Sharpie Marker Blog Candy - won by Virginia

Hi Virgina, congratulations on winning the sharpies

Anne x

More Journalling


I haven't done much stamping for a while. I've been baking, doing cross stitch and generally lazing about.


Here is one stamped card. The scene is made up of several diffent stamps stamped on water colour paper. I watercoloured using a water brush and markers.



I'm trying to get away from all my journal pages all looking very similar. This is a bit messy and reminds me of tree roots.
This is also done by dripping ink. I like the right hand page so much I think I'm going to leave it without words.
I seem to be drawn to pictures of chairs.

My latest page.

I hope you are enjoying journalling, if not give it a go it's great fun and a good way of getting rid of things that are doing your head in.

Have a lovely week. Anne x

More Journaling and a special thanks to Craft Stamper Magazine

I have not been online much the last few weeks. I had a treat in the post yesterday - lots of lovely sharpie markers from Katy's Craft Stamper blog. Big ones, tiny ones and all different colours. They will make a nice addition to my copics and pro markers. I will share what I make with them.

Here is a finished page that I started at Dyan's workshop. I love the white souffle pen, shame it doesn't show well on screen.

I haven't felt like journaling for a while. I kind of got all my frustrations out and then was lost for something to say. I have a new big journal and the pages seem scary! I might spoil them! So I've gone back to small pages for a while.

Today I started a fab journaling class with Julie Pritchard. It's great as it inspires me but as I'm not copying, my pages feel more like me.

This is in my lovely little moleskin. I'll let you know what they look like when they are dry and written on.

Have a fab week. Love Anne x

More Jounaling

Here are a few more journal pages.

I'm in love..........with Journaling!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to go to Heart From the Heart for one of Dyan's fab weekend workshops. This time it was art journaling - I loved it. It was an honour to share a weekend with so many amazing women. We laughed, we cried, we ate and we made a mess ;-) I would recommend it to any one. It was so popular that while we were there most of us booked into the next weekend.

Here are a few of the pages I've made so far. I am much happier than I come across on some of these pages and have now run out of rants so it works - don't get angry get journaling!

Scroll down Dyan's blog and you will see links to some of the other ladies blogs.

My pages are made with old newspaper which gives a lovely textured result. This is my work in progress rant page. Have a rant, cover it with gesso and sugar coat the result.
This is the first page I made. I was given the word rage and the colour red.

I love my white souffle pen.

I made this at a previous workshop and it reminds me not to take myself seriously.

My wireless has died and I have had to move the pc onto a small table near the phone. It means I can watch TV but it's killing my back! At least it stops me rambling on my blog. I've made a few more backgrounds so I just need to find a few images and get going again.

Cheats Leftovers!

This is a landscape version of my leftovers card. This time I cheated as I cut up full sheets of PaperArtsy paper! The trees are from Blonde Moments. Normally I would add some bling, but the colours make it a nice card for a man - possibly my hubby. He doesn't read my blog so he won't know!

Left Overs!

Over the years I have trained myself not to keep every scrap of paper -afte all I have enough full size sheets to insulate a house - LOL! But when I have a few papers that go together the old habit comes back. Here I have cut the pieces 1 7/8" square and inked the edges with marmalade distress inks, pulling the colour onto the paper to give a nice border.

Whatever happened to my counter? It was merrily counting a few hundred hits and then it jumped to 7000 and then 12000. Can't flatter myself that it's real and can't remember my password to reset it either!

Christmas Cards

Here are a couple of quick Christmas cards. Well they would be quick if I didn't faff about so much ;-) hahaha!

The first uses Blonde Moments trees and word stamps, a lovely pearlescent embossed green card and my new Waltzing Mouse frame. The frame works with nestabilities, but here I just cut it out, mounted it onto pearlescent paper and cut that out a touch bigger.

The Tilda card is my attempt to add a bit more to a card - usually I will colour in and stick the image to a smaller square card with no embelishments. It's not easy to see on here but I stamped the red card with little stars.


Now I must stop playing Cafe World on FaceBook and go and do some real cooking...

Old Friends

At Port Sunny I found a bargain old PSX stamp. Last night I inked it up and coloured it to match some Stampin' Up paper. This morning whilst checking a few blogs I came across this fab layout from Taylor.

Here are my two cards. They work so well with this layout that I think it will become one of my favorites.

I should really be making skinny book pages for a swap!

Friends
Thanks to the lovely Neet for my friends award and now I have the difficult task of choosing just six blogs.

I would like to nominate the following lovely people. Why not spend some time browsing their lovely art work for ideas and inspiration.
Anne
Cath
Julie
Janette
Jenny
Sylvia Anne

National Card Day

In honour of National Card Day I decided to get my finger out and use up some of the lovely stuff covering my desk.

Here are a couple of simple cards cased from an idea on the Hero Arts web site. Great for using up those odds and ends of paper. On the yellow card the black and yellow card is really pearl white coloured with copics and the pink background card below is done in the same way. They both use my new Tim Holtz stamp and the papers are edged with black ink to tie them all together. I've also seen this idea with stamped backgrounds and a big flower and ribbon across the middle. Good way of using up odd coloured flowers.

Last here is a photo of my son with his new puppy Rosie. he's just back from honeymoon so we all went out for an Indian meal and now I am too stuffed to move!

Blog Candy

Check out Anne's blog candy and lovely cards. If you're not lucky this time why not treat yourself to a set of stamps as it's for such a good cause. Details on Anne's blog.

Mike and Marie's wedding

Here is a photo of my lovely son and gorgeous daughter-in-law just after they tied the knot on 9/9/09. Sorry the photo is a bit grainy. I'm looking forward to getting the professional photos to scrapbook. 800+ photos will keep me going for life ;-)

After taking the photo I looked to my left to see two little ones having fun. It's one of my favorite photos of the day. The children loved taking photos. It was great to see lots of relatives who live far away and everyone had a lovely lovely day.

Scalloped Ovals




Haven't made any cards for ages, but feel I should get cracking with Christmas cards. One a week between now and Christmas will not be enough! This card is for my son, who like most men loves monkeys. It has a little bit of flower soft on the hat and is coloured with copics.

The scallop on the monkey card is made using a silhouette die cutting machine, whilst the oval below was cut with my new nestabilities. Both cards are approx 6" by 4". I prefer the nestabilities scallops but I am surprised how small they are. Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to use the tiny dies.

This card is a random selection of things, that tie together quite well with the colours. The background is glitter card.

Workshop

During my trip round the North East I managed to fit in a trip to Graphicus - so many temptations, but I was quite good and only bought one small stamp set of sayings and a few lovely things. Shame no workshops that week.

A the end of the week I went to a workshop at Art from the Heart in Harrogate. We made a little book from a paperchase diary. We glued, gessoed, daubed and stamped. Was great fun and best of all I rediscovered the joy of doodling. Here are a couple of pages, they are a bit rough but I like that as they don't look too nice to use.




I have been playing around with similar techniques today on a tag and in a small book. I also used masks and red ink to give an extra dimension - looks orange on photo.



As you can see I was a bit heavy handed with the black ink, but that doesn't matter I can use it as a line for writing along.

Messy is best for writing over, otherwise I am afraid of spoiling the page!

This a small card I made with the bottom bit of the tag.

Best wishes, Anne

Quick Catch Up

I've been off work for 2 weeks and in theory that should have meant lots of time for crafting. But what really happened was:

• A few days tidying & cleaning house - it gets so bad when I work long hours
• A lovely week travelling round North East of England
• A fab workshop with Dyan
• Shopping for wedding clothes. I now own a dress! Just need some shoes - I've seen ones I like but will I be able to walk in 4" heels?
• Had my hair done as test for wedding - below is a during photo and to be honest this looked better than final result! Why does my hair dresser want me to look like someone else at my son's wedding. I just want to look like smarter version of self. A much thiner version would be nice too - but unlikely to happen in next two weeks!
• Read a few books and am now on book three of TrueBlood series. I guess I'm an addict

Here is a photo of black cat Paws in her new bed! She is so difficult to photograph.

Back to basics challenge

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the craft goodies in my craft room and just seem to collect rather than use them. I look at some of the fab cards on blogs and feel overwhelmed. They are amazing and I couldn't make some of them even if I tried to copy them.

From time to time I like to set myself challenges and I really enjoyed this one. Use white card, one stamp and one inkpad to make 5 different cards. I used a Stampin' Up Real rose pad. I thought it would be really hard, but it got easier as I went along. Ok so none are masterpieces, but I would be happy to send them and most of all I really enjoyed making them. I've left the images big, so if you click on them you can see the backgrounds in more detail.

The card above is simply stamped and layered on a red border. The border was made by running the ink pad around the egde of the card to give a soild layer of colour. I cut my pieces to rough size and cut acurately after sticking, this way I only need to ink the edge. I guess I cheated a little bit using some ribbon.

The second card didn't go as planned. I tried to stamp the swirly parts of the stamp all over the background but it just looked odd. I used a matching marker to isolate the images but after I'd stamped a few on the right I didn't like it. So I rubbed over the images with a baby wipe to dye the card pink. This gave quite an interesting effect with the colour getting lighter across the card. The layering was coloured as above for one layer. The other layer was done by dragging the ink pad diagonally over the egde leaving an interesting effect.

This background was done with cut and dry foam to cover the paper in a random way, this was sprayed with a fine mist of water (you can just wet your hand and splash) dab the paper dry with kitchen roll to remove some of the water, leaving tiny random dots. If you don't have cut and dry try kitchen roll or baby wipes.

I used the rest of the water splash card to make this sideways card - though you could use it either way up. The torn edge is inked along the edge.


I cropped the image to make a square, The first layer is card pressed, with my fingers, against the ink pad to pick up the pattern of the linen ink pad. The third layer is just the flower heads stamped randomly. I used a marker, but if you have a cats eye or dew drop inkpad you could use the point of the pad. The final layer is just direct to paper again. Don't worry about overlapping lines it just adds an interesting effect. Fab easy technique which means you always have matching card.

I was going to stop at five cards, but this last card uses up all the bits I had left over. It was going to be an ATC but the measurements were not quite right. This uses prima flowers and a glitter brad. This is my favorite.

I hope this has inspired you to have a go at your own challenge. Please share any ideas you have.

More Loads of Love!I had a play with the bits leftover from the last card and came up with this slightly different version. The sanded stamp works really well with loads of different backgrounds and is great for men cards.

Loads of Love! Following on from the butterfly card, I made this with the rest of my sheet of kraft card. I roughed up some pretty paper with a more mustard mini ink pad; to give a more manly feel and used my new Stampin Up set Loads of Love. Bits of the truck are darkened using a grey marker. I find making cards for men quite difficult, so I must make a few more cards with this set.

I hope you are enjoying your weekend. I'm going for a Mongolian barbecue tonight, it's my son's birthday so guess who will be getting this card :-)

Kraft Butterfly I stamped this butterfly a while ago and sprayed it with a gold glimmer mist. This bled the colours whilst keeping most of the detail. I had no idea what to do with it, but it was far too nice to bin. Here I've used the card layout from Heather, I love her kraft cards but this is my first. I couldn't find a designer paper to link the Laura Ashley ribbon and butterfly, so I stamped my own.