night and day

This weeks challenge over at the Craft barn was day and night.

I do not have step by step pictures this time, was too much in to creating to be bothered to grab my camera, sorry. I sprayed the top part of the page with after midnight  Dylusions and the bottom with a blend of lemon zest and squeezed orange. Next I added the brick wall with red acrylic paint through a stencil on top of which I stamped these 3 cute little owls. I then masked them off to stamp the script stamp in the background ( if I would have had a plan to begin with I would have done that first before stamping the owls lol) Searched for a suitable quote which Goodnight sleep tight (don't let the bedbugs bite) uhm, wake up bright in the morning light is.
Thanks for stopping by and till next time, bye.

Quotes book

I am very proud to present to you my very own illustrated quotes book, a work of love from a whole year.

I started with writing all the quotes I have used on pieces of scrappaper, tearing them and glueing them down on the inside covers.

I gave that a wash with some dilluted gesso.

I wrote the letters Q and L with an embossingpen and heat embossed them with some clear embossing powder. I wanted to create a resist for the next step, which was sprayinking.
I then used my frame stamp all over, my stamping was far from perfect :-(

I painted the space in between with green to ty it in with the front cover, this was already making a difference, outlined the frames with a black pen, much better.
I typed all the words out and glued them in the frames, this was the finishing touch the covers needed.

For the outside covers I used some vintage green paper and created this 3D frame in which I stamped my handcarved butterfly stamp.

The inner pages are glued on 3 sides, so the top is open and creates a pocket in which I can insert tags with other inspiring quotes from the other entries.

Here is a recap of all my entries

Faith

I'm still in the process of learning to carve my own stamps, the 2 next lessons in the book Stamp, Carve and Play from Julie Fei Balzer were to carve a frame and a word (actually first an alphabet, but will be doing this when I have some more time on hand). 

So I wanted to incoporate those 2 new stamps in my last entry for the Q&l challenge.
The words to choose from were harmony and/or faith. I first started looking for a quote with harmony because I was sure that every quote with faith would be religious, was I wrong about this, found more quotes that appealed to me with faith than with harmony lol.

I used: 
Sometimes all you can do is
not wonder
not think
not imagine
not obsess
just breathe and have faith
because miracles do happen

I've ceated a wall with picure frames on.
I started with a background paper from Emphemera's vintage garden Enchanted rose kit, which totally could be someones wallpaper. Stamped my frame stamp on different papers and gold heat embossed this and cut out. Stamped the not in each one and handwrote the rest.

Now I need to make a book out of all my entries, hopefully I will find some time during this festive season. Not only the festivities will keep me busy, but I also need to move my studio from the attic to the basement, because my sweet husband has started finishing off the attic, so me and my son would have a nice place to do our art.But first I need to move all of this ?!??

heart

For this forthnight’s Q&L challenge (which apparently is the penultimate, I had to look that one up, thx I learned a new English word) I choose the word heart.

A couple of weeks ago I bought Julie Fei Balzer’s carve, stamp and play book because I admit I am a stampaddict and am intrigued by making my own.

She is also having a challenge called #carvedecember, you can find everything about this here.

The first project in the book is carving a heart.

As it goes with addictions I couldn’t stop at making just the one and I made 5, actually I only made 4 but the negative makes also a great stamp.

For my spread I started by free cutting heartshapes out of bookpages. 

I added some textures with texture paste through a dot stencil, there was a happy accident as I don’t clean of my stencils, the dots became blue. I then stamped the different heart stamps (I like the stitched one the most) across the middle of the page.

I wanted to keep it simple, because I was liking the left over white space (normally I fill everything up with color but not now), but it was missing something and that something was a ribbon.

I stamped my favorite heart stamp along the ribbon and created a focal collage underneath it with a doily, a vintage picture, some feathers and a heart gem.

The ribbon I didn’t glue but sew on ( can you believe I sew it, I am absolutely rubbish at sewing but I like the look and well I figured I can only get better if I practice, right?)

Here’s a close up of the collage

Last but not least I wrote the quote A heart that gives, gathers from Tao Te Ching on tissue paper. I used acrylic paints in handy bottles with a fine tip (from Ikea).

The paint did take forever to dry however(overnight).

I also will be linking to Inky Dinkly Doodles sunday sentiments.

friendship

Already the  23rd stage in the Q&L challenge (the end of the year is approaching so unbelievable fast) and the 2 words we can choose from are friendship and/or journey (more details and all the wonderful entries can be found here)

I found this quote:

Friendship is a rainbow between 2 hearts sharing 7 colors.

I used my new measuring embossing folder to emboss a piece of cardstock, I cut it into pieces  and glued them randomly on the page.

I created 7 areas by glueing down some string and added a layer of gesso.

Colored each area with a different color of gel stick and smudged it with a babywipe.

Used this stamp which looks like a chain that connects, like friendship does.

Wrote the quote on a kraft tag and added the 7 words in the 7 areas.

I will be linking this page to the Craft Barn’s Q&L Challenge and to SundaySentiments.

moon

For this forthnight’s Q&L challenge (for more details and the other wonderful entries please click here) where the 2 words to choose from are moon an/or sensation I immediately knew my quote I wanted to use:

Shoot for the moon even if you miss you’ll land amongst the stars.

I think this is a popular quote, I already saw some pages with the same or a variation on this quote, but nonetheless this was the one I wanted to use.

This weekend I did some clearing in my studio and while rummaging I found this background I wasn’t completely happy with at the time I created it but now it was perfect for my quote.

It reminded me of the universe in some way.

The background was made with watersoluble crayons and a babywipe on a gessoed page.

I added stripes in different colors of the same crayons to create kind of a solar storm, some stars which I embossed with some holographic embossing powder and some texture paste with glitters sprinkled in. I had stamped and colored this fairy stamp which holds the moon and placed here on a black circle (otherwise she kinda disappeared in the background).

This weekend my son got a telescope for his birthday and when you look through a telescope to the moon you have a circle outlining.

So that’s why I created the black border, which was too plain so I added some gold embossed stars.

The quote is written on a piece of paper towel which I turned into a little canvas with glue.

Thanks for stopping by, have a nice day.

I forgot that Susan from over at inky dinky doodle has her sunday sentiments open all month and you can link more than 1 project, so I did :-)

nowhere

Unbelievable, again only just in time with my entry for this forthnigth's Q&L challenge. And yet this time I started on time. On sunday I did a quick search for quotes with nowhere (as my previous entry already had hug in it) and found this one interesting: Nowhere on your birthcertificate did it say that life would be easy.
So the theme was set: baby.

I used soft colours for the background:
yellow and blue gelsticks
with a white embossed resist of cute owls

This was finished on monday, ok still on track. Next I carved a footstamp, I used an image of a footprint of my son when he was only 6 weeks old (where has the time gone??) and used a clear carvingblock, this has the advantage that you do not need to trace your image, but it's pretty hard to carve and is rather slick to apply ink to.

I made a birthcertificate of my alter ego aka butterfliecrafter.

I used a tag from a pasta package, recycling at its best. The journaling lines are also a homemade stamp out of cardboard and string. A doodled border which came out just perfect and I am also pretty pleased with my handwriting (probably for the first time), so all in all I can say I love the tag.

I handwrote the quote, except for the word nowhere which are letterstickers. Then came the finishing touches: the washing line with babyclothes, the stars and the cute owls again but this time in color.


I will be linking this to my junk journaling fb group and because I'm so late with this entry I can also use this for tomorrow's Sunday Sentiments :-)

Gift

I waited yet again till the last minute to make my entry for this forthnight's Q&L challenge where the 2 words were destiny & gift. I choose for gift and this wonderful quote: the best gift you can give is a hug, one size fits all and no one will care if you return it.
I started by looking for a cute image of hugging and found this one somewhere in my stash. I glued them on a paper towel canvas:

I initially planned to make a background which I would cut up in pieces to make a sunray. So I started, very relaxed, intuitively, no stress at all because it would be cut anyway. Well, it turned out that I liked it so much that I didn't want to cut it up and just used it as it is, just resized it to 21x21cm:

I added our little cuddly friends and used the cut off part of resizing as a tag, coincidentally it was exactly the wright size. Love it when everything just falls together. I attached the tag with this cute paperclip.

when you lift the tag the quote goes on

I will also be linking this to sundays sentiments tomorrow.

easier

Searching the net for quotes that spoke to me with the words easier or childhood was way much “easier “ than last challenge.

I found this one: life was much easier when apple and blackberry were just fruits.

I wanted to use this one, but I didn’t seem to get any ideas on how to start.

So yesterday I sat myself down and just started and went with the flow.

What happened was that I created a page that I am very pleased with, but has nothing to do with the quote I had in mind, so instead of fighting it, I came up with my own quote:

Sewing is so much easier when you know how to.

I still need to learn to sew, but it’s not high on my priority list, I  rather be busy with paints and inks, so for the time being I’m rubbish at sewing.

I started the page with collaging some textbook on the page (I think a good place to start if you have no clue what to do)

Next I added some texture paste through a stencil and did some random stamping. To add even some more texture I added a piece of string.

All the circles and string  all of a suddon reminded me of buttons and sewing. Recently I bought some sewing dies so this was the perfect opportunity to use them.

I used the die cuts on a tag. I added a flower with a button as heart and wrote my quote along the string.

So another great example of how when you stare yourself blind on an end result you can get blocked, just go where the creative juices take you is a wise lesson I take from this page.

And who knows I still might make a page with apples and blackberries.

Grace

Just in time with my entry for this forthnigth's Q&L challenge where the words were grace and/or peaceful. I had a hard time finding a suitable quote because a lot of them were religious and I'm not. But I noticed I wasn't the only one struggling with this challenge when I was visiting the other entries. I finally found a quote that wasn't religious and was kinda funny so I went with this one: cats are furry waterfalls of grace.
My initial thought was to create some kind of waterfall with cats sitting on different levels, but I found this gelli print in my stack and wanted to use this instead.

I added some stamping, a cat sticker, some washitape and a border with a felt bird (which I colored in with some pens) to which all the footprints lead. I found this cute cat alphabet which was just perfect to add my quote.

Hopefully the words that will be revealed tomorrow will inspire me more.

thing

It’s the sweet simple things in life which are the real ones afterall.

When I read that quote I had to think about cupcakes.

And as it happens I had already some stamped and colored cupcakes laying around on my desk (I think almost a year or so, I thought to use it for my birthday calendar but didn’t eventually, luckily I hardly ever throw anything away because it was perfect for what I had in mind).

I painted my primed page turquoise using a credit card, added gesso through a butterfly stencil in which I sprinkled some glitter (because what’s sweeter in life than some glittery butterflies??)

Then used my new made cherry blossom stencil again (just love it), glued the cupcakes which I glammed up with some silver stickles and the quote down.

As I stepped back and looked at the page I felt it was missing something so I added some more stamping in the upper corners, wasn’t enthusiastic about that so I added some pearl in some of the dots and think it’s okay now.

Thanks for stopping by, make sure to check all the other wonderful entries over here.

mind

When I came cross this quote  Creative minds are rarely tidy I immediately knew what to do: make a messy painty page.

First I started by making a stencil with paint splatters.

Then the fun could begin: 

using a sponge and different colorful colors I stenciled through my new stencil.

Next I dripped some acrylic paint onto my page and to top of the mess I added some splattering.

Now I just needed to add the quote and done.

I like the fact that I finally managed to make a page with still some white space coming through, yeah.