She's here

Afternoon friends and followers my granddaughter arrived safely at 11:12 last night, stubbornly refusing to be born since Wednesday lol. 

So I can finally show the card I had made to congratulate them. I have always loved Klimt and so this card is heavily influenced by his mother and child. 

I drew the base influenced by this picture and added dad. 

I started to build up my shading

I realised my proportions were wrong for the hand and no matter how hard I could not get it right so tucked it in a picket lol 

I used prismsa colour pencil to colour my drawing. I heat embossed around the family with a variety of colours to represent the gold and patterns from the original. This was mounted onto some pretty paper which had been distressed. 

And the finished card

Thank you for your visit 

Debs xxx

Darcy inspired Journal Page

Hello and welcome to my Sunday afternoon post. I hope you are all. We still have no news of the baby's arrival, hopefully she will be here this time next week. 

Today my challenge to myself was a Darcy inspired journal page. Every month Darcy takes us through loads of techniques she uses to create a journal page for the Paper Artsy blog. Check it out here.

I pretty much followed Darcy's techniques I will list what I used at the bottom. So sit back grab a coffee and have a look through the photos. All the details can be found on the PA blog.

I knocked it back with a watery Snowflake 

I used Fresco finish paints from Paper Artsy in Snow Flake Blush, Sherbet, Pansy and Egg Plant for the journal page.

For the flowers I used Ice blue, Sky Spanish Mulberry and Pansy. For the leaves I used Hide Hall and sage mixed together. I used the same Lin brown stencil. 

I loved making this. It's very different for me. Don't forget to check out Darcy's for all the info and do have a go it is such fun.

See you later 

Debs xxxx

Another doll

Evening all phew! isn't it warm. I am trying so hard to enjoy it but unfortuantly I'm struggling. Many of you out there will understand, we are not alone lol.

Earlier on I went into the shed to fetch something and noticed that the paper clay bodice I had made was dry. I was inspired to make this by Gabrielle Pollacco heck out her video here.  I started fiddling as you do and had an idea to make another doll. Penny brought us 3 great nights on the Paper Artsy blog and this doll is inspired by her first.

Now unfortuantly I got so carried away I forgot to take any pictures but I'll talk you through it, for those that are interested. 

I used paper  clay and shaped the bodice. The skirt is dried used baby wipe cut to size. The wings are stamped from Ellen Vargo stamp and the face is from crafty Indivduals the butterfly is from from Paper Artsy.

Thanks for looking 

Debs xxx

My doll has attitude

Evening everyone, I hope your Monday went to plan and that you are on track for tomorrow. This evening I'm bringing you a doll inspired by Penny Nuttall who gave us her first on the Paper Artsy blog last night. Go take a look it was great.

I'm afraid there are not many pictures as I got carried away. My tag background was created a while ago you can see how here. 

A few weeks ago I asked mum to sew up a few fabric hearts I had cut out which she did. I decided to fill one with lavendar and use it as the trunk of my doll. Who ever I give it to, can remove the heart and have a small fragrant bag they can attach somewhere.

I found a matching piece of fabric and made my skirt, two metal pieces for legs and a doll I had. Well sort of! 

I looked through all my stamps but wasn't happy with the heads so drew one. I coloured her the best I could as I cannot do small anymore as I cannot see the detail. On the ipad it's easy, just zoom in,  but a real page don't do that lol.

So her face was created and I felt had to have a hat so stamped and coloured it from Lynne Parella plate xxx From Paper Artsy. 

So here she is in her full glory hehe! 

Thanks for looking and come back soon

Debs xx

Paint resist

Hello and welcome to my Sunday afternoon play. Mum has gone home and I have sat in the shed playing through an almighty shower of rain it was an amazing 'here and now' moment of time. I don't think most of us have enough of these. We are always so busy, fitting stuff in so it's nice when you catch yourself in the moment and be totally conscious of that moment, Joy to be alive!

Any way lol, my tag was inspired by Darcy_uk earlier in the week when I had an amazing time at her class in the birds in the barn Summerfest. She gave us instruction how to make each of the 10 tags we can use in the book we made in her class. 

Also over at the Country View Challenge site they want you to use stencils so I'm entering this tag in the challenge.

I started with Tag 1 - I stencilled with snowflake fresco acrylic paint into a Lin brown stencil and following the instructions laid done my first coat of paint in Haystack.  

Once this was dry I again spritzed my tag and added a very wet coat to the tag but I had added some brown shed to darken it slightly. Each time wiping it off quickly I repeated this several times each time getting slightly darker. This was different to Darcy's as she only used 1 coat  for her tag.

I stencilled onto the tag in archival  ink using different stencils.

Those of you who read my last post may remember that I had mixed too much grunge pasted and so stencilled it onto some tags for later use, well I decided to use them on this tag as I thought the colours would work well together.

I added a little treasure gold in white fire, some words which I connected with and some fibre tied up by yellow string.

And now for one in huge garden

I love the look of the flowers on the tag and they feel good too xx I hope you enjoyed your visit. Take care and see you soon.

Debs xx

Inspired by Alison

Hello welcome to my Saturday post. I hope you are well and having a good weekend. My mum's staying the weekend and I got her painting lol.

She had asked me to make her a picture for her new bedroom using lilac so when Alison made a lovely frame over on the Paper Artsy blog this week I thought I could have a go with only two colours. Alison's was a lovely mix of blue and green, you can see it here. 

I used a 6x6 canvass the same way as Alison's; mum chose Lilac and Vintage Lace Fresco finish acrylic paint for the colours so I thought I would crackle glaze the frame so used black gesso for the undercoat. 

I used the Vintage Lace ontop of the dried glaze and the lovely cracks appeared. I painted the inside canvass in Lilac.

I mixed some grunge paste with lilac and used it in a JOFY 10 stencil. I mixed far too much and so used a Lin brown stencil on card to use another time. I used some printed tissue over the lilac canvas.

Now this is where I got mum to help we painted a variety of flowers in the two colours. A very good job she did.

I then stuck them on using a glue gu. I stamped and coloured a butterfly which is added to some lace. The last job was to skim with silver treasure gold.

And now the finished canvas.

Mum loves her frame I'm not so sure lol.

Thank you for your visit. Come back soon 

Debs xxx

Darcy_uk is a Star *

Hello and welcome to this post about my special day with Darcy at Summerfest 14. I had an amazing time making a wonderful tag book the Darcy_uk way. Those of you PATwits (Paper Artsy Twitter followers) will know how amazingly talented Darcy is, but for those who might not know please visit her blog here.

I also got to meet Lin Brown another amazing artist. She was teaching another class next door but popped in to visit. You can visit her blog here.

The Summerfest 14 was coordinated by Janet and her wonderful team at birds in the barn a very well stocked craft shop full of arty goodies. 

Well onto my book! 

Darcy gave us a pack which had templates and measuring card ready for us to cut out and use which was so helpful to use, and keep to make more in the future. We cut out our card for the bird house and Darcy demonstrated how to add grunge paste and make it look like wood.

Several coats of French Roast Brown Shed and Nougart fresco finish acrylic from Paper Artsy were applied in thin coats to build up depth and finally a tiny amount of blue was added.

We had three papers from the Paper Artsy Chatsworth papers and two boards cut to size and ready to use. The papers were scored, folded to size and stamped with a border from JOFY13 

We moved onto our bird leaves etc and another technique demonstration by Darcy. Paint your colours onto smoothly card and stamp onto of the paint. This allows you to mix the paint colours add texture etc which would be difficult to if stamped first and then painted.

Stamps from Darcy_uk mini 02 and the 06 plate

We stopped for lunch 

Then back to work to finish our books. Darcy provided us with clear written instructions of techniques as well as samples to look at for tags to go in our book. We didn't have enough time to start the tags but that's a project for another day. 

Now a fantastic part of our book is that we were given twigs which fitted in the spine of the book. This was decorated with bunting and then dangles were attached with coloured thread. These were made by Darcy out of clay; we painted them and then stamped on them before they hung from the twigs.

So the finished book.

Now when I attached the leaves to the twigs and went to take a photo I noticed that one of my leaves was missing. I looked everywhere for it but it had disapeared so I added another, however when I looked at this photo I found it - can you see it? I have since removed it lol.

I have had a fantastic day, thank you Darcy,  and thank you Bird's in the Barn for bringing Darcy and Lin to Essex.

I hope you enjoyed your visit, come back soon to see the tags in their special book.

Bye for now

Debs xxx

Remember this?

Hello and welcome. I  started my fearie a while back and showed you this

The back ground was inktense blocks and the faerie was drawn and then I used Caran d'Ache crayons neo ll. I added shading and decorations using prisma colour pencils

Not sure if she is finished 

Thanks for looking

Debs xxx

Mid Summer's Night Dream

Hello and welcome to my craft world. I'm bringing you a journal page that was inspired by the recent mid summer's night. It has taken me a while to finish but it got here eventually.

I started by adding colour to the page and blending in another colour before it dried. You can use any paint for this but on this page I used ArtDeco acrylics. 

I tore the page out and trimmed off the perforated edge. I cut this up and added it to the page. I then added some lines using folded craft card. 

I wanted a faerie stencil and as I didn't have one drew this outline and cut her out.

I used spray ink over the stencil in different colours.

Once this was all dry I stamped the faeries and toadstools from the free stamp I got in a magazine ( sorry cannot remember which) in black archival ink

I wanted to use some words from the play Mid Summer's Night Dream by Shakespear and my other half came up with an ideas to print them off from the computer. He found a website but cannot remember which that lets you manipulate words. For this page he loosely arranged them into the silouette of 'crinkle crags' up in the Lake District. Together we have climbed the crags twice, both times we found the long and windy path up to the crags tedious. However, once you get to the crags the ups and downs is a fantastic climb. I love the fact that you have to climb them hand over fist, and don't be lulled into believing there are only 5 because they don't count the first 2.

Here's a photo of the crags

The words 

And now the finished page. 

I hope you liked your visit and look forward to seeing you soon

Debs xxxx