Nevermore!

This is a page in the latest raven journal I'm working on, and also my entry for the current challenge at the Play Date Cafe.

Given the date I decided to go for something suitably macabre.

The images are part of the Edgar Allan Poe collection, courtesy of The Octopode Factory - a young lady who's still at school but already putting out some excellent digital images.

Clouds

This week's entry for the Play Date Cafe. It's their 1st anniversary and the challenge this week is yellow/orange/pink. This piece was inspired by a sunrise earlier this week, but it needed a little something extra and luckily I found a quote to fit:

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore

Journal page primed with gesso, then overlaid with blended distress inks. Trees and foliage added with fineliner. Words printed on cheap copier paper and blended in with DI

Samhain canvas

This is my contribution for a circle swap for Samhain/Hallowe'en.

Canvas coloured with DI - pine green & black soot, then sealed with hairspray. Stencilled over the top using a dreamweaver forest stencil with shabby shutters and scattered straw DI.
A4 card coloured with DI in greens and browns and then printed onto with excerpts from Wikipedia. Tree shapes cut out using Tattered Angel designs as a stencil.
Fallen leaves were stamped with Versacube inks on clear stamps of unknown origin :)
Verse was printed onto cheap copier paper, inked with DI.

Play Date Cafe 51

Not really much else I could call this one.

Play day today at the Cubby Hole, but due to travel issues and other commitments it was rather quiet. I managed to get some work done on a canvas, and also put together my entry for the Play Date Cafe's latest challenge. It's not how I visualised it, and I'm still not sure if I like it, but it's had the seal of approval from That Woman so it can't be that bad :)

Backgrounds are white-core paper which has been 'distressed' to reveal the snow and clouds.
Stamps are by Stampendous.

Raven's return

For those who were wondering, the raven journals are still doing the rounds but I've been kind of ravened-out for the last few weeks, but now I'm back to them. I've completed a couple of pages in the latest one and this is the second.

Depending on where you are, Raven is either the bringer of light and a teacher, or a trickster and bringer of the darkness.

What do you see?

Time to say goodbye

Don't panic, I'm not going anywhere!
Who said "that's a pity"? I bet it was you wasn't it? It's no good trying to look innocent now!

Anyhow, moving on, our boss departs for pastures new on Friday.
No, we're not putting him out to graze, it's just an expression.

As I was saying, he's off to a new job and as usually happens when something comes up at work, muggins gets roped into supplying the cards.
No, they're not "too tight to buy them", they prefer the individuality of hand-made, ok?

Right, where was I? Oh yes, a leaving card for the boss, plus one of the ladies at work has a birthday on Friday so I've finished up making two cards yesterday.
Pardon? No, it's not a two-for-one deal.

So, as I was saying,
What? No there isn't any kind of deal, I don't charge for them so how could there be a deal?

Right, I'll try again. Clock paper on the leaving card is Graphic 45, other's are from my old stash and unlabeled.
No, not that sort of stash! Look, can you be quiet please, some people want to know about the cards.

Stamp on birthday card is by Stampotique, and paper is by Junkitz.
What? Oh this is ridiculous! Security! Hello... Yes...Can you drag this one away please?

Ooops, I've done it again

When I saw the latest challenge over at the Play Date Cafe I was determined not to make a Christmas card.

Ah well, best laid plans and all that....

Let your heart sing - the sequel

I wasn't too happy with my last post for the Play Date Cafe, the colours were good but the finished piece was lacking something, so last night I had another look at it and decided to mount it in one of my journals and frame it. The frame is coloured with DI and charcoals.

For some reason my Muse now seems to be working the the owl shift, so this was another after-midnight production :)

Let your heart sing

No deeply philosopical words of wisdom for this one, just my entry for this week's Play Date Cafe.

Large stamp from Elusive Images

Heart stamp from Hero Arts

Pink, turquoise and orange are DI, brown and black are Stazon

The Big Cubby Hole Pyjama Party....

.....maybe a misleading title as PJs were optional!

This weekend I've spent a lot of time at the Cubby Hole as we've had a weekend long workshop which started on Friday and finished this afternoon. It was a brilliant weekend, and I'd like to say thank you to Carol & Sarah for organising it, Paul for the toast, and to the ladies who came along and made it a success - Christine, Little Sue, Tracey, Wendy & That Woman.

We started on Friday evening by covering the floor with plastic sheet and then splatting paint around with mops, brushes and even a garden sprayer! It was at this point I realised that these weren't ordinary women I was with - they're all addicted to Strictly! Every so often the theme would blare out from Sarah's phone and we had to stop what we were doing and begin a new task! Sarah even went so far as to demonstrate some of her new dance moves, although Suzanne missed them as she was too busy cleaning ;)

Moving swiftly on, the result of this weekend of mayhem is a handmade book with a felted and stitched cover, and various single or double pages which were created in response to instructions from Sarah (following another blast of Strictly intro) such as 'a page with a hole' or 'black & white with a splash of colour'. We also incorporated folded pages, giant jigsaw pieces, playing cards and various other 'fun & games' elements.
The "do you feel lucky?" page was finished when I came home. The instruction was 'create a page with the domino & bingo Cuttlebug folders'. As I was colouring the page the Dirty Harry quote came from somewhere and wouldn't go, so it had to wait to be finished until I had access to a printer.

We got to play with Tyvek, a fibrous material which comes in paper or cloth form. It can be cut but not torn and is used for making the white 'papery' coveralls. You may also find it used in packaging (the thin white padded envelopes). It's interesting to craft with as it shrinks when heated, but not in a uniform way so you never know what results you'll get. Colour it with paint, blast it with a heat gun (or iron it) and see what you get.

We were also given a challenge by Carol, to produce an A3 journal page during the weekend. Mine is 'Into the light'.

The books shown are (L>R, Top to Bottom):
Tracey, Suzanne
Sarah, Nigel
Christine, Little Sue
The theme for these pages was to take inspiration from a specific page in a craft book.

There's more on Suzanne's page here.