An away day to recharge the batteries.

Its been a long time for me to have difficulty sleeping because you've got so many craft ideas racing round my brain (work issues do keep me awake, thank goodness for Iplayer, it took me 10 attempts to listen to Benedict Cumberpatch in Rumpole the other week) but last night loads of what ifs and oh would that work?

Why, well I had a fantastic day at Hope & Elvis near Worksop run by Louise on a Liz Cooksey workshop.  I spotted the workshop ages ago and Liz's use of metal and grid arrangements with mixed media elements really spoke to me.

After a horrendous journey up the M1 I made the 10.00am start - just!  Liz explained her methods and design principles and she made loads of metal elements for us to use if we didn't want to have ago ourselves. Although all materials were available Id taken a load of stuff as I'd decided I wanted to work with a neutral colour scheme.

First thing I did was nick some used teabags and dyed some cotton scraps I had and the A4 Kraft card, left them out in the courtyard to dry.

I then stated to have a play with the metal elements thinking about what I wanted to "do" Started doing some crochet with linen thread (bit of a faff, think I needed a bigger hook) and sticking. 

Once my A4 was dry I added some book pages and then layered the cotton and some silk strips on the swankiest sewing machine I ever seen, I felt like I was driving an Aston Martin, so many buttons and oh so quiet. I felt really naughty sewing on paper with such a majestic beast.

Metal and shaping and bashing, oh how I enjoyed that, all afternoon you could hear the rhythmic ringing of metal on metal out in the courtyard.

The flower on the left is one I made, I love how hitting the metal wire with a hammer of a metal block stretches the metal, flattens its and changes the colour The wire Liz supplied was malleable enough to twist and make shapes and the tendril on the flower on right was done this way.

The stems had more wire twisted round and hammered flat and were attached with some of the line thread. 

The day ended at 4.00pm and that was good because I was knackered, all that thinking and pondering had taken its toll!  I knew the piece wasn't quite finished for me as I wanted to add some pencil marks and little bit of highlight colour.  So once home got the water colour pencils out and added in the brown, purple and red. 




I did start making a more Liz inspired grid arrangement, but this one just sort of demanded to be worked on. Ive got some ideas for the grid that will form a companion to this.

It was a great day, working with all my favourite materials in a beautiful space created by Louise and talking to other like minded people creating and chatting, lovely, lovely, lovely.

Hugs
Jo
xx

Late ....AGAIN

Good morning blog world! It's another sunny if very windy day here in the county of squires and spires (we have lots of churches and lots of gentry, hardly any National Trust as the families have enough money not to have to sell them off).  My dear hubby is still in bed nursing sleeping off the effects of too much sun yesterday at the rugby.  Yes we won resoundingly well and are in the finals which will be in Cardiff in about 3 weeks time.

Right enough blithering about rugby and back to crafting.

So last week's Sunday Stamper challenge was wings and I had every intention of taking part, I'd got an idea formed but first of all I needed to complete the other project I'd got on the go based on the big piece of art I created last weekend, this time it was going to be blue.

Big blue ended up in the bin on Friday.

I just couldn't get it right it had layers and layers of paint on it and it was virtually rigid when I peeled it off the craft sheet. It was hard to "chuck" it away but the right decision.

So back to wings.  I really wanted to make a naughty angel with one of the Stampotique grungy girls and some Tim effect rusty wings.  I'd got an old frame knocking around painted white. so I thought I'd use some of my new stash purchases - fresco paints. So slapped some London night on over the white and then used some of the crackle glaze with guacamole over the top. Um not a great success no crackling, bound to be operative fault as everybody else has had roaring success (possibly not a thick enough layer).  So instead rubbed this all back. most of the green came off apart from a few streaks and it went back to the original white undercoat - I liked it and I think the fresco paints helped a lot.

Stamped Missy in black and embossed her, then inked her with some DIs (mustard seed and marmalade - yuck what an awful edible combination but great colour wise) using the old craft mat and water technique. Carefully cut her out and put her to one side. then started on the wings using Tim's techniques, didn't use grunge paper but a quite thin card which burnt at the edges a bit quite liked) and curled nicely.  Added in a bit of brick red with the antique photo DI.

Embossed the metal background and put some London night over the top and made a tag for Missy to sit on, usual thing, paint, ink stamping, distress edges, ribbon and some tiny staples.  Put it all together with hot glue gun. 

Another recent purchase was the ATC die, so cut one from grunge board and stuck an ATC sized piece from Crowded Attic.  I hadn't realised that the further back you go in the stack the smaller the pieces just right for ATC's - the man's a genius or I am an idiot - what do you think?  Rubbed it back to get that nice edge and then stamped another piece of spare card with the phrase.  Then to complete added in the ha ha ha down the side of the frame.

So Missy is too late for the challenge - but hey she did say she wasn't a good angel, so whatever!

Have  good day wherever you are.

jo
xx

Dots or spots?

Well I'm finally beginning to feel normal (I know it's subjective but I base it on the fact that I feel healthier, not completely healthy in a I'm ready to run a marathon but healthy enough to feel able to do something apart from sit on the sofa like a consumptive Austen heroine).

So back to work, back to the battles over my malfunctioning car (I'm at the garage so often I have my own parking space) and back to the creativity.

I do like reading the challenge bogs and on occasion take part if I can meet the deadline or am inspired enough by the theme.  I was going to enter this one, but guess what - missed the deadline as I spent too long faffing.

Colour scheme was based around sand, pomegranate and lilac paints.

Again an IKEA frame covered in tissue tape and painted in sand, pomegranate was lightly sponged over some sequin waste along with a  bit of inka gloop in old silver to give some dots.

Inside the frame I embossed some cream card in a polka dot folder and rubbed over with some Old Paper DI. Some purple metal was cut with a PaperArtsy die and embossed in a Tim Holtz folder to give a different spot effect. Then lightly sanded, black paint swiped on and then off to age a bit.  I then cut in half, well three quarters to be exact and glued on top of the polka dot card.

Fun bit - embellishments. 

A Wendy Vecchi heart heat embossed in purple on some Grungepaper painted in sand. Spare bit of purple metal to create a smaller heart, some Tim Swirls die cut in Grunge paper and a hole host of Wendy Vecchi flowers on some old stash paper painted in lilac, stamped in coffee archival and sprayed with rum and raisin and denim blue glimmer mists.

I then spent hours (it flt like hours it may not have been but I'd gone through the Archers omnibus and was onto Desert Island Discs) moving all the elements around trying to decide on arrangement. 

You know the drill,place it one way, stand up, move away a bit, look at it, put head on one side, tut, go back move it around a bit more and do the whole stare and tut routine until you get so fed up you attack it with the heat gun and stick it all down (including yourself).

Usually I make hanging frames, but because I put the flowers sort of hanging off the edge I needed to come up with a solution if I was going to let it sit on the shelf rather than hang on the wall. My little ingenious light bulb moment was sticking two clear map pins in the bottom of the frame for it to stand on so the flowers on the bottom don't get squashed.

I really enjoyed making this and looking at this one and last week's I think my work is getting cleaner and more refined which shows progress and hopefully a more defined honed eye for detail and construction.

Happy crafting!

jo

xx

Black(ish)

Well I know it's cutting it a bit fine but I've finally managed to get my entry done for the Sunday stamper challenge.

I've had to work late most of the week and yesterday a stinking cold came along and decided to takeover my body and make me feel "rubbish" (I'm being polite). And today has been busy what with an early start as somebody who'd gone out with the lads last night and stopped over with his bro in law forgot to turn of his radio alarm, and going out to buy a new telly as bro is taking his to his new flat, and going to watch the rugby this afternoon AND only just finding my sillicon glue has meant only just finished!!!!!!!!

I'm really pleased with the black metal flowers. The bottom layer was cut with a Paperartsy die and then stamped with one of the new Paperartsy grunge flower stamps and embossed with some arctic black thick embossing powder. They have a nice gleam as you waft them under the light going from purple to green. The top layer is the smaller Paperartsy die which has then been run through and embossing folder.


The stems are florist wire covered in green tape, then wound with strips of black ripped organza and finally some thin purple florist's wire wrapped around purple wired ribbon knotted to make leaves.

The background was painted in black paint, then purple paint with a hint of gleam in it (one of the new paints from crafty notions I got from NEC quilt show) lightly painted over and then sprayed with slate glimmer mist. Bottom right and top left are terra stamped into with Paperartsy text and tape measure stamps from one their hotpicks and then painted over in peacock crafty notions paint. More slate glimmer mist and some cosmic shimmer powder stuff to add a bit more gleam and shine. Corners stamped with a flourish in black archival.

So better late than never - let's just hope Mr Blogger plays nicely tonight.

Hope you like it