Christmas in July? No - DT entry for Eclectic Ellapu!

Christmas cards in July - never too early to start I guess! I must admit I have been doing some colouring in, using my Copics on some images lately and mostly they have been Christmas images.

However, this card is for Eclectic Ellapu's latest July challenge - Your Favourite Holiday Season!

This is a Lily of the Valley image, coloured in with Copics and Spica pens, and judicious use of glitter glue! the image was not-so-fussy-cut and attached to a die cut label, and then onto some papers given to me by a member of the RAC group - Random Acts of Craftiness!

(in the sunlight -w hat there is of it)

The ribbon has been repurposed from presents last year, and I added a small tag and charm.

(in the shade)

I have been seeing a few more Christmas cards on the web lately, so people must be starting to do their cards for this year - I have some left over from last time, and this makes 14! Think I should probably do a few more when I can. Problem is dragging out the Christmas boxes and then putting it away again - no room in the inn so it is under the computer desk, and unless I am making lots of cards, I tend to put it back as it takes up sooooo much room otherwise.

Ho Hum, if that is the least of my problems.....

I will enter this in the following:

Thank You for the Design Team!

Over at Unstampabelles this month, we have been asking who are our Hero's and for me certainly the DT are all Hero's for agreeing to work with me and be on my team and put up with my idiosyncratic sense of humour and strange themes/twists for the monthly challenge.

Each month they rise to the challenge and produce work that is astounding and amazing and just so different to anything I have imagined when I put together the year of challenges in December last year. They let me play around and experiment and do things I always wanted to try and use the blog as an excuse for more shopping (who needs an excuse anyway, eh?) and to build up my immense collection of dies and growing collection of stencils......

So, to each and every one of you lovely ladies - thank you!

The theme for June has been to use mixed-media to create a project around who YOUR HERO may be in to write about it in your blog. 

This is the prize

I created a card

I started with a panel of SU Whisper White and a stencil and some new texture paste from Faber Castell called Glass Bead Glitter Gel. Yummy stuff!

I put the stencil from Memory Box of vine leaves on the card and smooched an amount of Gel over it, and then removed the stencil and dried it with the heat gun. 

So far, so good - I had seen somewhere a technique where the crafter had then replaced the stencil when dry, and stamped onto the stencil and paste, before removing the stencil again. I thought I would try a variation, and as it said I could use my Gelato's on the gel, I grabbed a red and green crayon and began to scribble through a flower stencil - it sort of looked OK but then I added some water - and the red went everywhere! I know, I said to myself (yes, talk to the expert) I will add some more crayon to disguise this! Then I had the idea of adding a flower - by this time the gelato's had created a messy mess - not me, you note! Oh No, I was only trying to improve things!

Eventually we ended up with green vines via a paint brush and gelato's; red gelatoed flowers; and some extra smallish white flowers to cover up most of the mess! The beads sparkled beautifully and the whole looked OK so in the end I stopped tying to make it better and just photographed it (for the second time). 

The sentiment is die cut from sparkly gold card. 

To my wonderful DT at Unstampabelles

You are all of you much better crafters than me and the sentiment is whole- heartedly felt!

Midway through June .......whoda thunk it!

For the challenge #47 going on over at Unstampabelles, it is midway! The theme is Who is Your Here and the idea is to create a multi-media item and blog about the hero worship behind it. We all have hero's - and it's important that we share the love. So why not go over and have a look at the challenge and some of the work the Design Team have put into it, and then have a go yourself. It can be an item of any kind, as long as it fits the definition of multi-media and has no stamps involved in it.

Photo of mountain ducks landing by Dan Fellow

We are in the middle of Dark Mofo here in Hobart, and you are likely to see many strange and wonderous things around after dark. The night ship has sounded its fog horn and shone its lights over the last few nights - I am waiting to hear it again tonight!

My DT piece for Unstampabelles is a journal page - my very first one - in visual art. I have a beautiful book to work in but its pristine pages have sat blank for a few months now. I read in a magazine that one way of getting over the fear of starting your journal was to work on pages and stick them in later - so I grabbed a bit of card and stated to play....

My Hero(s) are all the nurses out there.

Collage, ink, texture paste, stencils and writing/journalling plus embossing stars through stencils.

So - if I can do it you can too!

Of you go - to 

Unstampabelles

Second week for Unstampabelles Challenge

The week to date has seen winter arrive and typical winter weather display it's tricks and trials, including a -1 one night (unusual for us really). We had snow early in the week but it is all melted now; and a big rolling fog down one side of the river on several mornings. There were some stunning photo's taken up the mountain (Mt Wellington) early in the week and I will share just two.

These two photos were taken by Greg Faull, a former student of mine

This one shows the view from the top of the mountain down over the main city are and across the river into my bay! If you find the fuel depot, and follow the line across the river - that is Geilston Bay, where I live about in the middle RHS on the water's edge. 

Enough of my beautiful state - don't want to make you all too jealous!

Saw this on FB and had to add it today as it is so true - and I have gold glitter everywhere on my desk at the moment, full of static and so not moving far. Just rising in clouds when I try and swipe it away.

As you may or may not remember, Unstampabelles latest challenge is a mixed media piece based on the theme Heros. My Hero this week is the women and men who find out they have breast cancer and who go through the horrific treatments and operations and fight to survive. I have a young friend and several much older friend's dealing with this terrible disease and I think they are all amazing people!

Here's to them!

Pink TH Distress inks, ribbon and gold glitter paste through a stencil; a few squirts of Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (Peppermint Stick); SU Whisper White card and Rose Red to mount it. 

I tried for an Ombre feel, to indicate the waves of emotion and treatment and pain that each Hero deals with during her/his treatment and the one heart outlined for the family and friends.

Why not go over to Unstampabelles and have a look at the work there, get inspired and have a go at one yourself - who is your Hero? Remember, no stamps please. 

Another play with the Butterfly die......

.....and the various glittery sprays available.  Ends up all over the desk of course. Every woman looks better with a bit of glitter, doesn't she!

All the card is Stampin' Up and the twine is from my stash. The gold glitter paper is also from the stash. The sentiment is from an SU set Pursuit of Happiness stamped with Momento Tuxedo Black Ink.  The sprays were all from SU as well. The die is also SU and the EF is too! The krinkld card behind is packing repurposed.

This was photographed in the shade outside about 4.30, just before the sun went down and I thought the sparkle was not evident enough, so moved the whole shebang to the sunny spot to take a shot

Sure shows the sparkle but the glorious golden sunset just reflected bak off the black board and card and changed the colours  - would have looked just as good in green's apparently!

June has arrived for Unstampabelles Challenge# 48

Hello peeps - life has been interesting lately, to say the least, but three highlights were FINALLY getting the NBN attached and up and running, falling down the back stairs with a load of wet washing (you should see the bruise on my backside) and yesterday the screen of my desktop died before I had finished getting this post organized, and I had to resort to the tablet to get it out in time. That meant I just copied and pasted the beginning of the Unstampabelles post!! So I am back to do an edit now I have a new screen!

It's back to a cold blue day, with snow on the higher points today, and this shot was taken (not by me) this morning on the west coast of Tasmania, at Queenstown. Such an interesting photo.

This month, the challenge at Unstampabelles is to see who can mix it up a bit and try a little bit of mixed media - with an additional theme to work with as well AND a twist to blog about your hero!

Mixed Media:A technique involving the use of two or more artistic media, such as ink and pastel or painting and collage, that are combined in a single composition.
For a beginner that might be embossing and/or using paint or ink to create a background or using pencils and ink,  right up to collage work. There are many different ways to use mixed media in our craft. The image below is a project by a professional artist and the extreme edge of mm but it is so lovely as is all her work

This artist is Louise O'Hara
she uses paint, stencils, ink, paper, materials including lace, paste, and other items
 to create pictures. 

 This is the prize on offer for June  - two stencils

The theme is Who is Your Hero/Heroine? 

We all have someone we look up to and admire. Create a mixed media item to celebrate your hero! Your hero may be your spouse or another family member, a national or international figure or indeed a fictional person.

The twist is to journal about it in your blog

My Hero in this piece is my Dad and all the other Aussie soldiers who went to war in the last two centuries.  My Dad was in WWII and started of being sent off to fight in Syria and the fall of Damascus, before returning to Australia but being diverted before they made it back - to Jarva, where he and the rest of his friends were captured by the Japanese and sent to the Burma Railway POW camps for the next three years.

He survived or I would not be here telling you this - they were pretty amazing people. 

I used ink, paint, white and black pens and found objects, Gelato crayons, paste and stencils and die cuts and glue to create a small canvas. 

Badge purchased one ANZAC day in Canberra a few years ago - knew it would be useful one day!

Die cut poppies, with gems and black pen work

Texture paste coloured with TH ink - the stencil moved and got a huge mess so it's a bit scrappy

TH die cut of the Umbrella man minus his umbrella

So there you have it - my multi-media hero tribute.
You have a month to make your contribution - no stamps of course - and enter it at Unstampabelles

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Scribble and Scrap:  Anything Goes

We Love 2 Create: Anything Mixed Media goes

Moving along with the Times: Texture