Journal Journeys Challenge 10

Over on Journal Journeys Dawn gave us the challenge of 'Paris' this month.  Now I could've done a layout about the romance of Paris, but Paris in July only means one thing to me - The Tour de France!!!  I watch it every year and love it but this year was *very* special - we had a British winner in Bradley Wiggins.  So of course my page *had* to be about that.


First a little explanation.  The Tour de France is a bicycle road race around (surprisingly enough) France.  It starts with around a couple of hundred riders and raced over 3,497 km split into 20 stages over 3 weeks.  The final stage every year is ends in Paris with the riders racing down the Champs Elysees and past the Arc de Triomphe.  I find it absolutely exhilarating to watch and I'm constantly in awe of the riders fitness levels!  Bradley Wiggins was the overall winner and received the coveted Yellow Jersey.  Mark Cavendish won the sprint on the Champs Elysees to notch his 4th win there and he's a Brit too!  And so onto the page.

After gessoing the page I scribbled a blue Aquacolour crayon over the page and activated it with gesso to have an almost blue sky look to it.  I took a couple of photos (I know miracle for me!) but the colour didn't show up to well.  I found a free image of the French flag fluttering in the wind on-line and used a glue stick to stick to the page.

I then stamped the bicycle from one of Sir Tim's clear stamp sets around the outside of the page using Memento Tuxedo Black ink and stamped one bicycle in the white portion of the flag in Dandelion Memento ink to signify the Yellow Jersey.





This is when things started to go down hill somewhat and my MS came to play.  I desperately wanted to enter this challenge especially as I was doing a page about the Tour but I sort of struggled from here on in.  So this isn't exactly what was supposed to happen but I think it turned out OK.

I wanted to put the logo for the tour into the page somewhere and found it on-line and sized to what I needed and printed onto tissue paper.  I stuck to the page with Golden Gel Medium (matte).  








Once it was dry I found I stamped the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe from Paris Culture stamp plate by Chocolate Baroque onto the background using Black Archival.  I found some more free images on-line of Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and the peloton going into Paris.  I printed these out and stuck adhere them with glue stick.  I stamped some bunting and stamped the letters of the riders names into it.  I coloured Brad Wiggins name in Squeezed Lemonade DI as he won the Yellow Jersey and left Cav's white as he is the World Champion at the moment.  I decorated some of the bunting with Union Jacks which I drew free hand with Promarkers and stuck them on with glue stick.  I finished the page off with the 'We'll always have Paris' stamp from the Paris Postcard stamp plate from Chocolate Baroque in Black Archival.

If you like the idea of Journaling, why not come and play with us at Journal Journeys.

Thanks Dawn for organising this again!

Star Paws

One of my very talented friends runs Star Paws a site specifically for pet portraits.  The photos are amazing and I so admire her patience to be able to get such wonderful shots.  If only I'd known Sue when my girls were still here :(

Please have a look at her site and if you're in the area she covers have a portrait done of your pet.  


Or give her a call on 07828 08 11 66, or e-mail her for more information.

And if you mention that you've seen this on my blog....Sue will be giving a special offer!!

Journal Journeys Challenge 09

This month Dawn over on Journal Journeys set us the challenge of 'torn paper'.  I *love* torn paper.  I try to use it on my cards so that when I stick something on wonkily, it doesn't matter ;)


Yet again Dawn made a fabulous page and it took me a while to figure out how to follow it in my own style.  Then I remembered a couple of cards I had made a while ago using mulberry paper and the idea had arrived!


Firstly I tore up red, yellow and orange tissue paper and adhered them to the page with Golden Gel Medium.  Then I dribbled Golden Fluid Acrylic in Phthalo Green (blue Shade) and used a Speedball Brayer to brayer it across the surface.  








The colour was nice but I wanted more depth so I dripped more Golden Fluid Acrylics in Phthalo Blue (green shade), Hansa Yellow Medium and Cobalt Teal separately onto sections of the page and rubbed them in with my finger.  I like the colours much better and it gives it some interest.

Next I searched til I found my stash of Mulberry Paper and drew basic circular flower shapes on various colours with a wet paint brush and tore them out.  Then I drew some centres and leaves and tore them out too.  I stuck them to the page with a Zig glue pen.  Now on the cards I've made before I followed instructions from the PaperCraft Inspirations magazine.  They made poppies with the paper so the glue didn't show through on the black Mulberry but it does on the yellow centres I had so I had to stick some gems on to try and hide it.


I drew stalks on randomly with a dark green Promarker.  It didn't show up to well but I like that.  Black would've have been too harsh and I stuck the leaves on just to fill gaps really!

The top of the page looked a little bare so I tore a butterfly out of the Mulberry Paper and again the glue showed through the lilac wings, so back to the gems.  Gems are just *the* best things for filling up blank space and saving a project like this. 


I drew the antennae on with a black Promarker with the small tip added.


And here is the finished piece.  I really like the texture underneath the paint.

Thanks for organising this again Dawn :)

MS Trust Art Show

I promised you I would show you my piece from the MS Trust Secret Art Show when it had sold.  I forgot to take a photo so Jo from the MS Trust very kindly sent me a scan of it.  And here it is

The butterfly is from a (now sadly) discontinued stamp plate by Elusive Images.  I stamped it onto the heavy watercolour paper that the MS Trust sends you when you show interest in creating a piece for the show.  I embossed it with a silver embossing powder andpainted it with Twinkling H2O's, then used a yellow Ecoline Ink to colour the background.

The sentiment was also on the stamp plate but I needed it to be bigger, so I printed onto to tissue paper through my printer.  I have a Kodak ESP printer and the ink dries very quickly on all the things I've tried through it so far.  As long as I tape the tissue to a piece of cartridge paper it prints fine.  As the ink dries very quickly you can use gel medium to adhere it to the background which is what I did here.

It sold on the first day of the sale.  How chuffed am I ?!?!?!

There are still some pieces left.  Please have a look.  Its a great cause very close to my heart (for obvious reasons!!)

Journal Journeys CH08

Over on Journal Journeys Dawn set us the challenge of 'Once Upon a Time'.  She had done the most fabulous page and it was a real challenge to follow it.

I first searched on line for 'Once Upon a Time'.  Of course the bulk of the results came back to the TV series being shown on Channel 5 at the moment.  Really unhelpful :(  But there were a couple of possibilities.  One was Once Upon a Time in the West - a 1968 spaghetti western, and also Once Upon a Time in America - a 1984 gangster movie.  Then I found some quotes and one was exacly what I was looking for.

I wanted the page to look like and old book and began by doing a collage of dictionary paper (from one I bought at a church sale for 50p) over the entire page using a glue stick.  I was going to trim the paper that stuck over the edge of the journal but I kinda like it the way it is.  My initial idea was to use lemon juice over the top of it and heat it to make it look even older.  However because the paper is so old its *very* porous and just soaked the juice right up.  Time for a rethink... aha - antique linen DI which I blended all over the page to age it.

I found the perfect image on Joanna Sheen's Dancing with Shadows CD.  I've had a look on her website and I can't find it so it may no longer be available.  I found some long forgotten paper in the back of drawer (come on we've all got stuff like that!!) and ripped it to make a backing for th image.  I used the same paper to print the quote onto from the PC.

The paper was actually a light aqua colour before I got my hands on it (!).  I crumpled all the paper and image and used Antique Linen DI to colour them.  Then I flicked lemon juice onto them and heated it to get age spots on the paper.  Now I've seen this done but never done myself.  So I started to heat it.  They said it smelled nice but didn't warn me about the smoke that eminates from the page.  I had to open the window and had visions of my neighbours calling the Fire Brigade!!!

Once the smoke had cleared (OK it probably wasn't as bad as that) I stuck everything together with good old double sided tape.  Think thats the first time I've used it in my journal.

And here is the completed page.  Because the dictionary paper came from an old book, the whole page smells like old paper and it adds to the way the page feels.

Thanks for organising this Dawn :)

Bleeding Lovely Play Day

A couple of weeks ago I got together with Carrie (and her cats - thanks for the cuddles girls) for a play day.  Carrie had tweeted about her experiments with Derwent Inktense Pencils on fabric.  She said how great it was and that it might be even better with the Inktense Blocks.  As I have the blocks we decided to arrange a day to play.

I bought myself a couple of cheap t-shirts in Asda and decided to put a face on them from  Doodles Unleashed by Traci Bautista.  In it she has drawn some faces to download for you (as she puts it) 'trace, doodle, embellish...', so I did just that.

First of all I blew the face up to A4 on my printer and placed it under the t-shirt.  You couldn't really see the lines til the t-shirt was wet.  The fabric needs to be wet for the Inktense to work properly. 

Then it was just a case of choosing colours and following the lines.  I found that the wetter the t-shirt, the more intense the colours became.  The colours also bleed into the wet areas, so I decided to use this a design feature.  This was when I uttered 'this is bleeding lovely' with out thinking.  What I meant was that it was bleeding really well.  Hence the title of this post!!

Thanks to Carrie for taking all of theses action shots.  Most of them were taken from the opposite side of the table which gives them a fab angle!!!

And here is the finished article...well sort of.  When I took the piece of paper out from under the t-shirt and turned it round, the purple at the left side of the face had leaked through to the back of the shirt.  Just never gave a thought to the colour bleeding through to the back.  Bit of a DOH moment!!!  Next time I've got to make sure that I use a craft mat under the picture too so no colour will get to the back ;)

As I'd already 'spoilt' the t-shirt I decided to splatter the front with Inktense.  I used a wet paintbrush and flicked it off the end of the pencil.  I used the same colours that I had for the face - Fuchsia, Tangerine, Violet and Teal Green.  I think I'm gonna just bleed some of the colours directly on the back and do some more splattering and it'll turn out just fine (I hope).

Next I had a try at Screen Printing.  I've never done this before and *loved it*!!  The designs Carrie had were pre-made little screens of leaves, so I just went into the paint and scraped it across the screen onto a bag-for-life Carrie gave me.

You don't need much paint, at least definitely not as much as I used as this was the result.  Its supposed to be a skeleteon leaf, but looks OK almost fully filled in.

I kept going with some more leaves this time using blue and green.  It was just so much fun!

This is the bag as it stands at the moment - a work in progress.  I left it at Carries for me to play with some more at our next play day!




After all of the talk about the Inktense Blocks, I didn't use them but Carrie did on what she was working on.  Have a peak over on her blog to see what she did :-)

We had a fab time.  Thanks Carrie!!!!

MS Trust Spring Secret Art Show

Once again the MS Trust are holding a Secret Art Show in aid of the charity.  I have two pieces in this show - one that didn't sell from the last time and a new one.

Please, please click on THIS LINK and have a look at the fabulous artwork on offer.  You will only find out who created the work when you receive it.  Thats what makes it secret and fun!!

The sale opens for business at 9am on 11th May.  And, if you can, please buy a piece of artwork and raise funds for this wonderful charity!