Bookmark

Hi and welcome. Sorry I have been so tardy in visiting your blogs, but I've had the flu and I've strained tendons in my right hand from some over-zealous gardening!...absolute nuisance as it has restricted what I'm able to do. Hopefully it is on the mend.
At http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ this month's challenge was about books. What I had planned for this didn't happen, instead I've decided to go with a bookmark, using vellum, page from an old poetry book, and cardstock.

The vellum design was drawn with a very fine sharpie pen and coloured using Lyra pens. The images were then dry embossed on the reverse side, to give them a raised look. The outline was pierced (just like pin-pricking) and torn to give a lace-look edging. A border was done in a silver permanent liner. An additional butterfly was done in the same manner from vellum, fussy cut and placed over the original one. This top butterfly was given a fairly dry brushing of  3D Stamping Paint to give a slight sheen. The vellum was mounted to the poetry page using brads. This was then roughly torn to the same shape as the vellum layer. Both layers were then placed on cardstock layers. Punched flowers were added around the edge. These were left-over cardstock from Distress Ink experiments. With these in position, the bookmark edge was fussy cut to follow the line of flowers.

Added butterflies were punched from left-over poetry and old manuscript music bits. A beaded edge was added. Because I decided to go with the 3-D look for this bookmark, a length of wide ribbon was added for the marking of the page inside a book, so that the rest of the bookmark resides on the cover.

 

The outer edge of the bookmark was also finished with the 3D stamping paint.
Thank you for looking and for continuing to leave positive comments. These are truly appreciated and I look forward to catching up with everyone as as soon as possible.
Cheers, Di.

FANTASY GARDEN

Hi and welcome on this glorious spring day! Perfect weather for gardening and that's what I'd been doing earlier.
This  month's challenge at:http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ is all about fun and quirky! Well, if my garden plants were anything like the ones on my layout, they would certainly fit this criteria! I certainly had fun, firstly doodling the background, them adding the pops of colour by making flowers.

I've been doodling for years, and certainly used this as an art technique for students in my classes to make art works and book covers, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that this technique is now called zen tangling! I picked up a book ( The Art of Zentangle) last week to see what was different, and discovered the extent to which this form of doodling has taken... very interesting indeed!

The dies used for the flowers were T.H: Tattered Flower Garland, Tattered Florals and Mini Paper Rosettes. The photo is of a protea I used to have in the garden, but unfortunately, no longer.
To complete the layout, I used Lyra aquarelles, to give a random wash around some of the doodles.
Thank you for visiting.
Cheers, Di.

Finally, an art journal!

Hi and welcome. Just a very quick post, sharing the beginnings of an art journal... something I've had on the back burner to do but never seemed to find the time to actually start. Thanks to Julie's mini-challenge this week at http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ I've actually made a start!
It's going to be a working journal of my experiments with paints, inks, sprays and other mediums and how these react on various papers and background surfaces.

Stage 1 of front cover... gesso, Dylusion sprays and stencilling. This ended up as a surprise. After gessoing and spraying over the stencils, I didn't like the result so gessoed over the whole lot. I used a different stencil, sprayed and then spritzed the rest of the area with Dylusions and Perfect Pearls Mist and let it run. As it dried, SURPRISE!! the top layer started sinking and some of the bottom layer started appearing... INTERESTING!!!! LOVE IT!!!!!

The writing isn't perfect, neither are the samples.. it's how they have turned out. What I'm planning to add at some stage, will be samples or photos, of how and were some of these techniques have been used.
Thank you for visiting and for your continued positive comments.
Catch you again soon.
Cheers, Di

Bouquets For A Special Day

Hi and welcome.
This is the inspiration image for this month's challenge, at: http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ so pop on over to see what the rest of the team has done.

 

The layout I did for my DT piece at Pixels and Paper brought back very special memories of a very special day, 40 years ago.... yes, September 1st marked our 40th Wedding Anniversary!

 

The background paper was a beautiful piece which had a gorgeous lace design on it, so it was left as it was. Ovals were cut from different papers. One was a piece I had sprayed flowers on for previous projects, so I'd been left with a lovely stencilled piece.

 

 

 

Before attaching handmade flowers, I cut up a coloured photo of the bouquets and added them in. Flowers were made according to the tutorial by Jennie http://jennie-livethedream.blogspot.com.au/

(Some are supposed to be roses, by not as good as Jennie's... I need a lot more experience to have them looking as gorgeous!!)

 

 

 
The chipboard flourish was heat embossed with Opals embossing powder.
The flowers in our bouquets were made extra special as they featured orchids which  had been grown by my dad.... even more special memories!

The challenge is open to any interpretation. We'd love to see you join in.
Thank you for visiting and for leaving such lovely comments. Welcome also to my new followers.
Cheers, Di

Crocodile Rock

Hi again, today! Couldn't help myself... had a burst of inspiration after a 3-hour session of solid gardening, and just had to do this card for the Lollipop Ladies: http://thelollipopladies.blogspot.com.au/  where the challenge inspiration is lolly crocodiles with the addition of washi tape. What fun! Crocodile Rock immediately came to mind, and this is  what my card is based on.

The image is a Clip art one, downloaded in colour, but I've gone over it using Lyra pens, to intensify the colour. I use Publisher a lot when doing Word Art, so this is how I was able too make the circles around the image. The Lyras were also used to colour the background beneath the words. For some of the 'Rock and Roll' glitter I've painted the background around the croc with 3D stamping paint.  The words 'You Rock' were written with a permanent fine point. The washi tape has been used around the outside of the circle, and has been randomly pleated.
I had a lot of fun doing this. It was relatively quick, once I had found the suitable image.
Thank you for visiting.
Cheers, Di

Old Schoolhouse

Hi! Welcome on a lovely sunny morning. I've been having heaps of fun, popping around to many challenge sites and seeing what is happening. There have been some stunningly, awesome arts of work created using techniques and combinations of techniques that I'm itching to try myself.  I love changing it up and trying new things so my forays into different challenges have been rewarding for me. Today I'm showing you my layout for Archiscraps: http://archiscraps.blogspot.com.au/ where the beautiful inspirational image was of a delightful stone brick house with window boxes full of flowers. The additional element was to be flowers.
I've chosen to  some of the colours from the image, mainly soft browns, pinks and mauves.

 

The photograph is of the old schoolhouse in Richmond, Tasmania. This was built in 1835. It is a lovely old building, surrounded by trees and gardens with annuals and perennials. At the time of our visit, there were only a few plants flowering. It would be lovely to revisit the garden when flowers were in bloom as I suspect that there was a wisteria in there which would have made a beautiful show in spring.

The background cardstock is from Coredinations Whitewash Collection. This was lightly sanded then smooshed with Distress Inks (Antique Linen and Weathered Wood). Stamping  of agapanthus flowers (I always think of  them as being a feature in cottage gardens) was done in archival. Because of the corrugated texture of the background card stock, these didn't print as cleanly, but I really liked the shadowy effect. Tattered Florals die was used for the flowers. The brown-toned large flower was made from squishing flowers and leaves, sandwiched between watercolour paper, through the cuttlebug and leaving to dry. This technique gives a beautiful paper that can be used for backgrounds as well as for die cuts. The remainder of the flowers were cut from a fairly fussy floral paper, that I've had for some time and hadn't found a use for (until now).

At a play day at my good friend Julie's: http://timetocreate-handmadetreasure.blogspot.com.au/  where we were shown how to use a melt pot and then had a fabulous time using it with different techniqes, we were introduced to the delights of free form melting. I absolutely fell in love with this. I loved the randomness and the extra 'unexpecteds' when you dropped in additional colours of embossing powders and stamped into the hot  piece. One of my free form pieces looked like a trellis scattered with flowers... just perfect for this layout.

 

 

 

I had fun doing this and hope to join in this challenge again.

 

Thank you for dropping by. Thank you once again for your lovely comments. Catch you again soon. Cheers, Di.

 

 



Fairy Door Hanger

Hi and thanks for stopping by. This challenge piece for ABAC at http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/  is about fairies. The photo of the fairy was taken of a gorgeous metal woodland fairy I bought a couple of years ago. her wings are made from loosely woven twigs, so of course she had to have  woodland setting.

The door hanger is a piece of plywood which was painted with a thick layer of gesso and then sprayed with blue and red dylusions sprays. The large mushrooms, leaves and the snail (hand carved from rubber) were stamped onto some background papers which had been smooshed with Distress Inks, and then cut out. The wooden mushies and small leaves, were  plywood embellies from Prima....  love this range! I've also added a gum leaf chippie, real gumnuts and flowers diecut from glassine paper. All of the ply and chipboard embellies were painted with 3D stamping paint. A piece of seam binding helped to secure the gumnuts in place. My fairy door hangr is ready for use.

Thank you for stopping by and for leaving your encouraging comments.
Cheers, Di