If I were a mermaid

I'm booked in for a 'Drawing in your Journal' class at Art from the Heart in Harrogate with Kate Crane. so I thought I would dust off the cobwebs in my frontal lobe and practice doing a bit of drawing. It used to come so easy to me as a cocky 17 year old at college, but now I have too many distractions with daily life and everything. So I surprised myself when I sat down in front of the tele the other night to draw a mermaid, I thought I'd be there for hours, rubbing it out and starting again, but she was there in about 30 minutes! Ironically the lobsters took me longer to do. 

I'm still relatively new to this art journaling game, and I still have so much to learn, its exciting times for me, I'm enjoying the journey, being inspired by so many blogs out there, I love it!

I like anything to do with the sea. Every time I go to the beach I always come back with my pockets full of little bits of rocks and shells. I wonder what happens beneath those waves. What would you do if you were a mermaid? This is what I would do.

So here goes, the materials I've used were the glorious London Blue & Vibrant Turquoise Dylusions Inks for the background.  I have this old wooden rubber stamp that has a snow pattern on it.  I dabbed it in water and stamped it on the page to blot out little white dots on the fab blue background.  It worked so well as a bubble effect all over.  The hanging plants, the fish, the sea horses, the jelly fish and the coral are all the fantastic Lavinia Stamps, they're such good quality with loads of detail, Tracey is so talented.  I used many different shades of blue to give the illusion of distance with all the stamps.

I drew some foreground plants straight on the page with a black gel pen, and used a lighter shade pencil to draw plants in the distance. I love my little happy lobsters. I had heaps of fun making this page.

O is for Ornate

Oooooo it's about time I did another letter, and here it is, an eternal circle of ornateness. I took some sneaky pictures of the 'O' while it was being made on my WOYWW, and now here's the finished letter.  I keep meaning to take more pictures of the making process, but it's so hard to remember to take a picture.....well what I mean to say is, it's so hard to get my head out of my crafty behind to stop for minute and think that I should take a picture.  I will make more of an effort for the next one.  I had to stand the letter against a bottle of glue to help it stand up as the ornate plaque makes it want to lean over to the right a bit.

So for the ingredients of this recipe:
I painted the letter with white acrylic paint first as a base. Then I used a wonderful pink shimmering mist by Lumin Arte inc. called Radient Rain Pink Grapefruit. It has the most fantastic gold mica shimmer with a soft pink colour underneath. I was so surprised with the finish of this mist, I loved it. I know I will use it over and over again, so pleased it comes in a big bottle too.  It looked fab just like this, but not interesting enough to look at. So I used a contrasting pastel blue Cosmic Shimmer chalk mist over the top, I like the mottled effect it gives (use a heat gun to dry in between coats).

I stamped a few flourishes using a pastel blue Brilliance ink pad too here and there.

The most exciting part for me was using 2 new products I bought at the weekend from The Paperlane in Northallerton, unfortunately for me they were having a reshuffle of the shop when I turned up on Sunday morning and I didn't stay long......wait...not unfortunate for me at all....very fortunate on my bank account! I always spend, spend, spend in there, they did me a favour.  Thanks a bundle!

My 2 new products were Indigo Blu's Gilding Flakes (and flitter glue.. I know that makes it 3, but the glue goes with the flakes, come on, that doesn't count) and the Hummingbird clear stamp set from Kaiser Craft. The effect is amazing on the letter, and the camera doesn't pick it up so well, but it looks really great up close.

The ornate plaque is a Tim Holtz Idea-ology plate. I used Sail Boat Blue Adirondack alcohol ink, and dropped it a few times over areas of the plaque. I cut out some card, stamped an ornate O on the card and wrote the rest of "Ornate" out (I know it's not perfect, but I like it warts 'n all) . Distressed the edges of the card, stuck it in the plaque and filled the oval with Glossy Accents. Which takes an age to dry.

The stamped bird and flourishy flowers are Tim Holtz as well as the ink dyed bauble. The crown is a charm I picked up at a craft show.  The cat stamp is a Lavina Stamps cat, coloured with dark blue acrylic paint, and outlined with a thin black pen.

I picked up on the centres of the stamped flowers with some Cosmic Shimmer pearl pva glue and some yellow liquid pearls (I need an excuse to use liquid pearls on everything).  

Around the edge of the letter I painted bright yellow acrylic paint and flicked it with purple mica powder, the letter shimmers from lots of different mediums. Oh I can't forget the centre of the letter O which I coloured with blue Broken China distress ink.

 B is the next letter, I know what the first thing springs to mind beginning with B is, what do you think?

The Fairy World!

I have been lost again in the world of imagination with Lavinia Stamps. They are so versatile, you can make any scene look amazing. I never have a preconceived idea of what I want it to look like, I just tear some paper and make some hills or grassy mounds using distress inks, then I stamp on the main images I want, then I decide on perspective near or far distance. I could have just put a bush where the trees are and it would have changed the perspective to closer to the subject. Instead I went for distance with trees.

I used the small Dew Drop Brilliance pads for the different colours in the leaves on the tree. It is only one small stamp, but you use it many times around the tree, with various shades of ink. The Brilliance ink gives the tree a nice shimmery effect. I used a reverse image technique using the brayer in the water too.

I couldn't leave the inside blank too.

I used blue and yellow cosmic shimmer spray on the blank side of the card. 

And stamped some embossed Kanban card for the message side.

I used Promarkers to colour the fairy door. The ivy stamp is actually a Flower Soft stamp,  inked with Olive StazOn Ink. 

The sentiment is Papermania's Midnight Fairytail, stamped with Versamark and beautiful Persian Sea Aurora  Cosmic Shimmer Embossing Powder. It really looks gorgeous and metallic blue.

The card is finished off with Glitter Magic holographic silver glitter, and blue Ice Stickles. Oh and a small piece of K & Co ribbon. 

Lavinia stamps world

Using Lavinia Stamps takes me to a place where my imagination is let loose. They're so easy to use with all the stamps available its not hard to put a combination together and create a magical scene.  I was so pleased to find out that Lavinia Stamps was going to be at Rainton Meadows, Ross Papercraft Show, I could hear my purse squealing at the prospect of being emptied! It was well and truly emptied. I noticed that this Papercraft show is getting bigger, I hope so. I want it to be as big as Stamp Magic, so I don't have to drive to Doncaster.

The glitter just finishes off the images beautifully.