Snowflakes and Stars....

Hello!

I'm still in 'creating with a Christmas theme' mode, but wanted to change things up a little and be a bit more subtle! For my project today I've created a very Dina Wakley inspired panel....

This is postcard sized, so nice and quick to do!

As it's Dina inspired, of course I've used some Dina Wakley paints in there!

Sky, Lapis and Blackberry, to be precise!

My cardstock was primed first with white gesso, as well as giving a great base for the acrylic paint , adding gesso first means you can scratch patterns into it that show though once the colour is on top. You can see the swirly design in the above pic!

I used a bit of waste card, leftover from something else as a focal point...

I was going to stitch everything with white thread...but my white bobbin appears to have gone AWOL, so I used the red that was already threaded into the machine!

I actually think I like it better than white!

I used white paint flicked on to give splatters, then printed on to give the larger snowflakes. A smidge of outlining, and a few chit chat stickers to finish!

Hope you like it!

See you soon.......

Trish xxxx

pssst..... have you heard? We are having a SPECTACULAR Christmas event over here on the ASOI blog!

There will be something wonderful on the blog EVERY SINGLE DAY... be it a fabulous Christmas project from one of our talented guests, or a spotlight on a product. A little bird tells me there will be a rather large prize up for grabs concerning those 12 products, so make sure you bookmark us and pop back on December the 1st!

An event not to be missed.

We are very happy and excited to announce our big Christmas extravaganza called

The Twelve Projects of Christmas.

I cannot believe what an amazing line up we've got for you with twelve crafters and twelve products to tempt you as we go into Christmas. Each day we'll be bringing you inspiration and  gorgeous projects to look at.

So make a date in your diary starting on the 1st December to stop by.

Where's the snow?

I love the snow but right now we're experiencing nothing like it as we're still having to put up with mild seasonal temperatures. That might not sound like much of a pain but when the plants in the garden are growing and flowering and spring bulbs are coming out, that's bad news. Wasps and flies are still annoying us in the house and I just want the season back.

With what was still on my work table I thought I'd create my own snowy project.

For a change I've gone for a candy pink background and added some snowy texture with Golden texture paste. If you want to add some snow to cards or tags Golden is perfect as it's so light and adds no weight at all.

I used the good old sketchy Snowman from mr T Holtz which is actually on promotion at the moment.

Off doing the snow dance, Jaine x

Let It Snow...

Or, bring on the weird Christmas assemblages!
Hello!
Remember back in the summer when I created an Art Doll with a glass vial for a body? No? THIS one....
Whilst I was creating her, I had an idea for something else..but I've had to wait until it was the appropriate time of the year to show you!
My snowmen......

I used the smallest three vials in the Craft Medley set to create my snowy scene...
Filled with 'snowballs' (i.e the filling from a beanbag!), with tiny dotty buttons and some printed out words..

I wrapped some red cord around the neck of the bottle to resemble a scarf..

The heads are felt balls that I created months and months ago to use as beads for another project. Felting your own beads/balls is a palaver and a half, involving lots of soapy hot water and squeezing and rolling. I would recommend doing an online search for white felt beads!!!!!
The eyes are tiny seed beads, and the nose is the pointy end of a bamboo skewer, painted orange..

I had fun with these, and they have now been kidnapped by my youngest daughter who thinks they're very cute! Which is odd...'cute' wouldn't be my number one aim when creating anything! *note to self* must be weirder......
See you soon!
Trish xxxx

September layout

Well here we are in November already and the Christmas crafting is going up a gear, but before all that here's a layout from my Project Life album for September.

I looked in my stash for a suitable background paper to start from and found this beautiful Jenni Bowlin paper called Modern Mercantile. It fitted the mood perfectly.

For the rest of the layout I've used off cuts of other Jenni Bowlin and Glitz papers.

Jaine x

BasicGrey....

You may have guessed it that the new BasicGrey collection, Aurora is safely arrived with us today and is already up on the website!

This is a fabulous collection with 12 double sided 12x12 papers, 6x6 paper pad, 

embellishments and sticker sheets

There's also a coordinating set of clear stamps, rubber background stamps

and stencils from Hero Arts.

You can find the full collection here, with a 10% discount if you purchase all 12 papers.