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 !