Winter colours

I decided to combine two challenges in one card: The Rubberdance January colour challenge asking for silver and icy blue and the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday Challenge asking for Something New.

I used my brand new snowflake stencil, modeling paste, ink sprays and silver + pearl blue acrylic paints  to create a wintery background. The sparkles are not very visible in the picture, but I also added sparkly Kaleidoscope embossing powder, which attached to the wet acrylic paints. The Gorjuss girl has been coloured with inktense pencils and mica-watercolours to fit the colour scheme... luckily stamped images don't freeze in winter weather!

DLP week 1

 I have managed to get my first DLP-inspired journal spread done just as the new prompts came out for next week :) The Documented Life Project 2015 prompts for the first week were using old papers and "Be your own Goalkeeper". Besides the DLP I am posting this for the ongoing  SimonSays Stamp challenges: Monday (Make new friends, but keep the old...) and Wednesday (Something new)

Just as I joined in the Documented Life Project 2015 I realized that my gesso is almost dry... So even though I managed to find old book pages that fit my taste ( old math and chemistry books :) I felt I couldn't fill the background with them. Besides, my next spread already had lots of green paint on it after cleaning up earlier projects, and it would have been a waste to cover it up. I ended up doing some stamping with background stamps that I hadn't ever used yet and painting my pic with acrylic paints. Here is work in progress, I used a the top of a weathered tree stamp to create branches among the firs.

I wanted to integrate the old book pages somehow, and chose to make a pocket for the TH January tag I was working on at the same time. Besides, the tag would carry my goals. I looked through the old chemistry book I planned to rip, and ended up choosing the contents page: the first chapter is titled "the principles of a stable system", and intrigued with it, I masked it with washi tape before spraying the page with Dylusions and Perfect Pearls mists. To my surprise the page had resist spots of its own accord, I think they look a bit like stars. Otherwise I managed to fit the pocket quite seemlessly into the scene on the spread.

While wondering where to find inspiration for art journaling, I had also looked at the Journal 52 prompt, which was Pathways. I felt that the path was important, and forests like the one I painted on the spread are full of paths. I pondered between finding and choosing paths... in Finnish it would perhaps be easiest to say "look for your path" which led me to "search and search again" = "search and research" i felt it suited me fine, since one of the words on my tag is "Do Experiments". I used my new Tim Holtz Cargo stencil to do the lettering, and chose the word Path to be in the center.

Make a wish

Like hundreds of other crafters, I have decided to make these 12 tags for 2015, and even though it is to be seen if I manage to keep up with this all year, the first one is done! I haven't joined in these before, practically I haven't ever made a "distress" tag before... And I enjoyed doing it, so for the time being the resolution stands :) So here's my post for 12 tags of 2015 -January. I am also posting this for the ongoing  SimonSays Stamp challenges: Monday (Make new friends, but keep the old...) and Wednesday (Something new)

I am not planning to buy any new stash for these tags, so I was happy to remember that I happened to have Glue n'seal and exactly the tissue used in the prompt, otherwise... Well lack of resources is one source of creativity. I used pearl blue and green acrylic paints for the background and brown and blue Distress Inks. I love the shimmer of the pearl paint. The numbers, keyhole and key are from an old Grungeboard set that I never even opened before! I used an embossing ink dabber with black embossing powder. For some reason the embossing powder boiled really easily, which added to the pieces' distress look. I don't have chitchat stickers, but I was happy writing my words with a dymo, because then I could have them in Finnish. I distressed the edges of all the embellishments and texts with a green metallic wax.

The word at the top is CREATE and the word under the keyhole is MAKE A MESS

Because a tag can be held and turned around, I thought it better to have some fun on the back too. I didn't want to make the tag any thicker, because it will be stored in a pocket in my art journal, so before adhering the bits and pieces I sprayed the background with some inks and stamped with some VivaLasVegaStamps! That Make a wish -sentiment is one of my favourites, and suits the words on the other side.

I hung the little grungeboard key with some green embroidery thread and ripped a strip from a silk scarf I found at a flee market for 1€ to make a ribbon for the tag. (The rest of the scarf is the background in these pics) I love the way this looks, and it fits perfectly in the pocket I made in my art journal. If you want to read more about the spread, you can find it here.

Paskis #260

Tämän viikon p*skiksessa on annettu luonnos, josta päätin toteuttaa kortin käyttäen pois yhden laatikossa lojuneen valmiiksi väritetyn Gorjuss-tytön. Korttipohja on 6'x6', minkä luulisi olevan aika iso, mutta tuntui aika vaikealta saada tyttönen mahtumaan!

Olin jo päättänyt, että takapaperin nuotit saisivat käydä luonnoksen tekstistä, mutta sitten totesin liimanneeni sen niin leveäksi, että siihen oli luontevaa lisätä kirjaimet. Ollaankin menossa synttäreille loppukuusta, joten tämä käy hyvin! Washiteipit on ostettu teippitarhasta joskus viime vuonna.  Kissa kuvassa ja tassunjäljet teipissä ovat minusta aika ihana yhdistelmä...

Ostin näitä Gorjuss-leimoja aika monta kun olivat poistomyynnissä, ja silloin tuli saman tien leimattua ja väriteltyä inktense puukynillä ja vedellä. Kohta täytyy varmaan ottaa uusi leimaus ja värittelykierros, sillä alkavat huveta :)

Whats On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 292

I ran into the WOYWW board on new years day and enjoyed peeking around on other crafters' work spaces... so I decided to join along as a start to the new year. Getting to see other peoples' spaces and read what they are up to gives new inspiration and makes it easier to accept that my space is just half (or maybe 2/3...) of the living room table:

There's nothing there right now, because I had to do some work this morning. School resumes tomorrow, and I know my students want to know the results of some tests they did just before the holidays -so I spent the last day of my vacation doing work. That's probably why my calender is still open on the sofa. The white rag is used to dry stamps after washing them with soap and water, and the red-brown zipper pouch has been made at school by my daughter and stores my scissors and craft knives. After the tests were cleared away, I decided to continue work on a pair of mittens I've been knitting for ages. I'm sick and tired of that thin yarn, so it's good to be at the thumbs already. The white drawers are where I store my stash ( and a couple of drawers and shelves in the brown cupboard behind it + the corner of the sofa, some containers under the table, three shoeboxes under the sofa and plastic bags behind the bedroom door...) 

Right now I am working (on thought level) on my art journal, which is on top of the white drawer. While blog hopping on lasts weeks WOYWW-posts I ran into the journal 52 and documented life 2015 -workshops, which I plan to keep an eye on for inspiration. Tomorrow at work I'm going to snoop around some dusty cupboards with outdated schoolbooks, because I think old science books might make some cool backgrounds. On a more practical level I'm working on the Crafty Individuals January challenge, which is scenic stamping. I wouldn't mind winning a stamp, but mister random usually avoids me, so I'm just counting on the discount code everyone taking part in the challenge gets. Since I have nothing on the desk, I thought to show what I cleared away before I started working.

The lower image is my plan and the upper one is as far as I got in my first try at it. I've always done layering by fussy cutting images and this is my first attempt at masking previously stamped images. It's harder than I imagined to get the second stamp aligned where it should be (that nest image isn't straight and the ground image inside the circle came so high up that the tree wouldn't fit without leaving the outer edges uninked) and I probably should have done the hills with a brush in stead of the ink blender, because now the shrubs on the left don't stand out. It is to be seen if this can be fixed, or if I just have to try anew. The watercolour stamping ( colouring the stamp with several Distress inks and spritzing water before pressing the image) looks cool anyway.

Feel free to comment, now I'm of to take a peek at other peoples desks, the blog hop is hosted here at Julia's blog. Have fun, I know I will!

Bingo-kortti

Tämänviikkoisen P*skiksen aiheena on bingo-ruudukko, josta valitsin alarivin. Tunnustettakoon, että tällä ressaus-ompeleet-yksivärinen -linjalla menen ehkä sieltä mistä aita oli itselle matalin. Värinä on jonkinlainen harmaansininen, ja oletan että ihmishahmoon liittyvät iho- ja hiusvärit eivät haitaa :)

Taustan tein samalla kun osallistuin Paperillan korttihaasteeseen ja silloin tein myös nuo lumihiutaleet kutistemuovista, vaikkeivät siihen korttiin mahtuneetkaan. Kortti on muutenkin asettelultaan samanlainen, mutta vähän suurempi koska Gorjuss-tyttö vaati tilaa ympärilleen. Kasvireunus on Chocolate Baroquen, samoin lumihiutaleet. Lisäsin kellon päälle glossy accents -lakkaa ja sillä kiinnitin myös kutistemuovihiutaleet. Paperien reunat on tummennettu DI-musteilla ja ressauksen toteutin ompelukoneen äärellä ratkojan avulla.

Broaden your horizons

I am posting this bright and inky card for the Stampotique Designers Challenge and the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday challenge. Both are going with Anything goes this week.

I had some really inky leftovers from fussy cutting leaves for an this art journal spread... they looked lovely, so I just couldn't through them away :) I cut the edges of the inky papers to make waves for the boy in tub boat (Viva Las Vegastamps). I actually loaded my dymo with blue tape, planning to add the sentiment "Broaden your horizons -your imagination will follow" that I recently ran into on the web, but those beautiful inky splatters would have been hidden by it, so I decided not to. I could of course add the sentiment inside the card later on, when I know where this card is going.