UKS Monthly Tag Swap - March

I've certainly been doing some crafting recently, here is March's "Spring" tag for the UKScrappers tag swap.

Being the hostess I get to choose the theme, I chose "Spring" because despite its best efforts, the weather is definitely turning springlike. Today has been a beautiful sunny day in Southend, clear blue sky, warm sun - I even had my windows open...

Until neighbours 4 doors down lit their bar-b-que... sigh...

So... background is Dylusions spray inks in greens and blues and zapped with water to blend them together. The boxing hares stamp was a freebie with 'Craft Stamper' magazine a while back, the other two are from a set by Pink Paislee.

The green leaves are die-cut from a Sizzix die I borrowed at my Benfleet Crop some time ago, and cut to fit.

The rosette is one of Tim Holtz's strip dies, cut out of gold embossed music paper, with 3 paper flowers growing out from behind it.

Now all I have to do is come up with a theme for April - and I'm already a day late... ahh... now that has given me two ideas straight away!

Tags ahoy...

No point in having a lovely re-organised scrapping area (pics to come later) if I'm not going to do anything with it eh... so I've joined in again with the UKScrappers monthly tag swaps. Due to the host being super-busy I volunteered to take over hosting on the basis that it gives me even more incentive to get my tags made - altho it does give me a couple of days extra to finish them as I don't have to post them!

With the deadline for receipt being tomorrow (24th Feb) thought I'd better post pics of mine to show I've actually gotten off my derriere and done them - they have basically been finished for a few days but just hadn't got around to photographing them until this morning!

January's one is "Winter" - evergreen bough and weathered wood distress inks on the background, a PSX fir cone stamp coloured with Marvy brushmarkers in pine green and brown and then "huffed" on to moisten the ink, then the words stamped in Archival Coffee ink. A little fir tree brad to finish and a twist of white ribbon thru the hole and we're done.

I did discover to my horror tho that the Marvy brushmarkers, which granted I have had for years, had all-but dried out, so getting them to colour consistently onto the stamp 4 times was a bit of a mare... I've thrown them all away now as they are no use to man nor beast. But, as I said, I've had them for years!

February's tag is "Love" and is very simple... a background of tattered rose distress ink, then barn door applied thru a Dylusions leaf stencil, which in my mind look like hearts... I outlined each leaf/heart with a thin journaling pen and added a touch of white as a highlight. The stamped sentiment comes on one of the "Get Stamping" magazine stamp sheets (this months I think!) and I've also stamped bits of the Kaisercraft crackle background in tattered rose too. A heart-shaped brad to finish and a partial border of black/white checkers - I love this on a tag but didn't want to totally over-power the design.

I've received 2 sets of tags and waiting on the final set now, then I can swap them around and send them home. Just 4 of us playing for the first 2 months, a good introduction to running a proper UKS swap and I hope not my last!

My Art Journey

So whilst I'm getting all creative and throwing paint around and spraying colourwash everywhere, it does of course occur to me that I don't really have a clear idea of what I'm doing (or why lol)... but I've found an online forum which will have a section dedicated to Art Journalling... Each week there's going to be a "Research" prompt followed by an "Action" prompt, all cunningly presented in a handy PDF format. The first week covered making your own journals, couple of great ideas there, but I already have an A5 book I want to use, so have skipped that (altho thats not to say I won't have a go another time!)

This week was all about preconceptions and colour, including a great article by Claire Vickery from Creative Moments (who has just about convinced me to throw out my Hobbycraft acrylic paints and sell my soul for a set of Claudine Hellmuth acrylic paints instead...) all about the different types of mediums we can use in our art journals; acrylic paints, watercolour paints, colour mists/sprays, pan pastels, inkpads, crackle paint and distress stains, watercolour pencils and crayons, oil pastels - goodness me is there anything we can't use?

So today, whilst waiting on my calendar pages to dry, I dug my A5 journal out and sat and thought for a while. Some of my preconceptions are "am I ready for this?" and "can I do this?" so whilst having fun spraying my colourwash inks in shades of blue I was thinking about the other colours, and wanted a go with the red and orange sprays... so a firey page somehow sprung into life... I think the journaling will be "out of the frying pan into the fire" or something like that...

I've used Red Pepper, Sunset Orange and Butterscotch sprays on this, tilting the page to let it run down (or up) so it looks like a burning fire. It's hard to take a good picture of with flash, 'cos as well as colourwash sprays I had a go with Perfect Pearls Heirloom Gold as well, and it reflects the flash really well lol... around the edge I've stamped a couple of Dylusions stamps, coloured one with a white Posca pen and stamped the other using Barn Door Distress Ink... so this is now drying before I go wild and start writing on it!