EXPLORE

Hi and welcome again. Today I'm showing you my DT piece for Pixels and Paper. Pop on over to: http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/  and have a look at our inspiration photo and how the team has interpreted it.

My layout is depicting a set of photos of my son (aged 8) and myself exploring the rockpools at Flat Rock near Ballina, NSW. This is a great rock platform where all sorts of little hidden treasures can be found. Some of our favourite finds of the day included sea anemones, urchins and starfish.

I've framed the photos  with shaped mats and stamped on these as well as on the photos. I've also added some leftover framing from diecuts previously used. These are perfect for highlighting specific parts of a photo, making it look like a slide.

The title was diecut and then painted with a thick texture paste. This was very grainy and gave the appearance of sand.  Some 'crab' trails were added with a gold Kindyglitz (a glitter glue).
Diecut sea creatures  were heat embossed with Opals embossing enamels.  The chipboard pieces were purchased from Julie at  http://timetocreatehandmadetreasure.blogspot.com.au/                       .

The sea anemones were fringed and quilled from textured pearlised  and cobweb papers.
To complete the whole piece is a lovely quote... so true!
Thank you for coming by. Catch you again soon.
Cheers, Di

THOSE HATS!!!

Hi and welcome. This month, Pixels and Papers have a delightful inspirational photo of more formal times, to share with you.

Pop on over to: http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/  to also see what the rest of the team members have done to also inspire you.
I decided to combine the Easter theme with the show theme (Sydney's Royal Easter Show is such a major event on the show calendar).

 

The photo I've used shows myself (on the left) and two sisters, granddaughters of my mum's best friend.  My mum and I used to go for morning teas to either their Nana's house or to their mum's house once a week.This was a ritual which lasted for many, many years. Since I didn't have a grandmother, I adopted theirs and she became Nana to me as well, and that's what I always called her.
While we weren't dressed in our Sunday best, we certainly were dressed in the height of fashion for the show. What were our mum's thinking of!... those hats. I remember them being made of straw with very bright raffia flowers. At least they kept the sun off our faces.
Easter meant going to church services, meeting up with friends and family and of course... the eggs.  Mostly these were candy eggs, with their pastel colours. Occasionally I had the luxury of a chocolate egg with gorgeous rich, foiled paper on the outside.

I've replicated the feel of these by using a pastel-coloured background. The photo is popping out of an opened egg. This started off with a gelli plate print using metallic acrylics and glimmer  mist sprays. For the creased foil look I added gesso through a stencil. The doily was sprayed with glimmer mist and crinkle foil placed under it.
To complete the layout I scribbled around the letters of the title as well as the edges of the page. I quilled flowers to make them look like the raffia flowers on the hats and added some lace. Journalling has been done on tags. Some sticker strips I've had for years were finally used on this piece as well.

I hope you will come and play with us.We'd love to see your art creations.
Thank you for visiting and for leaving your comments.
Cheers, Di.

Golden Tag

Hi and welcome. We've certainly had an interesting week of storms, wind and hail in our region over the past week. At home this has not been to the extent of towns nearby where, in some centres it certainly looked like a Northern winter scape!
In my exploration of challenge sites I came across "Lets get Shabby Challenge" blog and decided to put an entry into their latest challenge ( just getting it in!), which is themed on "Gold". For this challenge at: http://letsgetshabby.blogspot.com.au/  I decided to make a tag. This was cut from a pearlised glittery cardstock which was coloured with gold metallic alcohol ink. Even though this card only had a soft satin sheen to it, the alcohol ink took well without any bleeding on the underside.
On the background I've stamped a steam punk rose image from Chocolate Baroque's steampunk butterfly set. This was coloured using 3d Stamping Paint.

The flowers were quilled from different gold papers, including a soft metallic gold vellum.

 

Some layering with corrugated cardboard, Tim Holtz tissue paper, diecut cog and ribbons were also used.  Around the edges I've added a random border of mica flakes.

 

 Thank you for visiting. I really appreciate your encouraging comments.
Cheers, Di