July is turquoise and beach huts.

Hi

I really enjoyed making the July calender page. I love summer, the sea and beach huts. Recently I took park in a brusho course at the Craft Barn and it is such fun and not too messy. I must remember less is more when it comes to shaking out the powder.

I used water coloure pressed card and sprinkled torquoise and lemon brushos on and spritzed with water to make the back ground. Next on seperate water colour card I clear stamped and heat embossed in black the beach huts. I again colured these using the brushos. After they were dry I cut them out and stuck them on the page. Finally I put on the calendar and added a little ditty about beach huts by Ann Perrin.

Hope you like.

June: Dragonflies and lavender.

It has been a very busy and at times traumatic month so only posting this just in time. I painted the background using acrylic paints and stencils. The border was made using my new indigo blue stamps. For the lavender I used inktense watercolours. The dragonfly was made with a mixture of inktense and pastels. Sorry this is just a short blog. Will try better next month.

Fionax

Travel

This weeks craft barn challenge is travel. It my is my Dads birthday this week and he use to sail an enterprise called Mad Moggy no E12929 every weekend. He probably still would if he could. So it is fitting that his birthday card has a boat on it.

A cople of months ago I learnt how to iris fold at the Tuesday craft club. One of the designs in Dawns book was a boat an I knew then it would be perfect for Dad. I needed to make a background thouhg so out came the inks and stencils and a sea and sunny sky was made...well sort of.

Hope you like.

Night and Day

When on holiday recently we looked across the bay and saw what looked liked a giant owl with glowing yellow eyes. In the day we could not make out the shape at all and assumed it was how the beach lift there was lit. But what if it wasn't. What is night shows the true image...

So the craft barn gave a challenge night and day and this gave me an oportunity to explore. I started with 2 tags and grunge pasted a skull on each. I gesso'd one black and one white. On the day one I painted it pale blue and added rocks and a red and white lighthouse. On the night one I added a black lighthouse and highlighted the skull.

I then decided to make a journalling page out of it all. No white space - sorry Dina  I forgot about that but I did ground my lines. I hope this fits in okay with the day and night challenge.

Craft Barn Callendar: magenta and flowers.

This month is magenta and flowers. This threw me a little, what colour is magenta..pink, mauve, redy purple and also I am not good with flowers. But hay hoy thats why it is a challenge.

I started with an idea by Anna-Karen Evaldsson from May edition of craft stamper. I used grunge paste through a flower stencel, using just the flower bits and not the leaves. Anna-Karen then used water colours and stamps. I used stronger water colour background using my ink tense pencils and blocks but went for stronger colour and more flicking. Less is suppose to be more..pah! I added colour to the petals so the flowers stood out and used distress ink put on with cotton buds and smudged. Oh and a butterfly stamp in an ink that would blur when wet. Lastly I added some silvery/lilac guilding wax to bring out the texture of the flowers. For the month I stamped straight over the picture. I had to go over with a pen as ink didnt show as strong as I wanted.

Hope you like, I think I have a magenta...just.

Edgar Allan Poe

Well I have had fun with this. I watch a programme called The Following which is about a serial killer called Joe Carroll and he is obcessed with Poe. A friend suggested I made something in tribute to them both. I have to say I do like doing dark things from time to time.

I started with an mdf tryptic. I took of the hinges and painted the whole lot in black gesso. This was to be my canvas. I then built up layers using texture paste, stencils, stamps and heat embossing. The images of Poe are from the computer, the lighthouse a die cut and a picture of a victorian lady to represent Annabel Lee. Around the edges I used thick black lace with a little deep red lace. This I went over with ultra thick embossing powder and stampendous aged black embosing enamel. Never done this on ribbon but the effect is excellent and it was great fun to do. Finaĺly some metal embellishments and son red roses. Hope you like.

Quintessentially English

I went to Cromer at Easter and nothing is more English than the traditional seaside and pier. Cromer is a lovely place and being a beautiful sunny day lots of people were on the pier and beach and some of the beach huts were open. I have chosen the beach huts as my project as I love them so much and is my dream to own one prefrable on the the North Norfolk Coast.

I used a JOFY beach hut stamp and then painted them with water colour paints. This will be made into a birthday card for some one special.