp with water and pressed it into the clay to form the impression.










Once it had dried out, I inked it with Frayed Burlap and Vintage Photo DIs, and finally smeared some Treasure Wax onto it with my finger.

This stuff is magic!  I got mine from PaperArtsy, and it's the White Fire colour.

I also used it on the twigs for my E.  These were cut from one of the rose bushes in the garden - incorporating part of this home into the tag - and trimmed to size, and then got the finger-smearing of White Fire to highlight them.


I realised that the tag was going to need some reinforcement, so I backed it onto some card from a hard-backed envelope - recycling too, you see - and then started to stick everything down.


The gluing wasn't the easiest thing in the world - curly burlap, knobbly twigs, fragile clay (didn't want to have to make that M all over again!).


The easiest was the clock, attached with a long attacher!  Gluing the houses to the tag also gave me a couple of tricky moments, when I thought I'd snapped something...












But finally it was time for the finishing touch: some DI-dyed seam binding, and my golden memories of home were all complete.



Thank you for taking the time to stop by today; I really appreciate it at this incredibly busy time of year, and I wish you all well in your festive preparations.  As you can probably tell, it will be bitter-sweet for me this year... enjoying one last Christmas in the house I grew up in.

I'm entering this in the following:
Simon Says Stamp and Show are playing by the House Rules
The Artistic Stamper challenge is Home for Christmas
The Do You Stack Up challenge is Silver & Gold - since White Fire is somewhere between the two, I'm hoping this will fit!
The Anything Goes challenge blog are looking for Tags
Little Red Wagon are playing Home for the Holidays
Allsorts are playing White + Gold + One other colour - mine is brown
The Fashionable Stamping Challenge this fortnight is To Die For (using die-cutting, in other words)
Addicted to Stamps have a great Bingo board to play - I'm playing the diagonal No Flowers, Embossing, Favourite Colours (obsessed with neutrals at the moment)
And just for good measure, with the white corrugated card and the burlap ribbon coming from The Funkie Junkie Boutique, I'm offering this up in the Sunday Share at Frilly and Funkie

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.
Maya Angelou

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday -- the longer, the better -- from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
Charles Dickens