INKY FINGERS

 Thought I'd shock you and post next day 😍

I found my photos of the book I made for an old friend...a friend I really love and respect, to be honest.  Although more my mum's age than mine, her youngest son is the same age as my younger son and they were best friends at school, until we went to live in France, many, many years ago. She's now one of a group I belong to in the church I'm currently at, and always someone to turn to - a real spiritual Mum. Because of lockdowns, we obviously haven't been able to meet up for the last year, communicating via Whatsapp  instead. The first day we were able to meet up again - socially distanced, in our Community garden - was her birthday, so I was asked to make something for her. 

It was a disaster from beginning to end. I started by trying to make someone else's design - very NOT 'me'. Because of the mess I was in with medication problems I had, I tore it up and restarted it 3 times and was tearing my hair out by the time I finished it, crying every time I went into my craft room.. So, I decided against the die cut book and made a concertina. I still tore out pages and started over again a couple of times, but that was mainly because no matter how hard I tried, I ended up with marks on my white space every single time I touched the book. So by the time I gave it to her, some of these pages were missing - mainly tag pages - but  I'd added a couple, too. I did a LOT of die cutting, as you can see - plus all the pages and layers I threw away!

Front of folded book

 I set a tag challenge for my FB group yesterday, so in order to open the album, I made a couple of quick tags, using what was on my (very, VERY messy) desk and in my stash 😊

I'd already die cut this one and used it to mop up some colour, so I smooshed a little more, stamped the Paperartsy text, added some filler stamps and doodling, then the stamped and die cut flowers from my stash - which is where the Janet Klein words came from. Edged in Delicata Gold Shimmer.  

I stamped, coloured and cut out this lovely lady yesterday, so I found another tall piece of card I'd stamped her on, smooshed some colour, added some stamping, some Inktense pencil shading and some doodling, then stuck my image over the top, colouring the stars with Oxides. I then went a bit mad with    

Oops! I missed another day…

Day 19 – Rainbows

A super simple card using rainbow colours. I’m very, very thankful for rainbows

Day 20 – Café…

A quick page to say thank you for morning coffee

I LOVE my morning coffee… I treat myself to 3 cups of REAL caffeinated coffee a day, but I really enjoy it!

I’ll have to finish this off later… had an unexpected visitor – and I’m thankful for that, too but I really do need to tidy up that white around the letter E!

I’ll link this to Art Every Day Month – AEDM

Modern and Vintage at Art Journal Journey

and

Just Add Ink’s Add a Large Sentiment

Thanks for popping by

See you soon

Cath

xxx

Today I‘m thankful for miracles…those little, everyday miracles we take for granted, the little ‘coincidences’ (or God incidences, as some of us call them) we are thankful for AND the BIG ones we don’t see quite as often, but we DO see them now and again... totally inexplicable events and occurrences.

Time has been short today, so I made a quick card. The Inkylicious words just happened to be on my stamping mat because I took them out for some reason last week and left them out so that I would use them!

I took my favourite Penny Black stamp off the wooden mount last week and attached it to some EZ mount, so I could use it in my Stamping Platform so I decided to use that. The stamp itself is more of an artistic impression than a defined image, so it doesn’t make a great deal of difference, if I’m honest, but it’s better in some ways. I used Tombows and scribbled some onto my mat for spattering over the stamped images.

I ended up having to mount this onto a 7” square card – it would, perhaps, have been more suitable for a journal page and will probably make its way into one of my journals in this form or a similar one.

These other cards use one of my favourite Miracle stamps, from Impression Obsession. The first was dry embossed after making the card front, the second was an Oxide background, with a white embossed image and some Brilliance Moonlight White overstamping and stencilling. The flowers were coloured with Prismas.

I’m sharing this with Art Every Day Month

Retro Rubber Challenge – Anything Goes (I’ve had the PB fuchsia stamp around 15 years!)

Words to Craft by – Blessings

and

Creative Fingers – Anything Goes.

Thanks for visiting today – always lovely to ‘see’ you

Back soon

Cath

xxx

I’ve been wondering if colour can be considered a creature comfort?  What do you think?  Nothing cheers the soul more than a colour explosion – it brightens an otherwise dull day and just makes me smile! It certainly did this week, after a few days of limiting myself to black and white.

So, I decided it IS in fact, a creature comfort because it’s so comforting, lol but we CAN do without it

So here’s my spread for Art Journal Journey, whose theme for October is…. Creature Comforts.

Here’s each page in turn, so you can see more clearly.

 CAS Mixup have a Metallic challenge at the moment, so I thought I’d give it a go, using one of my die cuts and some gold leaf. I can’t find my multicoloured leaf OR my copper leaf (I bet I’ve thrown it out in one of my recent clearouts ) so I improvised with some Pearlex copper ink, which I dabbed over bits of the gold and spattered over the card, with some Delicata gold. It doesn’t look very CAS but ‘white space’ doesn’t have to be white – right?

This next card started life as CAS, but soon developed into a more colourful specimen… I noticed Neet had been using Promarkers and decided I’d get mine out – I just forget I have them and enjoy playing with Prisma pencils or watercolour, so I coloured the leaves with those – and yes, they bled out a little, despite the clear embossing! I quite like the result, though.

I also made another simple leafy card, using embossing resist – I noticed that there were still some Autumn challenges around, so I thought I’d enter those.

Stamping Sensations – Colours of Autumn

Penny Black and More – Autumn Splendour

Moo Mania and More – Autumn

The theme on Shopping our Stash is Pink is the New Orange, so here’s a simple offering for that, made with Oxides and Paperartsy stamps.

I think that’s enough for now… I have more to share, but will be back tomorrow or the day after with those.

Thanks for looking

Back soon…

Cath

xxx

Some people I know would say I’m good at ‘making a scene’ but that aside, I made a simple scene for the challenge at Allsorts, using Oxides and Inkylicious stamps. I used to stamp a lot of scenes, but I haven’t been doing many lately, so maybe it’s time to start again…

I was browsing my downloaded ‘Ideas’ folder and came across a partially masked card, so I had to give it a go. I suppose this is a sort of scene, too, but not quite what I understood from the challenge. It was fun to make.

Back to rainbows…

I’ve been playing with more rainbows but I thought I’d do a comparison of Oxides and Distress Inks, so here’s how I started… I just swiped these three colours on my craft mat (I have a glass one beneath my non stick mat).

These are the Oxides.

 I then spritzed with water

Aha!  I bet you didn’t expect me to post again so soon… I saw the TIOT Challenge this morning – Dies and Stencils – and when I wandered into my Craft Room to put something away, I started messing tidying and playing with my dies… for someone who uses very few dies, I have a ridiculous number in my stash!

I’ll begin by saying this is a HUGE challenge for me because I don’t really do dies, even though I am an occasional collector. BUT you know you’ve had fun in your Craft room when you suddenly realise you’ve been in there for over 4 hours and haven’t even had a drink or a loo break !!!

So the first one didn’t work out very well, but I’ll show it to you anyway… I used the Tim Holtz flowers and dies, die cutting one of my hoarded Glimmer Mist backgrounds from aeons ago. I did add some shading with Prismacolour pencils and I stamped the stems, but the whole thing just didn’t come together well. Too much grass, not enough depth… I’m just not keen, but here it is. Maybe it would have been better on a smaller card base, I don’t know… I’ve also die cut the layers …I actually think these flowers may look better without the stems. I may try that later.

My second card was a play with texture paste (home made) and was far from perfect, so I found a word in my stamped words box and wrote another to go with it. I thought it was terrible but I have to admit that it’s growing on me, partly because I actually LIKE the imperfections. I think the choice of a creamy pearlescent card helped because it goes so well with the paste, which picked up a little of the inks behind – though drying with a heat tool may also have caused that... I love the smell of the baby talcum powder.

Some of the imperfections…

My third card was shamelessly cased from one I received from a lovely KCUK friend, Linda (whose cards I absolutely love!) when my Dad died recently.  I really fell in love with it, and especially with its simplicity, although I didn’t spatter ink on it, as she did. I used different butterfly dies and words and also added a touch of glitter…

Last but not least, with Brenda’s Pets Challenge over at Allsorts in mind, I played with the lovely TH dog dies and stamps. I had already cut up this stamp (Penny Black) as I so often do, but decided I didn’t want the ‘is like finding a four leaf clover’ bit at all, so cut that off and may well discard it. I always remove the dots and bits in between the words because they just don’t always fit what I’m doing with them, so cutting them off makes them far more versatile. I know – I’m weird – but words are important to me and this works for me.

I have a box of precoloured (while watching TV) doggies and crazy birds, so I like to pull them out now and again. Again, the card layers are die cut with double stitched dies. I really like the stitched ones and these are nice and big. I stamped the ‘Hard to find’ bit before I decided to cut the last bit off, so I decided to play with my Hero Arts circle stamps again to cover up the word behind the doggy’s ear and just carried on playing with them. I love the random effect.

Dogs are dear to my heart. I had an amazing best friend dog for 14 years and haven’t been able to replace him because he was like another child to me. Recently, however, I’ve decided I may well try to find a new friend, now that I’m in a house again and not the flat I lived in for four years. I prefer to rescue a dog that may not otherwise find a loving owner, so I’ve applied to a few places, one of which is just up the road, but they didn’t get back to me as they said they would, then didn’t turn up for the ‘house approval’ visit, so I gave up on them. I realise they’re all volunteers, but it’s such a shame when dogs are desperate for new homes. So I thought long and hard about what kind of dog I’d have if I was buying a pedigree and decided I’d prefer a lab…my last dog was half lab and was such a gentle, loving dog. So I applied to a couple of lab rescue places… I’m still waiting for the house visit, but I’m really hoping they show up soon. They’re a distance away from me, so I know they need to find someone closer to me but it’s been 3 or 4 weeks now and I’m excited about having another dog! My little granddaughter (aged 5) is also desperate for me to get one

Anyway, enough of that…

Thanks for the challenge, TIOT! It was fun.

Unfortunately, there’s no Linky on the Challenge blog – it’s saying ‘closed’ but I’m sure they’ll sort that out quickly…

I’m also linking to

A Bit More Time to Craft – Anything Goes

Thanks for looking

Cath

xxx