Finger painting therapy.

During a recent spell of anxiety due to a computer break down (I know, trivial), The only thing to do to relieve the feelings of negativity was to get out my journal.

I had great fun playing with Dylusions paints on the page, using my fingers and not a brush. It felt good and soothed away any anger I was feeling. It even prompted me to get out my Micron pen and hand write some journaling which I normally hate with a passion.

The number stencil is from Tim Holtz.

Jaine xx

Happy Pumpkins !

I've got a quick and easy card to share with you this week. I love Autumn/Fall and all the beautiful colours. Inspired by the abundance of pumpkins around at the moment I made a card for a special someone. I just know it'll make him smile!

I stamped two of the pumpkins from Stampotique Originals directly onto my card. The middle one was stamped using Archival Ink onto some cardstock that was painted with acrylic paints. His googly eyes were made by drawing onto a couple of tiny circles with a Micron pen and covering them with Glossy Accents.

Thank you for calling. Happy Halloween if you are celebrating. Gez

Spots of colour!

Good morning, Gez here in a rather wet & windy part of England today!!! 

Gosh, we're having some rain!

I am excited to be sharing an on going project with you today that will just keep growing & growing!

If like me when I get new supplies I can't wait to try them out... I have decided to catalogue them and keep them altogether on a metal book ring...

I've got 4 tags to share with you today using some of my favourite products from A sprinkle of imagination.

First of all I stamped a brand NEW stamp from Stampotique Originals, (it's from the Circle Cube by Daniel Torrente) Vicki stocks lots and lots of their stamps and can order any that you see online. I have used an Archival Ink Pad for stamping which are both water and fade resistant and a Sakura Pigma Micron pen for labelling.

I managed to fit the circle stamp 8 times onto one tag as you can see using various products.

On my first tag I have used acrylic paints, sometimes it is so much better to see the paint on cardstock rather by just looking at the pot or tube as you get a better idea of the finished look when it's dry.

This is true of all the different products, so I went ahead and had great fun using Distress Inks,

 Bombay India inks,

and also, 

 Inktense pencilsby Derwent

Here is my finished swatch...

 for now!

I can keep on adding to my ring and so on!

Thank you for calling, Gez

Serious Girl...

Hello!
Today I want to share some closeups of the piece I created for this months Colour Challenge!
Great palette, lots of scope for nice colour combos!

(The pic seems to be very yellow for some reason...the cream is definitely browner than it looks like on screen!)
 The base is a square of  recycled cardboard. My son had a new wardrobe, and I spent nearly a whole afternoon cutting up the packaging into nice sized pieces to paint on...very tedious at the time, but now I'm really glad I have a huge stash of ready cut bits to play with. Well worth the scissor blister!!!!
Anyway.....I've wandered off the point a little....

I smeared the cardboard with cream coloured paint (NOT lemon coloured, honest!), making sure to work some paint into the sections where I had ripped off the surface. I then added some seafoam coloured paint with a palette knife, emphasising the ridges here and there. Stencilling with the darker blue...

Then onto the printing and stamping!

I stencilled the ruby red stars, and had a bit of an accident! I used too much paint, and the stars went a bit 'smooshy'...technical term, that....
However, I tried to rectify things by doodling around the shape, drawing lines to give a sharper outline...

Weirdly, I like it better than an immaculately stencilled star..... (I could wax lyrical about embracing imperfection at this point maybe?!!!)
The little girl is a favourite Stampotique image, stamped onto text paper..

As a finishing touch, I added a little red splatter here and there. Not too much, (red splatter can look like an incident requiring the paramedics if you go overboard)...just enough to echo the red stars and bring the whole thing together!
I hope you like her.... and don't forget to have a play with the colours and enter the challenge HERE!
Love Trish xxx

Spooky altered envelope!

It's been a while since I last made an altered envelope and with the spooky season upon us I thought it would be fun to send some happy mail to my daughter away at University!

I started with a simple background using Distress Ink pads. Then I stamped the 'Abstract Foilage' stamp in the centre to form a rectangle for the address label again using Distress Ink and some white Gesso.. the 'Numeric' stamp and the 'Web' from Stampotique Originals were then stamped onto the envelope using Distress Inks for a muted look. The gorgeous Miguel Has A Gift brand NEW from Stampotique Originals was stamped straight onto the envelope using Jet Black Archival ink pad from Ranger. A little doodling with a black and white Sakura Pigma Micron Pen and my envelope is ready for sending!

 Thank you for calling, Gez

 

Pumpkin Atc

Hi good morning from a cold and wintery Lancashire, England! It's rather blustery here today, raining and blowing a gale.. someone said we are due lots of snow in November.. I do hope this isn't so..

This morning I've an Atc to share with you..

The background was created using Distress Ink by Ranger and a few water splatters. The gorgeous pumpkins and lil man are both designed by Daniel Torrente for Stampotique Originals.

I coloured the stamped images using Distress Inks and added some fine details using both a black and white Sakura Pigma Micron Pen.

Thank you for calling today, keep warm wherever you are, 

happy creating, Gez

Journal play

Here's a page which didn't take too long to do or much thinking about, it just happened.

I started out giving the page a coat of gesso, spreading and making marks in it as I went along. Once dry I used Caran D'Ache Neo colors to scribble all over the page and because the base was gesso and non-porous I could add water to activate the paint in the crayons and get it all to blend in nicely.  I glued down a few bits of paper and added more colour but that was about it. 

I cut the figure of a child from a magazine and pasted it onto a piece of black card, then fussy cut around the shape even getting into that little bit at the nape of her neck. It's fussy alright but so worth doing.  

The balloons were drawn on some coloured paper and cut out and details added later with a Sakura Micron pen. You can see on the silhouette, the more time you spend fussy cutting the better the detail will be. 

The flowers are Dylusions 'How does your Garden grow' and again my Micron pen was used for the stems and border details.

Have a good weekend.

Jaine x

homemade washi tape

Hello everyone!

Washi tapes are very popular for sometime. I would love to have one...but I haven't. But than I thought why not to make it by myself?! You can use different tapes to make your own washi tape. And what is the best part, you can draw/stamp whatever you want! I had been thinking about using a masking tape but than I received amazing Prima Writers Tape from Vicki. This tape is fantastic! You can stamp on it, draw or use some mediums on it. Tape is sticky back.

To make a simple washi tape you will need:
- tape - for a background
- paint - to add some colour
- waterproof pen - if you want to draw something
- waterproof ink - for stamping
- stamp

I made two pieces, one is drawn and the other stamped.

At the first piece I used a paint with water as a background and than added only the paint in some places. At the second one I applied the paint using my finger.

My ATC using these tapes

Products which I used to make my ATC:
- Stampotique stamp
- Prima Writers Tape
- Claudine Hellmuth Studio Paint
- Sakura Pigma Micron Pen
- Ranger Archival Ink
- Ranger Liquid Pearls
- Glitz Design Yours Truly paper
- Claudine Hellmuth Studio Black Gesso
- Claudine Hellmuth Sticky-Back Canvas
- Donna Downey Studio stencil
- Jenni Bowlin paper

Magda x