Lack of updates

Apologies for no updates recently. Just been distracted by work and having a week off, plus one wedding and another this weekend. Life has gone into overdrive and the art has fallen away.

I don't like the fact the art has fallen away but I am lacking something to draw me back in. I have done a little bit of work in a couple of journals but nothing major. I am unsure what to do at the moment - there are just so many things in my life to get sorted out.

This ATC is one I created over a month ago but had lost track of which I am sending out to a friend as a RAK. It was fun to make as I like drawing in Silver on black. Its a nice effect. I have more images from this collection which are fun and which I had planned to make cards for but as you can see they have not been done yet.

Anyway I just wanted to update you all on the lack of art at the moment. I am off to a wedding this weekend so looking like their won't be any art created this weekend.

I did as I said

and actually did some art yesterday. It was hard at first as I wanted to but didn't feel motivated and wasn't sure it would look right but once I got into it, it was all good. I first created an ATC from butterfly images for an image lottery on one of my ATC groups. I loved the colours of the butterflies and i did something a bit different but putting them on top of eachother to make it more of a 3d card but loved the effect. I just wasn't so sure about the background once I had done it, my card seemed bland but the couple of stickers I added made it look better.
Then using the scraps from making my ATC I created a journal page which looks like someones head with no face. Its odd but I liked the effect. It almost has a bit of a punk rocker look to it :)

Spring fun

Last night I decide to get in the spirit of spring and get moving on my spring postcards. In the end I made two. I bought a couple of years ago a 365 day calender about scrapbooking in that each page can be used to scrapbook. I had done nothing with it until this year and picked out a couple of pages to make use of in spring postcards. One had a nice flowery background and I took some tags from a craft magazine to spell spring across. I really like the effect it made and actually used brads rather than just glue them down. Just sitting here now I have realised I could have put hidden pictures behind them and you could have moved the tags to reveal them. I will use that in a future postcard - I like the idea.

My other postcard is a bit more random. I used another page, it has a flowery border and then took some pictures from a different page to put in the corners. I think found a spring chicken tag as such. That looked cute in the middle but I realised something was still missing. So i dug out some flowery confetti and put that like snowflakes on the page. After creating it I decided it would probably have looked better without the corner images but they were already there.

Finally I finished off an Easter ATC I had been working on. I only needed to glue the final flowers on it but I think they just added a final touch to the card.

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!

Busy Busy Busy

I apologise greatly as I have been a very busy person and so much of my life has been neglected and this blog included. But I created an ATC last night in some of the little time I have, I was looking for some stuff and was checking through all the stuff I have been sent from the emphemera swap, found the image, found the backing paper and knew they'd look great together - though I need something to go with it and I continued I found the stickers that look like typewriter keys - It was like it was meant to be p- Wish everything was that quick but then sometime its nice to know you laboured over something. So anyway enjoy the ATC and hopefully I will find some time for some creativeness real soon.