Alas, poor Yorick!

Hello all, and a happy weekend to you.  Welcome to Words and Pictures - with an especially big welcome to the new followers... it's great to have your company.

I set myself a challenge today... to break away from my comfort zone of blues and browns!  I've not had a lot of craft table time recently, so when I have had a chance, I've mostly been playing with my favourite colours.  If you don't want to click the links, just scroll down to some previous posts, and you'll see what I mean!

So when the Tando challenge was announced for October - to use Purple, Orange, Green and Black - I wrote it off immediately (I may even have snorted with laughter).  But clearly something was bubbling deep down in the subconscious because when my new stamp set arrived (I gave in to temptation on the amazing Oxford Impressions stamps - largely under the influence of the amazing Lynne over at Adorn) I found myself playing in exactly those colours.  And a couple of tag experiments later, this pair arose:

Of course, the colours are also influenced by the Halloween-y nature of the set, called Dr Coffin's Apothecary.


I've been avoiding getting too seasonal so far (though I'm finding it harder and harder to put my foot down about restricting Christmas to December - it's going to leave me a lot of catching up to do, very rapidly, on the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags for instance!), but this set appeals to my vintage inclinations, and I can see wider applications for the stamps than just Halloween in the future.

The tags are also decorated on the back - another experiment with Rustification for Simon Says Stamp and Show, simpler than the last, but still pleasurably textural... and the decay of rustiness seems a really appropriate texture for Halloween.


The stamps are largely from the Oxford Impressions set, but there are also some Tim Holtz ones mixed in - the large skull, the handwriting in the background behind it, and the embossed Happy Halloween on the reverse sides.


The ribbon is from some packaging - I forget what - deliberately frayed and decayed at the ends!





I'm very happy with my little bottles... they're stamped in Staz-On black onto some acetate packaging (from some TH Idea-ology as far as I can remember).  I then used Pesto and Oregano alcohol inks to colour it, heated it to make it pliable, and curled it into 3D.

And this meant that they had to be a "pair" of tags - it was the only way to get the whole of the lovely Witch Hazel label on display.  And, you know, it says Witch Hazel on the bottle, but I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable using it...

We won't talk about trying to get them glued down if you don't mind!!

Some time ago, I picked up a bagful of copper clasps for £1.  I'm not sure, but I think they're probably some sort of bead or jewellery clasp - but they were perfect for an extra little metallic rustiness on each corner of the tags.  I squeezed them together using my eyelet fastener.


These close-ups also give you a chance to get a closer look at some of these amazing stamps and the backgrounds I inked and painted in various ways.  There are skulls galore - hence my reluctance to sample the Witch Hazel - with a name like Dr Coffin, this apothecary may just be hiding some dark secrets, it seems to me!.










At the top of this tag (right), you can see the streaks of paint I brushed on.  After painting the reverse with its first coat of acrylic paint, I basically dried the brush in rough strokes in the corners of one of the tags.  

I love the murky texture of it under the blended Dried Marigold Distress Ink.



And I also like the bruising of the colours around the cat below...  the handwritten script you can see is the TH stamp, and may be my new favourite writing to put onto a project.  I cut and used a mask of the large skull, so that I could get the writing all the way round him.

Down near the foot of each tag, you have the witch's familiars - the black cat and the raven - one with fur, and one with feathers, and each guarding their respective bottle.

See... see!  Why does it need to be guarded if it's just plain old witch hazel?!?


A quick look at the textures of the rusty background, and then I'll leave you in peace for today!


I painted the tag with various layers of paint, and then gave them a good scratching in lots of directions for some texture before applying a wash of Transparent Iron Oxide acrylic.

I stamped the Happy Halloween in clear embossing ink, and used some Stampendous Detail embossing powder in black to heat emboss it.  I love the glossy dimension you get - and it needed something strong to show up against the dark rust background.

Then I swept embossing ink over the tag surface very roughly, and applied Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder - which retains its lovely scrubbly texture even after heating.

Once embossed, you rub over it lightly and that releases more particles to give an even rougher texture, so it's perfect for this kind of rusty effect.

So that's me for today... I can see I've probably started out at the top of a very slippery slope with the whole Halloween thing.  Quite apart from anything else, I think skulls and skeletons are extraordinarily attractive objects - fascinating and uncanny at the same time.

Thanks so much for taking the time to drop in today.  It's always great to feel you're not just typing away to the empty ether! Every comment is so much appreciated, and I'll always do my best to return the compliment...  Happy crafting (or whatever else-ing, obviously)!

I'm entering this in the following:
The Tando Creative colour challenge to use Purple, Orange, Green and Black
Artful Times are playing with Fur and Feathers this fortnight
Simon Says Stamp and Show are still looking for signs of Rustification
The Crafty Bloggers Network are playing Anything Goes this month
Heck of a Challenge are having a Spooktacular challenge

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw

Sonnet Mash Up

Hello all, for the second time today (if you've already seen What's On My Workdesk this Wednesday)... delighted to have your company here at Words and Pictures for a while.

I'm sharing a project I've had such fun making - and which has grown out of the same source as much of the work recently, but with an altogether happier process (and outcome too, I think).  So this one is for Kathryn and Bill, with great love and admiration for your extraordinary performances in A Tender Thing, which have given me such inspiration... it was a joy working with you on such an amazing piece of theatre.

I was puzzling over ways to alter tags so that I could play along with Anita's wonderful challenge at Frilly and Funkie at the moment... There's some amazing inspiration from the DT as always, including some albums and booklets, like this gorgeous one by the fabulous Stamping Sue, and having thrown out a number of far-fetched ideas, that's where I circled back to in the end.

And it suddenly all made sense as - from nowhere, as it always seems - the idea arrived for the text which might go in my little book.  It is what is technically known, I believe, as a mash-up.

In the high-school television musical-fest Glee, which I've dipped in and out of, the school choir will frequently mix together two songs which "match" in terms of lyrics or theme.  Instead of songs, my mash-up is of two of Shakespeare's sonnets.  How's that for a high/pop culture mash-up in itself?!?




So the title on the cover is Sonnet Fragments, as you don't quite get either of the sonnets in its entirety, but lines from each which "speak to" each other.

And this very combination appears as part of the text in Ben Power's A Tender Thing, as the ageing Romeo and Juliet face up to the sometimes harsh realities of getting older.

As I was working on this - over the course of several days, juggling with a number of other projects - the new Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge was announced, and provided the perfect excuse to go to town on my corrugated cardboard cover which at that point was merely painted and awaiting further inspiration.

SSSaS are playing with Rustification!




That couldn't have been more perfect for this project about the physical decay of the autumn of one's life...

So to the pale acrylic already in place, I added a layer of Ginger and Rust alcohol inks, then played with Burnt and Raw Umber acrylics, mixing them quite roughly onto the cardboard, then adding a wash of Red Iron Oxide to some areas.








I added all those colours to my stash to take part in the Andy Skinner Timeworn Techniques workshop online... but I'm so far behind with that, that I've started to play with them any old how!

I then had a play with some Vintage Photo Distress Embossing Powder along with a few brush dabs of Cosmic Shimmer embossing powder in Dark Bronze.  The Vintage Photo gives fantastic texture, and the Dark Bronze gives that lovely lustrous shine in certain places.  I'm very pleased with the results!



So to the inside... and apologies for the photo-heavy and long post, but I like to document these things fully - for myself as much as anything else!



The mash-up is of Sonnets 73 and 104.  We start with 73, worried about being in the autumn of life... and the decay of former beauty and youth.

(You'll need to read several pages to get to the end of a whole thought.)






The stamps include Tim Holtz, Bobunny, and Stampology, and there's some of the TH calendar tissue tape - the autumn and winter months of course...

The autumnal colours are obviously dictated by the text.

I had a lovely time with the leaves (the stamp is from Artistic Outpost) - the "yellow" ones were embossed in clear onto the manila tags, and then I stamped in progressively darker Distress and Archival Inks to get a variety of shades in my leaf mulch.

The thought is turning bleaker now, from the colours of the leaves to bare branches in the cold...

... so the colours on these pages are bleaker - the branches stamped in Coffee Archival, and the shading done with Pumice Stone - the grim gray of winter starting to take over.









And the branches are compared to the choir pews in church, but their choir of birds has long since flown...

The stamps here are Tim Holtz, and the leaves are die-cut using his Autumn Gatherings Decorative Strip Die, which I've been making plenty of use of while the autumn crafting season is on us!

Here it's cut out of some Kaisercraft music paper, and inked with vintage photo. 

I like how the leaves float over the background.







At this point, before it all takes a turn for somewhere even darker, Sonnet 104 interrupts (in the play it's Romeo stopping Juliet in her tracks).  This has always been one of my absolute favourites, so beautiful as a thought - in my eyes you are unchangingly young and lovely - and expressed as perfectly as only Shakespeare can...

The gorgeous girl is from one of the Classics sets recently re-released by Stampers Anonymous, and I just love her... I hope the regulars aren't getting bored with her!  And the deliciously rusty heart is from The Funkie Junkie Boutique.  

And to complete the thought that you're just as lovely as when I first laid eyes on you, the eye comes from that same Classics set, and the girl is from Artistic Outpost's Think and Wonder set (the focus of one of the other upcoming projects - just to tempt you to return soon!).  

The inside covers, backed onto the corrugated card, aren't made with tags, but with slightly textured cardstock... it needed something sturdy to get the cardboard to behave - it was part of some packaging and had been rolled up, and was determined to stay that way for quite some time!

I wanted the outside to have a really 'junkyard' look... so as well as the rusty corrugated card, the title is stamped onto very crumpled, torn kraft glassine paper.  

That's backed onto some lovely rusty mesh, from the Funkie Junkie Boutique again, which I've frayed and twisted at the edges.  

And so that it would show up against the rust, there's a layer of distressed dictionary text in between.  I love this view of all the layers of texture, with the distressed  edges of the tag pages.  


The whole thing is fastened together with some garden twine, which is also what binds the tags inside, for a rough and ready rustic look - as you saw at the top of this post, if you can remember that far back!!

Thank you so much if you've made it this far - I know a long post can be trying when there are so many amazing blogs to visit out there in Craftyblogland, but I hope that you've enjoyed what you've seen.  Do let me know what you think, and if I know you've visited I will always do my best to return the favour.  Happy crafting for now, and see you again soon...

You can't hide your true colours as you approach the autumn of your life.
Anonymous

I'm entering this in the following:
Frilly and Funkie's challenge to create A Different Kind of Tag, with an Autumn theme
Simon Says Stamp and Show's challenge this week, Rustification
The Fashionable Stamping Challenge are looking for Shades of Autumn
Try It On Tuesday are also offering us the chance to play with Autumn Colours 
And with the rusty heart and the metal mesh on the cover, and my AO Think and Wonder set, all from the Funkie Junkie Boutique, I'm sharing this at Frilly and Funkie again in the Sunday Share

WOYWW 175

I'm back!  It felt so weird to miss out on WOYWW last week... how can something become so essential in such a short time?! And if you don't know what I'm on about, come share the addiction over at Julia Dunnit's Stamping Ground where every Wednesday you can explore the Workdesks of the world.

And here's What's On My Workdesk this Wednesday:

Basically there's lots of inky stampy stuff I've been using on four projects which are all on the go at the moment.  I hope to be posting one of them later today - it's slightly covered up so as not to reveal it before it's ready - but do watch this space!  (Done now!) You can see the three TH metallic distress stains which I've been experimenting with, and a new arrival right in the centre - the embossing diffusers - very excited about playing with those.  The big gold bottle is just an old sun lotion bottle that I use as my water spritzer.  There's also a background made with paper napkins that's got a bit stuck, but I'm hoping inspiration will strike soon.

Short and sweet - just as our lovely hostess likes these posts to be, but I can't go without sharing just one moment of glee with you: I discovered yesterday that one of my projects has been "pinned" on Pinterest by... wait for it... the man himself, yes, Mr Tim Holtz!  Have a look if you don't believe me... I don't do Pinterest, so it took me a while to work out if what I thought had happened had really happened - and even now little bubbles of laughter keep erupting unexpectedly at the thought!! 

Have a very happy WOYWW, and I'll be round for a snoop soon...

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place. 
Josh Billings

If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy.
Traditional Proverb

Update:  Sorry... the post has just come, and I quickly wanted to share my extremely happy mail with you.  I was thrilled and delighted to win the Crafty Individuals prize as part of the Tando Creative Birthday Blog Hop last week... and the incredibly generous prize from Jean and Malcolm has just arrived.  Not only lovely Tando things to play with, but amazing CI stamps and masks, and some very cute Christmas tags too - I'm blown away!!

Had to take the picture on the floor as workdesk is now full of half-made project, not yet ready for viewing!

Sailing into the Blue(s)

Well, well - World Card Making Day - that's got to be worth celebrating, no?  Greetings to all out there in Craftyblogland, as we share our love of card-making... Frilly, Grungy, Funkie, Fussy, Steampunk, Fancy, CAS or cute - whatever your style, share a card today!

TIME PASSES...

Well, I don't know - I wrote that very upbeat opening on discovering it was World Card Making Day, and then went and sat at my craft desk and... nothing!  Tried some stuff... hated it!  Mojo-less on World Card Making Day - how's that for ironic?!

I decided I needed to push through and make something, so I have and, if you've been following, you may care to read into it another step in the internal journey I was making last weekend from here, via here, to here - meaning there's been a slight hardening of the heart again - but I'm going to leave that up to you.

Here's my offering, with mixed feelings about its successfulness, but it nevertheless comes with love to all the new crafty friends I've made on this extraordinary journey so far...

It's another piece inspired by music - seems to be a habit recently - the lovely, but melancholy I'll Sail This Ship Alone by The Beautiful South.  The title forms the sentiment.

The background is blended Distress Inks in Stormy Sky, Broken China and Chipped Sapphire, sprinkled with drops of water off my fingertips - TH's Spritz and Flick technique - to get the teardrop splatters.









There's some stencilling (using the Tando sequins mask) and stamping using the Kaisercraft music manuscript and text from the PaperArtsy sewing receipt.










And the gorgeous architectural cornicing is from one of the recent Stampers Anonymous Classics releases.

The two focal images are, of course, by the extraordinary Lynne Perella at PaperArtsy.  They're both stamped in Archival Ink; "the Captain", as I think of her, in Cobalt, and the Ship Lady in Black.  


The Captain is stamped on her own inky background, in slightly stormier colours, and the edges were given some dimension and shabbiness using the Tim Holtz Paper Distresser.

And the glorious Ship Lady has had some highlighting using the Picket Fence Distress Marker.

I wanted to whiten her face, but that lost me some definition in her features, so I redrew them using the fine end of the Black Soot Distress Marker.

The sails and her lacy upper half also got some attention.  

I love this stamp - a skirt made out of text, how gorgeous is that?!  But there's also something very strange and unknowable about her, and I think she, as much as anything else, was the inspiration behind that very firmly independent sentiment.

I definitely have the sense that it's her doing the "talking"...

(There's also a sense of the mask being firmly back in place with that white-lead facepaint look... If you've seen the wonderful film Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I, you'll probably remember the amazing final sequence where she turns her back on love and decides to commit herself to her kingdom (queendom?) - all to music from Mozart's Requiem. That's somewhere in my head here...)



So that's where I've ended up on World Card Making Day... I did in the end enjoy making this, but with a distinct bitter-sweetness about the enjoyment.  I'm certainly looking forward to coming visiting to see what everyone else has been up to. And looking forward to a return of the upbeat Mojo soon - perhaps I need to listen to some cheerful music...  
Happy Crafting all, and see you soon.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.
Seneca

It is not the ship so much as the skilful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.
George William Curtis

And my favourite sailing quote bears repeating (though it's been associated with this stamp before):
I am not afraid of storms, for I have learned how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott

I'm offering this up for PaperArtsy's World Card Making Day quickie competition - one day only spectacular!
And for Crafty Boots who are also having a Mini-Challenge to celebrate today

Milling around

Hello all - Friday at last, and time for a new challenge over at Fussy and Fancy... the task for this fortnight is to make an Easel Card, but other than that it's entirely up to you.  There's lots of inspiration from my fellow Design Team members, and here's my contribution.

I'm loving autumnal crafting - though I've yet to be tempted down the Halloween path... I'm still obsessed with trees and leaves, and particularly with my new die, the Tim Holtz Decorative Strip Die called Autumn Gatherings.

I used it on this tag in pretty much the formation suggested on the packaging, but for this card I've broken it apart a bit, scattering leaves and twigs across the whole card.

And, as regular followers will spot, I've cut it out of my much loved bread wrappers!

Making the easel card was more straightforward than I'd feared.  I found this very clear tutorial at Crafty Devils Paper Craft just by doing a Google search.

A few simple folds and you're done - and I found it made sense not to stick the main square onto the base until most of the work was done... it just made it easier to get the layout arranged.

You can do all sorts of fancy stuff with the shape of your easel card - as you'll see over at Fussy and Fancy, but I thought I'd stick to the basics on my first one.

I have made this card which I loved, and which worked as an easel card - but only by chance really, not with this properly structured architecture.

I used some textured white cardstock to create the card base and main background.  It's got a nice weave in it which shows through the blended DIs of Tea Dye, Antique Linen, Frayed Burlap and Vintage Photo.



I tried to make sure that all the surfaces were inked which would end up visible, even from the back.




And I used the card leftover from cutting the Autumn Gatherings die last time around as a template to do the stencilling, inking the leaves mainly in Walnut Stain DI.







I love these stamps from Artistic Outpost - the Old Grist Mill set - they're just so full of vintage atmosphere, and seem so perfect to me with the autumn colour palette.

And the water mill, using the power of nature to create energy, is coming right back into fashion of course, with alternative energy - tapping into the power of the natural world.

For the main image I blended Sepia and Coffee Archival inks onto the stamp and stamped onto white cardstock.  For the echo, it was Coffee and Black Archivals stamped onto kraft glassine paper.




You have to heat the kraft glassine after stamping, or the ink will remain smudgeable, and the heating also has the amazing effect of making the image sit somehow 'inside' the paper rather than on the surface.




The two mills are layered in a fan with a paper doily which has some more Walnut Stain on the edges to weather it, and a piece of Core-dinations embossed with the TH woodgrain embossing folder.  And more bread wrapper autumnal bits and pieces are scattered around, adding autumnal leaf mulch texture.

I also added a third stamp from the set - the lovely little olde-time newspaper advert.

I adhered one of the Autumn Gatherings leaves to a tiny tab (cut with the TH Tiny Tabs and Tags die) which I'd used a few weeks back to practise one of the Andy Skinner Timeworn Techniques on - the textured rust.

And you can see one of the Autumn Gatherings acorns here too, as well as the pale mesh ribbon from The Funkie Junkie Boutique which I chose as decoration.




Simple garden twine tied in a bow is the final touch on the main panel.

When you create the base for the easel card, it's really good to give it some dimension so that there's some height.  This will mean there's something to prop the main image against, to hold the easel in place, as it were.





I've built my base embellishment on some corrugated cardboard, also from the FJB, gesso'd and inked very roughly for a rustic look.  

Then there's another strip of the embossed Core-dinations, sanded of course to reveal the contrasting core, and the wonderful sentiment from the same AO set.  

More bread wrapper leaves and twigs scattered around complete the look.

I hope you'll be inspired to join in this fortnight over at Fussy and Fancy - we'd love to see your easel cards - and it's definitely worth hopping by to see what the rest of the DT have come up with.

Nature will bear the closest inspection.  She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore.  There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
Albert Schweitzer

I'm entering this in the following:
Simon Says Stamp and Show are offering us some Leaf-spiration this week
The Artistic Outpost October Referral challenge has begun - Anything Goes using an AO stamp
There's a new Vintage Stamping Challenge blog, sponsored by Flonzcraft, who are starting out with an Anything Goes
Papertake Weekly are celebrating their 5th Birthday with an Anything Goes
The Artistic Stamper challenge for October is the Natural World
Crafty Creations would like to see projects with the Colours of Fall
And with the ribbon and corrugated cardboard bought from the Funkie Junkie Boutique, I'd like to add it to the Sunday Share over at Frilly and Funkie

A Thoroughly Modern Wedding

Hello all, I've had a busy few days away from my craft desk, and I've been missing you all - though doing my best to get round and do some visiting.  I didn't even manage to share my workdesk for yesterday's WOYWW... bah!  So I decided I'd do a very quick share today of a card I made over the summer for the wedding of some very smart, stylish, (ultra-modern stylish) friends of ours in the Czech Republic.  As you'll see, it's not in my usual mode - but was tailored to their tastes.  Good fun to play in a different way...

I used papers from the Documented collection by Simple Stories, combined with the 6x6 BoBunny Timepiece collection.

You'll see that the brilliant Tim Holtz Paper Distresser was deployed on the edges of the layered papers.

I love the text paper with all its mini-sentiments.










I blended some Vintage Photo DI onto the outside edge of the final background layer, front and back.

The married couple themselves and the heart are stickers from the Documented set, as is the bird on the inside of the card.

I layered and matted some more papers on the inside, to continue the themes... but with a switch from stripes to spots!

I even handmade an envelope from some grid-patterned kraft card from Papermania, whitewashed with Picket Fence Distress Stain, and sealed with another Documented sticker.  Since the card was about 7x7inches, no normal envelopes would fit!




By the way, these friends of ours - the wedding couple - run the most amazing, stylish, boutique accommodation in a converted farmhouse in South Bohemia, in the Czech Republic - if you're looking for a peaceful, beautiful holiday destination, you couldn't do better!

Thanks for dropping in at Words and Pictures today.  I'll be back tomorrow with my Design Team project for the new Fussy and Fancy challenge - so I'll hope to see you then.  Happy crafting in the meantime!

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
Mignon McLaughlin

I'm entering this in the Try It On Tuesday challenge Lots of Layers
And Papertake Weekly are celebrating their 5th Birthday with an Anything Goes with the option of celebration as a theme - celebrating a wedding here rather than a birthday, but definitely a celebration
Lisa Somerville's Blogger Challenge this week is Falling For You - looking for love themed cards in Autumn colours - so I'd like to share it there too... Quite apart from anything else, I love the wordplay of the title!