Alter this? You must be joking!

When my friend Paula paid me a visit a couple of weeks ago - apart from giving me a demo on how to colour cardstock with ink pads, she also gave me this 'to have a go at altering'.



Thanks Paula its lovely - erm how am I going to live up to her challenge?


Well I have done a few puzzle pieces - but never one like this! Ecky thump, I thought, I feel a headache coming on.

It sat and looked at me - and yesterday I decided to just relax and play and have fun and see what happens.

I sit in my studio/shed and daydream looking out of the window a lot - at my chickens, the garden, the weather - and for some unknown reason I started thinking about the jungle and a pioneering explorer in the Victorian era, collecting all sorts of artifacts.

And pictured the discovery outside a ruined stone building of an old rucksack - covered in mould and near a skeleton.

A rummage inside revealed a note book of his adventure and bits of pieces of his collection. This is what I came up with.


It was very challenging technically to do actually.

The stamp is a faux 'field' postcard so fits in with the Tag You're It Challenge

So it fitted in nicely with my daydream. The testing bit was to cover the shiny patterned surface of the original card -


and to stamp and paint and distress the tag to match up with the outside cover exactly (beginners luck methinks), and without making it too thick to slide in and out! It's a little piece of art in its own right.


At last I am finally realising that 'art' should be fun, not hard work - and not to be taken too seriously by the likes of me who is just discovering this wonderful hobby.


So I played with Guesso, paints,texture paste, inks, chalks, pastels,embossing powders, metallic pens, ink pads, and two stamps

It was fun, fun, fun!

Thank you Paula - for a great challenge - and the chance to daydream and play without any pressure.

Wings - for This Thursday Challenge

I found this quite a challenge this week. 'Wings' if only it had been that theme last week I could have entered my butterfly - so what could I do that was totally different?

After spending a few hours on an angel - I finally admitted defeat and started a totally different piece of art.

Firstly I chose a few images and then focussed on this one.

A lovely picture of a Japanese young lady.



I decided to age her by painting her with acrylics - to give a vintage oil painting feel to her. I cut out butterfly wings and colour washed them the same colour as I had painted her shawl.

Next I cut a small gothic arch and painted the background with acrylics - then collaged on top of it the wings and the lady. I painted her hair to fall down her back and wings to ensure that they looked part of her rather than added. I put that to one side and cut out a larger arch and covered it with a sheet of a Japanese newspaper.



I coloured this with TH distressed inks to match the colour scheme of the small arch. Then stamped a few small butterflies on top.

I mounted the small arch onto the top one and added gold leaf (which unfortunately is showing up quite bright in the flash light). In natural light the gold leaf gives it an aged effect - like peeled gold on wood.




I have photographed this at an angle to try and show the small arch edged to give an illusion that the girl is in a room looking out through an arched window.

More pieces of aged gold leaf, and textured with clear embossing highlighting some areas to add to the aged look and give it more depth as on the fan etc - it feels wonderful and looks so much better in real life.

MADJAK DESIGNS - Butterfly Stamp

I am entering this for This Thursday Challenge Blog


At last I got to use one of my beautiful stamps from MADJAK designs. It is one of a set of four ATC sized stamps and they are gorgeous - I am trying to do them justice!

After a visit yesterday from Paula I was inspired by the way she colours her backgrounds with different shades of ink - so I had a go. O.K. so it looks mainly black - but there are different shades to make it look like that!

After shading the backing card, I stamped out a butterfly on acetate and coloured the back with firstly alcohol inked gold - then once dry added red acrylic paint. Although you can't see it here - it gives the butterfly a lovely gold shimmer on top of the red. A bit like painting in reverse!

I had a whale of a time with textured paste - as you can see - and incorporated butterfly red, gold, silver, black shades, and white.

I stamped on layers of ferns - with the top layer having some sea foam embossing.

I sprayed some dried twigs black and that was 'sunk' in place with a No Nails product and coloured to match the rest of the texture.

The butterfly is resting on the twigs - its head is the 'bud' from a dried twig as cutting out the head and antennae of the butterfly out of acrylic was a bit out of my scope. The butterfly antennae are twigs with 'buds' conveniently on the top, painted with gold leaf

It hangs by gold thread at the top.

I would just like to thank Linda for the stamps, together with Zuzu, Ginger and Paula all of whom have inspired and encouraged me - and I think that their guidance and influence is beginning to show in my work.

Mermaid - Third Coast Designs

I finally got around to finishing my texture mermaid - I bought the stamp from Third Coast Designs and wanted to make something to do it justice.

I got the chance when Zuzu and Ginger came to visit for a few hours and they showed me how to use texture paste. I didn't get to finish it at the time - but have spent a while adding bits and finishing it off since then.

In real life - it is lovely and shimmery and 'wet' looking just like a mermaid under the sea. The pearls around the edge and her necklace are all done with liquid pearls. There is silver and sea foam embossing too - and of course lots of texture!

I have been trying to find something to dangle at the bottom - a single pearl - but alas can't find one anywhere - so she is hanging in my studio until such times I can find what I have in mind.

Monthly tag swap this month is E

E is for Eyes.

Tag on dark green painted card - with lots of textured golds and greens bubbled up with a heat gun

Bathing beauties - ATCs for an organised swap

I have been spending far to much time doing manual labour - and other things - and not spent enough time for 'myself' relaxing - so this afternoon as it was raining, I remedied the fact and spent four wonderful hours making these.

These were all monochrome photos to start with!


Having been posed in a Victorian studio, I wanted to 'blur' the fact so have altered this photo and the others, for a 'Vintage Bathing Beauty Swap' but I am not sure that they will be right for it.

The seal I stamped on - to add a bit of fun - it came from USA, I quite like the way that the the foaming sea in the background gives a nice natural seal-like texture to its back.



This one is another 'posed' photograph. I have added layers and layers of mulberry paper to give it texture and to represent a foaming sea. I spent a lot of time colouring and shading these photos - and especially the mulberry paper otherwise it would have looked flat. The stamp I used came from America.


Here is the last one - I hope they are not too 'arty farty' for the swap.



Another Victorian photo which I have 'messed about with' to make it look all wishy washy to give the feel of the seaside.

It was originally a studio shot with a plain background and she was sitting on a chair - the shoes are a giveaway clue!

Fairy Diane

The enlarged scan of the ATC




The photo of the ATC - again much enlarged

This took all morning to make - a lot of intricate work involved but hard to see on the images.

The backing paper was stamped all over with an 'Imagine' quote. Then, with a pen, I dabbed tiny golden dots all over the paper. Then embossed it.

The fairy is made up of different pictures which I have coloured with luminous pens. The fairy's body is covered in gold - and doesn't looked lined as it does in the images.

The hand she is resting on is a stamped image from Kath - thank you for those - which I have coloured and manicured!

The whole ATC has had a couple of layers of embossing put onto it, to give it a dimpled and textured effect.

For the 'Orange' themed swap

This has been photographed - both these images are very much bigger than the ATC!


And this is the scanned image.

Neither shows how it looks in 'real life' - much better.

It is softer looking - and is embossed which gives it a lovely texture.

The 'lady' started off as a nude fairy with long flowing hair - and rather volumptous!

I did some drastic 'plastic surgery' with my knife, and she ended up with having a helmet put on her head, some clothes, and I drew in a spear!

A Greek Style Artifact

This took me a very very long time to do - but I loved experimenting with it.

Oops I photographed this a bit wonky! It is the right size and shape really.



Firstly I aged some backing paper with chalks and kept coloring it until I got the shade I liked.

I stamped the face onto another sheet of paper, and using inks, coloured it in different shades of green.

Next I did the edging - using Tim Holtz distress embossing powders in different colours, and finally I did several layers of embossing on the face leaving some spaces to highlight. On the backing sheet and on the face I did a light gold rub to give the overall effect of a slab of an aged gold artifact. I finished it off with a gold eyelet and embroidery cotton in different soft shades.

I love textures and this one feels really nice to the touch - and looks better in daylight.

This is for a 'Touchy Feely Textures' Swap

This is another ATC for the Touchy Feely Textures Swap

Yet again the scan does not do it justice one little bit.

The backing card is painted black and has tiny weeny bits of black a silver glitter, almost like dust, so too on the sheep's fleece - but in the picture sadly it looks like a black blob - it looks subtle, pretty and dainty in the daylight!

There is a machine embroidered daisy from Anne which I cut out and used, and some wide hessian type sacking from Momiji which I used too.

The difference in textures feel lovely when you close your eyes and run your fingers over it, - and that was what this swap was all about.

The back has a pretty patterned smooth material on it - which adds another element.

I just have to label them all up, and send them off to the USA.

Touchy-Feely - Textues

This is the start of an experiment and it is not finished yet - you can see that the glue isn't dry!

I only got an hour late afternoon in my studio - had a busy day - so this is as far as I got.

I need to tidy up the thick glue and the gold paint, and maybe add a framework - if I can. I might try blanket stitch all around if I have some suitable thread - and if I can get it to go through the card and the thick material!