Doing The Oriental

Backtracking - 16th-17th June

OK, I admit it, I am not a huge fan of Oriental, it has never appealed to me, but after doing a jiggy swap earlier this year, when I had two (*two* !!!) pieces to alter in the Oriental style, I found myself being drawn more towards Eastern images and colours and artefacts, so when a swap came up on UKATC for Oriental ATCs, I jumped right in!

First came backgrounds... and I spied with my little eye some bag ties that I have been hoarding for a while, and wondered... what would happen if I cut them down slightly, glued them onto an ATC and then stuck some faux washi paper over them? This is what happens!

Rather jolly like that effect, and with the direct to paper inking on the backing card, and on some chinese script paper that I glued at the very bottom, I was chuffed with the result. Oh, where did the spots come in?! Well, the paper was in my scraps box and the colours seemed to just match, so I went with it... bit unconventional for Oriental I must admit.

Had downloaded from http://www.digitalcollagesheets.com/ a bottle cap image sheet, so printed off a few to use the Oriental lady image, which I glued into a squished bottle cap (thank you Merlin - that is what I call my Wizard die-cutting machine by the way!)

Finishing touches? Wire and beads, a word, some german scrap and voila - I did the Oriental (and it wasn't painful at all!)

Made It! Father's Day Framey

Backtracking - 15th June 2008

Time to get cracking with that frame for Father's Day, so got up early to finish my masterpiece (?!?!) Took the photo and matted it onto a background I had made that is a continuation of the colours on the frame. I also got brave and added some colour directly onto the photo (eep!) so the sand in it looks yellow. It just looked a bit odd having the photo completely black and white, and I think adding some light sandy yellow to it has made Freaky Deaky Dad and bro stand out more..?

Thanks to my Freaky Deaky Friendie introducing me to gel medium, glueing on the shells and beads was a piece of cake. I put my brain into "seaside" mode and added all and sundry I could think of that would be on the seashore...

• big shells
• pebbles/gravel (I smashed up a few shells and used beads to create these items!)
• driftwood (I used a bit of pot-pourri snaffled from some Mumsy was chucking out!)
• fishing nets (used mesh)
• fish (friendly plastic fish!!! Yay!)
• flotsum and jetsum (covers just about everything else I stuck on !)

I had some star washers - used embossing powders on to distress them, so they fitted in and looked rusty, and like they had been washed up onto the beach. I smashed up a few shells and did the same, used my embossing powders to make them look distressed. The finishing touches were simple - 4 doo-dads in using appropriate words "adventure" "explore" "play" "laugh", and finally, I stamped Brighton 1953 using my fave word generating rubber stamp, the provocraft wheel stamp, and attached with waxy flax, buttons and good old gel medium.

Freaky Deaky Dad was well chuffed, and the frame has pride of place, where else, but in the bathroom!

BTW, they are wearing woollen bathing suits - embarassing!!! All the rage in 1953 - or so I am told! ;)

Texture Paste - cool! - and Bubbles Galore

Backtracking - 14th June 2008

I got me some texture paste, with a project in mind, but had no idea how this one was going to work out... found a really old pic of Freaky Deaky Dad with his brother on a beach and thought it would make a good Father's Day prezzie if I could create a frame for this pic...

I took a boring frame that cost me a pound (bargainous!) and used a pallette knife to spread Texture Paste over it... bit like icing a cake! Then I took a plastic fork and plopped it over the paste to create a kind of spiked, wavy effect...

I was trying to re-create the seaside scene so it would eventually look like the frame was a continuation of the beach on which Freaky Deaky Dad and his bro are sitting on (those of you who are curious, it is Brighton circa 1953!) Anyways, took acyrlics in yellows and blues and mixed and blended with white to lighten and create a sand to sky effect from bottom to top...

By then I had been crafting all day, so what does a crafter deserve after a lot of hard work? A bath full of bubbles! To be precise, a Lush bath full of bubbles. I love Lush! This bath has Karma bubble bar slice in it thanks to a Freaky Deaky Friendie of mine :)

Lie back and r-e-l-a-x...! :D

Background Bonanza

Backtracking - 13th June 2008

Friday 13th - not unlucky for crafty chicks! Went bonkers with backgrounds, along with Mumsy, and look what we made! Got out some canvas, acetate and textured wallpaper as bases.

To add colour we used:

• Adirondack paint dabbers
• luna lights
• regular acrylic paints
• chalk dew drop inkpads

To add texture we used:

• string
• plastic forks (drag through/scrape the acrylic paints - try it! Makes cool patterns)
• toothbrushes (old ones!)
• sponges

The paint fumes sent Mumsy quite doo-lally (either that or it was spending time with Freaky Deaky Crafty Chick that was the cause of her delirium!!!) It was a stonking afternoon, don't get many of those round here so will remember it always :)

First Attempt at a New Style

Backtracking - 11th June 2008

Having recently stumbled upon Teesha Moore's work http://teeshamoore.com I have been dying to dip my toe in the water and have a go at a journal canvas page thingy wotsit, but been too afraid of trying to get it right and failing. Then an opportunity came up for which creating a piece of journal art would be the perfect thing to do... so I went into the jo-zone and created something of which I am proud of (did I just say I am proud?!) for many reasons, but let's stick to style/arty talk on here.

This pic shows it before the journalling and finishing touches and heaps more went on. That part is deeply personal, private and somewhat painful, but the blank-ish un-journalled canvas gives you an idea of what I was attempting to create...

The crop-a-dile was handy-dandy for making the holes and setting jumbo eyelets at the bottom. Couldn't live without that in my tool box. I cannot really remember much about how I created the background, except that it started by being a place to dab off my dirty paint brushes and finger daubers and sponges, and ended up being an actual piece of journal art. Enough said.

Going Under...

Backtracking - 9th June 2008

...under the sea!

It's a theme for ATC_addicts_R_us this month and I have gotten rather into the jo-zone with this one. There is something about sea colours that make me go ooooh and I had loadsa fun playing with these backgrounds and creating collage-y style under sea scenes. Above you can see are the works in progress...

The backgrounds are actually wallpaper samples courtesy of Sainsburys Homebase (!!!) to which I have added colour with my ink pads and twinkling H20s - see how the spots on the wallpaper have resisted more intense colours? I love that effect!

I have decided that Friendly Plastic is now *definately* my friend - I used it to create the starfish on the ATC this ATC "The Weight of Water" using one of several molds that have been gathering dust in ye olde craft room. Had fun distressing star washers (from DIY store!) with clear inkpads and B-Muse embossing powders (love those powders, must buy more!)

There are heaps of elements used on the final ATCs from charms to crimped tigertail, from ball and chain to beads, from mesh to mulberry paper. A right mish-mash of stuff, but somehow it
works! (I think...?)

Ripped up a dictionary for the various words... some of them are rather teeny-weeny so to see them proper-like you'll have to click on them ;)

(Un) Friendly Plastic ???

Backtracking - 8th June 2008

Friendly Plastic... or is it? In the past, it has been most unfriendly, but a great mate of mine has helped me to bond with it - she showed me how to work with it properly (I had been just messing round, not really knowing exactly what to do with the stuff until now) - thank you friendie! :) A couple of days later I got my Friendly Plastic out again and made some masks and some buttons using some molds I have had lurking in the room of craft since Xmas and not really used... some of the masks/faces look slightly warped... ooer!!!

A couple of days later I had a bit of a problem thought... having bonded with Friendly Plastic (with the help of a rolling pin and spatula "borrowed" from my nephew's playdoh kit) I couldn't then de-bond from it!!! Heeeeelllp!!!

Doh! The skewer lived to tell the tale, and the beads I created on it have since been used on some ATCs. As for the rolling pin... I am afraid it had to be consigned to the dustbin (sorry nephew of mine, I will get you another rolling pin for your playdoh ready for your next visit!)

So is Friendly Plastic really friendly? Well, I think only time will tell...! :p

Addicted to Canvas

Backtracking - 1st June 2008

Went to Paris (only in my mind that is!) and created a canvas for a friend's birthday - she be learning French so she can speak it fluently as part of her job, so I thought what better gift?! I was chuffed with the effect of embedding the eiffel tower (the charm, not the actual towers itself lol!) into a tag containing heated pearl UTEE - and the trickery of dealing with UTEE flying round the room convinced me I *need* a Melt Pot. Let's hope the birthday fairy makes my dreams come true!

More Mini Canvases

Backtracking - 30th May 2008

Made some more mini canvases - these are vindictively addictive I tell you! I felt quite bright so went for orange and purple, and created my own little people on them (am I mad I hear you asking - the answer to that question is most probably yes!) I gave one of these to my best friend, she thought it groovy-woovy so I took that as a compliment and added it to my list of -isms :p I even felt generous enough to keep one of these for me!

Entering Blog Land - Crash Landing!

Backtracking - 27th May 2008

Well, here I am in the land of Blog, it seems a nice place to have found myself, hey, maybe I will find myself during my Freaky Deaky Lemon Squeaky nose dive into Blogdom - that would be super-duper - but where do I start? I guess the beginning is a very good place lol! But that would just be plain cheesy, and no doubt there is an "about me" column somewhere on this Blogger thingy, so I am going to backtrack to a veeeeery creative time for me and the day which I intended to start blogging on! I spent all night crafting, creating mini canvases - wow, that was some night! I duplicated some of the designs, but in all made around 20-25 of the blighters! Kinda addictive!

Of course, the best bit of making all those canvases, was playing around with colours and stuff to make the backgrounds :) These ones here were sponged with lilac acrylic paint, then pink, and then I sprinkled over some good old powdered eyeshadow (maybe it's Maybelline!) that was lilac, and rubbed it in slightly with my finger; such a pretty shimmery effect :)

Added a layered up die-cut flower with a gem flower for the centre, a stem created from a fine guage wire with a slight tweaky-weak to make a leaf, and guess what that texture is at the bottom? None other than a textured wallpaper sample splodged with lilac paint and edged with silver ink. (Don't tell Mr B&Q that I "borrow" wallpaper samples for crafty-ness not ever intending to cover a wall with it!)

Add a brad and a lickle folded piece of ribbon and voila!

My next mission (should I choose to accept it, and yup, I was going to as I was still wide awake come 2am!) was to get going with something different so I dug out some hardly used Twinkling H20 dabbers - yes, there is such a thing! I used a reddy colour then dabbed over with a bright blue and landed up with a smurpley-purpley effect, bit dull so added a spot of luna lights (left)

Rubbed that in with my finger and once it had all dried, over stamped using a Christine Adolphe stamp (stampington) in white and it kinda faded into the colours on the canvas and looked ghosty-whosty. Quite cool! Then used modge-podge to apply some ripped/torn/stamped mulberry paper, and the colours oozed up through which was quite an interesting effect - not planned! Added my fave kinda stuff atm - mesh - some gems, 2 lickle flowers and at the very bottom, a bugle bead with a seed bead either end, attached wire wire. Here you go!

One of the others I created a few of I used Adirondack Paint Daubers in colours I cannot recall the names of (willow, wotsit and doofer) again, I added a speck of luna lights like on the previous canvas. Then, I took the Clarity Stamps Willow Lady stamp, onto mulberry paper, and used modge-podge to see what would happen - wow! Didn't think that would work! The fibers of the mulberry paper look a bit like they are running through the branches of the willow. I liked this! I had to add the essential embellishments and so added star gems and also traced over some of the willow branches with green patina stickles (see, I can remember the names of some of the colours of stuff I use!!!)

And that was the end of my "canvas till you can't no more" night. I recommended it! :)