The Caged Bird

The Caged Bird title describes how I've felt this week perfectly. I have been longing to put aside the orderly (and OK yes I admit - cutesy - lol) card making stash and make a mess with paints and inks!

This project has been spinning round in my head for 4 days and today I finally finished it. I have, on several occasions, been really frustrated with myself as it never seemed to be about to 'come together'. I'm not sure it ticks all the boxes as far as cohesion is concerned but I confess that it was good to get back to the satisfaction that mixed media chaos brings to me after being more concerned that what I was making had to satisfy other people's tastes and not my own!

This canvas measures 12" x 10". I painted the background with a mixture of acrylics, watercolours and distress inks in shades of green, brown and white. Whilst the paint was still wet I put some plasterers jointing tape over it and brushed over some thinned down paint then quickly removed the tape to leave a small chequerboard appearance. Once dry I stuck on the script background (by Artylicious and printed onto glossy paper), used some alcohol inks first then painted it with gesso and then stamped the edges of the canvas. I used black Stazon for the crackle stamp and white Versamagic for the flourishes.

The large images on the right were cut from a Graphic 45 sheet that I have had for EONS -(I steeled myself before cutting into it- lol) and the one on the top left is an image from an old book with some gold paint, gold mesh and 3 small metal pieces added.

I used some Paperartsy and Elusive Images stamps for the foliage and the large bird was stamped onto a piece of acetate. The butterfly was a present from a fellow crafter and I used some Glossy accents on the wings and some tiny black gems. The caged bird is also acetate attached with clear glue.

Please click on the pic to enlarge.

The theme at 'So Artful' is 'Shy Beauty' - and I believe that the women's faces are beautiful (shy I'm not sure???) 'Lots To Do' has challenged us to use Alcohol Inks, Gingersnap Creations (GCSP3) has their Blue Moon challenge theme of 'Take on a Tutorial' and I chose the tutorial on 'Creating a Background With Acrylics' , the Sunday Stamper's theme is 'Free (as a bird)'. Sunday Stampers is also having a blog candy give away to mark their 100 weeks! Click on the link in my sidebar! and last but not least Mixed Media Monday's theme is 'Look what I've found'....and as I 'found' the courage to use the paper, I've submitted my canvas!

Springtime Paris Memories

I finished a couple of cards this morning using the extra birdie images I stamped yesterday whilst making the one for the challenge. I will post these at a later date!

Here is an ATC I have just done for the 'Lots To Do' theme this week. The challenge was to make something that reminds you of Paris. Paris is a bit of an enigma really, for some inexplicable reason crafters love it - maybe it's the romanticism of the place, but whatever it is making things to do with Paris range from portraying the tragic Marie Antoinette to images of the magnificent architecture!

I have called this ATC 'Memories of Paris in the Springtime', a take on the April in Paris theme.

The background paper is by Crafty Individuals and I just sponged over it with some white versamark. The flourish stamp is also one of the Crafty individuals range (have spent rather a lot there just lately!! LOL) applied with black Stazon. The three small images were all stamped onto the same background paper then cut out and collaged. I printed the vintage woman onto an inkjet transparency, but when I put it on the ATC the image was too dark. So I put some of the lighter part ofthe background paper behind her, sponged it again with white versamark and then glued the transparency on top. It did make it lighter but still not as light as I hoped.

The flower is another from my stash and as they're out on my desk I'm using them on everything at the minute!!!

Fairy Dreams

Had a couple of hours today so whilst watching the weather alternate between torrential downpours and brilliant sunshine I sat here and made messy! Have made this ATC for four challenges.

The theme at Wednesday Stamper was 'Dreams', Created By Hand was 'Faeries', Lots To Do had set their challenge as 'Collage' and TMTA's subject was 'Fly'.

I confess to recycling on this ATC! The butterfly stamped on acetate was sent to me on a birthday card and had decided to fly away from the card during it's journey so I rescued it from the envelope and put it to one side thinking (as all us crafters do) 'that might come in useful' !!!!

So the background paper is from Crafty Individuals, (another part of my recent spending spree!) and I stamped the corner with pearlescent Ice Blue ink and heated using a little clear embossing powder. The image was printed on glossy photo paper and I added the lace, word and recycled butterfly.

New Stamps!

I had a bit of a flurry of spending at the end of last week..... all on craft stash too! So I have been making messy today (housework not done AGAIN!!)

I have had 2 tries at altering slide mailers...nothing too spectacular as they were my first attempts and I thought I'd better not try anything too ambitious. Will take pics of them once glue is dry and post (if I think they look OK!!)

I also bought some new stamps..(as if I didn't have enough already...... can you ever have too many???????) and used one of them on this ATC.

The background paper is by K and Co (another bit of my spending spree - a huge box of gorgeous papers that I don't want to use cos they're too pretty!!!) and the stamp is by Crafty Individuals.

I stamped the image with Timber Brown Stazon, added the feather and some flowers.

This is my entry for the Lots To Do challenge of 'Stamping'.

Faces

I know it's a week since I posted - I have suffered from severe crafting withdrawal symptoms as I have had very little free time - and what free time I have had I've spent selecting teams for forthcoming games and when I'd finished that I was just too tired to do anything!

I did however manage to scrape a win last Saturday in our first event of the season! If you want to look at a pic follow this link!

As I've had no crafting time this is something that I made a few weeks ago and didn't get round to posting on here - it was made for a jigsaw charm swap. You could send a 'stand alone' jiggy charm to be put onto a bracelet or a charm mounted onto an ATC, and the swap host would send you soemthing similar in return.

I am not very good with small jiggy bits!!! Only large ones!

I wasn't particularly confident of being able to produce something that would be good enough for attaching to a bracelet, so I decided to put the jigsaw piece onto an ATC. The background is a paper collage of various cities, I stamped the face image onto the acrylic painted jigsaw piece and coloured it before applying a couple of coats of glaze and once dry then added the charm at the bottom.

As I haven't entered any challenges for ages, I have submitted this into the 'Lots to Do' challenge this week who's theme is 'Faces'.

Forever Autumn

Lots to Do has the theme of Nature this week.

I think Autumn is a lovely time of the year. I love to see the leaves changing colours, there are some many different hues

(Mind you, I just wish they would stay on the trees as I'm not so keen in having to get out the rake to scoop all the dropped leaves up from the lawns!)

This unmounted stamp is just a single tree, so I needed to stamp a couple of times in varying shades to try and get some appearance of depth, and I added the buttons in different colours again to try and reflect the shades of the leaves I can see at the moment in my garden.

It is unseasonly cold here at the moment, some snow flurries all over the country but hopefully this won't last.

Autumn should be clear blue skies and cold windy days - it shouldn't be grey skies and snow!