Less is More (more or less) and mail art

Good morning you all! Seems to be a cool and windy day here, no sunshine and not much birdsong. They are probably busy holding tight to their branches so as not to be blown away.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time painting again, but can't show you yet as it isn't finished. And I have started 2 mini books for different swaps, but they are also not yet finished.
In the afternoon I decided to do my card for *less is more*. This week they want a one layer card with some embossing. No problem. But which embossing folder to use? Or should I use heat embossing? Or both? Then I decided to make a little scene and emboss part of it. So I made the card with the hot air balloon. Not totally bad, but not good either....

Well, I can use the reverse for some trial stamping....
















The next one I liked a bit better. Till I realised that the sentiment was not straight....

Then I remembered my Xmas folder. Brilliant! I embossed the card, and realised I had put it into the folder the wrong way round, so it was debossed. I thought I could put a sentiment on to it anyway, and promptly stamped it onto the wrong place. Said some naughty words while aiming card into the bin....

Tried again. Not bad, but not good either. Bin! (I love my bin!)

Then I remembered my lovely Penny Black cats and my *scrollswork* sentiment - and this was the result. It's not perfect, either, but I am leaving it as it is....enough of less is more for this week!

After that, I decided I was having a bad card day and decided to paint to soothe my nerves again. I made a mail art envelope to send the mini book I made last week. After painting and *bubbling* I distressed it with black stazon, did some random stamping and then decorated it with some rub-ons. The effect is rather wild, and I like it, so I hope the recipient will, too! I am wondering how the post lady will react, though....Anyway, who cares? Not my problem!

So, that was it for today. Time for some more coffee! Havea great day, whatever you are up to, thanks for visiting, and take care!

Sketch Sunday and some painted notebooks

Good morning, it's Sunday and that means another Sunday Sketch day over at *Blue Chair Diary*
Iam sharing a sketch I made some time back after a bad dream - about a spider! The astonishing thing in the dream, was that I was not frightened of spiders as I am in real life, but could stand and admire it. In my dream I wanted to pick a rose. As I stretched out my hand, it got trapped in a big spider's web, complete with spider, and I found it so pretty, that I forgot about the rose, which crumbled and fell to the ground. In real life I would have run a mile to get away from the spider!

I often try to paint or draw scenes out of dreams, as they are sometimes so fantastic and almost like a film!
Yesterday I spent the day messing with paints again. On Friday while i was tidying up I discovered some notebooks that I had bouhgt to alter, so I did just that.
I used the Five S technique again - splodge, smudge, smear, spray and scratch, and as usual, it was fun slapping paint on and just playing about. After the painting part was done, I heat dried it with my heat gun. This is also a real fun thing. The heat makes the paint bubble and boil and then the bubbles burst (sounds like we're getting to the B technique now!) forming little craters, which show the colour underneath. The thicker the paint, the bigger the bubbles! And when it is dry, it has a completely different feel to it, sort of rubbery. I do this over the kitchen sink, so that I have water at hand in case an accident happens, and I am not sure if the paint fumes aren't addling my remaining grey cells, but what the heck - no risk, no fun, and just now I NEED some fun.
So after all that waffling about nothing, here they are:

These are 2 small flip notebooks. I painted onto card, which I then glued onto the original cover.

These spiral bound notebooks are a bit larger, and as they have hard covers,I painted both front and back.

Okay, that was it for today. Hope you all have a great Sunday. Take care, and thanks for visiting!

A Day without Blogger....

Good morning you all! It seems to be a fine and bright day here, with lots of sunshine, birdsong, and no pneumatic drills. The road repairs seem to be finished. I had a good night's sleep, for which I am very thankful, I must have slept as soon as I put the light out, and I feel better for it. I do love painting, but I need to sleep sometimes!
It was a strange day yesterday without Blogger. It shows how many things we just take for granted as being there, and how hard it is when they disappear. I just lost the comments from Thurday's post, so the losses were not too bad!
I felt rather at a loss what to do without visiting blogs....I just needed something else to do, so I actually cleared away several of the *heaps* that have been accumulating over the past weeks. I found a lot of things that I have been missing, and can once again see the surface of my working table.
And I worked on 2 mini books, which I need for swaps. Here are some sneak-peeks of the one that is finished, can't show more, as I want it to be a surprise:

The rest will be revealed when it has reached its destination in England!
And I nearly forgot my *Creavil* challenge card. They want to see butterflies. Here they are:

The butterflies have been stamped with perfect pearls medium and embossed with perfect pearls in gold. The stamps are from Crafty Individuals, the black paper is *black magic* from LaBlanche. The 3-d butterflies have been printed onto acrylic, cut out and mounted onto the easel card.


So, here's wishing you a lovely weekend, take care, thanks for visiting, and especially for all those who left kind comments to cheer me up; it really did me good to see that so many people care!

A Late Paint Party Friday and some scrapling tags

I thought I would not be able to post today; Blogger seems to have had major issues today, the posts from yesterday are still AWOL, and I am wondering if they will turn up again!
But today is still Paint Party Friday, so here my efforts for this week. I wasn't feeling good this week, was very down, and painting and crafting are two of the things that help me in such situations.
Putting paint onto paper, however you do it, really is relaxing.
I made 2 paintings on Tuesday, which I randomly stamped with black ink, embossed and treated with perfect pearls, and used them to create die cuts, which I have used in my work this week, which was great fun. (See earlier articles from this week)
And then I made these three paintings. No subjects, just layers of colours. I am still thinking about whether to leave them as they are, or to use them for making embellishments again.

Yesterday evening I painted a canvas before I went to bed. Just lots of layers of colour, I seem to need this at the moment, and this will of course not be cut up. But I still think it needs something to finish it off. Time will – hopefully-tell. Anyone got any ideas?
This week I used a method that I developed in my childhood, and which I now I call *recurring artistic retrograde development*, or, more simply said, the 5 S method – splodge, smudge, smear, spray and scratch!
But it is fun, and it just does me good. Have a try!

And I also managed 3 tags yesterday. The team at *Just for fun* want us to use scraplings this week, so I used three paint cards Yvonne sent some weeks back, and turned them into bright and sunny children’s tags.

These are something quite different to the things ! usually make, but I think we all have to leave our comfort zone sooner or later!
Have a nice (Remains of the) Day, take care and thanks for looking!

Under the sea, play-day and what the postie brought....

Good morning everybody. Looks like nice weather again today, although the weather frogs have been promising us rain and storm. At the end of the day we will know if they were right!
Had a great day yesterday, just played all day, painting, crafting, reading; felt like a fish in water! Which reminds me, that I made a tag for the *Blog Challenge Garden*, theme *the deep*. At first I thought it was a silly theme, but then that lovely Beatle's Song *I want to be under the sea, in an octopus's garden in the shade* started going round in my head, and I was hooked. So, here it is:

I painted the background with turquoise metallic acrylic paint, drew some sea-weed with a felt tip, and added glass splitter as sand, and some shells and fishes I found in my decorations box. The skull was left over from halloween, and the blue fibres were in my stash, too. I wrote the opening of *Octopus's garden* round the edge, and that was it.
Then I want to show you some of the lovely things I have received this week from crafting buddies.
Lynne of *Adorn* sent me this beautiful notebook, tag, and home died lace in a wonderful shade of really hot pink, and the lace is so beautifully presented on a card and fixed with a decorated pin:

The lovely Notebook is next to my lap-top, so I can write down all the challenges I want to do, or things I would like to buy etc. A very big improvement on my flying scraps of paper! Thanks Lynne!
Then I received the coasters from the Gingersnappers Art Coaster swap, which were rather battered as they arrived, but I have tried to fix them as well as I could. Here they are:

Made by Beverly

Made by Kate Burroughs

Made by Sharon Briss of Gingersnaps

Made by Chris Grabb.
Thanks to all four ladies who put so much work into their lovely coasters, and especially to Sharon, who organised and dispatched etc, a lot of work with so many participants!

And here is one more thing I made yesterday. It's a 6x6 canvas, coated with structure paste, then painted with gold acrylic and distressed with stazon timber brown. I used the dragonfly die cut and 4 of the inchies I showed yesterday, and an image from CI behind a TH fragment. The little chain has been made from broken jewelry scraps.

I am entering the canvas into the *Simon says stamp and show* challenge - anything goes.
Okay, this was only going to be a short post today, but it seems to have stretched a little! Have a great day, take care of yourselves, and thanks for visiting!

Inchies, birds and butterflies

Good morning every one! Its another sunny and really warm day here. No pneumatic drills either, the silence must have woken me! Our road looks rather better now, less pot holes, and all the man-hole covers have been fixed properly again, as some of them were rather loose. Yesterday I went to a friend and had a day out, playing cards, going for walks, chatting and eating, so I was really keen to get started on something when I got home.
I painted and stamped some more papers for making die cuts or backgrounds. The first one was painted with orange metallic acrylic paint, then sprayed with home made sprays (re-inkers, water and perfect pearls) before being heat dried, stamped with stazon black and cut up.

After painting, spraying and stamping

Close up....this shows the lovely metallic sheen from the perfect pearls.

....And some pics of the finished die cuts. I have just placed them onto white paper to show them, they will be used on projects in the coming days!


And then I used the small scraps to punch out:

some inchies....

some butterflies....

and some birds.















Fun and easy to make, and now I have a nice set of home made and unique embellies to use in my work. The second sheet is also finished, I will show the pics another day. But this is much cheaper than buying embellishments, and it is fun to make, so have a try! I use a good quality paper to work on, this gives the finished parts a real quality.

And before I fell into my bed, I made a card for the daughter of a friend, who is starting her own shop for fashion accessories in a few weeks. I am calling it *A dedicated follower of fashion*, and will put the sentiment on later when I have found my small alphas!

Here I have kept completely to blue tones, although the cameo looks rather greenish in this light. The dress form (TH) has also been die cut from some of my hand worked paper, and the background stamped with lace and flourishes, all in TH *faded jeans*.

And the last card for *Less is more* - white on white. Well, def, the last one for today!

The flowers have been quilled, the sentiment has been cut using felt. Sorry again for the fuzzy photo, my camera is really playing up!


Tomorrow I will show you some of the lovely things I have received in the post this week. Till then, thanks for looking, have a great day and take care of yourselves!