More recycled newspaper pages for the book

Layers of paint on the newspaper page

Then stamped with thick acryllic paint

Although the picture is copied from THE book -  I have painted all over it, the bird, each leaf, each flower, each stem - to make it look more like an original

I am pleased with the texture on the backing pages - like thick oil painting.

This bird is another regular visitor to our garden, and I hope that the image looks like a vintage watercolour painting

Craft Stamper - May magazine

 In the May issue of Craft stamper, there were some great projects - and I have been working on one of them on and off for a while now.

It was to make a book out of recycled materials - by Katy - very inspiring, and the great thing is that you can keep adding pages, to build up a nice journal.

The covers were made out of a cut up cardboard box.

Here is my effort.

This is part of a sheet of pre-printed paper.  What you can't see is that it has lots of texture where I have painted over it, stamped, and embossed - and have used a gold spray in parts too.  I tore up scraps of paper and stamped and painted those, and made them into a distressed flower and added a button.

I did the same with the back cover - you can see on this a bit better the colouring and metallic paints.

The butterfly I stamped onto painted paper, and the body and the spots are made from layers of stickles and sparkle in the light

The cardboard is rather thick, so I have punched holes for book rings.

I have also made a start on the internal pages.

This is the inside cover - I have painted it with metallic paint and experimented with stamping with paint.  I was quite pleased with the paper 'bag' I made with the little blue egg 'in' it.

This is really fun to make and a great opportunity to try out all different techniques.

You need to tear sheets of newspaper to just under the size of the book covers.  It takes ten sheets of paper for each page - then glue them together.  They are meant to look 'ragged'.

I used different layers of paint combinations.  I did the gluing and sticking over a few days as they needed to be left to dry - ditto the painting of each one of them.

This is the book made up - I had to balance it on a box so that you could get an idea of the fringing.

The pages look askew as I have had to  open them to balance the book.

I decided to make this book to celebrate the magical moment a little while ago, when I sat in the shade in my garden and heard all sorts of bird song.

These pages are to celebrate the thrushes that visit our garden.

I painted the pages before I decided on a theme - so they are not very colour co-ordinated - but great practice experimenting.  I have tried to make the paper look vintage and aged, and the thrush in the nest I have copied from a book, and sketched over it and shaded it.  I bet you can guess the book I have used.   If you can't today  -  you will absolutely know when you see the other pages I have made.

Same - but different

I made another flower arrangement yesterday - the same basic style but in a modern fashion - two extremes!

The previous one was in a traditional style and this one arranged in 'modern' style.  I found this one really hard to make.  I used Aspidistra leaves - four of them, and had to manipulate them to cover two blocks of floral foam, by curling them and weaving them - and that ended up looking like a sculpture before I added the flowers and texture foliage.

The tulips I wove in and out of the swirled leaves and pinned them in curves - and yesterday they were all flat.  Then this morning when I got up, they had decided that they wanted to look at the sunshine!

So gradually turned their little heads right the way up!

I guess they liked looking at themselves in the mirror.  It's quite a nice effect as I only used one bunch of ten tulips, but the reflection makes it look as though there are double the amount.

Here is the traditional arrangement.

Totally different.

Nothing gets wasted - I even made a simple vase arrangement out of the scrappy left overs - the stalks I took out of the leaves in the modern arrangement, the left over flowers and some Eucalyptus from the garden.  I have even pinched out some little 'stalks' and hope to grow them on as cuttings.

All this for £18.50 - plus £5 for my share of the cost of the village hall I went to - a bargain I reckon!

It's that time of the month again!

It's been a busy week - so I haven't been able to do any crafting this week - apart from the bag that is.

It's the last Friday in the month - which means it's a flower arranging afternoon.  It's a bit of a trek - and I often don't feel like going - but since I have it has done me a (flower) power of good, and I am always really glad that I made the effort afterwards

I used to do a lot of flower arranging - most weeks in fact, and I loved collecting flowers and foliage from my garden - but it fell by the wayside when I had to stay out of the sun.  But it's great to be back doing it.

It ensures that at least once a month, I have a nice display in my home.

I thought this was lacking something so I added the candle and wrapped a bit of the pink wire around it to colour co-ordinate it.  Not sure that I will light it though - I like them lit in the winter!

I have taken lousy photos - it was all a bit of a rush as I had to start cooking for visitors the weekend

It does smell lovely and looks more colourful in daylight

All dressed up and nowhere to go!

I was all dressed up ready to go out and explore - and - the car wouldn't start.

Doh.

Phoned the AA and a knight in shining yellow armour came to my rescue within 35 minutes.

Despite his big black charger - even the knight could not breathe life into my silver horse powered carriage and rescue me! - My battery was as dead as the proverbial Dodo.

So what does one do?

Well I walked into the village through the church grounds (where once my stepgrandaughter aged 5 at the time - was skipping at my side as we went past the ancient tombstones - where we stopped to read some names. She asked me all about the different ones, the engravings on them, then we went along another row, where the moles had been busy and there were mole hills. "Nana" she said, "see those piles of dirt - is that where the people are trying to get out?")    She is 15 now!

Anyway, I digress, a walk through our lovely historic village, through the church yard looking at all the wild flowers, and a bright and breezy, "Hello" from the chap mowing all the lawns - soon dispelled any lingering disappointment at my aborted shopping trip.

I crossed the green, past the bowls club, and headed for the little village garage.   Explained my damsel in distress plight and they got on the phone, ordered the new car battery I needed, and old Malcom and his equally elderly friend who hangs out at the garage, came this afternoon and fitted it for me.   How's that for service!

So never being one to sit still for long and having time to fill before Patrick came back from bowling, I decided I ought to have some playtime.

After the daydreaming through the church yard to times gone, by I decided to 'do' another vintage bag.

The picture  I used, I found on the Art Creations Friday blog, and it was digitally altered by

Terri Daugherty - but there was no link to her blog only her name on the photo.

I Googled her with the aim of asking her  if I could use her image - but failed in finding her

So if you see this Terri or know Terri - I hope she will not mind my playing with it. 

It is not for gain or for sale - just something to keep me busy.

So I painted it, and stamped it

And painted some more

And painted and stamped even more. 

The background, her scarf, her lips, her eyes, the flowers - and more, more, more, more.

And gradually built up the layers until it looked like a painted canvas

The colours are now different too!

For some reason it looks darker in the photo below  - taken from a different angle I guess.

But the true colours are those of the close up - shades of brown, sepia, creams etc

I do hope that Terri takes it as a compliment that I used her image

It's kept an old lady very happy for a day.

So what shall I do tomorrow?

Why get all dressed up to the nines again - and go and explore and shop!

Zuzu's Alter it monthly Challenge - Matchbox

I first came across Zuzu in February 2007 when I stumbled across ATCs and a forum called CM&P.
Before then, I hadn't ventured into the world of 'art'. 

You can see my first efforts here shock horror!  At the time I was rather proud of them - but not now - but we all have to start somewhere.

Zuzu very kindly offered to trade an ATC with me  - an Oriental one - and since then, thanks to her guidance, help, and inspiration, and then later those of her friends, I stumbled into the magical world of rubber stamping, altered art, grunge, embossing and so much more.  I would never have had the imagination or confidence to do these things myself.

I was absolutely thrilled to see that she is back blogging and started a Monthly Altered Art Challenge.

For some reason my brain 'freezes' when the word 'Challenge' is mentioned, and I struggle to achieve something in a week or two - but with a MONTH to make one in - then I should be able to manage it.

My first effort which I made last week is below - just blogged it today - but it's not as good as I would have liked, so I tried again this morning and I am a lot happier with this effort.

Using a white matchbox, I painted it with distress inks.

Then stamped all over it

And did the same with the tray.

One of the first things which I learned from Zuzu's art, was to 'outline' edges

So every single thing I make I edge - albeit with ink pads, pens, gold leaf, or embossed

I started with a strip of paper and inked and stamped and shaded each page to match the images I had chosen to use - and edged them with ink pads!

I thought this vintage style would be more 'Zuzu'

I inked the images, and yes 'edged' each one

And instead of it being a challenge to do

It turned into a 'fun' thing to do!

So this is a product of all the guidance and help I have received.

And I hope that each month I will be able to master the challenge!

Thank you for visiting.

Thank you for the challenge Zuzu

I hope to visit as many of your challenge blog entries as I can, but I am limited to just an hour on the web due to eye problems.

Altered Art Monthly Challenge - No.1. Matchbox Challenge

This is my first attempt at Zuzu's monthly Challenge.

An altered matchbox

I found this a rather difficult challenge to do.

I inked, distressed, stamped, embossed. and rub and buffed.

I used texture paste, metallic paints, and perfect pearls.

And this was the end result.

It took me hours to do - and I tried my best, but it is not good enough.

So I left it a number of days and tried again this morning.

As you will see in the post above.