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:

Bottle Caps - Squishy-Wishy

Backtracking - 20th June 2008

Bottlecaps - themed swap for UKATC this month, so I couldn't resist having a play and taking part, so I bought a bottle cap image sheet from www.digitalcollagesheets.com which of course fitted perfectly in my bottle caps, which I had squished with my Wizard aka Merlin.

All the backgrounds were done on canvas, being such a canvas freaky at the mo, what else would I use?! Kept them pretty plain and simple, only using one or two colours of acrylic paints, stamping one of my new-ish Paperartsy border stamps on the left hand side. Then I simply added a little bit of mulberry paper across the bottom, and created an embellishment using the bottle tops, images, a teeny pearl flower, diamond glaze, and some good old wire and beads!

Now, they needed a finishing touch. Something... I don't know what! I was going over to see my Freaky Deaky Friendie and after much conflab, she gave me 3 words from a sheet of doo-dads she had, in very cool colours and they matched perfectly. I have now added these to my list of must-haves!

Thank you Freaky Deaky Friendie :)

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! ;)