Courageous Women

Hello all - it's quiet around here again at the moment... lots going on behind the scenes, but very little spare time for pleasures like non-deadline-crafting and blogging.  I realise I haven't even fully caught up with the samples from the release of my three stamp sets from the beginning of this year... and PaperArtsy have done a whole new round of releases since then!  So here's a quick how-to of my pair of courageous Lynne Perrella women, coupled with quotes from PaperArtsy EAB08 Strength & Courage.

It also gives us a shot at a little touch of colour after all the neutrals I've been dallying with lately.  The palette was chosen by Leandra for the release, and it includes pink - most unusual for me.





These couldn't have been done nearly as easily if it hadn't been for the Tim Holtz stamping platform.  The backgrounds were done very simply with some PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze and soft sponging of the paler paint colours (two coats of sponging for a really soft subtle crackle).

I then used the magnetic buttons to hold the postcard in place while I stamped the first of the women.  (You can see one in the corner here.)  Crucially, I then left both the postcard and the stamp in place while I did some delightfully carefree painting to colour in the image.  No need to stay completely within the lines of this intricately detailed image...










... because once the paint was dry, I inked up the stamp again and re-stamped over the top.  The stamping platform means the stamp goes down in the exact same position and, voilà, beautifully detailed image lines all coloured in.











Here's the magic trick again with the second woman (maybe my all-time favourite Lynne Perrella stamp) - all blurry with paint - straight over the top of some of her features and all that detailed landscaping on her decolletage...















... and re-stamped to perfection.  I always enjoy painting these images, and find it very soothing when I have lots of time.  But if you're in more of a hurry this is a perfect solution to getting a lovely finish without being quite so painstaking about your colouring.














All the stamping is done in Watering Can Archival, and when I got to the quotes I also clear-embossed them - a favourite way to make them pop just a little more.












I think this Anne Frank quote may be one of my favourites, so it gets to go with my favourite woman!  You also get that lovely touch of light from the gloss of the embossing.













There are little scraps of tissue tape for added interest.  Oh, and the postcard and postmark stamps are from a couple of older Sara Naumann sets (ESN05 and ESN17)...













... and I layered my postcards onto some white card so that they would pop a little more up on the PaperArtsy sample boards at shows.














Thanks so much for stopping by today for this little refresher, and I'll be back with a new creation pretty soon.  Happy Sunday all!







Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of.
Bethany Hamilton (who, aged 13, lost her arm to a shark attack while surfing, but returned to the sport, later competing as a professional surfer)

Naturally Neutral

Hello all and welcome to another neutral day here at Words and Pictures.  I'm still not in the mood for colour, but luckily these vintage neutrals are perfect to take on A Vintage Journey with me.  The new challenge starting there today is hosted by the wonderful Jennie, and she would like us to get Back to Nature.  We want you to celebrate natural elements in your project.  Think real nature in terms of twigs, dried flowers, shells or pebbles, or perhaps stamps and stencils depicting these wonderful elements.

You can find all the challenge details as well as some glorious inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides if you hop over to A Vintage Journey, but first let's get Back to Nature right here.  Well, I don't know about "back" to nature - I never seem to be very far away from it in my crafting these days, so here's the trio of neutral natural tags I've created.

I haven't been able to track down any photos of the first stages of these tags.  I know I started them in NYC, which means it was back in February or March.  I wanted to have a little play with the (at that time new-ish) Memorandum Paper Stash, which I bought over there.





So I glued some of my favourite old paper sections onto three tags, and gave them a swoosh of watered-down gesso.  And then they stalled...  until this time last week when I pulled them out of the pile of bits and bobs on my desk and started to play with some stamps and dried flowers on top of them.

This is not the first time I've used this combination, but it makes me just as happy now as it did when I created this Imagine Simplicity tag back in February 2016.  There's just something about these flower stems which makes my heart sing.  I guess in some ways they are like white paint spatters in 3D!










The Memorandum papers have a soft golden-pink glow to them (from the aged papers and yellowing tape in the images), like the eerie light you sometimes get at dawn... so I thought I'd like some dew drops in the mix.

I added droplets of DecoArt Liquid Glass to each tag.  Here they are immediately after application, still opaque while wet.














And here they are once they've dried... completely clear, so they reflect the colour of whatever piece of old paper they happen to be sitting on.














You can even see the white spatter and the text through them.














Other than that, I've really kept things very simple here... neutral, gentle, with maybe just a touch of melancholy...















- and an occasional whirl of chaos through the middle.









Thinking about it, that's exactly the mood I've been in.  These tags come straight from my subconscious, I think.

If you've read my recent posts, you'll know it's been that way since I got back from my latest work trip.  I expect there'll be some colour again soon, but I'm not going to push it if it's not feeling right.

There's a Quote Chip on each tag - I was slightly limited by size and by wanting the same font on each of them.














But they're all good words.  Must have words!

(For a fascinating glimpse at a bird which uses its wings better than most - with a miniature version of a nest and all - check out Cestina's Dollshouses today.)

I mounted them over a mess of cotton thread - the tangled randomness feels right at the moment.














The metal Typed Token on each tag has had a touch of Mushroom alcohol ink.














It gives a lovely distressed effect.  And you can see the embossed stamping of the meadow grasses here really clearly too.  











The flowers are stamped in Archival and embossed with Wow Bark embossing powder - a really dark brown.

These really are three of my all-time favourite stamps.  Two of them are Tim Holtz images, and one is by Penny Black.















And I love how the dried flower stems echo them three-dimensionally.















You'll have spotted one of the Entomology insects crawling around the tags - another little touch of nature.















I roughened the edges of the tags with the blade of my scissors, and doodled some border frames.  And there's some cream coloured woolly twine to top them off.










I hope you'll be inspired to get Back to Nature and join us on A Vintage Journey this month.  As always, there's more delightful inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides if you hop over to take a look.

Thank you, as ever, for your company on this crafting journey.  There are big changes in the offing over the next year or so.  If you read the tagline for this blog, you'll see some of the plans I had six years ago when I started Words and Pictures... well, they're finally turning into more solid reality.  There's a long way to go yet, but there are even bigger crafting adventures calling to me.  I hope you'll continue to come along for the ride!

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Albert Einstein

I'd like to share this trio at Stamps and Stencils where they're having a sort of anything goes theme called It's been a while...  If you read their challenge details, you'll see these tags fit right in - with that long gap needed for my creative spirit to wander before it returned to let these tags take shape
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they are celebrating Stamptember by inviting us to Stamp It On
While we're at it, let's celebrate Stamptember at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge too - where the invitation is to Stamp On It - do you see what they did there?!
And I'm being a little cheeky but, with all that tangled cotton thread, I'm going to join in with the Haberdashery theme at Frilly and Funkie, just because I do like to play there!
I'd also like to play along at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog where, as always, Anything Mixed Media Goes - this should fulfil their requirement for multiple mediums with gesso, ink, embossing powders, alcohol ink, pen work, and Liquid Glass
I'd also like to join in with the party at Simply Neutrals #48

A Gentle Journal

Hello all!  After all the excitement of the Get Wrapped Bloghop - thank you to visitors old and new for all your lovely comments on my Wrapped Meadow Journal - I'm back with another exciting post...  Believe it or not, Mini Album Makers is celebrating its first birthday.  Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!  To celebrate, we are also hosting a bloghop this month, and there's a prize on offer for hopping as well as for participating in this month's challenge.

If you're already hopping, you should have arrived here from the amazing Maria, and I'll point you in the right direction for your next hop at the end of the post.  If you've arrived here mid-hop, you can find the full itinerary at the foot of the post.

As inspiration for you for this month's Mini Album Makers challenge, I've got another version of Eileen Hull's wonderful Wrapped Journal.  What with all this excitement, I was in need of something calm and gentle, so here's the gentle journal I've created for you this month.

I think maybe it's the journal belonging to the woman from yesterday's Thy Sweet Love Remembered tag - another gentle, calming creation.  It's not only the blog-hopping that's left me in need of peace and calm, but also the show I've just been working on.



I'm happy to say that Tamburlaine, which has just opened in the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, has had great reviews (both local and national) but it's nobody's idea of a relaxing night out - an "epic, entrancing bloodbath", according to the Guardian!  Not to mention that tech/dress/previews/press is always a really intense period however light-hearted the show.

(You can see lots of production photos here, if you're interested in what's been keeping me away from you all for so long.)








I arrived back home needing to do some urgent making and blogpost-writing to meet various deadlines, and it wasn't even a conscious decision to reach for the gentle neutrals... it just happened! 











In very quick succession I made this journal and then yesterday's Tag Friday tag, and felt very calm and relaxed, despite being up against those deadlines.

This is really the simplest of makes, and I'm afraid I don't really have any process photos, since it wasn't a difficult process - just cutting and sticking.  If you have Eileen's die or some die-cuts of it (thank you Anne - though I'll confess I've since given in and bought the die!), then you're not far from a special handmade book.











I cut pieces of Tim Holtz paper (I suspect it's from the French Industrial Paper Stash) to cut the main panels of the matboard die-cut, the two front panels and the back... 

















... and used strips of Design Tape on the spines.















This allows the scored spine to stay nice and bendy for when you are wrapping the journal.
















Inside there is some more of the Tim Holtz paper lining the interior...















... and then some of my Canson Mixed Media paper signatures.












Usually I'd have been inking all the edges of everything in sight, but I really just wanted to stay light and airy and bright, so instead I just did some simple sanding and added a couple of swipes of white paint.













Again, the signatures are held in place with some fine twine, and I've left them unstitched so that I can remove pages to work on if I want to.














The holes are cut by the die, of course, but having added the layers of Design Tape I used a hole punch to cut through again in the right places. 














I really kept the decoration to a minimum - I was in a minimalist mood.  So there are some of the lovely Tim Holtz Wildflower Thinlits, but just in plain off-white card, no altering.

And I used a Calico Craft Parts Word Elements piece to create both my focal point and fastening for the journal.

I just rubbed some white paint onto the laser-cut MDF, keeping quite a rough, weathered look...












... and then threaded some crinkle ribbon through it, checking I had the right lengths to tie the bow where I wanted it...














... before gluing down the Word Element, with the ribbon stuck down behind it.  That's the only place where the ribbon is glued - I've left it free-flowing otherwise.

It's plenty to hold everything in place when the ribbon is wrapped and tied.

The ribbon has been distressed with some Pumice Stone Distress Ink and a bit of white paint leftover after all the splattering. 

And that really is it - simple, quick, but oh, it makes me happy!

I hope you enjoy hopping on round to see the rest of our Mini Album Makers birthday creations.  Your next port of call is with the wonderful Inna.










Be sure to leave a comment on every post, and you will be put in the draw for a $25 gift certificate generously donated by Blitsy.  This will go to one lucky reader whose name will be chosen at random from all of the comments on the Design Team blogs.

In addition we have our usual prize for participating in the challenge itself.  Our sponsor this month is Lindy's Stamp Gang, so there's a $25 gift voucher up for grabs for their fabulous products.




I hope, as well as hopping, you're inspired to come and join in with us at Mini Album Makers this month.  As always, any handmade books/albums/journals are welcome, in any style, and remember to add our badge to your post.   Thank you so much for all your amazing contributions over the last year.  We are always completely blown away by the incredible entries each month, and here's to many more! 

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.
From Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace

Mini Album Makers Blogaversary Bloghop

Nancy Wethington - Art-From-The-Heart

Jennie Atkinson - Live the Dream

Anne Redfern - RedAnne

Maria Lillepruun - Magic Attic Design

Alison Bomber - Words and Pictures... you're already here! 

Inna Bronnikova

Autumn Clark - SewPaperPaint