July - turquoise and beach huts

This month's calendar challenge at the Craft Barn asks for turquoise and beach huts. So I started with a 12x12 turquoise paper, cut it in half and stamped 2 designs all over on each half. Fishes on the one and sea horses on the other, just wright for a beach theme, no? 

On one of the halfs I added some walnut DI to create another tone.
Then I cut strips of 2 cm wide and glued them alternating on a piece of paper. 

Again I cut strips of 2 cm wide (now cut in the other direction, so in the width) and glued them on my final page, this way I created a mosaic, the easy way.

Then the beach huts, that needed some thought as I do not own anything with an image of a beach hut.
So I thought about carving a stamp or making a stencil, but while searching images I came across a pattern of a beaded beach hut, so I took that design and created a beach hut with iron beads from my son. 

Now I only needed a fitting quote which I found after some searching:
A little sand between your toes helps to take away your woes.
Wrote it with the help of a lettering stencil, outlined it with a black marker and filled it with some white correction fluid.

Hopefully I manage to create the August page much quicker than this one.

Clean and Simple

Sounds easy, no? But I must say I had to think a bit because usually I work messy and use lots of layers. I took inspiration from Dawn over at The Craft Barn and used texture paste in combination with a stencil from TheCraftersWorkshop (TCW327S) on black cardstock. 

I used the 4 images, but one didn't come out crisp (I think the stencil is a  bit thorn) so I discarded that one.

I used a 12x12cm crème metallic card as base, glued the 8x8cm square in the middle and cut a frame out of the same black cardstock. Repeated this for all 3 patterns.

Nepal

This spread in my ARTicles book is about the devastating earthquake in Nepal.
I started this page then (so end of april) and only managed the other day to finish it. (ashamed)
I first painted a mountain landscape

on top of which I collaged (the thought behind this is that the small pieces actually resemble the broken country)

Next I emphasized the broken land even more by tearing up the page.

As a final element to the page I made some banners of flags, each flag is made with a different piece of tape (I seem to have a weak spot for tape, actually not only for tape when I think about it lol)

circles and flowers

This is my entry for this weeks challenge over at the Craft Barn (all details can be found here)








I started by shaking some yellow brusho powder on my page, spritzing it with some water and using a sponge brush to color the page
















Next I spritzed some darker colors (purple, marine blue and black) and hit it with some water.


















Initially I intended to color circles from a stencil, instead I just outlined them with different colors of pens.
















Next I used my favorite background stamp set and stamped all over the page in a very precise manner (not) 
















That was the circle part done, now for the flower part I glued down a whole bunch of flowers on the left side of the page (you could imagine that these are part of a very large circle)








And what is a flower, or a page, without some butterflies,wright?

words

This week’s challenge over at The Craft Barn is to use words as background.

Easy.

I started by gluing down book pages 
and giving it a white wash

Then used 2 new stencils, first stenciled turquoise through the main stencil, next placed the circles on top of the other and stenciled in black. Then added some more words with a script stamp. Really pleased with how the background turned out.

Next came the main elements, I used a Julie Nutting stamp which I stamped on a book page and a piece of patterned paper of which I cut out the dress.

I stamped a frame on a piece of metallic paper to form a mirror, added a bird on top of that and used my self-made frame stamp to create a frame for the quote:

What we see depends on what we look for.

deck of cards

For this week's Craft Barn challenge with the theme deck of cards I started on a page that already had some word steniling on (I started this as a second entry for the word challenge a couple of weeks ago  but never came to finishing it).

I colored the background with sun yellow and sienna gold Inktense pencils and activated the pigment with a babywipe. 
(I'm always surprised at the vibrancy after activating, just fascinating)

This large sheet of card rubons, which I have had for years,

 was just perfect for this page. I randomly added some images to the background.

That was the background done, I then searched for a fitting quote and found this one: 

As focal image I glued down a paper pieced Julie Nutting doll which I have made way back following the instructions of Gabrielle Pollaco and added some butterflies to finish it all off.

I just read the instructions for this weeks challenge and it should have words as background, this would be perfect for that too, wonder whether I would be allowed to enter it a second time?

stripes

It's so hot here right now that I escaped to my studio which is currently situated in the basement, so nice and cool there. I took my gelli plate, brayer, acrylic paints and a texturing tool

 and whipped up some prints in bright colors using a corragated piece of cardboard

I then cut the papers in strips of 2cm wide and glued them on a cardbase in different patterns and added some sentiments 

Thanks for taking the time to stop by.