Thinking of Spring

Hello all, and welcome to Words and Pictures.

You've arrived just in time for the April Artistic Outpost bloghop, so do hop around and see what my fabulous Design Team-mates have been up to with their Artistic Outpost stamps.  Here's the full itinerary...

Gerrie Johnnic, Lisa Somerville, 

Suzanne Czosek, Tracy Evans, 

Linda Coughlin, Alison Bomber,

Terry Horrall, Kate Yetter

And if you haven't yet heard the big AO news, do take a look here, or at the press release.

But before you go anywhere, here's my offering for you today.

It'll come as no surprise to the regulars that I've been in Springtime mode, and playing with the wonderful Birds of a Feather plate again.  As usual with these brilliant stamps, I've been mixing and matching, so there are guest appearances from a couple of other sets too!






I started with one of the PaperArtsy Heavy Grey Boards.  They're 2mm thick, with a lovely smooth white surface on one side, so great for layering and stamping onto.  I inked very gently with Bundled Sage, Iced Spruce and Peeled Paint.

Next, I did some stencilling with the same colours, layering the Tim Holtz Honeycomb and Dot Fade, and adding some browns into the mix too.










I stamped the beautiful robin pretty much centre stage.  It's either Coffee or Potting Soil - sorry, I've forgotten which!

And the nest seemed to look just right nestled at the foot of the board.  

The adorable birds on a wire are from the Bluebird set... 

... they're ready to take off from the top or the bottom of the piece!











And a couple of little birds are also perched part way up, surrounded by the leafy vines from the Hayride plate, which are stamped in my new Leaf Green Archival ink.













There's also some lovely Gothic book text, which is another stamp from Birds of a Feather.












The wooden banners I think came from Unity Stamps - they're deliciously chunky, about 5mm deep.  

I stamped the two phrases direct onto the wood (Spring is here from Birds of a Feather, Thinking of you from Bluebird).







Although the ink has run slightly along the grain of the wood, I rather like the softening effect.

A little touch of frayed twine on each of them, and we're pretty much done.







Thanks so much for stopping by, and do hop along to see what the rest of the team have been up to... there are many delights awaiting you!  If you get lost along the way, you can find all the details here at Artistic Outpost.

The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off.  Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.
From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
(She's writing about a British robin, of course!)

Plenty of my favourite things here... Artistic Outpost stamps, nature images - especially that vine stamp!, wood and twine, so I'd like to pop this into A Few of My Favourite Things over at the Inspiration Journal sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium.

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!!

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

Under the boardwalk...

Hello all, and welcome to Words and Pictures on a busy and exciting day - there's so much going on over at Artistic Outpost!  Today sees the release of a brand new stamp set - and it's fabulous... like summer on a stamp plate!  

Here's a little taster of just some of what I've been up to with it... I've got several pieces to share with you and I'll spread them out over the next few days and weeks, but I thought I'd give you a quick glimpse of them all to whet your appetites.

So, without more ado, I give you: Boardwalk...

And if you hop round the rest of the team, you'll find so many amazingly inspirational makes.  Here's the list:

Gerrie Johnnic, Lisa Somerville, Suzanne Czosek, Tracy Evans,

Linda Coughlin, Alison Bomber, Terry Horrall, Kate Yetter

Here's what designer Robyn Phelan Sharp has to say about the new stamps:
For the love of the Jersey Shore and Atlantic City's historic boardwalk, this stamp collection features a lovely ATC sized collage featuring Steel Pier, bathing beauties, a handsome gentleman, and other summertime elements. 

Collection available in both unmounted sheets of red rubber or precut and mounted on EZMount clingfoam.



And to celebrate the (hoped-for) approach of summer, there's an amazing special offer on AO stamps at the moment: a Memorial Day sale with 15% off all Artistic Outpost stamp sets until June 8th - temptation, or what?!






So, I had to decide which project to share with you to start with, and I decided to go with one of my recent obsessions...



With the number of tiny floors I've been making recently, it was obvious to me from the get-go that I would have to make a "boardwalk"!



So I grabbed a fistful of coffee stirrers from the Costa Coffee on the boat on the way home, and here they are transformed into a weatherbeaten boardwalk in Atlantic City!











The Alterations cabinet card dies sliced through my cream mountboard with no problem at all, and I dabbed the resulting frame and background into some Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass and Broken China inks daubed onto my craft mat.

There's Frayed Burlap around the edges to add a touch of vintage ageing to the overall look.

The gorgeous background image of the Steel Pier building has also had a little shading with Frayed Burlap Distress Stain, just to deepen the brickwork.  

And I surrounded it with random stampings of some of the seashells.

The coffee stirrers were painted with Broken China and Picket Fence Distress Paints mixed in varying proportions to get variegated "wear and tear" across my boards.

I didn't want too neat a finish along the edge, so I cut them to varying lengths, but always with the same angle to the cut, so that they would line up nicely against the back board.

I stamped the word Boardwalk beneath my boardwalk - just in case it wasn't obvious! 

And the line from the song got pride of place at the top of the frame.  

By the way, it's pretty inevitable that you will be singing the song the entire time you're working with these stamps... just as well it's brilliant!

I coloured the two New Jersey badges with Distress Markers before UTEEing them.  

While the UTEE was still slightly warm I brushed some Pewter Distress Stain over them to try to get a bit of a look of a vintage tintype button.

I stamped a couple of Pier tickets and attached them with one of the adorable Idea-ology paper clips.




The 3D seashell embellishments were a fantastically lucky addition to my stash recently... 












I won a giveaway of "doodads" from the amazing mixed-media artist Cat Kerr (she has another Giveaway right now, but only until 24th May, so hurry!), and these seashells were amongst the doodads that arrived - how fortuitous is that?!  

They couldn't have been more perfect for this new release - and they match the seashell stamps brilliantly!

I pressed the seashell stamps into service again to decorate my padded supports between the frames.  

As I've done before, I used the sponges which come in the packet when you buy Texture Fade embossing folders.

I sliced them to size and then stamped the shells in Cobalt Archival, so that even if you do catch sight of them within the three-dimensional frame, you've still got something nice to look at!

So that's my first encounter with the Boardwalk stamps.  You'll find lots of amazing work from my amazing team-mates on your way round.  

If you get lost, you can find all the details here at Artistic Outpost.  And don't forget that fantastic 15% off offer... until June 8th!  

For now, thank you so much for stopping by today... I hope the summer is finally starting for you (if you're in the correct hemisphere for that of course!), and happy crafting whether it has or hasn't turned up!



Oh, when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof
And your shoes get so hot, you wish your tired feet were fireproof
Under the boardwalk, down by the sea
On a blanket with my baby is where I'll be
Under the Boardwalk by Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick