Liberate Your Art: the blog hop!

I mentioned back in April that I was taking part in a rather fabby and fun project run by the lovely Kat :)

Oh, the excitement of stalking the postie each day to see if a new card had arrived! Now that they're all here, I don't know quite what to do with myself.... Though the postie is thankful, I think! ;)

I didn't share images of the cards as they arrived, as I preferred to save them til today's 'big reveal'. I did however do my best to contact each sender to let them know (a) that I'd received one of their cards, and (b) that said card was now on proud display in the UK! I also posted a quick note on Facebook each time, and sent out a tweet. (I didn't hear back from all the recipients of my own cards, but it was such a thrill when I did get a message, and lovely to hear where they'd ended up, so I wanted to do my best to let my 'senders' hear from me!)

And now, at last, I can show you the cards that came my way:

Thank you, garden trellis - you make a great postcard display frame! And the withered brown stalks also visible show both how late spring is this year, and how poor a gardener I am!!

My first card was from William J Charlebois in the US. What a fun, colourful moose! And I love that he designed the 'b-side' to properly look like an old postcard, too :)

The following day I received this gorgeous photo of a messily artistic workspace from Renee in Oregon. The quotation on the back is perfect for a photographer :)

3 days running!! Another card landed on my mat; this one a beautiful painting by Linda from Norway, with an inspiring reminder on the back:)

After a gap of a few days, this fabulous photograph arrived from Alison (in Minnesota, I think...). As a photographer(ish) and a writer(ish) myself, this really appealed to me. Super Rousseau quotation, too :)

Another few days passed, and postie was getting jumpy again... Then Kat's lovely photograph and inspiring quotation turned up. I particularly love that she went to such effort with the colourful and personal message on the back :) (No link available, sadly, but I do know that she's in Virginia!)

Last but by no means least, my card from Kat herself reached me all the way from Oregon. What a beautifully dreamy piece! And - hang on - she's thanking me?! That's not right at all, I should definitely be thanking her for all her hard work coordinating this wonderful project, and for making it possible for me to take part :)

I've had such fun throughout - the creative process of designing my own cards, the thrill of receiving my work in printed form, the messy joy of decorating the envelope to send them off to Kat, the excitement of seeing my envelope featured on Kat's blog (mine's the one with the swirls), the anticipation while waiting for my share of the cards to arrive, the hope of hearing back from the recipients of my cards, and the delight of receiving the ones sent to me....

And now, of course, there's the chance to hop around some fellow-participants' blogs and see the cards they were lucky enough to receive! If you'd like to follow round too then the links should appear in the list after my final photo below. (This list will grow as people add their posts, so it's worth checking back later for links to more inspiring work!)

And my final photo? Ah, yes - I didn't have a photo of the back of my own cards to share when I first mentioned this project, so here it is now. I had a printed greeting - which is my message to all of you reading this now! - and I added a handwritten note to each card, too.

PS I'm definitely signing up for next year's swap - are you? :)

#3UP

So I was casually scrolling through my Twitter feed a couple of weeks ago and I spotted a few mysterious references to '#3UP'. There were no clues to what it was all about, but it seemed that by using the hashtag myself I might be taking part in something or playing along with something or volunteering for something - but having no idea what that something was...

I was brave. I attached said hashtag to one of my tweets, and waited to see if anything happened.

And you know what?

Something DID happen! Something exciting, and crafty, and fun :) Something that involved secrecy and creativity and three surprise goodies in the post :) Something cooked up by the lovely PaperArtsy!

The DM (Direct Message) I received asked me for my address, gave me a crafting deadline, and swore me to secrecy. PaperArtsy freebies, crafting time and subterfuge? I was so up for this project :)

The goodies arrived the very next day - which was a Saturday, so I had time available to craft immediately, result! In fact, I was so excited to get started that I completely failed to photograph the three items, oops... But I can at least tell you that they were a box canvas, a little wooden branch and a pack of three wooden butterflies (sorry, no link - think they might have been an end of line?) The butterflies reminded me of a favourite stamp, which decided the theme of my piece, and I was away...

For the background, I added and blended Mermaid and Sky Fresco Paints using a baby wipe, then stenciled on some Inky Pool through sequin waste and stamped more Inky Pool with corrugated cardboard and bubble wrap:

Butterfly paper tape was perfect for edging the canvas, and then I got a rough idea of where I wanted to place my background stamps (I'd already decided more or less where the wooden pieces would go). These stamped beautifully onto the canvas, it gives a lovely smooth and sturdy surface!

A generous spattering of Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls Mist added some shimmer, and I also brushed some Old Gold Fresco paint round the edge. To help my two 'focal stamps' - the clock from this set, and the sentiment stamp (origin unknown, sadly) to stand out better, I also sponged on a bit of Nougat paint:

In between times, while waiting for layers to dry (pesky drying times!!) I worked on the wooden branch and butterflies. The branch got a coat of Guacamole Fresco with Hey Pesto sponged onto the ends, while the butterflies were undercoated in Rose before having a layer of Crackle Glaze added with Claret on top. I also edged all the pieces in Old Gold:

I used Matte Multi-Medium to secure the embellishments to the canvas - love this super-strength adhesive! :)

I gave the little clock some hands by adding Tim Holtz spinners - it was easy enough to pierce a hole for the brad with my pokey tool! Then I realised that the green of the branch needed a bit of balance, so I painted and edged some little chipboard scraps and added them to the opposite corner.

   

All done! :)

Many, many thanks to PaperArtsy for inviting me to play along - and for making it so much more fun by being so mysterious about it!!

You can see the projects other '#3uppers' have made over on the PaperArtsy blog, they've been appearing there all week - mine is there tonight, which is why I'm allowed to break my silence at last... ;)

Passing the Page...

I'm delighted to take part in this special event to celebrate the 2nd birthday of Julie's blog :) What a fun idea! Have you ever played the game Chinese Whispers? I remember it from my own schooldays and time in Brownies and Guides, and still use it myself now in my teaching and small groups - it's one of those perennial games!

What a good idea to apply this concept to scrapbooking :) I was fortunate enough to be sent a beautiful page from Sandie to use as my starting point. My post will make more sense if you've seen her layout first - but then, you should really see her inspiration before that - and so on, and so on, so in fact if you haven't started this blog hop with Julie herself I think you'd probably do better to go there and follow round in order :) You should find yourself visiting:

Julie @ Letting the Days Roll By
Alison @ Life in the Slow Lane
Fay @ Stitch...Stick...Sew...
Ruth @ Chatty Crafty Arty Pig
Jemma @ Just Jimjams
Miss Smith @ Curiouser and Curiouser
K @ K's Crafty Corner
Missus Wookie @ Missus Wookie's Wanderings
Sandie @ Itchifingers
Me! @ I Speak Melsh, naturally!
Alexa @ Trimming the Sails
Jo @ Curly Scrapbooker
Jacky @ Scrappyjacky

If you do need to go back to Julie's I'll wait for you here, OK?

Done that? Good :) Shall we have a look at my layout then? Here you go:

So, how did I get to this from Sandie's layout?

Well, first I tried to 'see' her layout as a sketch, to get a general shape for mine. This gave me a photo towards the top left hand side; journaling below it; something running up the left of the whole layout; something towards the top right; something towards the bottom right. I also looked for any details that gave me particular inspiration. I liked the photo mat with the wider border on the bottom edge (Sandie used this for her journaling). It was when I saw the cute little birdie's caption though - 'Bend when the wind blows' - that I knew exactly which photo I wanted to use, and the whole layout suddenly came together from there!

I went with the larger border for the photomat, but used it to anchor part of my title, adding my journaling underneath but straight onto the page.

In place of the chipboard embellishments or stickers Sandie had used, I made three little paper windmills with a pretty double-sided paper from the same range as my background (My Mind's Eye, Fine and Dandy).

A strip of paper down the left hand side provided my 'vertical' element and gave me a base for the first part of my title.

I've been treasuring this gorgeous paper in my stash for ages, but not only did it have a lovely printed pattern in one of the locations my mental 'sketch' had identified, there was a bicycle as part of that pattern! How very suitable for a page about our trip to Amsterdam :)

I have to say, I don't think my page looks anything like Sandie's lol... But it was definitely inspired by hers :)

And now, shall we travel on to Alexa's? I'm so keen to see her page! I wonder what she took from mine? :)

PS If I've planted this song in your head, I can only apologise. It stayed in mine for several days after I made the layout...

Liberating

I first came across Kat via Rinda, though I know others of you know of her too - I've seen her Photo-Heart Connection appear on a few blogs, for example (I love Blog Land! I love that we can share good ideas and fun finds and introduce each other to each other!) Anyway, I liked what I saw, and I was particularly interested in the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap so I signed up for this year's - along with a few names I recognised! :)

Today I received my first postcard - woo hoo! Very exciting :) But I'm not going to show you yet; there'll be a blog hop for all participants 10th-12th May, and I shall reveal my 'received' postcards then. For now, here are the ones I sent:

They all began as photos I'd taken (some of which you may recognise, as I've shared them here before) but I played with them a bit in PSE to give them more of an 'art' finish. I found the 'palette knife' tool was great for this, though I also liked the 'watercolour' finish on the yellow daisy - the effects are more obvious if you click on the individual photos to enlarge them.

I had them printed as postcards at Moo (who, by the way, were brilliant; I was very impressed by how easy it was to create my postcards, how quickly they arrived, and how high the quality of the printing was - I can thoroughly recommend them!) There was a message - of my own design - printed on the reverse of each card, but I don't have a photo handy so maybe I'll share that as part of the hop. I also added a handwritten note to each.

Wonder where mine will end up? :) It's just as exciting to send as to receive!

My Precious {April Edition}

I'm finding Sian's theme for this year's Storytelling Sundays really interesting to ponder. As I evaluate my possessions, by either mentally or actually wandering around my house, I'm interested to discover that although I have a LOT of 'stuff', there's very little that would be irreplacable - there's plenty that I'd be sad to lose, sure, but not so very many things that I'd be entirely heartbroken about. I'm not sure if I'm pleased that material items don't matter so very much, or embarrassed that I've managed to accumulate so many of them anyway! And, of course, I wouldn't want to be put to the test....

But perhaps that's the reason I've already started to interpret this in a slightly different way; my choices so far have been representative of areas of my life that are important to me. My engagement ring is special, of course, but being unable to wear it doesn't detract in the slightest from my relationship with The Doctor - it's the relationship that's truly precious. I'd be pretty gutted if anything happened to my camera, particularly if there were photos still on its memory card, but cameras can be replaced and being unable to take photos at all would be what would really hurt. (And even then, there are other ways of recording memories!) My Bible, too, though I've had it for a long time, is far from being the only copy of a Bible in the world - in our house even - and the faith it represents is what's really precious here.

This mental shift made me look at my possessions in a new light, and with the thought of what was actually precious to me in my life - not necessarily physical things at all. And so, here is my choice for April:

There's a shelf of the wall unit in our dining room which holds 2 little hedgehog ornaments, an old pair of binoculars (a charity shop find that I couldn't resist), something I made during my ArtsyCrafts workshop (2 years ago now, gosh!) and three Willow Tree ornaments. The one in the centre was given to me by The Doctor on our wedding anniversary a few years ago; those to either side, showing a mother and her son and a mother and her daughter, were given to me by The Children for Mothering Sunday and birthday gifts. I love these ornaments - there are others in the range that I really love, too, such as those representing friendship or reading, but I have a self-imposed rule that they should be given to me by an appropriate person - as above - rather than bought by me...

(I don't know why, now I come to think about it. Oh, well....)

Anyway, this long post and this photo could really be summed up in two words. When I think about what is most precious to me, there's an obvious and definite answer. My April precious? My children, of course :)

A picture tells a thousand words...

I could easily find at least a thousand excited words to tell of the most wonderful time I had yesterday with blog friends from all over the world!

For now, though, a picture will do instead:

I could easily find at least a thousand joyous words to tell of the reunion with two very special ladies I'm so honoured to call my friends!

For now, though, a picture will do instead:

I could easily find at least a thousand bittersweet words to tell of the difficulty bidding farewell to my dear friends...

For now, though, a picture will do instead:

And actually, as the memories flood back and I relive the moments and the emotions, the chatter and the laughter, the joy and the tears of yesterday, I find myself lost for words after all. Thank goodness for the pictures!