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 :)

August is here

and with it has come some nice weather here in the UK - the weather last weekend was gorgeous and I spent much time enjoying it whilst at an all day BBQ - much fun had.

However on the art front not much happened this weekend but I realise it had been a couple of weeks since I posted and I have done some art in that time, its just racking my brains to remember. What I do know is that I went to this place about half an hour away which has all these small shops, one's people have set up themselves and well there were a few craft shops there. So I had a nosey around and yes you can guess - I bought some bits. I bought some scrapbooking papers (not necessarily for scrapbooking) because so far I have not actually managed to get any scrapbooking done but I am sure it will get used for many things. I got some peel off's which gave me idea's which I wrote down but have not actually created yet!

I also bought some embellishments - some tiny feet brads for an ATC idea I had and some travel one's to make some ATC's and I did make one - a flying one. I also have a boat and a car so it will follow along the same theme.

I did start some bits for some colour Mail Art to send out in return for some that I have received. One is a rainbow card but I am still deciding what words to put on it. One was a colour mirage underneath with a black cut out over the top - like when you make snowflakes. I liked the effect.

I made a nie thank you card for my sister Cayleigh as she sent me cool Spongebob notepads from over in the states - for that I used some of the paper I bought on my shopping trip.

Lastly I made a shaker ATC which was in the July 4th theme so much Red, white and blue. We had use part of a specific image hence the 4 behind the glitter but I thought it looked like a fun ATC. So the winner of the draw has it winging its way to them and hopefully it'll make a nice part of their collection. I am planning on maybe making a couple more shaker ATC's but depends whether I feel I have a theme that fits.

Was waiting to put pictures on 1st before publishing but going to be a couple of days so will publish and add photo's later! Enjoy

Art last week

Thats right I actually managed to create some art last week. I made a lovely ATC out of some of those bits I bought a week or so ago. I have yet to have made use of the papers yet but I do have some plans for them. I made R is for Retro. When i saw those 3D stickers I immediately had any idea for this ATC, thinking of the colours and what I had that I could to add to it. I like it. Now I just have to think what I can do with the rest of the stickers. I am sure inspiration will hit me at some point. I finished off the work I had done for Bonnies Journal and this has now been safely sent off. I love the patterned paper I had and I like the things I used for texture. For the final E, I was orginally going to use sequins but I could not find them so I used felt instead. The felt probably has a nicer texture anyway. The theme of bonnies journal was favourite things and so I chose colour and texture. This is because I love colourful things and am always buying colourful stickers and stationary but as the same time i love feeling the texture of things. Thats right I am a toucher - I have been told of many a time by my fiancee for touching things as we walk around shops and such but i like feeling them - it makes a much more fun experience! The final thing I worked on was my 1st inchie - thats right I have finally created an inchie - it was to swap with Sherrie as we did it to encourage eachother to make one and I had received hers weeks ago so am happy to have finally made it. I like this but I found it very hard to work on such a small thing. The background was easy but in terms of picture and such I found this a real challenge so am unsure as to whether I will make more of these in the future. Depends if I can think of something to make that small. However with the limited time I seem to have to spend on crafting at the moment, this will probably fall on the back burner for a while as have journals to complete, ATC's to make for swaps and need to continue making pieces to send out in return for my Mail Art Colour swap! Maybe a free weekend or such will pop up soon. Who knows!

Sunset

Yep I made the effort Wednesday evening and although I only made one thing, it is one thing more than I might have done. I made a nice sunset postcard to send out to one of the people who have sent me something for my colour swap. I did the sun in pen and then blended pencils together to create the sunset effect coming from the sun. I found it fun and although simple I still think it looked lovely and was a good use of colour. I sent it to Miguel Jimenez who's work you can see through my links of what people have sent me.
Yesterday evening I was out with a friend so no art yesterday although I have over the last few days at work been writing bits for my mini journal I am going to do for serendipity's swap on her website - that also can be found on my links. I'm going personal with this zine because thats what I feel like doing - it can be alot easier to tell things to people who don't know you.

Photo of sunset postcard to follow