Flower Power Canvas!

And Now For Something A Little Bit Different...

An Unexpected Critique... and a Friend What is Famous!

I had an unexpected letter following an altered canvas I created for someone several months ago. I am not one to blow my own trumpet; I have added this comment to my blog so I can read it on the days when I feel like my creativity has been sucked out of me, and in the hope the one day, I will read it and believe it.

"On a personal note, I would like to thank you once again for the wonderful art work that you created for me. I have shown it to a number of people who have given very positive feedback about your work, and I wanted to feed that back to you. One person in particular referred to the collage as "fantastic art" and raved about how talented you are. I, as you know, agree, and really do encourage you to continue developing your style."

Moving swiftly on, my Bandy Wandy Friendie (the one who got me the loverly pussycat frame for housewarming giftie) has been telling me the ad she was involved in filming for Tesco (as a member of the Royal British Legion Band and Corps of Drums Romford - starring Paul Daniels!) has been showing on TV! I *still* haven't seen it, but she sent me a link to watch it online, as someone has recorded it and uploaded it!

http://www.visit4info.com/advert/TescoComparecom-Paul-Daniels-Magic-Tesco-Compare-Car-Insurance/62073

Check out the band's website here for more info:

http://www.royalbritishlegionbandromford.co.uk/index.html

Not much happening on the arty farty crafty wafty front today. Hmph. Hopefully a more productive day tomorrow - I have swaps to do!

I'm here!

Yesterday I moved into my new place - gulp! At the risk of sounding like I am giving an "Oscar winning thank you performance" I must say ta very muchly to Mumsy and Freaky Deaky Dad, who helped me move most of my stuff, not to mention helping me to spring clean from top to bottom and shift furniture around - rewarded them with a Chinese takeaway!

Now, here's a question for you...

Q: What is the most important part of Freaky Deaky Crafty Chick's home?
A: Craft Space!!!

Here is the "before picture" - taken first thing this morning... oh the jumble!

Then along came my fairy godmother in the shape of my Freaky Deaky Crafty Friendie, and with her magic wand and my fairy dust (plus rather a lot of shuffling things around and re-jigging me bits and bobs) we turned an area of my lounge into this...

Ta da!!!

And do you know what? My FDCF bought me a giftie, well she bought it over here, but she actually created it herself - wow! I was sooooooo chuffered; not only had she taken the time to make me an stonking altered canvas, but she even wrote the words herself - I think I shall start calling her my Uber Talented Freaky Deaky Crafty Friendie!

"A time to craft, a time to play, A time to art your heart away,

A time to get messy, and time to have fun, a time to art until you are done,

New techniques, new tools to use, experiment with them, use your creative muse..."

After receiving such a wonderful gift, and a craft space ready to rumble, how could I resist having a play?! So I made a start on an altered coaster swap for Advanced Artist Trading. Using a technique from Bernie Berlin's book, I created resist backgrounds using acrylic paints, paint dabbers, clear heat embossing with rubber stamps, more paint (dry brushed on) and then applied a hot iron...

For some reason, I didn't get quite the right effect on the top R coaster, and the bottom R one was naughty and some of the actual chipboard of the coaster came off after ironing (iron too hot?). That said, the ones on the left hand side I am well chuffed with :)

Theme for the swap is numbers, so to include my favourite or a significant no. on each coaster. So what's the magic no.? That'd be telling!

Feeling Better = Feeling Crafty

Backtracking - 26th June 2008

Cold going, going... gone! (Well, ish!) At least I am not sneezing in quick succession anymore! I felt it safe to return to the craft room! Canvas is a theme on ATC Addicts R Us so I finished off the canvases I had been working on. They just kinda came together...

And kept one for me... cos I might soon need lots of ATCs and other crafty stuff that I have made myself to decorate something I might have in a new place I might be going to, some time soon, but not very soon, in fact, it could be months but anyhoo, I be keeping this ATC:

A Crush On Canvas (and crafting with a cold *atchoo*)

Backtracking - 25th June 2008

Why, oh why, oh why do I feel so poorly? Cos I have caught a cold! How did I manage to catch a cold in the middle of Summer?! Cos I am just plain freaky. I should change my blog title to sneezy-wheezy-crafty-atchoo-chick cos I am sneezing like the clappers and it huuuuuuuurts! *sniffle*

But I wanted to craft, so I can't have felt *that* poorly! With my crush on canvas still as rampant as ever, I made 4 backgrounds, using acrylic paints, luna lights, gold ink, stamped tissue paper, applied with modge podge over gold mesh...

...which was great... until I got to the part where I had the idea of using gold ink and embossing powder around the edges to give some texture... and sneezed... then sneezed again, and again, and again... (my record so far these past couple of days is 11 in one go!!!)

So crafter's, if you're out there, take heed - do not craft with embossing powders (or glitters for that matter!) when you have a cold! You're only asking for a room to get covered in sparkles and powders, and you know what that means - hoovering up!

N.B. No backgrounds were sneezed upon during the making of these canvases.

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.

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!