Encore - You don't bring me flowers...

Encore Posts

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'm back with one of my Encore posts.  They'll be bobbing up now and then when life is too busy or too complicated for regular projects and posting.  I've still got watercolour experiments to share, but just haven't got time to write the posts at the moment, so an Encore it is.

This one was for the Artistic Stamper and it's from almost exactly three years ago... 23rd March, 2014.  Funnily enough, I've just recently been playing with some moulds again, so it seems like the right time to post this particular project.  Here's what I wrote back then...

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Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here again, with a musically-inspired hanging for you today.  (Click on the photos for close-ups if you'd like to see more.)

This happens to me a lot... a phrase or song lyric will go round and round in my head until I'm pretty much forced to allow it to play along.  If you want to listen while you look, You Don't Bring Me Flowers is the song that invaded this creation!

I know this song was triggered by the new toy I was playing with to create the stone urn on this piece... there's something very melancholy about old stone planters in my head, and that dictated how this piece took shape.

Jennie has just added these fabulous Katy Sue Designs silicone moulds to The Artistic Stamper shelves.  There are some really lovely and intricate moulds - and I thought this little trio might have dollshouse potential as well as crafty applications.

UPDATE I'm afraid The Artistic Stamper doesn't stock these any longer, but they do have other moulds to play with here.

I had meant to use some air-drying clay, but when push came to shove I wasn't patient enough to wait for it to dry, so instead I melted some beeswax in a tart tin, using my heat tool, and poured that into the moulds.

I sealed it with multi-medium, and then painted it with various colours, including the marvellous Stone Fresco.  The little mulberry paper flowers are from my stash.

Regulars will know that when I need melancholy, I usually reach for the Gibson Girls, and this woman was perfect for my purposes.

I stamped her in Potting Soil Archival onto some Distress Watercolour Cardstock, and then used a mask to allow me to ink and stamp around her.

I stencilled around her using the new Tim Holtz Doily mask, and stamped with my favourite Calligraphy Mat, but lots of the layers have almost disappeared under the final spritzing of Perfect Pearls Mist in Pearl.

Worth it for the shimmer - though it's hard to capture in a photo.

The book page ivy strands had been sitting around on my desk for ages (created for this art journal page at the beginning of February, but then that needed something darker).

Despite the layer of beeswax covering them, they're pretty fragile, so it's a miracle they've survived this long!

The watercolour panel is layered up over some distressed book pages...

... with some die-cut paper lace tucked under the edges.

Another crack at that shimmer here... with lace and book page and corrugated card and all!

The words are stamped on another piece of watercolour cardstock...

... torn...

... and inked around the edges.

And I used gesso and some Picket Fence Crackle Paint on the corrugated background to create a shabby chic look.

I rather like all the layers of distressed elements, and the masking of the main image which I think really makes her pop.

A couple of eyelets and some pale twine, and it's ready for hanging.

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So another blast from the past for you - delivered as close to its third birthday as possible!  I hope I'll be sharing some of my more-recent mould-making with you soon, but first I'm supposed to try to make some dollshouse dolls for the Tudor Tavern... it's been empty long enough.  I haven't decided exactly how to go about it yet, so that will be taking up most of my time and creative energy over the next few weeks.  I'll keep you posted if I have any success, but in the meantime, happy crafting all!

You don't say you need me
And you don't sing me love songs
You don't bring me flowers anymore
From You Don't Bring Me Flowers by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman & Neil Diamond

Love is in the air

... or is it?  Hello all and welcome.  It's challenge time.

The amazing Astrid is our host this fortnight at A Vintage Journey and, according to the challenge theme, Love Is In The Air!

As usual, my wonderful team-mates have come up with a wealth of inspiration for you, all with a Tim Holtz twist (we certainly all love Tim Holtz at any rate!), but before you hop off to check it out, here's my offering for you.

And love is in the air... but it's under considerable pressure, I'm afraid.

I thought I would use an old hardback book cover as my substrate.  I have a bunch of them, removed and preserved from disintegrating books during our big house move just over a year ago.

I happened to pull this one out of the shelf, and was delighted to find that, unusually, there was some ephemera on the inside leaf... and that inspired the direction I took with the piece.






The book was a copy of Six Months in Red Russia, by Louise Bryant, first published in 1918.  She was an American journalist who spent time in Russia before and during the revolution.  (If you've seen the film Reds, partly based on her writings, she's played by Diane Keaton.)














On the inside cover there's a Russian letter - a permit to travel, according to the blurb underneath - the perfect ephemera to provide a background for this pair from the Idea-ology Found Relatives (I've just re-appropriated it from Louise Bryant and re-written it in their names - in my head, that is, not actually!).

Suddenly they started to talk to me...







Here they are... a young Russian couple, caught up in the maelstrom of events.  The arranged marriage had to take place in a hurry to allow the two of them to travel together out of the country, to try to find a safe refuge from the turmoil.

The young man is filled with the excitement of the adventure, optimistic about the future and what it holds.  His slightly older bride looks considerably more wary, unsure about the wisdom of what they're doing.










The book page hearts echo the letters in the background, but the crackle and rusty wire perhaps show that all is not simple and straightforward between these two.










They have a long and dangerous journey ahead of them, even with the letters permitting them to travel through the country and across the border.














You have to wonder how much it cost their respective families to get those letters signed, and who they had to bribe for the travel tickets.










Although she has now committed her life to her new husband, and they must depend upon one another, obviously she still thinks about the family she has left behind.

Her thoughts are bound up in the letters she writes, never knowing if they will reach their destination.

She has brought mementos from home: a piece of her childhood bedroom wallpaper, snipped from behind the headboard of the bed, so nobody will notice it's gone; a portion of the lace her mother so carefully chose to adorn the wedding dress - already torn and stained with travel.

The dress itself had to be left behind - there's no room in the luggage they carry for anything but absolute necessities.









His constant urging is that she should look on the bright side, encourage her hopes not her fears.

He has promised to take care of her, to cherish her, and he will find a way to do that however far from home they have to travel.












I hope the distressed state of the book board is not a sign that their marriage is already fraying around the edges...













I hope that he is right to indulge in his high hopes for the days, months and years stretching out ahead of them...











I hope that love will strengthen them as they journey together through the world and through their lifetime together...

I hope...

(You may have noticed in the past that Valentine's Day is rarely pink and fluffy round here at Words and Pictures!!)








In any case, I do hope this hanging has offered you some inspiration for the challenge.  Do hop over to see what my team-mates have been creating for you, and we'd love to have you join us for this leg of the journey now that Love Is In The Air.

Check out all the challenge details as well as our Travelling Instructions to make sure you qualify for the prize voucher, generously sponsored by Country View Crafts.



Apologies that I'm somewhat missing in action again at the moment - it's a busy start to the year work-wise and crafting-wise, and there's the dreaded tax return still hovering.  I hope to be back visiting very soon.  Would so much rather come and see you all than do my tax return!!

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word is spoken.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Circumstances define us; they force us on to one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
Ivan Turgenev

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Leo Tolstoy

I'm entering the lovely Choose Your Challenge at Craft Hoarders Anonymous - they have a chart and you need to include one ingredient from each list on your project. So I have Colouring Medium - Ink, Fibre - Lace, Technique - Die-cutting, Texture - Distressing and Wire, Embellishing - Eyelets and Ephemera
I'd also like to enter this at The Inspiration Journal where they are looking for A Fresh Start... a January anything goes, really.
And at Anything But A Card they are looking for New Beginnings, and since this Russian couple really are looking for a fresh start, it seems right!

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.

Laughter is the best medicine

After a busy PaperArtsy start to the week, there's a more relaxed vibe here at Words and Pictures today.

I'm sharing a hanging combining some of the recent Artistic Outpost releases: the wonderful Hayride set, Chalkboard Wisdom and Chalk It Up.  The weather seems to have taken a turn for the wetter and colder, but I'm holding on to those last days of autumn sunshine in my crafting at least.

I started with a piece of cream mountboard, inking it up with Distress Inks, and then stamping the images in Archival ink.

The large frame is from the Chalk It Up plate, and seemed the perfect home for the Hayride boy.














The boy is stamped in Sepia, the frame is stamped in Potting Soil, and for the sentiment I applied both inks for a shaded look.












The vine holds its position as one of my new favourite stamps to use - just love these twining leaves.












I added some of my rusted embellishments - washers straight from the DIY store and some little resin roses - from a couple of months back.










The corrugated card in the background has had a rough coat of gesso, and then some Distress Ink daubed onto it.  And finally I clear-embossed it for a glossy wet look.  

A couple of eyelets (with a quick dab of paint to make them tone in), some rustic twine, and we're all set.

Thank you for stopping by today, and for all your amazing feedback on this week's creations.

It seems to be taking a while to recover from the last couple of months of frenzied activity, but I'm slowly working my way back to feeling a bit more human.  A few more early nights, and a bit more time at the craft table, and I'll get there.  Happy Crafting all!




A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
Irish Proverb

If you're too busy to laugh, you are too busy.
Proverb

Laughter is an instant vacation.
Milton Berle