Maribel

OMG, it's been an age since I last blogged and this is going to be a very swift post.
I've used the beautiful Maribel stamp from Stempelglede. Stamped and coloured in with Archival inks, I also used and sparkle pen and distress collage medium - crazing, although the crazing isn't very visible it will help to act as a seal.

Junk Canvas

Anna from Craft box set us a challenge to make a blended canvas from bits of junk. 

I had a box full of pieces that got water damaged when my craft storage area got flooded from the water tank that lives above it, so this was an ideal opportunity to use some of that stuff. Plus ring pulls, ripped up cardboard box, a broken paintbrush, old inky cotton buds, bottle tops, netting, plastic insects, bobbins,sliced up empty kitchen roll, broken pieces of laser cut pieces, cocktail sticks, finds from walks including a glass heart and marble! And so much more.

Once all of this was glued into place, I covered it with white gesso then started spraying with 

DecoArts Media Misters "yellow green" and "turquoise", these misters work like a dream and give really good coverage. 

Thank for looking x

My Mum

I've just realised that I haven't updated my blog in a long, long time.  It's not for a lack of not wanting to but due to caring for my poor mother who sadly passed away on the 10th May and also having to work full time too. 

I'll be adding more photos over the next few days. 

But firstly one photo of my beautiful mother, rest in peace.

Miss you so very much. xxx

Zentangle Butterfly

Here's my take on the Zentangle Butterfly from wk 2 Bonus project of Life Book 2016.

Explore

Warm up piece for Life Book 2016 - My word for this year is Explore - although that might change as the year progresses, In fairness to the teachers and Life Book, I will not be sharing any of the techniques.

The photo is a bit rubbish but if I cropped it the colours darkened so much that it wasn't recognisable as the piece I'd created as it is this is already darker than the piece actually is as it has a very thin gesso wash over it so should be more muted.

One Word - Explore

Here's my take on week one of Wanderlust - One word journal pages. I'd actually chosen this word earlier for my word of the year, although that might change as the year goes on.
Sorry in fairness to the teachers at Wanderlust I will not be sharing any techniques used.

3UP Abstract Canvas

I can now reveal that I'm taking part in the current 3UP over on Paperartsy Blog.

Please do pop over and take a look at all of the wonderful creations. 

Colour group B: Banana, Tangerine Twist, Bougainvillea, Caribbean Sea, Blue Glass and Purple Rain.

My Topic Paint

I started off with adhering Tissue wrap to a large canvas board then totally covered it with Blue Glass, then started to shade in with purple rain, splattered and dripped Caribbean Sea.

I let this completely dry before adding any of the other colours as I didn't want to be left with a muddy looking piece.  I had soon firm ideas of where I was going with this piece but after looking at it for a couple of days and realised that I was being limited by the butterfly so I covered  it up and everything started to flow.

The colour palate reminded me of the smarties and tutti fruttis and that influenced how the piece finally looked when it was finished, a sort of cosmic explosion of sweets. 

I had so much fun producing this using the wonderful Paperartsy paints in our colour group and I also added a little Snowflake, Treasure Gold Indigo & Limted edition 2, Blue Crocco, Micro Beads, tissue wrap, stencil and script stamp.

Happy Mothers Day

I meant to have made this card last Sunday but it just didn't happen (I had a cold and just wasn't in the right mood) so it was a bit of a rush this morning to get it done, but I'm very happy how it turned out even if the colours look a bit weird in the photo in real life the corrugated card is a soft pink not salmon pink (just to give you an idea).

The base card is an 8"x8" so Tim Holtz fabulous huge botanical stamp fits ok on this. I firstly used a mixed embossing powder of clear plus a little bit of sparkle, then I blended various distress inks over the top of it. I finished off by adding a couple of the texture fades and diecut Butterfly Duo which I doubled up after I'd blended distress inks and bling on them.

Birthday Card

I can now post this birthday card on here, as the recipient might have seen it on the facebook feed. I truly can't wait until we get some decent light to get good photos. I didn't check the picture until after the card had gone otherwise I would have taken some more.

Using Tim Holtz new Butterfly stamp and flourish stencil, plus , sentiment stamps and plenty of different shades of purple.

 Background: milled lavender, dusty concord, seedless preserves distress inks.

Butterfly: Pickled raspberry, seedless preserves and spiced marmalade distress inks and pens. I finished it off with some flowers that had been inked with dusty concord and spritzed with a purple/black mica spray and added rhinestone brads.

Thanks for looking

Treasure Seeking with Mati Rose McDonough

This is my week 8 piece from life book 2015, abstract/intuitive art isn't really my thing and I so very gave this week a miss, but I thought I'd get the background under way it wasn't until I decided to put a Viking boat on it that it came together for me. I'm not too happy with the gilding on the boat as the silver looks more like the sea-foam! maybe I shouldn't have used multi-coloured leaf. Apart from that it was really a fun lesson.

Affirmation Feather with Tamara Laporte

This was an extra project for week 5 of Life book 2015, I've still to make the main project which might wait until I have a few different supplies to help me create it.

The Beacon of Light with Tamara Laporte

Here's my week one main piece The Beacon of Light, I keep on adding little touches here and there to her and I'm still not entirely finished but she'll do for now.

Warning today is going to be a little like buses, nothing for ages and then a few posts. lol

Playing Tag with Roben-Marie Smith

Here's one of the life book week 2 bonus projects. Roben-Marie showed how to make quick tags and also shared a couple of tags for us to use. I use a small portion of one of Roben-Marie's tags as the main focal part of this tag and created a background to go with and also used Tim Holtz journey and sentiment background stamps.

Art Feeds Your Soul

Here's my Life Book week 3 piece that I created yesterday. Instead of using watercolours I used my inktense pencils. Looks like I need to loosen up a little to get this technique right, there should be more white areas and more painting outside of the lines, I was happy with the greens blending into the blue but that's really where I draw the line. lol

All of my Life Book projects are done on 12" x 9"

Thanks for taking the time to look.

Karin x

Happy New Year Everyone!

 LB 2015 Warm-up exercise

Here's my first and warm up piece for Life Book 2015. 

In fairness to Tam and all the teachers on Life Book I can't share any of the details of any Life Book makes but if you're curious then why not join in. 

You'll find out all the details here

Thanks for looking in.

Karin x

WOYWW 291 - Expressive Florals

What a terrible blogger I've been these past few months of the year! It's not that I haven't wanted to create but due to a change of my working hours and job. That's not going to change for awhile but I'm planning on making more time to create now that I've settled into the job.

This is my final piece for the year - it's from Life Book 2014, I'fe still plenty of weeks to catch up on.

Sorry I don't actually have a work desk this is a corner of my dinning room table and as I was waiting for the paint to dry I cleared the paints away.

Happy New Year everyone and thanks for passing by.

Karin x

ATC Swap July - Bugs

The theme for the Willowing ATC swapsies for July was Bugs!

After discounting the rabbit, I decided to use the stampotique Bee stamp by Jo and the beautiful Dragonfly by Stampers Anonymous - designed by Michelle Ward

I've used lots of distress inks on these two atcs plus a little bit of clear sparkle from a sakura starlight pen on the wings - not sure if you can see that.

Thank for looking,

Karin x

CC3 - 7 ........shabby chic jewellery box updated with original photo

Painted Industrial meets shabby chic jewellery box!

Over on  Studio L3,  Linda Ledbetter and her wonderful crew (do go and check them out) are sharing their masterpieces for the seventh challenge of The Compendium of Curiosities Vol 3 Challenge (CC3), from Tim Holtz's latest publication. In respect to Tim please don't ask for the technique used; you need to get your own copy :-)

The challenge this time is Painted Industrial technique, which can be found  on page 46. 

I've put my twist on this as I wanted to use this technique but with a different colour. 

Here's a close-up of the top

 This looks like it's a totally different colour but that's the trouble with photographing metal, the photos I took inside looked dull but these ones outside look different colours. I used Salty Ocean and white, just to give you an idea of the true colours. The metal was stretched to the extreme over the stars!

I've just found the original photo of the box!

 The fabulously generous people over at Inspiration Emporium are offering a $50 prize! 

Thanks for looking

Karin x

CC3 - 6

   Altered Burlap Panel

Over on  Studio L3,  Linda Ledbetter and her wonderful crew (do go and check them out) are sharing their masterpieces for the sixth challenge of The Compendium of Curiosities Vol 3 Challenge (CC3), from Tim Holtz's latest publication.

The challenge this time is Altered Burlap Panel technique, which can be found  on page 37. 

I've used lots of Tim's products on this 8"x 6" Burlap Panel which was one of the Christmas Panels, Tissue wrap -Composor, Wallflower paper stash, distress inks, rock candy stickles, alcohol inks, shrink plastic, tissue tap, trellis framework and the new Layered Dragonfly. I love the detail on the this die; unfortunately the camera hasn't picked up the detail on the shrunk ones but the both look gorgeous in real life.

In respect to Tim please don't ask for the technique used; you need to get your own copy!  

Tim and Mario have sent Linda, prizes for the challenges, those guys are the best!

All even numbered challenges are  are sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

Life Book ATC swap

This is the pair of ATCs I made for the swap on Life Book

They've both arrived now so it's safe for me to share.

More to follow soon...hopefully :-)