Pastels and Unusual Alphabets

Last night as I was unpacking the bag of birthday presents I got from my friends I refound the pastels that my friend Adam had bought me. Immeadiately I wanted to play with them which is exactly what I did. I got out a journal I have only used a couple of times because I have not got into the swing of doing journal work not for a swap. Not sure why, maybe I should start trying to do it more. Anyway I haven't used pastels since I had an old set and used to draw on my walls at my Dad's - he didn't mind as it was wallpaper and he knew he would take it down one day but that was in my teenage years where you have all those emotions and you feel you want to make a statement. So I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them but decided I would just have a play. I started just rubbing them on at first but it didn't look right and that's when I started blending it with my fingers. I of course ended up with different fingers for different colours and I can only really blend with one hand so I soon ran out of space but it was fun. I started with the background just thinking about enjoying using the colours and such knowing I would put stuff over the top soon, maybe some writing or something. The other page didn't turn out quite as I wanted it. I thought I would create a dreamy looking woman with flowing hair and a flowing dress but my drawing skills were not up to it, especially in pastel. The second I drew the high neckline I was like ahhhh no thats not what I wanted but I kept with it anyway and in the end turned out better than expected but not to what I held in my mind. Practice, practice will be the key.

Unusual Alphabet ATC's. I was glad to get these all done in the one night as I should have sent them yesterday but one day is late is ok. Well its not ok but its done now. I had thought about my idea's during the day and printed off the pirate and guinea pig pictures. The monster was a sudden inspiration upon finding the monster wrapping paper someone had wrapped one of my birthday presents in and thinking - AH HA. The pirate one was fun to make as I basket wove the background for it to give it a nice patchy effect which was realistic. Trying to stick squares on would have been a nightmare. That left with one left to do and i just looked at what I had and what letter I could do and thats where B for buttons was born from. I don't use my buttons enough and I do like them so it was nice to play around with them. So smooth :)

Plus I found the picture of the valentines postcard I sent and here it is. Couple of years ago I bought like a desktop calender which had pages you could use for scrapbooking everyday. And this is the first one I had used, Only took me a couple of years and I didn't use it for scrapbooking.

So thats it. I am off up to Rugby tonight with work for a conference tomorrow so I might take my journal with me to work on those pastels pages some more turning them from WIPs into winners :)

ATC's, Cross Stitch and more

I got creative the other night and was busy finishing off cards, making news ones and working on a couple of postcards to go out to pen friends. Firstly these are my cross stitch cards which I made for a swap on MixedMediaATC_UK on yahoo. My cards arrived too late for the swap and due to lack of internet over the weekend I was unable to let Amanda know but we are going to do a one for one swap and so she will get to pick from these 3 cards. So the two she doesn't pick will be open for trade. Also I will have my all cross stitch card which I have yet to have refound yet. So if anyone is interested let me know, Always happy to do one for one trades. My favourite of these is the flags card. I like the though of stitching flags so I did this first not really thinking about what the background would be like but once stitched I decided that some different languages behind the flags would bring across the sense of other countries. I think the white paper is polish from a polish newspaper and the more brown paper which was a page I got sent, I think it is spanish but could not tell you for sure. I like the layering effect they gave and that is what inspired me for what I wrote around them.

Then we have this love theme card which seeing as were around valentines it is unsurprising I ended up making a love themed one. I love the material that I put over the top, again sent to me, probably in a grab bag win. You can't see it very well in the picture but I wrote love underneath in red which is what inspired me to call the ATC Hidden Love.

The one below is stitching meets doodle, I like that effect. I sometimes worry that doodle looks rubbish although I love to do it however I think

for this ATC it framed it nicely. Plus its what I wanted to do and enjoyed :)

I also made a couple of valentines card to send to Catherine and

Norma in the states in return for the lovely ones they sent me. Having got some vintage valentine images from the mary davis sampler I decided to have a try with them as I rarely use vintage images using more modern stuff but fancied giving it a go. I like the though of a secret admirer giving flowers. I loved the backgrounds for these, just images I searched out on google images and then printed out thinking how great they would be for back grounds but totally not knowing what was going to go on top of them at the time.

And finally on this creative night, although thinking about it I think it was over a couple of evenings. I made postcards to send to a pen friend. One was a valentines postcard which I don't seem to have a picture of at the moment - the question is did I take one. And the other was making use of some patterns I had printed off forever ago knowing I would love making a postcard from them and then losing them in the ether which turned out to be hidden in a work folder.

So that has been my creativity of late. Apart from that finished watching Season 3 of Lost and loved it. Might have to rewatch them as was really ploughing through them and I like to contemplate what I have seen and thinking about possible future storylines and how linked to previous stuff. Been playing with our new cute guinea pigs. Patch and Takumi. Both boys with black and white coats and such different personalities. Patch is bolder and easier to get a hold of where at Takumi is more jumpy and can run ever so fast, round and round the cage when trying to catch him. But both very good when you get them out, so loving them and spending time taming them. Bit of Guitar Hero last night, got it for my birthday so was loving the new songs to play to. Plus needed to chill after spending most of the day on trains travelling to different meetings. Yesterday was a long work day!

Pictures galore

Thats right, having finally moved into our house properly and set up our PC i got the pictures off my new camera and thus I can share them with you lovely people. I added some pictures to a couple of older posts that I said I would add pictures so have a look back and see what wonders you might find (its only a couple of posts). Now I can show you the work I did in Seren's journal that I had around christmas time. I did quite a few pages before sending it off, although I did have it a little longer than I should have :( But I got it off after christmas which at least means it didn't get caught up in the christmas post.

Firstly I did a page based on the pantomime I went to see with a colleague at work. We went and saw Dick Whittington at the Hackney Empire. This was at he beginning of the first journal and so it was more writing than colour and art. At first I found it hard to encorporate art into it and at times felt that the page might be seen as boring as its only writing but I guess that is interesting as well as that is the insight into what the person is thinking. I just sometimes think the background might look dull.

I then created a page on butterflies - I love butterflies - I think part of it is you can make them so colourful and I am not sure what else it is. I like the shape. My writing is a bit rambling talking about how Seren's bubble page inspired me but in the end I wish I had cute out the shapes rather than colouring them in. However this did lead me to create the page on the other side so maybe not so bad after all.

This page made use of the fact that where I had used colouring pens for the butterflies on the first journal page that they showed through onto this side. It made me think of the fact they were faded and almost made them look more like real butterflies than the bold colours on the previous page did.

This is a page that never was. I had this whole plan about how I would write down all the songs I listened to on my ipod on my journey back from Bristol one weekend on the train. I normally drive so no chance to create however I was getting the train back this sunday and so I thought it would be a good time to create. I drew the IPOD bit in advance and then got it all near the top of my page for the journey however once on the train I realised I did not have my ipod and thus the page never became. Thats why its says "This page never happened".

This was me rediscovering some card and paper I had bought leading up to Christmas on one of my trips into ArtBase the little craft shop down the road from us which I try not to go in too often because I always discover fab things I won't necessarily use but want anyone thus spending money. I had though the sparkly card was awesome and that I would use it in Christmas cards which in the end I did but only after I had rediscovered it and used some for this page. I like the winter effect the 2 pages give and I made squares because I like the pattern they make, I have a thing for patterns and have always loved making different patterns by colouring half the squares in a 4x4 block to see how many patterns I could make. When I was younger I did so many pages on them. In recent it has been Lia who has helped me move my pattern love to a different medium with her love of 1" squares and I decided to use this on this page.

This was my final page in Seren's journal. This was just after New Year and so thats what my thoughts were on. I don't really like making New Years Resolutions as I never stick to them which means I then make them with no real faith however I felt I should try and make some differences. So I wrote down my idea's of things I would like to do or what I wanted to change.

There you go, finally some decent pictures uploaded and some info on some of the work I had been doing.

Cross Stitch ATC

As promised here is a picture of my cross stoitched ATC. It was fun to make although of course time consuming doing all the little flowers but I like the effect it has given. I plan to make some other all cross stitch ATC's in the future as it is something different.

Actually I have an article in a cross stitch magazine about people making mail art envelopes all in cross stitch - the put nice pictures on it and stitch the address on and send letters or such in it. I mean I partake in mail art but had never thought of that. It is awesome but can see it would be time consuming. Plus you need to keep stuff in plastic inside incase the envelope gets wet. So I do have a plan to see about making one in the future, I guess the question would be, who would I send it to :)

Hmmmm so many plans. Once I am in the new house though, much time for bringing these plans to life. Today is my last day at work so I have cakies with me and I must get on sorting everything I need to hand over. Then tomorrow is my birthday - wooooo. I start my new placement on tuesday next week so get a few days off :)

Pretty Postcard

I got sent this beautiful postcard a couple of weeks ago. It is made with Alcohol Ink on Steel so thanks to Seren for sending it to me. I think its great and very different to get a metal postcard.

I finished up an ATC yesterday totally done in cross stitch. I have started the background ages ago and lost it and then refound it just as on one of my groups there was a cross stitch ATC swap. Excited and knowing it would be a good basis to start I finished it off and got it made into a proper ATC last night. Forgot to take a picture but will add it tomorrow. Just need couple more ATC cards but will do normal ATC's with cross stitch on rather than a whole cross stitch ATC. It has lots of little flowers as the background and says Flower Power in green. I like it!

Still lacking a journal at the moment and I miss it. It was nice to be forced (as such) to write something everyday and be creative. I enjoyed being in the rhythm and I am missing it now. Hopefully my next journal from the swap will show up soon. Plus seren was going to include a truly collaborative journal where I can be creative on pages already started. Looking forward to that.

Fed up of no pictures

As still haven't set the pc up at the house and therefore cannot make use of my new camera however I did find the charger for my old so it is working and I have taken a couple of pictures of postcards just to add some colour to my posts.

I have sent Nathalies journal off now and have done a couple more pages in the Good or Evil journal and am getting ready to send it back. I wonder what the person will think of the pages and I guess I will never know but we shall see. I am hoping my next journal will arrive soon but I have not heard back from Seren on whether she had already sent it out or not. I will know soon enough.

I have also been making some postcards for a valentines swap on my penpal livejournal group and trying to make sure I am all caught up on swaps. I still need to finish up my elements cards and send out to Julie. My idea's are there I just need to sit down and create them and maybe I can fit that in tomorrow night when I get back from the gym. So busy in the evenings seeing people, off out for dinner tonight.

There is a mixture of pictures here. The first two are free postcards I picked up probably from my gym or the cinema and I am sending to a couple of friends because I think they are fun and colourful. The third postcard is one of the valentines postcards I made. I made use of some stickers from paperchase.

The final picture is of a valentines postcard I received from this swap. This one is from nina and a very friendly postcard as you can see.