Catching Up and Getting Started Again.

Hi Folks



Warning....... Longish post.....that I started whilst on Holiday in Italy on 19th February 2010 and finally finished here in the UK on Mother's Day, 14th March 2010.....!



It has been quite a while since I posted anything on here, there are a number of reasons for this, most of which are not worth sharing, things like computer and broadband connection problems, really frustrating, especially when you have project deadlines that you can't meet. Also the longer you leave it, the harder it seems to be to get going again.



Then there was the Claxby Craft Weekend with some really special friends, we celebrated Christmas early, combining crafting and shopping with good food, homemade Baubles for the Christmas tree and christmas crackers, christmas tree , christmas dinner and a visit from Santa at the end of November !! We all ended this weekend tired but happy and ready for a repeat next year.







My Christmas Bauble.



After the Claxby weekend, preparations for Christmas at home started in earnest, although I found it really hard this year, at every turn I was thinking about my dad, and missing him more than ever. It seemed especially poignant as both my daughters and my eldest daughter's partner were going to be with us for the first time for the whole christmas holiday. Usually my creative Mojo gets me through when times are tough but not this time, partly because with the house full, there was no opportunity to get time for myself and my creative mojo had flown the coop and deserted me in any case. I hadn't realised how low I had got until the middle of January. No blogging, no creative projects on the go, and not even bothering to read anyone else's bloggs, not even Tim's !!! Thank goodness for real friends, you know who you are, who can just be with you when things are tough and ride the storm alongside you.
A huge thankyou too, for Tracey and her inspirational scrapbooking classes and crops at Running With Scissors, http:/tj-runningwithscissors.blogspot.com my weekly therapy session, in the company of some other fantastic women, this really keeps me going, even when I just sit and chill and watch what everyone else is creating.





I think I must have hibernated (at least mentally) at this point, because the next thing I knew it was February, a brilliant weekend workshop on Art Journalling at Art From the Heart in Harrogate with the divine Dyan Reaveley, http:/www.dyan-reaveley.blogspot.com a fantastically fun and theraputic treat, as I get older I find that I appreciate the company of other creative, funny, compassionate women more and more, again you all know who you are, so thanks a million for your friendship, at the end of the weekend we all received our certificates in Prattology from Dyan, to be coloured in and suitably altered, of course.







here are the pages I made over the weekend.











The front cover.



All the pages were made from scratch using newspaper, glue sticks aand gesso, then background painting, images from magazines, borders, pens for detail and journalling. etc.













Anatomy of a page.












This workshop was liberating and cathartic, a real tonic, filled with both laugther and tears, it should be made available to all women on the NHS, I can't wait for my next "Therapy Session" in May.



Then it was half term and I was off skiing in Italy with my youngest daughter, an annual event which helps blow the cobwebs away. This time I packed, a bound journal, inktense pencils, watercolour crayons and various pens etc, instead of 3 or 4 long novels, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I would find it very difficult to start using my lovely clean blank pristine book.....lol...Then I had a brainwave at the airport and bought myself a very nice little moleskine journal and suddenly I was free to start using (the now less expensive) journal I had brought with me.


Here are a couple of pages I did whilst in Italy, not bad for a real novice, at least I'm pleased with them.










Usually Spring has made an appearance by the time I get back from Italy, but not this year, we came home to bitter cold and dark grey skies. However the sun has finally made an appearance in our garden this weekend, and although there are still snowdrops and aconites in the garden, the Daffodils are just beginning to bloom and it feels like spring has finally arrived..

Finally I will leave you with a few other projects that have been completed recently.






A valentines Card for Tuesday Taggers Love Makes the World Go Round Challenge,




An altered notebook for Tuesday Taggers Curls and Swirls Challenge.


And a litte Microscope Slide Mailer Shrine for Tuesday Taggers St Patricks Day Challenge.

Front Cover



Inside.



It is good to be back in Blogg Land, and to feel my creative juices beginning to flow again. Thankyou for taking the time to read my blogg and share these little glimpses of my creative adventures.

Bye for now

Bee xx

Time for a bit of a catch up.

Hi Every one. I can't believe that it is more than a fortnight since I last posted on here, life has been extremely hectic, but quite exciting too.
When I last posted I was hoping that work would start on fencing the land we have recently bought.......here is the proof that it actually started on time !!! It took four men working really hard.... well hardish, nine days to complete and looks really good. The grass seed has germinated and a faint haze of green is now covering the whole field, we have also planted a few trees to replace ones which had to make way for the fencing. I can't believe that this "pipe dream" has become a reality.




These first two pictures were taken as they started work on the first morning, and the next three were taken this morning, now that all the work is finished.

I really feel fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

Last week's challenge at Tuesday Taggers was to create something spooky, I decided to continue in a digital fashion following on from the previous week's little mouse and created labels for my Halloween Goody bags using Photoshop Elements and some Rhonna Farrer Halloween Style Digital Brushes, I printed them out onto plain white card stock and then coloured them using TH Distress Inks, I put some suitable sweet treats in the bags and the addition of some fibres to the pack tops for that finishing touch, hmmmmmm, just need a suitable container and ..... I wonder who will get to sample these?



Finally ....for now.... This week's challenge at Tuesday Taggers was to use "Bursts Of Colour" sounds straight forward enough I know, but it was a struggle deciding what to do, a firework theme may have been the obvious choice with Bonfire Night coming up but it didn't really appeal to me. I was thinking about fireworks however when I finally decided on using a "caught in crystal" technique as the colours really seem to burst when you drop pigment powders into the Klear polish on the acetate. When my acetate / pigment and Klear polish / tissue paper sandwich was dry some of the colours were not as vivid as I wanted, so I used my copic markers on the back of the tissue paper to add more colour in some areas, I then used black Stayzon to stamp the trees on to the front of the acetate. The Caught In Crystal Panel is mounted onto an 8" x 8" canvas which has had book pages stuck to it in places and been gessoed before painting with acrylic paints, a chinese proverb which says "One generation plants the trees. Another gets the shade" was adhered to the canvas before the "Crystal panel" was placed over the top and finished off with some ribbons.


I am pleased with the end result as it reminds me of the glorious sunsets we see from our windows at this time of year, as well as expressing what our little bit of Lincolnshire and the trees we are planting mean to me.

I'm off to Malham Tarn at the weekend for an annual Crafty get together with some wonderful crafty friends, I can't wait for Friday to come....but in the meantime I need to decide what to take and what to leave at home (other than my OH and DD....lol) I'll probably end up taking everything and the kitchen sink as usual.

Bye for now.

Bee xx

Still in an Autumnal Mood.

Hi everyone.
The weather here in Lincolnshire continues to be bright and sunny, although an autumnal chill has begun to creep in and as well as glorious sunsets we are now getting some lovely misty mornings. The tree colour is still good, although the leaves are falling fast. We have just managed to get the grass seed sown in 3 acres of land that we have bought adjoining our garden and hopefully the workmen are arriving today to start on the fencing, I am really looking forward to choosing and planting trees and hedgerow plants to give us more autumn colour in the future.

Over at Tuesady Taggers this week the design team are still in an autumnal mood too, our challenge this week is to use a digital stamp to create our projects. We have all used the same image (A cute little Harvest Mouse) by Teri at Delicious Doodles, for our projects.

My Harvest Mouse takes pride of place on the cover of a little Pink Pig Notebook.

First I downloaded the image, decided what size I wanted it to be and printed it out onto copypaper, I then coloured it in using Copic Markers and cut it out. I used perfect medium and two coats of clear embossing to make my mouse more durable. To create the background I applied tea dye and walnut stain distress inks directly to the edges of the green mulberry paper covered board and stamped random leaves using shabby shutters distress ink ink and the acorn stamp from stampin up using walnut stain distress ink.
I tied two pieces of ribbon around the cover and then added a mat made from card covered with frayed burlap and inked with glimmer mists. I placed my Mouse on top of the Burlap mat and added glass beads adhered with diamond glaze around his feet. The end result has a real tactile quality with lots of different textures.

Thanks Teri for giving us the image toplay with, I have really enjoyed this challenge.

Bee xx

Scrapbook Pages.

Hi Everyone, I haven't posted any scrapbook pages for a while, but thought you might like to see these. This double layout was made in response to this month's layout challenge over on the Running With Scissors Shop blog at http://tj-runningwithscissors.ning.com/ Helena had posted this single page sketch.

and I immediately thought of the photos of the Hot Air Balloon Trip that Kate, Jim and I had recently. Kate had always wanted a trip in a hot air ballooon, for that matter so had I....lol... and as both Kate and our good friend Jim celebrated special birthdays this year, it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.

Kate's birthday was in early January, not a good time of year for outdoor adventures, Jim's was in early September a much better time of year, and our trip was planned for 17th September. We spent a lovely day in York, mooching around the shops and having a leisurely lunch before heading to the racecourse to take our balloon trip, an experience we would all willingly repeat, and a real Red Letter Day for all of us.

There were far too many photos that I wanted to use, as I wanted to give a feel of the whole experience, so a double lay out with large flaps for hidden photos and journaling was called for, the sketch with it's strong horizontal lines lent itself to being used this way. The large areas of white space in the sketch also felt appropriate as I wanted to capture that feeling of being at one with the sky.

The Hot air balloon embellishments were simply rubber stamped and coloured in, using a stamp from Clarity Stamps, stamp club that coincidentally arrived in the post a few days ago. The image was stamped once on white card and once onto white shrink plastic, which was then heated, this helped give a sense of perspective, and the calendar page was created in Word on my computer, cut out and then a Stamping Up Border Punch used to give the spiral bound look. All the journaling inside the card was printed out from the computer and then cut into strips before adhering, as were the two Haiku poems I created for the fronts of the layouts. I really like using the Haiku structure to add meaning to my pages in a way that is different from that straight forward journaling.

The words read "A Hot Air Balloon, As one with Wind and Nature, Drifting in Clear Skies" and "Once in a Lifetime, A Different Perspective, A Red Letter Day"

The large letters for the titles were cut using A Slice machine.

I am really pleased with how these pages have turned out, thanks to Helena and her inspiring layout sketch.

Bee xx

Altered Wooden Box

The challenge at Tuesday Taggers this week is to use Autumnal Colours in our projects. This is a real bonus for me as I just LOVE Autumn. The trees around where I live are the most fantastic colours at the moment and there are wonderful shiny conkers on the ground. We have had our first rain today for ages and now it smells of Autumn too.


Anyway back to the project.....
I had a little hinged wooden box in my craftroom just waiting to be altered....another crafty bargain from the range....

I wanted to use Autumn Colours but also get the sheen that you find on fresh conkers....lol

So out came the pearl powders, metallic dabbers, perfect medium, a maple leaf stamp, etc etc, a piece of ribbon, a few pieces of Tim Holtz Idea-ology and some words from a download from Lisa's Altered Art.


After painting all over the box with Black Acrylic paint and leting it dry, I then painted the lid with a variety of mica pigments in strong Autumnal colours in a random fashion. When this was dry I overstamped with clear perfect medium and the maple leaf stamp and coloured these with dry pearl pigments in copper and brass, I spritzed these lightly with water to set and then overstamped again using the same stamp and black stayzon to get a really layered look like a pile of fallen leaves.

I overpainted the black body of the box with a gold acrylic dabber and then distressed it when dry with a coarse sanding block, then rubbed aged mahogany distress ink over the top. I inked and distressed my words and adhered them with dilute PVA which I then used to seal the whole of the box.

An idea-ology Lock plate, brads, sprocket and spinner were attached to the front of the box and the woven ribbon used on the edge of the lid and bottom of the box.


This was quite an experimental piece as I was using a lot of my supplies in ways that they weren't designed for, for example the distress ink wouldn't dry and fix on top of the acrylic paint, but the PVA sealant prevented this being a problem, in fact there was a bonus in as much as the distress ink became more vibrant and moved around with the PVA in a way which improved the look of the box. I also tried a sandwich crackle technique on the body (I painted the crackle medium between the black and gold acrylic layers) which didn't work, thus necessitating the heavy handed distressing to get a similar effect. At the end of the day though I am really happy with what I achieved and had a great time creating it.

I hope you like it too.

Bee xx

Shaker ATC for Tuesday Taggers

Happy Tuesday everyone.

The challenge this week at Tuesday Taggers is Trees, the autumnal colours in the trees around where I live is absolutely stunning at the moment, especially when the sun is shining through them, but my tree here looks as if it would be right at home in Narnia....lol....where it is always winter but never Christmas!!!

I have made shaker ATCs like this before, but thought this was a good opportunity to revisit this very tactile little gem.

The tree image has been stamped in silver brilliance ink onto black glossy card and heat set, I have used glass seed beads for the filling and the textured window frame has been made by glueing tiny broken pieces of pasta ribbons onto the card with PVA and then painting with black acrylic paint. When the black paint was dry I dry brushed over it with some silver acrylic to get the frosty effect.

I can feel a series of these little shaker trees coming on.......all four seasons......watch this space!!

What a Fab Weekend !

Hi everyone,

The photo below shows me (on the far left) the wonderful Dyan and my good friends and fellow Tuesday Taggers DT members Emma and Janet at the end of a fabulous two day mini-ranger university techniques weekend masterminded by Dyan at Art From The Heart in Harrogate.

Two days of wonderful inky, painty, shimmery play....combined with good food, great company, plenty of laughter and crafty shopping !!! what more could a girl ask for?

In two days we completed 38 different technique tags, using acrylic dabbers, dye inks, pigment inks, distress inks, distress crackle paint, perfect pearls, Claudine Hellmuth studio paints.....etc etc.... we spritzed, embossed, blended, resisted, painted, coloured in, altered, distressed, grunged and babywiped to our hearts content, ending up with each of us creating a wonderful resource file full of information, tips and techniques which can be added to in the future.

Some of the techniques were already familiar to me, but Dyan managed to put a new twist on them, others were entirely new and have opened up new ways of using my crafty stash. So huge thanks to Dyan, and to Emma and Janet for such an enjoyable weeked.....and here's to next time !

Bye for now

Bee xx