29 Days of Giveaway

I am constantly surprised at the number of artists/crafters who are so generous as to give away their work.

There is a wonderful giveaway on Chrysti's blog - 29 days of giving in fact. The link is:

http://chrysti.wordpress.com:80/2008/12/02/29-days-of-giveaways-for-you/

I love one of the quotes Chrysti has used -

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” -Winston Churchill

I have been pondering the meaning of life lately and I think that quote sums up so many of my thoughts.

Pop on over to Chrysti's blog to see her gorgeous work and maybe win a prize in the process.

First ever canvas

I am in the process of creating a canvas of my bub. It's the first one I've ever done and painting hte background really wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I intend to modify the photo a bit so the green isn't quite so green and I am trying to figure out how to add words to it at the moment and what it would need to complete it. I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

This first pic is of just the canvas backgound. I am normally into more vintage or earthy colours but have recently decided I love pink and green together too so I thought I'd play with those colours for this canvas.




This is roughly where I intend to put the picture on. I will fiddle with the colours and I think I'll probably do an image transfer to mute it even more... not sure yet.

Altered Book for my baby girl

I am still new to AB's and don't want to become a scrapbooker so I decided to make my baby girl an AB. These are pics of the first spread. It isn't finished because I want to add fibre and charms down the spine and I am planning on putting pictures of her on the fold out pink and white diamond paper, but want to do a year's worth, not just the first few months so it's a work in progress.


This first one is the left hand side of the spread, with a fold out flap closed. I used my cuttlebug to make the word 'love' - Hippie Chick alphabet.

Unfortunately my scanner isn't big enough to scan the full spread in one go. The background is lumiere's and acrylic paints.





This is page one opened. The scan doesn't show it really well but her little feet were inked and 'stamped' on the bottom rioght hand corner of this page.








This is the second half of the spread., with the flap closed and then with the flap opened.

The Generosity of the Art and Craft Community

Over the past few weeks I have been amazed by the generosity of mixed media artists and rubber stampers.

There were the wonderful works of Tim Holtz, Bernie Berlin, Claudine Hellmuth, to name a few, to help out Bernie's "A Place to Bark" see http://www.aplacetobark.com

There are all the blogger's participating in the 'One World One Heart' blog giveaway.

And of course, I have to mention Catherine Matthews-Scanlon's "Art from the Heart" Giveaway. Catherine's work is just gorgeous. If you haven't seen if before I encourage you to drop in to her blog. On her blog Catherine is giving away two copies of her beautiful book. To find out how you could win a copy visit her blog at http://cmscanlon.blogspot.com/2008/01/giving-away-two-copies.html

Background Noise Journal

Call me anal if you want but when I started my background noise journal I wanted to have facing pages with one page of instructions and one page of samples, so I left the first page blank. Well it was staring at me and daring me to do something... anything. I have never art journalled before and didn't know what to do, but I wanted to represent the concept of background noise, so I filled it with lots of doodles in black and white.

I finally got around to putting samples of my shining stones backgrounds in my art journal. This is what it looks like.

Colour Frustrations

I am wondering if I am the only stamper out there frustrated when it comes to layering colours. I know the colour wheel and I understand colour schemes, primary, secondary, tertiary etc, but I really struggle with the various shades within that. What I mean is, for example, I know purple and yellow can look really good together, but I also know that some purples look awful with some yellows and I find picking what does and doesn't work very, very difficult. I wish I could say I was colourblind - that would be a good excuse - but I'm not. I just don't have a feel for colour. And it gets even worse when I have something like the shining stones backgrounds below - multiple colours to layer. I normally resort to the good, old trusty gold, black or white but I would like to be able to look at a multi coloured background and pick just one colour out of it and be able to find a matching layer. Anyone else feel this way?

Shining Stones Background Technique

On Next-Generation-Stampers we are currently participating in a Background Noise Challenge. For details on this project, and the shining stones background technique, visit Trish Bee's Art-venture website at http://trishbee.co.uk/?p=307

Here are my backgrounds. They turned out a bit washed out, probably partly because my Kaleidacolor inkpads are drying up and partly because I used too much water. Hopefully I will have time to 1) add them into my art journal and 2) create something with the 'extras' in the next week or so.




This background was made using Kaleidacolor Creole Spice ink pad. I didn't have any perfect pearls or other mica-type products so I ended up using gold lumiere's watered down a bit.

This background was made using Kaleidacolor Carribean Sea with gold lumiere paint.

Altered Puzzle Pieces

I thought I would start by sharing a couple of altered jigsaw puzzle pieces I made as part of a swap with some good friends.

I love the little boy image I used in this first piece. I just wish I could remember where I got it from. The frame is made with a Stampers Anonymous stamp. I had purchased it from the US for a specific project and waited and waited for it to arrive. At the last minute I changed my mind and didn't use it, so it was good to have a worthwhile project to use it on.

I really struggled with this piece. I think it was because the friend I was making it for is a very talented lady and therefore I felt I had to create the 'perfect' piece. I really wanted to do a time themed piece but after two failed attempts gave up on that idea. Using the watch face to hold shells came to me in the middle of the night and I was happy with this piece in the end.