Stampotique Challenge time!

French Text and Splatter Long by Jo Capper-Sandon 

Minkygirl by Daniel Torrente

for Stampotique Originals

Ooh, it's my turn to host the Stampotique Designers challenge and I'm delighted about that! Here's my challenge:

I am always looking for ways to make art which is useful, something I can use in every day life so what better than a bookmark? You can never have enough of these ... I like to use them to mark pages in all of my favourite art publications! You can make any type of  bookmark: A traditional straight bookmark, a corner bookmark, a swinging tag ... In any style: Vintage, funky, cute or weird. Anything goes! So go and dig out all for your favourite Stampotique stamps, it's time to get creative!

As it's the second challenge of the month it's Stampotique stamps only please, and as always there is a chance to win a $30 gift certificate for one lucky winner (and who wouldn't want that?!) Hop over to the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog here to post your creation. I look forward to seeing you there!

I chose to turn Minky Girl into a bookworm by drawing some reading specs onto her face (well, I need them, why shouldn't she?!) I made a background using distress inks and as this was a challenge linked to reading, I thought it only right to include some text so I used Jo's French text, along with a couple of long splatters. I then stitched the whole thing inside a pocket of heavy-weight acetate to protect it.

And here it is, nestling inside a book:

I do hope you will join us on this challenge! Bye for now........

Hello again.

Image by Crowabout Studio B 

Border by Tumblefish Studio

Paints and inks by Dylusions

I'm baaaaaack!  Just had a wonderful two weeks away in sunny Cornwall, lazing about, canoeing, eating, drinking, fishing for crabs etc. I had no internet access and pretty much no phone signal either. Yikes! I had to go cold turkey for two whole weeks!

I took a small (-ish) bag of art supplies with me and managed a few pages in my journal. This one is in my large A4 Moleskine sketchbook. (Hey, does anyone know if Moleskine are still making these? They seem to have replaced it with a Folio sketchbook which has much thinner pages. Anyone know? I neeed one and I can't find one).

We got the got the car ferry a couple of times across the estuary and I managed to sneak the ticket onto my page:

I had fun getting inky with this next page. The page began with a mopped up ink spill but I loved the colours so I continued to work on it. These images are so fun to work with! I sprayed Dylusions inks onto paper and stamped Dotty onto it, and then added a bit of extra colour with pastels.

I LOVE the birds, especially the way that they face different directions so you can layer them all up.

All stamps, inks and paints by Dylusions

Stamps: Birds on a wire, Say what you mean, Basic Backgrounds, Further round the Edge, Dependable Dotty

I don't know if you can see but I stamped the wings onto acetate and then bent them so that they stick up as a 3-D feature:

Now, back to the holiday...... This is what we had at the bottom of our garden for the last two weeks:

Which meant we could do a lot of this:

You can see the house we stayed in the background here. It was a very old house next to an old water mill and had the most seriously wonky floors I have ever known. I felt like I was drunk before I had a drink!

We were delighted to find this little fella in the garden one day:

Of course we had to take our pampered pooch with us - she wouldn't want to miss out on this much fun would she?!

Whilst out and about I tried taking a few arty shots to practise my photography skills. I've still got a loooong way to go but I'm managing to shoot in manual so I'm doing ok so far I think!

Last Thursday we saw the Red Arrows performing at the Fowey Regatta. They were fantastic, it was completely exhilarating to see them perform at speeds of up to 700 miles an hour, and flying so low. We were deeply shocked to hear that on Saturday one of these jets crashed, killing the pilot. I just can't believe it, especially as I had just seen them two days before.

And finally, I leave you with this. Don't you just love it when you stumble across something random like this?! This was just taped to the window of a little newsagents shop in Fowey, Cornwall:

Thanks for all your blog comments while I was away :-)  I'll be around to visit soon but in the meantime the washing machine has gone into overload as I try to catch up on two week's worth of sandy, salty laundry! Bye for now

It's Stampotique Designers Challenge time!

Batboy by Daniel Torrente for Stampotique

Alphabitties by Jill Penney and Daniel Torrente for Stampotique

Hearts cubed by Jo Capper-Sandon

There's a new challenge today over on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog. This time Val has challenged us to try altering a page in a book, any book, even a journal. OOh right up my street :-))

I chose to use the kind-of-ugly-but-gorgeous Batboy. Isn't he adorable? LOL! I coloured him with prismas and oil pastels.

I altered a page in my 1911 vintage time book. It's very fragile so I have to be very careful not to overdo it on the pages. I wanted to leave some of the old writing showing through:

You can link your altered creation here, and if you do you may be in with a chance to win a $30 gift certificate for Stampotique. As its the first challenge of the month you can use any stamps at all, although it's great if you do choose to Stampotique of course!

Bye for now.

Craft Stamper in the shops!

The new issue of Craft Stamper is in the shops now (UK) and is choc full of lovely stampy goodness! This month I have a masterclass article on things do do with canvas (and by the way I got hold of my canvas in 'The works' for 1.99!) Here are a couple of sneak peeks....

Byee for now

Taking a break

Paints and inks by Dylusions

Rub-on by 7gypsies

A couple of weeks ago I taught an art journaling class with a theme of repeating images. We created a background using finger painting *my fave* and then hand drew our houses onto old text before colouring them in with paints and pastels and adding them to our pages. We can all draw can't we?  Drawing doesn't have to be 'perfect' (whatever that is!) and mine certainly isn't perfect LOL!

Occasionally I like to add a random rub-on to my pages, and I love these by 7gypsies:

Rub-on by 7 gypsies

Next we chose an image to represent ourself, so here I am as a crow. It's not the first time I have been referred to as an old crow ;-) We added hats to represent the different hats we wear in life. Here my hats are: 

1 wife and mummy

2 teacher and instructor

3 general dogsbody and picker upper of things and stuff

Now, lookie what has landed at Art from the Heart this week.

OMG I am loving the new funky people and they are a fab size for art journaling. They are selling out fast already so you had better be quick!

I am going to take a little blogging break while my children are on holiday from school. I have scheduled a couple of posts to go live over the next couple of weeks but I am going to step away from the internet (it's gonna be hard LOL!) so I won't be around to reply to comments or e-mails. Missing you all already!

I am going to spend a bit of quality time with my children doing things like this:

And this:

Enjoy your summer wherever you are :-)

Bye for now.