Strange Beauty

With Halloween almost upon us my mind can't help turn to the strange and spooky.

Here are a couple of very quick spooky ATC's 
This one uses a stamp from Inkadinkado. I've had the set for ages as I just couldn't resist the quirky images, but this was the first time I've used it. The quote round the edge is "there is no beauty without some strangeness" which is a variation on an Edgar Allen Poe quote and very fitting for this fab octopus. It is coloured mostly with watercolour pencils.

For the second one I used a Sheena Douglas stencil and a gorgeous tree stamp from a Crafty Individuals set. It was coloured with a mixture of watercolour pencils and black and white Neocolor crayons.

I'd like to enter these into the Craft Barn weekly challenge.

Happy Halloween to all!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

My little boy recently turned 3 (where on earth did the time go!). He's a very sweet little lad (most of the time) and loves singing. One of his favourites is twinkle twinkle little star, and he sings it so sweetly that I well up every time. He's my little star. 

So today, I want to share a piece of home decor I made with this in mind. I have wanted to do something with teabags for a long time, and it finally got pushed to the top of my mental ideas list by an article by Jaine Drake in this months Craft Stamper magazine. My piece is a very different style but the patchwork effect was definitely inspired by that project.

I have to admit, it's a bit, hmm, should I say 'rustic' and I'll apologise in advance for the poor picture quality.

It's made of teabags stitched together and then stitched onto some brown packing paper. The packing paper had white and gold paint applied randomly using my Gelli plate (using up a failed experiment). Some of the teabags were stamped or stencilled. The stars were stenciled in Prima copper crackle texture paste through a Prima stencil and outlined with watercolour pencils. I stamped the words and stitched those on too. 

I'd like to enter this in the Craft Barn weekly challenge on the theme of light, and also into Craft Stampers 'take a technique' challenge. 

Finally here's a quick pic of my lovely little muse.

Thanks for looking! X

Oriental Adventure

Hi All,

I have a canvas to show you today. Its a small (~A5) one that I've had hanging around for ages and has already undergone several incarnations. 

This time I've finally got something I like: A grungy, aged, oriental inspired design.

First I gessoed over the previous project, then gave it a bit of colour with tea dye and walnut stain distress ink. 

Next I took some packaging paper, crumpled it and smooshed it through the same distress inks watered down on the craft mat. I love doing this, it creates really lovely worn looking paper. I also splattered on some watered down DecoArt quinacridone gold acrylic paint. I glued torn strips to my canvas with gel medium.

I added an oriental bird image and some stamping with some Paperartsy stamps from a Hot Picks backgrounds set.

A thick layer of DecoArt one step crackle, and some DecoArt antiquing creams in black and red oxide, and it was finished.

I'd like to enter this into the Craft Stamper Take it Make it 'take a stamp' challenge. The stamping may not be the most obvious here, but It was very definitely necessary for the oriental feel and texture in this piece.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah x

Gelli and Stencils

Hi there, 

My lovely husband got me a Gelli Plate for my birthday a couple of months ago. Its so much fun to play with that I have made loads of prints, but haven't actually used many of them. The piece I want to show you started off as a print using acrylic paints (Sennelier Abstract Blue and DecoArts Media Quinacridone Violet) with an Andy Skinner stencil.

Looking for something to do with the print, I spotted a new sketch book and thought the print would make a lovely cover image.

I edged it using black neopastel, which mirrored the lovely rough texture of the print then added more layers of stencilling with neopastel and archival ink through some Crafters Workshop stencils (I love the Rebekah Meier ones!). Simple, but quite effective I think.

I'm going to enter this in the Thats Crafty 'stencils and masks' challenge and also a stencils challenge on the Mixed Media World blog which I have only just discovered.

Thanks for visiting, I hope to have more to show you soon.

Sarah xx

A few cards

Here are a couple of cards I've made recently for family and friends. They are fairly experimental so I hope their recipients liked them. 

First 1: brayered fresco finish paints, stencilled grunge paste and stitched layers. Stitching seems to be making its way onto almost everything I do now I've finally got the hang of threading my sewing machine (it didn't stop me doing making the stupid mistake of sewing the front and back of the card together though, oops!).

Second one: music paper, stamped and distressed, stencilled fabric and a stamped and stitched teabag.

Sorry for the poor quality photos - my mobile actually takes better pictures than my camera, but neither are fantastic.

 

Thanks for looking, hope you are having a good week,

Sarah x

Trading Post - Forgotten Times

Here is my ATC for the Artist Trading Post challenge. The theme was 'Trading post' and it made me think of an old, forgotten shop and how times have changed.

My son found me the watch face and bark for the sign in our local park. Getting him trained early at finding me random bits and bobs - think he's a bit of a magpie.

The background was a Tim Holtz paper, coloured and stamped with distress inks. I added texture with some Finnabair copper crackle paste to which I added some brown fresco finish paint to take the shine off. Unfortunately it didnt actually crackle - maybe because of the paint or maybe because I was impatient and dried it with a heat tool. I still like the texture though.

Thanks for visiting,

Sarah x

Fun With Scraps and Stitching

So often my creative time gets taken up with marking cards for friends and relatives, so it was really nice this weekend to just have time to play.
I grabbed my distress inks, sewing machine and all the leftovers scraps lying on my desk.

I made a couple of ATCs:

And a larger, postcard sized piece: 

Just for fun :-)

Sarah 

Mixed Media Baby!

Although I haven't been finding much time to create I have been keeping up with other peoples blogs and recently I came across this stunning Journal spread from France Papillon. It is absolutely gorgeous and, even better, she has a video tutorial (part of her journal on Monday series)

Inspired by her technique and style, I made this simple card for some friends who had just had a baby boy.

I won't go into much detail, but the texture is basically created by layering gesso and gel medium and then heating until it bubbles. I added colour with various ink sprays and highlighted with treasure gold.

I absolutely love how it turned out (and that doesn't happen very often!) so I really hope my friends liked the card and didn't think it was too arty.

Xx

Thinking off the shelf

Thanks for visiting my blog. I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, but I've finally managed to find a little creative time.
I'd like to show you an abstract mixed media piece that started life as a shelf from an Ikea cd unit!

The picture below shows the shelf as it was originally.

I started by covering it with old book pages and then inked, stencilled, grunge pasted, and painted. Originally I just had turquoise and pink/purple shades, but it needed more. Then I spotted the inspiration photo on the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge Blog. I decided a splash of yellow might work. It didn't. But somehow partially covering it all with yellow helped led me to something I liked much better with the same pink, turquoise and yellow colour scheme. I'm definitely embracing the 'if it doesn't work keep adding paint until it does' idea!

Here are a couple more pictures to show the texture - I love how it has worked out.

So I'm entering this into the Try It On Tuesday 'recycle it' challenge and the Mixed Media Monthly photo inspiration challenge.
Hope you like it,

Xx

Bye Bye google reader

Google reader is going soon so a lot of people will be changing how they follow blogs.

I'm trying out bloglovin...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Still figuring out how this will work, but I should also be able to put a link in the sidebar for you to follow me if you want to.

Xx