Calico Cuckoo?!

Hello all!  January is vanishing fast, and there's still the tax return to do.  (What can I say?  I've always been a deadliner!)  So what better than some crafty procrastination?!  I'm over at the Calico Craft Parts blog today with another offering for you.

I'm not sure the Tim Holtz bird is really a cuckoo (though he's close enough in shape), but I'm never one to let accuracy get in the way of a good bit of alliteration.

If you'd like to see the rusty home I've created for him in more detail, do hop across and check it out.   I've managed to capture some sunshine too!  For now, I'll love you and leave you, and hope to see you soon.

And hear the pleasant cuckoo loud and long,
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song.
Henry William Davies

Hidden in a book

Hello all!  When I did my PaperArtsy round-up before Christmas, I promised you more details of the project I shared there.  It was my task to select creations by the Designers and by entrants from three of the PaperArtsy challenge themes from last year - Niches, Sprays and Words.  Then, time permitting, I had the option of creating a new piece which combined all three themes.  Well, there's nothing like a challenge to get my mind buzzing, and this is where it took me.

These days I reach for old books more and more often, both for altering and for journalling.  Book pages have always played a leading role here at Words and Pictures, and I've dabbled in altering books right from the very beginning - once I'd broken through the initial resistance to desecrating such precious objects.  I've come to the conclusion that the unwanted ones and those which are falling apart deserve a new life.







I was inspired by Helen Chilton's use of a die to cut the niche in her book - I'd hacked mine out with a knife when I created my own first book niche, Her Light Extends, but it turned out not to be that simple.  My book wouldn't fit through my BigShot!

I'd planned to use an Oval Mover and Shaper, but there was no way to get the thick steel-rule die and the book into a sandwich to go through. 









I turned instead to a tag-shaped Thinlit, and eventually managed to get some pages cut by doubling the book back on its own spine so it was narrow enough to go through, placing one cutting pad a number of pages down and one over the top.

When I'd cut about 10 pages I gave up and finished the rest with my knife!  The indentations left by the thin die on the opposite page also dictated some of what followed...

I started with a wash of gesso, and stamped the lovely birds and grasses along the bottom of the pages.  I also used French Roast Fresco paint to deepen the niche with shadows as well as to distress the edges, drawing the eye inwards.

I then used Tumbled Glass and Stormy Sky Distress Sprays, spritzing and wiping back, and then spattering ink droplets by unscrewing the lid and tapping the hose with my finger.













Since the coat of gesso is light and the ink is translucent, there's always a hint of the book page words to be found underneath.













I chose a Hot Picks image to go inside my niche.  (Weirdly, though the Hot Picks are my joint favourite PaperArtsy stamps - alongside Lynne Perrella - there hadn't been a single one amongst my chosen projects in the round-up... so I needed one!)

He's stamped on tissue paper and glued into position.













I love how the Hot Picks tie in and echo one another.












How great is it that one of my favourite PaperArtsy stamps of all time - the birds and grasses, stamped along the foot of the pages here...














... are also there on the top of the Phrenology head from some of the latest releases?!














Despite all the words on the pages, I wanted some extra words to fulfil that part of the Niche/Sprays/Words brief.  One of the trimmed out pages forms the word tag.  I used it to mop up some ink and paint and then stamped and embossed the Tim Holtz sentiment.













The cogs and gears from some of the summer Hot Picks releases offer great corner and framing detailing.












And since they're there in stamped form, what more excuse could I need for adding them in metal embellishment form too?















The cover of the book was red until I gave it a few coats of soft brown paint...

... and there are some more of the grasses and birds appear along the bottom edges - stamped and clear-embossed.













I spritzed some Ground Espresso Distress Spray onto it which gave me a mottled distressed look which I really like... 

... and I added some white spatter to continue the effect.















One of my favourite things about using old books is that you benefit from their character.  This embossed figure in the cover is a beautiful detail...















... though that doesn't stop me adding a bit more character and antiquity for good measure!









So, a few more close-ups for you, and another project collected in to my virtual scrapbook here at Words and Pictures.

Over the next few months there will be quite a few "encores" going on, as I'll be away from my craft desk for quite lengthy periods of time.  I hope you'll bear with me as I gather projects shared elsewhere for Design Team or Guest Designer duties and bring them under this one roof.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll see you again soon.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a store house, a party, a company by the way, a counsellor, a multitude of counsellors.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books are a uniquely portable magic.
Stephen King

Stay curious... come what may!

Hello all!  Such dull, grim, grey weather - so disheartening... but a good reason to stay indoors at the craft table, eh?  There's a lot going on at the moment, so I'm grateful for any time spent with my inks and paints and stamps, and I had a lovely time with the art journalling I'm sharing over at the Country View Crafts Projects blog today.

I hope this sneak peek will make you curious enough to hop over and check it out... and whatever you're up to this week I hope it goes well for you.  See you soon!

The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existence.  One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality.  It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
Albert Einstein (almost certainly my "most-often-quoted"!)

If you don't mind hopping to see the full reveal, I would love to share my little birds in their wintry setting with the lovely Chrissie's Winter Wonderland theme at Art Journal Journey

Family Trees

Hello all!  Thank you so much for the feedback on my first Wanderlust pages - creating them gave me great joy, so it's lovely that you enjoyed them too.

After the bothersome news this morning, I've a bit of fun for you now - a tag playing with a couple of Stampotique stamps I treated myself to.  I know the quirky Daniel Torrente images are not my usual thing, but I've had a soft spot for them since I discovered them.  I do have Moth Fab, who has put in an occasional appearance here, and a couple of others and another resolution this year is to make sure I ink them up more often.

These two snowmen delight me... and I wanted to give them a nice snowy forest landscape to live in.





Family, eh... you can't choose your family, they say.  And some of them you really can't take anywhere...  (Don't get me wrong - I love my own family dearly.)

With the look on the little snowman's face...











... I couldn't resist this Small Talk sticker.

The whole thing started with me smooshing the tag into a combination of Distress Stains and Paints on the craft mat - but deliberately keeping the blues and whites separate to create sky and snowy ground.










The snowmen are painted with the same mixture of Distress Stains and Paints, with some detailing added with Distress Markers, and I mounted the one in the foreground on padded tape to add to the illusion of depth.












In the sky I stamped my favourite snowflake stars with Picket Fence Distress Paint, and I added shading to the landscape, creating billowing snow drifts, and of course there are lots of lovely trees for the forest.










They're looking for projects including trees at the Stampotique Designers Challenge, and it's so long since I've managed to play along, so I'm entering this tag in the Trees theme at the Stampotique Designers Challenge.

That's it for today.  I hope you enjoyed this bit of light relief, and I'll see you soon.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.
Jim Butcher

With the bluesy colours and the little snowman feeling so blue, I'd like to enter this in Oh So Blue at Stamps and Stencils too

Google Blogger Bother

Hello all!  News today of a spot of bother, I'm afraid.  The grand overlords at Google are at it again, and this time with a move which is likely to cost all of us on Blogger some of our followers.  They've decided to allow only followers who signed up with Google accounts to continue to be registered with Google Friend Connect, so anyone who signed up with anything else will disappear from our Follower gadgets and numbers will go down.

Apparently it's in order to make life better for everybody...  Don't you hate it when they "improve" things?!  "New and improved" is my least favourite proclamation to see on a much-loved product.

Here's the announcement they made on Blogger Buzz:

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs. 

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

 Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean you have to have Google+, but just regular Google accounts, as I have from being a Blogger blogger.  I have not signed up and will not sign up to Google+ while it requires me to be identified by my full name wherever I go (a similar problem to the one I have with Facebook, though there are all sorts of other reasons why I won't become a Facebooker).  While I'm here, apologies to those of you whose blogs now require the Google+ sign-up to comment - I am admiring your work, but I can't comment any longer as I'm not on Google+.

There's not much we can do, other than alert everyone that if you signed up to follow Blogger blogs without a Google account, you'll need to get a Google account and re-follow with that if you would like to stay connected (and/or sign up to Follow By Email so that you get notifications in your probably already overloaded inbox).

It's hard to know what the impact will be.  Many of us are Blogger bloggers, and so we have Google accounts anyway, so maybe it won't make much difference - we'll see.  I know lots of people are already switching much of their crafty action to Facebook in any case.  I wish you well there but, as I mentioned, I shan't be turning up to join in.  I'll still be here, whatever happens, even if I'm here all alone!

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Victor Frankl

Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.
Robert C Gallagher

Setting out with Wanderlust

So after all the retrospectives, we're moving forwards into 2016, and the journey has begun... Wanderlust 2016 is under way.  If by some chance you don't know what I'm talking about, you can see all the details here, and it's not too late to join in.  If you're tempted, just click here.

I'm going to try to keep up as much as possible in these early weeks as, come mid-Feb, I'm off on my work travels again (more of that another time), and will be away from my craft desk and all my supplies.  So I've dived straight in to my Wanderlust book with the first prompt from Kasia.

The idea is to leap in with your own journalling, but there was a lovely video tracing Kasia's own journey, and I was inspired to try some of the ideas and techniques she used in her own page.  After all, the Wanderlust journey is all about exploring and expanding your creativity.  (I won't be sharing the "how" of it here - that's for Kasia's class to share.)

So there are many things about this page that are very familiar to me...

















... but there are also some new things in the mix.












And that's the way I like it!  One of the greatest joys I find in this visual arts exploration is the learning curve.












So the word that came to me was Seeking.














There's still so much to discover, so many things to try out...














... and I'm still finding out what really suits me, what really makes me happy.











(One thing that makes me happy are these gorgeous Calico Craft Parts flourishes, and another is that I've finally started working in my Finnabair Vintage Vanity journal!)












There's a seeking going on in a wider sense too, as I continue to shape my freelance career and work out what fits where...













... what my priorities are, and how I might go about fulfilling some more of my dreams.











It's strange and slightly foolish how scary it feels embedding my own handwriting into a page.














But, as Kasia says, it's not really meant for anyone else to read.  It's my own thoughts in that moment.









That's a really freeing thought for someone who is usually creating for DT duties where the end result has, by definition, a function and an intended audience.












Obviously I always hope for a sense of flow and release, otherwise what would be the point of the time spent at the craft table?

Nonetheless, it was lovely to be officially freed of any "oughts" or "shoulds", and to allow the work to go in search of itself, rather than pushing for a deadline.








And there's nothing I enjoy more than that sense that you're not really in charge of what's going on... you're channelling something from somewhere else.

It was great to spend some time at the table just allowing paint and ink to flow on to the table - using Kasia's guidelines, but letting my own preferences shape the process too.   I'm so grateful for the time and the inspiration to play.

You can still come and join the Wanderlust 2016 journey.  (I'm on the course, but also an affiliate to help promote it.)  There's only been one class so far and none of the videos are going anywhere, so you can catch up whenever you have time.  For just £99 (around $150 or €137) you get a whole year's worth of downloadable video workshops (more than 50 of them) with some amazing teachers, technical classes and information, as well as sponsor discounts, giveaways and challenges.  

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.  Be bold.  When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore.  Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan Alda

Starting the new course, trying new things, starting work in a new journal - so I'd like to enter this in Something New at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
And with all that newness, especially my new art journal, I'd also like to share this at Anything But Cute where the fabulous Redanne is inviting us to Ring out the Old, Bring in the New

A Generous Baker's Dozen for 2015

Hello all!  So I'm finally catching up with the right year...

As I was putting together my top Calico picks (check them out here), I realised I hadn't done my usual selection of projects here at Words and Pictures yet.  And it turned out I'd forgotten 2014 altogether, so I did a retrospective retrospective!  With 2014 finally honoured, I started scrolling through my 2015 creations and trying to decide on a Baker's Dozen.  As usual, the whittling has been tricky, but here are some of my favourites from last year.

I haven't included any of my Tim tags though I love them all (and you can see them all here anyway!) or any of the things made at workshops (though they are definite favourites - you can see them here) and I haven't included any creations which appeared on other blogs as part of Design Team or Guest Designer duties.  I'm away from my craft desk quite a lot over the next few months, so I'll be running catch-up posts collecting those projects together here at Words and Pictures, which means you'll get to see them again anyway (and I'll leave it to you to judge which ones might have made the shortlist!).

Winter Recovery

The Depths of Winter

Love is in the Air

Cherish Possibility

Harlequinade and Harlequin's Other Half

Simplify Life

Dollshouse Book

Dawn Chorus

Simply because... 

What makes a house a home?

A Beautiful Adventure

Never doubt your instinct

Remember, Remember...

A Blustery Day

What do you wish for?

If you were keeping count you'll notice my baker is even more generous with his dozen than the phrase already allows for.  But I think reflection is a really important part of the creative process, and looking back can be a real inspiration for taking the next steps forward, so I'd whittled as far as I wanted to.  I hope you've enjoyed this collection, and I hope I've included some of your favourites too.  Now onwards into 2016!

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
Henry Drummond