Willingham Woods

Took Fraz to Willingham Woods today. We were there for about 4 hours and had a picnic and a couple of long walks. We did need a well earned rest though.

Ruler Tag Book - TH Style

Hilda is hosting a ruler tag book swap, Tim Holtz style, ie grungy!!!


The pages were covered in various colours of distress ink. The ink was applied with cut 'n' dry foam pieces


Images and embellishments were added

Along with a bit of stamping

A Few Simple Cards

Got loads of birthdays and a couple of anniversaries in October and the beginning of November, so had to make a start on a few cards. They are only very simple as the people receiving them, don't really appreciate them - mostly family!!!

This first one was inspired by Sue (ex Paper Paradise)

She was holding a class yesterday and showed me the cards she was using as samples. I fell in love with the 'green' one on her blog, no surprise there then!!! So created something similar. The image on the one I made is a rub on, kindly given to me by Maz, rubbed onto a piece of cork, kindly supplied by Hilda. I love the way the rub on crinkled as I tore the piece of cork off!!


Again very simple, a couple of pieces of paper, joined by a piece of ribbon. A flower, a couple of leaves and a sentiment added


Again a couple of different papers, a piece of sticky lace to cover the join. A couple of skeleton leaves and a paper leaf, 5 small flowers bound together and a bow added to hide the join


I found this car on the internet, printed it 4 times and decoupaged it. It obviously looks flat on the photo, but it's actually come out pretty well

Gothic Arches - Autumn

This weeks Gothic Arch theme is autumn. I stamped my Mona and placed her in an embossed cuttlebug frame smeared over with distress inks. I cut the leaves and acorns with my cuttlebug and water coloured them to get the paler colours. The backing is a piece of tumble dryer sheet sprayed with adirondak colour wash sprays. Still deciding whether or not to add a word!!!!

Lotstodo Challenge - Black, orange and one other

I've bought a few new books recently and this piece is made from inspiration in one of them, but for the life of me I can't remember which one, when I find it again I'll let you know!!!

I made a template of the shape and then cut it out of metal. Did some embossing with the Cuttlebug, rubbed it over with black acrylic dabber paint. The frame housing the skeleton image is made from grungeboard and painted with orange acrylic dabber paint, sanded down and rubber over with black stazon. A piece of orange metalic foil tape was added across the top, along with eyelets and an inside out bottle top with an image. The word 'wicked' was added along the bottom.

This piece will double up as my 'something for halloween' swap over on Lotstodo.

Last two

These two were made in exactly the same way as the others. The background on the bottom one is just plain black card. They have both been mounted in to clip frames.

Another one

This one was done in exactly the same way as the one below except I used 3 strips of different papers on the image. The background paper is one I'd made a while ago using leaves as a mask

And this is it in the frame, again got a reflection from the glass

Been Playing

With inkjet transparency film. Printed the image onto the film and then made a collage of different papers behind it. In this one, she has a blue love heart on her nose!!! I then added a piece of music paper which I burnt the outside edges with lemon juice, a paper doyle which I covered with walnut crystal ink, a piece of Sir T!m's distressed paper, a couple of flowers, a flourish, a bit of ribbon inked with distress walnut stain ink and the word hope. I have placed it in a clip photoframe, but it didn't photograph well in the frame because of the reflection of the glass. It is actually quite large, the page/frame measures 10" x 8"

Bits and Bobs

I had a few bits and bobs lying around. Well actually I covered the two frames with metal foil, alcohol inked them and then wondered what I was going to do with them!!! The piece at the back is grungeboard cut in the shape of a film strip but then turned on its side. I coloured that with frayed burlap distress ink, sanded it down and went over it again with timber brown stazon. I attached a piece of wire mesh to the back using raffia to hold it to the grungeboard, added a button in the middle and a piece of chain, oh and also added the images and then stamped the words into the frames.

Tag Swap - Birds

Hilda over on the Lotstodo Forum is hosting a tag swap. Each tag has to house a bird or two!!!

Atc Swap - Tickets

Hilda is hosting an atc swap on the Lotstodo Forum. You have to have a ticket on your atc. Thses are mine.

Lotstodo Week 38 - Tag(s)

This weeks challenge was to make a tag. I used 3 pre-cut tags from balsa wood, with an oval cut out the middle. I sanded them down, covered them with gesso and then applied texture paste. The one on the left I smoothed the paste out, the middle one, I did alternate sections in smooth and rough and the right one I did all rough. Once dry I covered them all in juniper acrylic dabbers. I then added gold metalic acrylic and espresso, I also framed the outsides with espresso. Added the angel images, stamped the one on the left with the CI-Angels word stamp (CI-140) as it was flat so would take the stamping. I stamped the words onto tissue paper and applied them with mod podge. To the middle one I added a couple of pieces of mica again in the flat areas. I added fibres to finish them off.

But then I decided to stick them all together!!!

Lotstodo Week 37 - Watercolour

I covered the tag with watered down green and yellow watercolour paints and I framed the outside of the tag with a light brown. I used Oregano Adirondack Dye Ink to ink the stamp, spritzed it a few times with water and stamped onto my tag. I used the Demin ink pad in exactly the same way to stamp the flowers.

Bees Wax Canvas - Dezinaworld Challenge - Wings

June over at Dezinaworld is holding a Challenge with a fabulous prize attached. Check it out here. All you have to do is create a piece of art around the theme of wings.

I decided to do something I wouldn't normally do, I wanted to do something different, so I based my canvas on the colour blue, not a favourite of mine at all, but I am pleased with how it's turned out.

I used acrylic dabbers to cover the canvas, aqua and cloudy blue and stream to frame it. I laid out my various pieces, coloured the silver no 2 and the small fragment square (which Caz kindly shared with me and Hilda at our meet last week) with stream alcohol ink, used the dictionary definition of wings in the background, coloured a green admit one ticket with blue paint, scrunched it up and tore it in half, added a couple of paper flowers, an image and quote from Lisa's Altered Art and chalked a wing. I covered the whole piece in bees wax.

This is a side view, all the sides are the same. The pattern is stamped with broken china distress ink.

Another Wooden Spoon

Altered another spoon

Lotstodo Week 36 - Tissue Paper

We were having a wooden spoon swap on Lotstodo Forum, which Ang organised, so I started to play with wooden utensils. For this piece I ended up using a spoon and a spatula. I cut their clothing from card and painted it. I added lace, ribbon, beads and a flower to the bride, a bit of gold netting for a vail, a bit of ribbon and a fancy shape coloured with gold acrylic and some liquid pearls for her tiara. Her hair is espresso acrylic paint. The grooms hair is black wool. Both of their faces were stamped onto tissue paper and mod podge was used to stick them down. A piece of 12 x 12 paper was stuck to a piece of corrugated for stability and they were both siliconed onto it. With one of the offcut pieces I die cut 'I DO ...' using the round table sizzix set of alphabets and attached it to the bottom with a piece of ribbon.

Uk Stampers Swap - Watercolour

The theme on this months UK Stampers atc swap is watercolour. I randomly stuck newsprint to 3 blank atc size pieces of card. I colour washed them with watercolour paints. I used ginger Adirondack dye ink for the 2 faces, spritzed them with water and stamped onto the backgrounds. For the little girl I used oregano Adirondack dye ink and again spritzed with water. Simple but very effective.

Gothic Arch Challenge - Tag

For this weeks Gothic Arch challenge you had to incorporate an arch onto a tag. I used peeled paint and weathered wood distress inks to create the background. I then stamped over it with CI-122 stamps in Nick Bantocks Van dyke brown. I cut the word journey from swirls grungeboard with my cricut and inked over it with peeled paint distress ink. Cut out a small arch, stamped my car onto it, used fired brick, spiced marmalade and mustard seed distressed inks to colour and stamped the word discover in olive green stazon. I used my paper distresser around the edges to ruff them up then I inked them with peeled paint, and finally I added some fibres.

Wooden Spoon Swap

We had a wooden spoon swap over on Lotstodo. I made mine into a flower for Ang, she has named her 'Daisy'.