Inktober Week 4

Hello all, I'm overdue with posting the last of my Inktober line and wash paintings.  I'm sorry I'm so late posting them here... there's just been too much going on.  But I promise I did keep to schedule with the challenge, and completed one a day all the way to the end of October.  So here are the week four offerings, and then there'll be another post with the final few to complete the thirty-one days.

So, no messing about (if you want details of what I'm using to create these, or what the heck Inktober is, then it's all in the first post Inktober Week 1)... here they are.

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

There you have it - again some clear favourites for me (I never knew I loved berries of all kinds so much!) and some that don't make me quite so happy.  I wonder whether yours are the same as mine (probably not, going by previous weeks!).  Next time, with only three more to share I'll also try to include a couple of process photos from various paintings, so that you can see the different ways I was working.

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend and I'll see you again soon.

How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
Dr. Seuss

I'd like to share these at Paint Party Friday - sorry I missed a couple of weeks! - where it is the Week 37, Year 10 Check In

They're looking for Anything But A Card at Country View Challenges

#newbloggersucks

A New Leaf

Hello all!

We're sharing a Tag Monday over at A Vintage Journey this week.  I love Tag Monday... an excuse to play with a tag, Tim-style, no pressure, no theme - just me, some inks and some stamping!

And given I'm in full-scale sample-creating mode at the moment it was lovely to take ten minutes out and just play.

Hop over to see what my lovely team-mates have shared, but before you go, here's my contribution.

This is not quite "a new leaf", though it sort of is.  Although I've used most of the stamps in the Daydream plate from last year's releases, I'd never inked up this lovely skeleton leaf before, so it needed to happen.












I started by blending ink directly onto a manila tag, then started layering in some detail with stencils.... first the Bubble and then my favourite Latticework.

I was using Broken China, Peeled Paint and Mowed Lawn... though in the end the greens rather took over from the turquoise (which is as it should be for leaves, I suppose).











I used DecoArt Chalk Paint to do my white stamping (a tip from Andy Skinner - if you haven't seen the things I made at his fabulous workshops, I'd love you to check them out).

You can't go wrong with the Papillon script...











I have lots of book page pieces left from carving out my Bell, Book and Candle niche.













They're handy to grab, so that's what I ran through the Trellis Frameworks and added as an extra layer.












Both the quote and the leaf are stamped in Potting Soil Archival.

I needed them to hold their own against the busy layered background, so I did my usual trick of clear embossing them.  It gives that lovely touch of gloss and dimension, as well as intensifying the colour because of the refraction of the light as it hits.












I used a blending tool to add some Rusty Hinge and Vintage Photo colour to the leaf very roughly.  I love that you can still see the layers even through the browns.











I added some golden pen nibs, arranging them in strong vertical lines to echo the quote and the leaf.

Well, what else are you going to use to write that gorgeous Papillon script?!










And the ribbons were actually dyed with Fresco paints for one of my samples (hmm... any guesses who the samples are being made for?!  Watch this space), but I ended up not using them for that.











But with a touch of Vintage Photo the ribbons were perfect here, tied with a bit of rustic twine.

I glued the whole tag onto some kraft card and trimmed it to size before attacking it with the distressing tool.








And we're all done.  I love how it warms up as the rays of winter sunshine (between snow showers) hit it.

Do hop over to A Vintage Journey to see the taggy delights created by my wonderful team-mates.  And you've still got time to play along with our current challenge to Use A Portrait on your Tim-style project.  Check out all the details and our Travelling Instructions - we'd love you to join us on the journey.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I'll see you again soon.  Now the samples are all done and ready for posting I might even get to come visiting...  Oops, no, tax return first!

I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copy-books; and I make so many beginnings there will never be an end.
Jo March in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

Butterflies for me!

Hello all and welcome back to the second post of the day.  Yes, it's the first of the month and it's challenge time!  If you're looking for my Christmas is Coming offering for Artistic Stamper, just click to visit it.





But now it's over to the new theme over at Country View Challenges.  This month we're looking for  Bugs, Bees and Butterflies.  You can use any or all of them on your project… no prizes for guessing which way I decided to go!


For this tag, I reached for something old, something new and something blue.  If there's anything borrowed, then I'm afraid the owner can't have it back!


The blue obviously is there in the colour palette - blues and browns, probably my all time favourite combination, though one can always ring the changes with the precise shades used.












The "something old" is one of the tag backgrounds I made using Tim's June tag technique.  At the time I made four or five different colour variations as I was having such fun with the technique.  It was finally time for this one to take centre stage.

The "something new" are the French Flight Framelits butterflies… my first time of using the stamp-and-cut die set.









I love the inky stencilled print effect on the watercolour paper, but since you can read all about the background technique in the words of the master himself, I'll just fill you in on a couple of the additional details.










For the butterflies, I inked up a separate piece of card and stamped them in a combination of Cornflower Blue and Aquamarine Archival inks, blended the inks on the stamp.


When you cut them, you lose the labels and the antennae, so before gluing them down, I also stamped them directly onto my lettering background in Cobalt Archival.

So once they were stuck down, they had their bits and pieces back in place!









I edged the wings with Florentine Treasure Gold, as the metallic glow was becoming a bit of a feature elsewhere…

Here, for instance, in the couple of pen nibs attached as embellishments.












And on the altered Muse Token at the top of the tag… just a touch of Treasure Gold can really zhuzh something up!











I used some Chitchat Stickers to create my sentiment, outlining with a fine PITT pen to bed them into the background.













And because I stuck down the watercolour panel a bit too high up the tag, it needed something extra at the bottom.

I used some Idea-ology Long Fasteners to create a row of studs.  A burnishing of Treasure Gold to make them tone in, and we're pretty much there.










Oh, not forgetting the Distress Ink-dyed ribbons of the topping, of course!








So there are my first Bugs, Bees and Butterflies.  Do hop over to Country View Challenges and see what my fantastic team-mates have been up to, and don't forget there's ongoing inspiration there throughout the month.

I'll be here in a few days with my second Bugs, Bees and Butterflies offering, but I'm off to the theatre again now.  As well as new challenge day, the 1st November is also our first Preview, so today we find out how the show goes down with an audience… fingers crossed.

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I've just over a week left in New York now, so I should be able to visit Craftyblogland more regularly again soon.  Happy crafting all.

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

If you're after seasonal inspiration do check out the new Artistic Stamper challenge too.  Christmas doesn't usually start this early at Words and Pictures!

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Hello again!  Hope you're all having a lovely August weekend - weather permitting!  Thank you so much for choosing to spend some of it here at Words and Pictures... it's great to have you stop by.

I've been having a glorious time distressing and ageing to create some leaving cards I'd been commissioned to make.  It was a slightly strange experience...  a colleague from the Royal Shakespeare Company (where I worked for nearly eight years until going freelance earlier this year) is now also leaving, and asked if I could make some farewell cards for her to distribute.  So I found myself making Farewell cards on someone else's behalf, for people I know very well, and with whom I'm just about to start working again, as I'm going back in as a freelancer at the beginning of September!!

In any case, you'll now understand the Shakespeare theme when you see the cards.  And my colleague had selected specific 'thank you' quotes for each person, so the cards vary slightly according to the play from which the quote is taken.  Take a look...

When I knew I'd be making several cards, I wanted to work with a technique I really enjoy!  I did enjoy getting a vintage patina and lustre onto the embossed background, but my absolute favourite thing to do at the moment is the ageing and distressing... I love using inks, the Tim Holtz Paper Distresser, rubbing, rolling, ripping, tearing and curling to give the papers an antique feel, and some dimensionality on the page...




Each card has the first page of the First Folio (my absolute desert island book) text for the relevant play for its quote, inked, ripped, rolled and so on to get some sense of the nearly 400 years which have passed since its publication (1623 for the curious amongst you...).







Then the quote itself is printed, grunged with a Tim Holtz texture stamp, inked, Paper Distressed on the edges, and finally rolled around my useful bit of wooden dowelling to get the wave effect, and the curly edges.

(I'm sharing mainly the Twelfth Night one here, but you'll get glimpses of some of the others.)





The background is medium weight Kraft cardstock, embossed with the Tim Holtz Patchwork embossing folder.  I then blended Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and a bit of Black Soot onto it, and finally gave it a good spritz with the Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls Mist, for a lovely lustrous finish.

The nib, of course, is there for the writer, and you'll see that I've used the Prima French Script stamp to provide a background on the cream card base.



I printed some tiny Williams to put in the little jewellery findings frames I got from the Bead Shop online, and filled them in with Glossy Accents... then attached them with a TH Idea-ology long attacher.

You can see in this photo that I've also taken the Paper Distresser to the edges of the embossed background layer to get that extra texture.




Just another little shot trying to really capture the movement in the quotes (this one the Henry VIII card).

You can also see below the inked mesh and ribbon added for texture and for some strong horizontal detailing, which I felt it needed to anchor all the higgledy-piggledy layout and distressing.

And finally a shot of the whole lot, awaiting delivery to their commissioner - who was, thankfully, very very happy with them.  I look forward to finding out how they went down with the recipients soon!

Thanks so much for spending some time here at Words and Pictures... it's great to have your company along the way in this crafty journey... and I look forward to meeting again here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland very soon!

I'm entering these in the following:
Favourite Technique (ageing/distressing) at Simon Says Stamp and Show
The Allsorts challenge to add something metal (nib and picture frame) with their Heavy Metal challenge

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves

Wonderful women!  Have you ever thought how much we all, and women especially, owe to Shakespeare for his vindication of women in these fearless, high-spirited, resolute and intelligent heroines?
Dame Ellen Terry