August Calendar

Scanned images above and photo below.

Another month is here and I've hardly had time to blog, but I have made my August Calendar pages (and finished writing up the July Calendar). Another great stamp from Craft Stamper magazine which gives me my pink, blue, green colour scheme and floral decoration theme for August. I painted my pages with acrylic paint, and I've put the journalling squares directly onto the page, painting them with a bit of pearlescent white here I thought they were too dark. Not sure how it will look when I write on them, but I like my multi-coloured pages now. I like drawing the doodle-ly squares straight onto the page. I coloured the stamped flower images softly using distress inks.

July's ATC swap theme was "Jewels" so I made one with pink pearls
and one with jewellery on black velvet paper.

My July Calendar pages

Long time no blogging, due to busyness at home and then holidays. I did do a bit of Art Journalling on holiday - pictures later when I finish putting the holiday journal together. However, I have done my July Calendar. Yesterday I painted some patterned card in pink and pearlescent white, decorated it with the lovely Craft Stamper chandelier and a bird, stuck on squares using only two patterned papers, and used Distress Inks in Victorian Velvet and Frayed Burlap. I like this colour co-ordinated effect - less colourful than most months. What I don't like is having to stick all the squares on - there is a lot to be said for painting the squares when painting a background on plain paper !

June Calendar

Yesterday being a Bank Holiday Monday I was at home, so I painted some pages for my June Art Journal Calendar. I've gone back to painting the whole page in acrylic paint, and sticking paper squares on. I love these papers ! This is the first month where I have not used the 2011 Craft Stamper Free stamp - I decided I didn't like it enough, so I have used their black cat stamp from June 2010, which is great. Not sure it has come out that well on my pages, but at least I like the overall purple (and silver and black) effect. You can't have too much purple !

May ATCs and Tags

This month's ATC swap theme was Men. I made a vintage style ATC using bits and pieces from Creative Craft Cabin's bargain bundle bags. The blue one uses a football stamp I bought at Ally Pally, and some foam tool embellishments, also from Creative Craft Cabin. And I made some tags using chipboard tag blanks that I got from Capture the Magic at Ally Pally.

May calendar

Better late than never ! We've been very busy recently - Easter and lots of Bank holidays, which meant days volunteering at the Reading Beer & Cider festival. Great fun but also hard work. So I painted my May pages a few days ago, filled in some of the entries and finished the stamping yesterday. This month I did the pages with watercolours again, but I masked off the squares before doing the background - more or less - some of them are neater than others. Then I doodled edges and stamped with the Craft stamper balloon stamp. Today I added a couple of photos of the lovely balloon flight that was my birthday present a few years ago.

Sakura Pens Workshop

Fab workshop on using Sakura pens at the Creative Craft Cabin this morning with Michelle Johnson. Made two cards and several toppers, which turned into two ATCs, a pink topper for another card and some more left over bits that I can use later. Great fun, learned lots of techniques for using sakura pens, and I bought some more - gold, silver and sparkly.

Artful Splodger Blog Candy

Pop over here http://artfulsplodger.blogspot.com/2011/03/shop-opening-giveaway.html for some lovely candy - open until 18 April !

April Calendar

Another month has flown by. So its time to make my Art Journal Calendar pages for April. First I painted the background in watercolours, then painted squares for each day.

As the Craft Stamper magazine stamp for April was a butterfly I thought I should do some delicate pastel pages with fluttery butterflies. So it s a bit different this month. I painted my background with watercolour paints, instead of acrylics, but they came out a bit darker than I had intended. Then I painted the squares for each day in watercolour, quite dark. And stamped the butterflies using dark Distress Inks, and added a few stamped & heat embossed onto dark vellum. I like the effect of painting the squares directly onto the background, rather than sticking patterned paper on, and will probably try doing this again later in the year, but the finished pages are not that good. I should have redone the backgrounds and restamped the images to get a better finish, but ran out of time and energy. I took a picture after I'd finished painting, and then scanned and photographed the finished pages.

Another great stamp from Craft Stamper, and next month should be good too.

Artist Trading Club ATCs for March

Finished my finger painted old book page background ATCs today, for the Artist Trading Club swap this month. I painted an old paperback copy of "Othello" which was falling apart, using some lovely bright acrylic paints. Then I stamped black swirls and text - very, very similar to my easel ATCs, I realised, too late. And added stamped, heat embossed vellum flowers with big bright brads, and a few words from the book to finish them off.

Stitch and Craft

"Beautiful" scrapbook page and MJM's instruction sheet.

Pampered pets - workshop shaker card on the right.

Had a super day out on Thursday at the Stitch and Craft show at London's Olympia, travelling up by train. I got there about 10.45, and was able to join the docrafts card making workshop at 11, and Michelle Jackson-Mogford's scrapbooking one at 1pm. Also saw Dawn Bibby of QVC demonstrating at 4pm, and made a few cards. I bought various things, including some lovely stamps, especially docrafts things that I don't usually see. We used their new pampered pets range to make a shaker card - mine fell apart when I picked it up at the end of the class, shedding beads, so we stuck it back together but it came apart in my bag on the way home too. I made the other (pink dog) card at home, using some of the papers they gave us. Michelle Jackson-Mogford's "beautiful" scrapbook layout was lovely. We ran out of time to finish it, but when I got home I realised I had some good pictures of my husband on Santorini, where we went for his 50th birthday last year. The main photo was the wrong size, but I added two other pics, so the title "beautiful" might refer to Santorini or our whole trip, not just my husband. His favourite bright blue shirt and the blues of Santorini fit the page well, but I left off the lovely pearls Michelle used and the lace (fab ideas, but they don't fit my photos). I tried to take a pic of Michelle's instructions, so you can see her finished layout, as well as the one I made.

Lucky Dips

Lucky dip crafting - see the expalanation at the end of this post , after the pictures !

Goody bags before I started.
Lucky Dip 1 below (the pink paper on the right was chosen deliberately, after the blind pick gave black card and flowery fairy stickers)

Lucky Dip 2 - just 2 items, and I couldn't think what to put with them.

Lucky Dip 3 - I got the creamy pearly ribbed paper and the butterfly stickers sheet, and then I chose to add orange card.

Lucky Dip 4 - rough beige card, stickers and amazing spotty glittery parer.

The finished items - 3 ATCs and a tag. Not pictured in the correct order - top left is 4, top right 2, lower left 3 and lower right 1. Better picture of the first one follows.

Black and pink ATC taken without flash, to show off the black paper (its so pearlescent the flash made it silver, but its black !)

I really wanted to go to the Craft Show at Malvern, but decided its just too far to drive (two and a half hours, I expect) and would cost far too much petrol ( at least £30 worth !) so I stayed at home, and spent a happy morning listening to Create and Craft TV in the background, while I made some bits and pieces. I got these fab bargain bundle bags in Twyford at the Creative Craft Cabin, and I challenged myself to shut my eyes, take two items from a bag, and then add another one (or more) bits, and use them to make something. I did cheat a bit, as several of the dips were impossible to put together, so I returned them to the bag and tried again. The first Lucky Dip came out wonderful - I got the black pearly card and the flower fairy stickers, and chose the pink paper with silver butterflies to go with them. This made a lovely ATC, with the addition of a stamped flower, which is also on paper from these bags ! Second dip gave me two sheets of paper, very different, but I made a tag and cut bits out off the colourful paper, which doesn't look too bad. Third dip was very good, and easily made this very simple ATC. I already had my eye on this sticky-backed butterfly sheet for ATC backgrounds, so I used very little here and saved the rest. But then I realised I could use the butterflies as embellishments, if I stuck them on to card and cut them out, so they finished off the ATC made from Lucky Dip 4 really well - everything on that ATC came out of a bargain bag !

Calendar

Another month is here, and I just managed to finish getting my March Art Journal calendar pages ready this afternoon. Love the button flower stamp from Craft stamper, and this time I've added some real buttons for some more dimension. Here are my pages. I scanned them in, and also took a photo of the two pages on the table.

February ATCs

Just to prove I made some ATCs in February, here they are. They use bits and pieces from the bargain bundle of papers etc I bought at the Creative Craft Cabin in Twyford at the beginning of the month. Oops, don't know why I took two pictures of the purple pansies ATC, but never mind !

Made my easel ATCs for the Artist Trading Club's February swap. As they look like little works of art, I painted white card with acrylic paints, cut it into ATCs, stamped over the painted backgrounds, and finally added heat-embossed hearts and a "With Love" message in honour of the month. I like this new style of making ATCs that can stand up.

Then I made my ATCs for another February swap (see picture at the top of this post), where the theme was "hearts". The pink ones use some interesting bits of card and stickers I got in a bargain bundle of papers from my local craft shop. The yellow/green ones use Distress Inks, lots of heart stamps, and hearts made from some of my left-over acrylic-painted card. The pearlescent white acrylic paint that I have mixed in with all the colours really gives a nice sheen.

Still working slowly on my March pages for the Art Journal - I have painted them in shades of yellow, and stamped the background a bit, but not assembled them yet. Tomorrow afternoon's task, I hope ! Other than this, all the crafting I have managed to do recently has been making a few tags.

I've managed a bit of crafting in the last few days, mostly making tags for the new UKSN swap list. I did remember to take pictures, so here they are. The green/brown/orange tags I made at the monthly craft club in Twyford (first Friday of the month), and I used inchies (which are so great on tags). The pink and purple ones I made at home yesterday. They all use Distress Inks. I bought some bargain bundles of papers etc at the shop in Twyford, which will make loads of fab ATCs and tags in due course.

I also made a few one off ATCs and a Birthday Card last week, and rushed them into envelopes ready to post them, without taking photos !

February Calendar pages

Well, I finally managed to finish the February pages for the Art Journal Calendar today, partly prompted by the arrival of the March Craft Stamper magazine in the post already ! I had painted the pages a few weeks ago, but then got busy and then spent a week being ill, so never got back to them. First, I did paint two pages in black, white and silver, but they were too dark and dramatic for this theme (can't decide whether to cut them up into ATCs or keep them in case I can use them later in the year !). I love this stamp and the "Tempus Fugit" idea is so suitable for a calendar. The blue paint looked a bit bright, so I used very pale paper for the day squares - thanks to Hobbycraft's sale for the pack of papers I've used for most of the squares. I've borrowed ideas from other people's January pages - love the idea of putting the month down the side, and having rough shapes, not real square "squares".

I'm not too thrilled with my photos again - I took a picture of the pages in the ring binder, which is how I'm keeping this journal, but you can't see them well enough - had to use flash as the daylight is fading away (such a problem for crafting at this time of the year - I'm only at home in daylight 3 days a week). So I took a picture without the plastic covers, and then the camera batteries died, so although it's not very good I'm posting it anyway. Really looking forward to using the button flower stamp for March, and April's butterfly appears to be another good one. Many, many thanks to Craft Stamper for super stamps and a great magazine all round.

Yesterday I made a Thank You card and a belated Christmas card, and three ATCs. The ATCs use the lovely scrapbook kit that I got out to make my January Calendar pages - super to rediscover it and how much of it I've still got left (loads!). The ATCs all have little messages hidden inside, or under the flap of the horizontal one. Also had fun blog-hopping around discovering other people's calendars - so many amazing new crafty blogs I hadn't seen before. Had to stop at 11pm or so to go to bed, as I had to go in to work for a few hours this morning to catch up as we didn't do any work last week.

Happy New year to you all. Here's another picture of my January 2011 Calendar pages, before I start to write on them !