A Bit of Brown

These are for Cazro's colour swap this month.  This month's colours are toffee and chocolate, which are definitely colours I'm a bit more comfortable with!

UTEE, Bleaching and Watercolour Pencils

These are for Cazro's Let's Stamp Swap on the DoCrafts forum.  This month's theme is triple embossing for a glossy finish.

I visited the Lake District a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to call in at the factory shop for Derwent Pencils.  I picked up a HUGE box of watercolour pencils half price, and there were some pastel pencils free with it as well.  As you can imagine, I have been exsperimenting with them ever since.

To do these ATCs, I started off by inking and stamping the backgrounds, stamping the main images and then bleaching out the colour from the main images.  I then coloured them using watercolour pencils and triple embossed them with three layers of UTEE.

Encaustic Art

I had a day off last Friday, so managed to make some encaustic art ATCs.  These are the first ones I've done in a while, so I'm a bit rusty, but I think they turned out OK.

I'm off today as well, but not because I want to be!

The Stamp Man ATC Swap

These are my ATCs for The Stamp Man ATC Swap.   Well, three of them are anyway.  I got a bit carried away and made a a couple of extras.  This month's theme is "wings".

Unfortunately the photos don't show up the shimmeriness (is that a word?)

I made the background using Starburst Sprays, with Papermania Vinyls as masks.

I then stamped the backgrounds in distress inks and the flowers in black archival ink.  I also stamped the dragonflies directly onto the ATCs because I am lazy and didn't want to cut out the legs. (Well, I tried, but they kept falling off!)

Next, I stamped the  dragonflies onto white card using black archival ink and coloured them with watercolour pencils.  I added highlights using white and glitter gel pens.  I stamped the wings separately onto some shimmery cellophane , cut them out and stuck them on.  I attached the dragonflies to the ATCs, curved the wings and put some foam pads under the wings for a 3D effect.

Silhouettes

I got some beautiful new stamps at the Happy Stampers North West show a few weeks ago.  These are from Lavinia Stamps and I absolutely love them.  The background is layered ink, masked with torn paper.

I have some trees as well, so there will be more to come!

Blind Drawing!

Most of these are for a swap on ATCs for All hosted bt AnnD, but they are very addictive so I made a few extras.

The idea is to draw a face with your eyes closed and then to make it into a character.

I've added a bit about each character at the side as well.

The images are drawn using Promarkers and black artist pen, with a bit of white gel pen.

The backgrounds were created using collage, inks, acrylic paints and pens.

Bleaching

These were done for one of Cazro's Let's Stamp Swaps on the theme of bleaching.  I've inked and water sprayed the backgrounds, (stamped on most of them), stamped and embossed the main image and then used bleach to take out some of the colour.

Sun, Moon and Stars

These were for a swap on ATCs for All.  I also did a moon and a star, but I haven't posted them becasue they didn't photograph very well.

I used printed text and music score, watercolours, tissue paper, acrylic paint, glitter gel pens and Precious Metal paint.

Yellow (Another Colour I Find Difficult)

These are some more ATCs I did for cazro's colour swap.  The colours for these were yelow and cream.  Yellow is another colour I don't use very often, because I find it dificult to work with.

I used layered stamping, and I used wax crayon resist on the owl and the angels.

Another Silly Collage ATC

This was another silly one I did a while back.

I used printed papers, part of a sewing pattern, printed images, inks, acrylic paints, Promarkers, white gel pen and black art pen.

Pink!

Pink is not my colour, but these were for one of Cazro's s colour swaps.  I've done every one since they started, so I'm not going to let  a bit of pink stop me!

ATCing With the Boys

These are some ATCs I made with my boys, Alex who's 7 and Adam who's now 5 (but was 4 when we made these).  They were done for  a swap on ATCs for All.  They were started by the boys and finished by me.

More Metal

This is some more freehand metal embossing I've done, coloured with alcohol inks and then sanded, and this time I've added some gems.

Another Silly Collage ATC

This is another silly collagwe ATC I did. 

I used printed papers, ink, acrylic paints, printed images and text and pens for this one, (and probably one or two other thigns I've forgotten about!)

I'm Still Alive!

Wow!  I can't believe it's been such a long time since I last blogged.  Between working full time, looking after two children and making the most of the lovely weather, I seem to have very little free time lately.

I have a rare day off where I'm not trying to cram a million things into it, so will try and catch up a bit.I've still been creating things as and when I've had the time so will post pictures of some of the things I've been doing.

These are some emboss resist ATCs I created using distress inks.

And Finally... a Bit of Love... or was it just the wine?

This one has a gesso resist and distress ink background.  The heart is cut from a book page and I've used ink and gesso to colour it, using sequin waste as a stencil.  I've added the swirls on the heart using white gel pen and have stitched around the edges of the ATC and the heart.  The word "Passion" is rubber stamped and the rest of the words are found poetry taken from a page of "David Copperfield"