Fungus Fairytale

Hello all.  I hope you are all doing okay and staying safe in these strange times.  I've got a fairly short post for you today (after some mammoth affairs in the last week or so!) to share a couple of the sample tags I made for my last release of quote stamps at PaperArtsy back in February.  It feels like years ago!

This pair of tags uses quotes from the EAB16 Magic & Wonder set... and I figure we can use all the magic and wonder we can get at the moment.

To me, there has always been something fantastical and other-worldly about fungi... they're neither plant nor animal, not flora nor fauna, but a whole order unto themselves.  And some of them behave in very weird and wonderful ways, playing a vital role in all sorts of natural processes without us even being aware of it.

So when I was looking for some stamps to partner the fairies I wanted to use with these particular quotes, the Scrapcosy mushrooms also by PaperArtsy seemed like the perfect choice.













The backgrounds are done very simply by sponging on the Fresco paints with a natural sponge.  You get such lovely soft stippled effects this way.

The colours include Lavender and Wisteria, along with Lawn and Granny Smith.









The fungi are stamped in a combination of Potting Soil and Coffee Archivals and painted in the smoky neutrals of Chalk, Eggshell, Taupe and French Roast.

I used my stamp platform so that I could stamp the mushrooms, paint them in my chosen shades...

... and then stamp again to retrieve all that lovely shading and detail.  It's such a satisfying process!

The fairies are played by Paper Dolls with some of the lovely acetate Idea-ology wings attached.








But these tags are really all about the words for me.  The quotes are embossed in Wow Primary Bark, applied over an Archival ink stamping.  (I find you get slightly better detail with Archival than with a sticky embossing ink when you've got a stamp like this.)

You can't have a quote set about Magic & Wonder without some words from the master of fairytales himself, Hans Christian Andersen.

I'm not sure he's right about a fairytale at the moment - seems like we're in more of a disaster movie a lot of the time!  Still, maybe there'll be a happy ending.











And this extraordinary quote by Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister (Master) Eckhart, a German philosopher born in 1260, has exactly the kind of uplifting optimism I need at the moment.











What if, out of this catastrophic crisis, we were able to imagine and create for ourselves a better way of going about our lives?  Less in thrall to materialism, more in tune with nature; less driven by money, more concerned with compassion.

Suppose we were able to start something new - that would be the start of a happier ending, wouldn't it?













Enough of that for now.  I hope you enjoyed seeing these samples in more detail than I was able to share them on launch night, and I hope you are still finding magic & wonder in this extraordinary world of ours, even in these dark hours.  Stay safe, stay well and I'll see you again soon.













Just a quick fungi-connected afterthought before the quotes... Cross promotion is not something I do very often, but if any of you are fans of science fiction or the wonders of nature - especially the fascination of fungi - or simply like a really good read, can I just draw your attention to a newly published book, Living with Annie, by a very good friend of mine.

If you'd like to know more, click the link and "Look Inside" to read an extract; and if you scroll down to the reviews you'll find one there by someone called "Alison" (!).  If it seems like your kind of thing then I highly recommend it.






When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
John F. Kennedy

In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path - the path of compassion, courage, understanding and love.
Amit Ray

I'd like to share these over at Tag Tuesday where for the next fortnight Anything Goes
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they would like us to Create A Scene

Spring Blossom

Hello all!  I hope you're enjoying a gentle Sunday.  Now that we've finally had a taste of springtime here in the UK, I thought I should probably share a couple of the samples from the third of my recent PaperArtsy stamp releases, EAB06 The Spring Edition.  Well, it's not really that recent any longer, but you know what I mean.  And since today is Earth Day, it seems only right to head to the natural world for these...

It's another pair of tags (if you saw No Small Dreams or Lose Sight of the Shore, you'll know I often work in pairs or sets when I'm creating samples).  We're still in the official launch colour palette, and this time I was playing with some of the charming new stamps by Kay Carley.  These delightful springtime trees are from EKC16.







I love tree blossom.  We've got lots of May trees blooming already in our area, but most of the blossom is yet to come.  It may be my favourite form of flower, I think - and part of that beauty comes from its impermanence - it's always with us for far too short a time.

And although white blossom is my favourite, blossom-time is one of the times when pink is also very welcome in my world, so the launch palette worked really well in this case!









The backgrounds of these tags are done in my "soft crackle" technique.  The background layer of paint was one of Seth's new blues, over which I applied PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze as normal.

When the glaze is dry, I then use a natural sponge to apply my top coat - in this case Fresco Chalky Finish in Chalk, a lovely soft white - and let that dry too.  








Then I do another soft sponged coat of paint over the top of that.  This softens the look of the crackle and gives a subtle aged look to the background.

Once the soft crackle was done, I blended on watery washes of the blues to give me spring skies, and then stamped some of the grasses in Venice Blue and in Mushroom.











The trees themselves are stamped in Watering Can Archival and clear embossed, and then I used the Mulberry Fresco paint and a water brush to colour in the blossoms.














It's great to have the two sizes of tree on the one plate.  As you can see, the large on is perfect for a standard size 8 tag in portrait, and the smaller one works beautifully in landscape.














But you could also use them within one scene to create depth, by using the large one in the foreground and smaller ones "further off" in the background.  You could have a whole Chekhovian cherry orchard!











I tried out a few Archival ink colours for the Charles Lanman quote, and in the end I think it was a secondary stamping in Plum Archival which did the trick.















And for the long Mark Twain quote which is the main feature of the landscape tag, it's Vanilla White Wow embossing powder applied with Versamark ink over a Mulberry-painted background.









I've used the whole quote - it's long but so lovely, and oh, how I know the feeling! - but there are plenty of phrases and sections which you could use by themselves.

Some simple white doodled borders frame the tags, and they're finished off with some seam binding dyed with the same Mulberry paint and fastened with white twine.

I hope you're enjoying some spring sunshine and some spring blossom wherever you are today, at least if you're the right side of the planet for that.

And whatever season you're in, I wish you a very happy Earth Day.

It's still pretty quiet here on the blog, but I'm gearing up behind the scenes for a busier May on the crafting front.

I promise there are more good things coming your way in the not too distant future...  Thanks so much for dropping by and I'll see you again soon.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

Book of the Flowers

Hello everyone.  If you haven't heard the wonderful news that Calico Craft Parts are back... well, where have you been?!  Although I'll always miss Calico Crafts as it was, I'm thrilled that the Craft Parts have arisen from the ashes to live again.  I've been celebrating the wonderful news by sharing some of my Calico Crafts Design Team pieces which used the Craft Parts.

If you're tempted to play with any of these great wood and MDF laser-cut designs, click on the links and you can head straight to the brand new website and start shopping!

I'm adding this altered book box to my crafty scrapbook here at Words and Pictures today but, as always, if you saw this post over at Calico Crafts the last time round, please don't feel you have to comment again.






So, on the outside of the chipboard book (the large one of the Chipboard Book Box Set  - so it's 22.5 x 18 x 6cm) I played with lots of layers of paint and texture.











I knew from the start that I wanted to use the large Wildflower Corner Flourish (knowing what's inside, I know it will complement what's there!).  It's already so beautiful that I did very little to alter it.

There are lots of different Corner Wood Shapes available, and they all come in various sizes, so there's bound to be something perfect for your project.










I just gave it a coat of the DecoArt One-Step Crackle, and once that had worked its magic, I inked it with dark brown ink to highlight those fabulous crackles.










I put some DecoArt Decorating Paste through a stencil from my stash which seemed to work well with the Wildflower Corner, and once that had set, I started adding my layers of paint.













I can't say for sure what colours are involved... I'm pretty sure Warm White, Driftwood, and Raw Umber were in the mix, built up in layers and washes, knocked back and dry-brushed until I was happy with the look.











I thought it would be nice to have a cobwebby look across the "ancient tome", so I pressed the Kaisercraft Crackle Texture stamp into action.












It's stamped in Coffee Archival and then clear-embossed so that there's a dewy shimmer as it catches the light.













I stamped "les fleurs" onto the smallest size of Plaque Shape 1, painted with more DecoArt Americana Acrylics, and I added some flourish stamping before giving that a coat of the One-Step Crackle too.

Again, there are many different Birch Plywood Plaques, all in lots of sizes.








On the spine I added a label using one of my favourite Tim Holtz sentiments: In dreams we catch glimpses of life larger than our own.














And around the edges, there's another Kaisercraft stamp on duty, this time the Woodgrain, which I thought made rather good "pages"!








So, we come to the inside, and some of my absolute favourites of the Calico Craft Parts lines... these gorgeous Wild Grass Shapes.

They've had the same treatment as the Wildflower corner on the cover, with crackle and stain.






I love that the gloss of the crackle intensifies the colour and darkened edges of the laser-cuts, as well as giving a gorgeous shimmer in the sunlight.












For the background I used a natural sponge to add another bunch of DecoArt Americana colours - Indian Turquoise, Spa Blue, Hauser Light Green and Citron Green - so that you travel up the page from grasses to sky.












For some extra detail, I stamped some lovely TH text in WhiteWash, and did some additional script stamping as well as some inking using toning inks through the Tando warped honeycomb mask.











Here you can see the stages of adding the crackle to the meadowgrasses, from left to right - the "raw" shape, easily beautiful enough to use as it is, then with a coat of One-Step Crackle, and finally with the inking to intensify the look of the crackles.











I've used several different grasses: Wild Grass Shape 3 gets its own spotlight inside the front cover...















... while Wild Grass Shape 2, Wild Grass Shape 4 and the Bulrush Grass Shape 8 are all inside the box.












To create the dimensional depth between the flowers I deployed a couple of those incredibly useful little sponges that come as part of the packaging when you buy TH embossing folders.









I cut them to the size I wanted, and gave them a coat of paint too, so that if you catch sight of them it won't look too out of place.  They gave me both the ability to create the dimension and some stability for gluing the stems in place.












Around the bottom I added some lovely Icelandic Moss, a mixture of light and dark green, I think.













The quote is by Ralph Waldo Emerson and bobbed up on a Google search.  It seemed to work well with my beloved meadow grasses: many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers.











It's stamped according to my usual habit, in multiple ink colours, and inked to echo the sponged paint in the background from grass below to sky above.









So there you go.  As you'll have noticed, this wasn't the easiest thing to photograph, but I hope you get the idea.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope you've been enjoying re-visiting some of these Calico Crafts projects this week (check out the Garden Tray and Woodcuts ATC if you missed them) but - as I've said - there's no need to re-comment too!

There are more to come over the next days and weeks, and I hope somewhere along the line you'll be tempted over to the new Calico Craft Parts website to see the delights awaiting you there.

Happy Crafting all!



The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller

Live in the moment...

Hello all!  Well, we've got a lovely interval of sunshine in between the tempestuous winds so I dashed outside to grab some photos of my first make in my new craft space.  

Guess what?  It's a tag.  

Oh... and anyone who was concerned that I ought to bring some ivy with me from the old house, you can relax, as you can see!

I've got a heavy (but probably very enjoyable) work week coming up, so I haven't been able to get my head round any complicated crafty projects (though there are several brewing in the darker recesses of my mind!), but I had to break in the new room, and here's what arrived.

I also promised you some pictures of the glass cabinet - still empty when I showed you the room - doing its proper job of displaying something, so if you scroll down you'll find a few pictures of that too...

This tag started with a background of Distress Paints - Salty Ocean, Picket Fence and a touch of Broken China - sponged on using a natural sponge.  I think it gives a lovely fluffy cloud sky effect.

The sentiment is definitely one to live by, I think.












I added multiple stampings of some of the Tim Holtz meadow flowers, from the small size sets, stamping in Sepia and Coffee Archival inks.












I added some tiny heads of blossom around the place using the Inkssentials white gel pen.














Around the bottom of the tag I used Potting Soil to stamp the little texture stamp to give a real sense of the earthy undergrowth.













I used the same texture stamp, stamping in Broken China, around the edges of the sky for a bit more depth.














The birds were stamped in Black Archival, and then the white pen went into action again to add some feathery detailing - the only thing I'm in two minds about here - I loved them in plain black too.












I added a tiny shadow of Vintage Photo for definition, and then some distressing with the paper distresser around the edges.












A natural topping of raffia and very fine twine, and we're done.








So, on to the display case...

I actually feel a bit uncomfortable having my stuff out on display for some reason (though I can see it's a pity to have it huddled on shelves and in boxes as it has been)... 

... but the rest of my family all love how it looks in the glass cabinet, so I've yielded... 

... and probably reluctantly accept their verdict! 






















Besides, it was interesting to see what made the cut as far as I was concerned (there's still a fair amount in boxes!)...
















... and it's also really nice to have a visible record of previous work to remind me of ideas and techniques I'd already forgotten about!














Sorry about the reflections in the glass.















I also took a few with the doors open so that you can see what's in there better.













(Remember you can click on the pictures for close-ups if you're curious.)

Not much doubt about my favourite colour palettes...

















Or my tendency to work in threes!













It'll be a quietish week here at Words and Pictures as I'm going to be hurtling up and down to London delivering workshops for my "day job", but I'm planning to fit some blog-visiting around the edges so I hope to see you soon.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a lovely Sunday!  

I'm off to enjoy some more moments...

Forever is composed of nows.
Emily Dickinson

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau

“What day is it?"
It's today," squeaked Piglet.
My favourite day," said Pooh.”
A.A. Milne