I'm a winner!

Oh my - I came home to the news that I'd been picked as the winner of a very special blog give-away - Kate Crane http://www.thekathrynwheel.blogspot.com/ had hosted the recent Stampotique challenge and had altered a matchbox into a mini Rogues Gallery using her favourite Stampotique designs, and had decided to give it away to a random commenter on her blog - and it was me! Couldn't believe my luck, I was almost dancing round the lounge lol... my fella looked at me as if I'd gone totally loopy...

And when I got home from work this afternoon there was a package on my doormat - so now I am the proud owner of - drum roll please - a Kate Crane original lol...

She's used a Swan Vesta matchbox as her base, so that should give you some idea of the size... it's about 3.5 inches by 1.5 inches and as well as painting the box and the portraits, Kate has machine-sewn around them as well.

Here's some close-up pics of the Rogues themselves...

Here's the cover with Dweeze - love his wings lol...



Here's Eric

and Carrot...

...and Hiya Cinth...

...Dawwze's legs - wish mine were that thin...

and Quasimoto 3...

...with Mela to finish off!

They are all so cute, I've never really got into Stampotique stamps but having browsed thru their website tonite to find the names of the stamps Kate used, I've ear-marked a few that I wouldn't mind having myself - they are certainly quirky!

Having just signed up to do a matchbox shrine swap I've already had one person offering to relieve me of this fabby piece of art - sorry lovey but this stays firmly with me!





Art Journaling (or getting well messy...)

Saturday I should have gone to an all day crop, was especially looking forward to it as it was finishing at 7pm rather than 5, so an extra couple of hours to work, but when I woke up I had very little voice and couldn't stop sneezing - who gets ill on the weekend? There should be a law against it!

So I've spent the weekend slouched in front of the laptop playing online backgammon, and watching crafting videos and the Kate Crane DVD's I got for Christmas, and eventually plucked up the strength to have a play over on my craft table... I had already made a start on my art journal calendar a few weeks back but hadn't got very far with it, just gesso'd the pages and then put a base coat of blue and white acrylic paint on them. So far so good. I'm using cheapo Hobbycraft acrylic paints 'cos at £2.59 in their sale they were just too good to resist. They are a little thick to spread, but as I'm no expert I'm happy to play around with them for now.

So yesterday I decided to go a bit mad. NO change there, I hear you say... well I dug out my Adirondack Colourwash sprays and slapped on my latex gloves and got busy... all 3 shades of blue... even had a go at spraying thru an alphabet stencil.... and shock horror, I didn't like it... it was far too dark. So I left it to dry whilst I made yet another cup of tea and played some more online backgammon.

When I came back to have another look, I decided everything needed lightening up, so grabbed a bottle of pearlescent acrylic paint in a very pale blue, and covered the whole of both pages, using an old creditcard (sacrilege!) to spread the paint very thin. You can still see the stencilling thru it, but now its all a pale pearlescent blue.

Still not that keen, so it was back out with the colourwash sprays and a few very light applications of each of the blues, and I'm happy. For now. Stuck it to one side to play with something else. Tomorrow is another day - I'm thinking stamping with distress inks and Stazon, making little marks in acrylic paint with bottle tops and that creditcard, mebbe even some bubblewrap (hang on, I've got a clear stamp of bubblewrap - that'll do...)