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 !

Art Calendar January 2011

There is a super article in December's Craft Stamper mag by Kate Crane on making an art journal calendar month by month for a whole year. So I have made my pages for January 2011 - roughly based on the article but using my own colours and stamps. I decided to use the Craft Stamper mag's free stamps as my main embellishment and theme each month. So I thought of making coffee coloured pages (browns, creams, and maybe some gold) to feature the coffee cup this month, but the only acrylic paints I had at home were baby pink (Anita's from a scrapbooking class ages ago) and pearlescent white (which I bought to cover chipboard shapes - it gives a lovely sheen and can then be coloured softly with Distress Inks) so I painted my pages yesterday in pink and white, stippled on some Distress Inks (Tea Dye and Victorian Velvet) stamped cups, dots, and words. There is a nice shine in places when viewed under electric light. Then I stamped the title onto spotted paper (had to use black ink as the Tea Dye didn't show up well enough) and cut out some cups and the squares. All this lovely paper is from a scrapbooking kit I bought in Create and Craft TV's sale a year or so ago - they are all in lovely pink, beige, red, orange and green colours, which fit beautifully together and suit the pink painted pages. Then I stuck it all together - spot the two (not quite deliberate) mistakes ! I wanted something green in the lower left hand corner and stuck the green dotty cup there, then when I numbered the squares I had not put one on for Monday 31st - so I had to put another green square on there (moving the green cup) - now there's too much green on the lower left hand page ! And I stuck the cups on the right hand page before I stuck on the squares - so one square covers the edge of the distressed stripy cup - pity ! I love this paper, it is already distressed and suits my style wonderfully. The distressed look is so forgiving - where I handled some of the bits with pink inky fingers, it doesn't really matter ! After I had stuck everything on, I had a blank gap on the right hand side , so I stamped some numbers on there. I had hoped to have space to display a matching ATC, but there isn't room on the page.

I'm really looking forward to making February - the timepiece stamp will be fabulous for a calender - not sure whether too make it in blue (loved Kate's January colourway) or all sophisticated in black, white and silver, or what ?

Anyway, I do hope I can keep this calendar up and I will use Craft Stamper free stamps every month - but I reserve to myself the right to use a stamp from 2009 or 2010 if I don't like this year's stamp any month. Most of them are fab and I usually make some ATCs each month using the stamp (they are a great size for ATCs), but occasionally they are just not my style. I did not use the December 2010 stamp with the elf on a postage stamp - too cutsie for me !

Made my "For the Birds" ATCs for the Artist Trading Club's December swap. I liked the way the guest designer had made hers all different, so this time I have made five very different ATCs, using nearly all the bird stamps I have and my favourite big shot die too ! Here they are.