Treasures!

Just before Christmas I was the very lucky recipient of a trade package from a wonderful lady in Oregon. It was full of treasures - stickers, cutouts, tags, glitter glue, inchies, chocolate and tea to name but a few. For the whole of the day when the box arrived, I played with everything - the Stickles glitter glue being one of my favourite things. I have not used Stickles before but it is great fun. I was adding it to everything. So inspired was I that I dashed off to Ebay to find more colours. As you might imagine Stickles is playing a big part in my creativity at the moment. It has added some sparkle to my projects without the mess of traditional glue. So I have added a few pictures of the things I made - some ATCs, lots of inchies, a vellum tag (vellum stickers on the tag and laid over some brightly painted yellow card. The yellow shows through the vellum to make it glow with a little colour.) and a couple of mini boxes. The boxes were made from a template I made of a box one of the chocolates came it. I carefully pulled the box apart and it makes a great template for those little gifts you might send - or inchie storage. Needless to say the Winter box is highlighted with white Stickles. It just doesn't show up.

Blog habit

OK! I'll admit it. I spend more time reading blogs these days than creating. There! I have said it. There are so many wonderful blogs out there and so many creative people to catch up with that I spend more time seeing other people being creative than doing any myself. I can't help it. I have seen so many techniques that I want to try but each time I come across one there are also links to other new techniques. It is a never ending spiral. However, I have broken free over the last few days and have made a few things. The picies speak for themselves - three cards, an inchie and an ATC.

I have had my first proper attempt at soldering like Sally Jean Alexander. It's not as easy as she makes it look. At the moment I am wrestling with discoloured and blobbly solder. I have no doubt that with a little patience and a good hot soldering iron I will smooth it out. It just needs patience - probably. Whereas other artists who make such keepsakes use collaged items I have used some tiny drawings I made. The first one is a badger (surprise, surprise) with some rubber stamped words. No photo yet as I have only done one side of it but I will post one soon - barring horrible accidents.

ATC parade

Just a collection of ATCs that I dug out. Some have been shown here before, some not, but all were languishing in a box all alone. Some are hand painted some are papercuts, some have been rubber stamped and some collaged. They use a variety of materials from paper and ink to fabric and felt.

The Altered Page Etsy store

I have been visiting Seth's The Altered Page blog for some time now and have been part of his ever growing Pulse project too. Now he has opened his own The Altered Page Etsy store, without pomp and ceremony, just quietly. He has some beautiful pieces of art for sale along with the famous Pulse zine, which I can highly recommend. I know his store will go from strength to strength. Why not take a look now then bookmark it for later visits. I know I will.

Chrysti's giveaway

Chrysti is doing something very wonderful on her blog. She is running a project called the 29 Days of Giveaways where she will give away all kinds of things from books to classes. I have been following Chrysti's blog for some time now and have always been awed by her work. She inspired me to try painting my own background papers, to make inchies and I am lucky enough to have taken part in a swap hosted by her (my first ever ATC swap). I even have one of her hand drawn ATCs. Recently she has been seeing good signs of all her hard work paying off with articles in big name art and craft magazines and exhibitions. It is truly well deserved with more to come, I feel. So do take a look at her blog for plenty of inspiration, if nothing else.

Christmas Countdown

If, like me, you use alot of printable ephemera in your art you might be interested in Lisa Vollrath's Christmas Countdown. It starts today and you can find it here.

Tim Holtz has his own countdown of sorts. He is making the Twelve Tags of Christmas - one a day for the next twelve days. Pretty! His twelve tags from last year can also be found on his blog. The links are in his sidebar.

Boxing clever

I made this little box as a Christmas present for my Gran. She always says she doesn't need anything at gift giving times but always seems to like the things I make. She doesn't read my blog so I'm OK posting pictures of it. The box is a wooden, shop bought box, coated in acrylic paint onto which I painted a cardinal. Now, we don't have cardinals in the UK but I think they are are beautiful birds. I found the pattern in a book called Joy to the World: Painting Holiday Heirlooms by John Gutcher. It was my buy of the year as I picked it up for a few pence. The box has been filled with Gran's favourite candy sweets so I hope she will enjoy it on all levels.

The ATCs are for a swap entitled Arabian Nights so I had to take part. They are done in shades of purple and pink with mulberry paper, metallic paint and a little bling. Also shown are some magnets I made out of mini collages. I put some on Etsy to see if they are of interest to anyone.

Bob, bob, bobbin'

I finally decided to go with a robin for my third exhibition painting. However, he refused to scan nicely. The colours look a bit funny here. He is actually a little guy who visits my garden. After feeding the birds one morning I thought I would take my camera outside and see if I could get some nice photos. Of course, robins being the characters they are, he posed for me sitting on a branch and on the garden fence. Then he flew off to beat up the other birds in the garden that were trying to feed. Robins can be very territorial and will fight with anything that crosses their path. Not just a pretty face then.

The card is a shaker card I made for someone to give this Christmas. But I like it so much I will have to make another one. The only problem is that I had to use gold and silver micro beads which makes the snow look yellow. I'm sure there is a joke there somewhere.

I was thinking about wrapping a gift this week and was struggling to come up with a neat idea. The gift is long and thin and I find that wrapping something that shape can look a little sad. So I figured that a Christmas cracker shape would work. I was given a gift in a cracker shaped box many years ago and vaguely remembered the shape of the box so I had to try and recreate it. The cracker shown here is the result of the template I made. Decorated with some stickers and sparkles, I think it looks OK.

A few other crafts that I have been playing with this week - some needle felted toadstools, inchies, digitally altered photos made into magnets, a notebook and a Christmas card.

Making an exhibition of myself

I have not been posting much lately, have I? I'm not really sure why, other than the fact I have had nothing very creative to post. Where is the time going? I seem to get up in the morning and suddenly it is night time again. The end of the year is galloping towards us at high speed now. I seem to have so many plans but cannot find the time to get them all done. Argh!

Still, I have an exhibition taking place in a couple of weeks and have to prepare some work for it. The two paintings here are finished and ready to go. Now I have to come up with a third. I always find it hard deciding what to paint. As this is a Christmas exhibition I figured wintery subjects might sell well. I'm contemplating a robin but that might be taking things a bit too far. Robins may be the typical Christmas card front but I don't know that it would sell. One thing I learned from my summer exhibition is that small sells better during the credit crunch than anything big. People might be able to find a few pounds for a painting, maybe to give as a gift. Anything larger tends to have a larger price tag too. A little extra cash would be very nice just before Christmas.