When you need to find your wings (plus a little artwork)

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me. Today is all about getting back into the groove. You know what I mean, you've been on holiday, or had time away from the things you do because of other commitments, health problems or whatever. Getting your mojo back, whether it be creative or otherwise, is often a difficult path to find. And, depending on how long you've been 'missing', you may find your confidence has disappeared a little too. I have no magical solution to offer you except to say this. 

Sometimes you will have no control when you can return to your normal way of life, if you've had health issues for example. When you feel able you will start to build your way back in your own good time. However, if you have gone off the path completely for other reasons finding your direction again can be harder. Especially if the committee in your head have joined in (see my post I is for, to get a full explaination of the committee).  Sometimes the only way back is to jump off the cliff and free fall. It will be an interesting journey down, but it doesn't half make you fly again quicker! And soaring back upward is so rewarding. All you need to do is find your wings.

Now onto the real reason for my blog post today. If you liked the look of my postcard on the Chocolate Baroque Design Team blog then here is a tutorial for you to follow. It is a little lengthy so please make yourself comfortable.

1. To create the beach/skyline background first take a piece of copy paper and tear it in two across the width, creating a series of 'hills and valleys'. Don't be too careful with this, the more random the better.
2. Next take an A6 piece of silk card and lay it down portrait style in front of you. Now choose one of the torn edged pieces of paper and lay over the top of the card approximately half way across. You may want to tape down the top and bottom edge of the paper to your work space to stop it moving, but don't tape the card. 
3. Now ink up your brayer with Adirondack Pool ink, run off some of the ink onto a piece of scrap paper (you want a pale covering on the brayer) then. holding the torn paper and card with your free hand, lightly begin to brayer up and won the exposed piece of card. Repeat until you have a shade of sky you are happy with (re-inking and running off the excess onto the scrap paper as often as necessary). Clean and dry your brayer.
4. Now turn the card around 90 degrees and match up the other piece of torn paper over your sky. Leave the smallest amount of blue showing before taping in place as before (this will ensure you have no white gape between sky and sand). Ink up the brayer with Scattered Straw Distress ink and run off the excess as before. You will find that with distress ink you probably only need to run the brayer once over the spare paper as it doesn't coat a brayer as much as other dye based inks. Brayer over the card until you achieve the sand shade you require.
5. To give both the sand and sky some depth use the torn paper pieces and either a brush, cut and dry foam or a small piece of makeup sponge. Choose a curvy part of the torn paper that resembles a cloud, place in the sky area and very lightly dust Pool ink across the edge where the paper meets your background. Lift the paper to see how your 'cloud' looks and repeat if nexcessary.  TIP: When inking up your brush, sponge or foam dab off the excess onto your spare paper until you think there is no ink left. You will be surprised how little is need to achieve this effect and you can always build up more colour if required. Repeat this technique in the sand area with the Scattered straw ink to give the effect of dunes.
6. Stamp the beach huts from the Seaside Dreams set onto a self adhesive label with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colour with pencils of your choice; I used watercolour pencils to give that seaside style washed look. Cut out the individual huts, the flag pole and the flag and set aside.
7. Now stamp the beach huts over the sand background with Archival Jet Black ink and allow to dry thoroughly. You can always 'blot' with a piece of clean copier paper to ensure the image is completely dry. Remove the backing paper from your cut out huts and stick into position. Add the flag pole and flag.
8. Finally ink up 'Dreaming of the beach' with Jet Black and stamp in position.

This is the first proper brayering I have done since my accident twenty months ago so I am a little out of practise. Getting back into this groove was certainly harder and I definitely jumped, but I really had fun making this postcard and am tempted to make a series using the rest of the Seaiside Dream set. Thanks for stopping by, see you all again soon

A is for

It has been almost a year since I last tended this little blog. As you may or may not know I had an accident in December 2012 and I broke my arm. Nothing too traumatic there really, except it's now February 2014 and my arm has only just started to heal (thanks to surgery and a lot of metalwork and pins). I also had a few personal difficulties to deal with and so 2013 became a series of badly written chapters in my life book.

There is good news though - I am still here and I've made the decision to write the next few chapters myself. So I have taken charge of the pen (albeit with one hand!) and set myself some goals. The first one is to blog every day for the remainder of this month (tall order for someone who couldn't blog consistently with two hands), with each post containing a piece of my artwork. I have chosen to use tags mainly because I can complete one single handedly. However I also have a good supply of tag art created prior to my accident so I have something to fall back should I need it. Always have a backup plan.

There are 26 days left until the end of the month so can you guess where this is going?  Today is day one and I shall start with the letter A, which is for Art. Quite an obvious one you may think but each word I have chosen to define my alphabet has a dual meaning as you will find out if you continue this journey with me.

Over the years I've had many people say to me 'I'm not arty' or 'I wish I was good at art' and lots of other comments in a similar vein.  Well there is one thing I have come to realise during the last year.  It is not that we cannot do art, it is that our mind and heart isn’t OPEN to being arty or creative. And this closed mindset can be caused by anything from illness, to grief, to stress and worry and even as far as being told at school that you were no good at drawing/painting/colouring etc. There's a great one for closing your mind completely.

So here is my tag to celebrate art

This is a new creation and uses Chocolate Baroque Punky Flowers A4 stamp set, Dylusions Spray inks in Fresh Lime and Vibrant Turquoise plus the Cell Theory 6" Crafter's Workshop Template. All the stamping and stencilling was done using acrylic paint, not an ink pad in sight.

This tag illustrates the point I made earlier. The previous week I had got out inks, stamps, pencils and other crafty stash with the intention of having a good play and after a bit of spraying and a dab at a stencil nothing else happened. Either my head or my heart wasn't there - the closed sign was up. This weekend I realised why it had locked, and then the flood gates opened - I came up with this idea for a start. Not sure if that was going from the sublime to the ridiculous but boy has it generated a load of enthusiasm, creativity and art.

So if you find your mojo has left you, or find that you aren't being as creative as you would like, take a look around you - find out what it is that's closing you in, then look for the key to open it up. It may be hidden, but it will be there.

See you tomorrow with B

 

Win Brand New Stamp Sets

You may have noticed that flowers are everywhere and not just in the garden.  Here is a brand new release from Chocolate Baroque, aptly named Sunny Sunflowers, and you really are in for a treat.  Suitable for so many occasions they lend themselves to a variety of projects - just keep watching the Design Team blog to see the amazing ways you can use these stamps.

In fact, why not try and win yourself a bit of sunshine.  Glenda is kindly giving away not one but TWO sets of these stamps. All you have to do is either visit the design team blog page by clicking here and leave a comment, or visit Chocolate Baroque on Facebook and 'like' the page. You have nothing to lose, but just think of all the stunning designs you could create with these gorgeous stamps.  Good luck.

Lesley

A little bit excited

Well, here we are mid-summer and it is absolutely pouring down! I suppose we should expect it from the British climate, but really.

Anyway, once again I've been absent but there is a good reason.. I have been hard at the designing thing. I have put together a few digital and printable kits and guess what?... the first one was released today over on the Chocolate Baroque website. And yes I'm just a little bit excited - as I am rather pleased with how they have turned out, I hope you all are too. I'm putting a little sneaky peek on here, but if you have time please pop over and see what you think (you'll find all four sets in the printable downloads category). It's one thing to design a product, but I need to know if I'm on the right track. There are also lots of other lovely products on there including some fab stamp promotions and it's free p+p on UK (mainland) deliveries all this weekend, well worth it.
I am hoping to be able to show some things I have made with the kit very soon, in the meantime I hope you are crafting to your heart's content and that life is being kind to you all.

Until next time

Lesley