I am not a punk!

The Three Muses want us to create a piece in steam punk style. The term steam punk denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used — usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era (Wikipedia). So here goes, I hope this fits the bill!

Credits: MGL, B Kerr, Gypsy, SherrieJD all at SBG

Fiesta

This hot weather inspired this digital collage.

Credits: T Baxter @ SBG

India

This week Sunday Postcard Art is taking a trip to India. This is my postcard (double-click on it to see the details):

Credits: T Baxter & A Sexton @ SBG

Art Creations Friday

This week ACF gave us a picture of a little girl. This is what I have done with her.

Credits: All other elements from Discovery, by Rosey Posey @ SBG

Eyes

'Eyes' seem to be a recurring theme, but that's the challenge from the Three Muses this week. Having created a couple of digital pieces on this theme before, I wasn't quite sure what to do. It wasn't until I finished a journal page last night that I realised it would fit the bill nicely!

Elephant parade

On Saturday my husband and I went on an elephant hunt across London. Over the last few weeks 258 large, decorated elephants have been dotted about London to raise awareness of the plight of Asian elephants. I took lots of pictures and so decided to put some of them into a homemade book. I got the idea of using different page sizes from Linda Brown of L. B. Crafts.

I tore the paper to size and the painted the pages in varying colours of acrylic paint. I decorated them with paper serviettes, various stamps, pictures of the elephants (including some details), some paper flowers and decorative tabs. I outlined the elephants with various pens and wrote the name of each elephant on a piece of paper that I then stuck on the relevant page. I joined the pages by making holes in the centre of the pages and threading them with wool.

If you want to see the pages in greater detail double-click on the elephants.

Itinerary 25

This week, Art Journal Caravan wanted us to explore the idea of breathing space.

As usual, my mixed media pages first.

And now my digital piece. 

Credits: T Baxter & A Sexton @ SBG

Sea Voyages

This is the theme for our postcards this week from Sunday Postcard Art.

 

Here is my digital piece:

Credits: Dover & T Baxter @SBG

Art journal

This is my latest journal page.

Love

I made this yesterday evening.

The substrate is a large (19 x 13 cm) chipboard tag. I dragged on various colours of Distress Ink - lighter in the middle, darker around the edges - and then sprayed over it lightly with Crafty Notions White Matte spray. After it had dried, I used brown Stazon ink to stamp on some script and a cracked pattern.

The large heart is pre-cut Grungeboard that I coloured with red brick distress in. I coloured the little heart with scattered straw Distress Ink and added some glitter.

I stamped both sets of tickets using Tim Holtz stamps and coloured the words of the smaller ones. I made the flower by die-cutting two flowers of the same size, cutting out a petal of the beige one and gluing the remaining part of the flower back together, and then layering them together and securing with a brad.

It took me a while to decide how I wanted to arrange all the embellishments on the card, but once I had got it right I stuck them in place.

ACF 79

This week Art Creations Friday provided a picture of the dancing man. I thought he needed some companions!

Credits: Itkupilli

Fragment

This piece started out as a clear plastic fragment, measuring approximately 3.5 x 4.5 cm. I decorated some black paper with Glimmer Mists. Once dry I drew around the fragment and cut out it out. I used Glossy Accents to attach it to the fragment - it's clear so it doesn't show. To decorate the front I used some Tim Holtz Foliage pieces coloured with alcohol inks, and in the lower left-hand corner a 7gypsies rub-on. The last step was adding the ribbon.

Buttons & bows

I created this digital piece for the Three Muses challenge this week.

 Background - my own

Girl, hat & glasses - B Kerr @ SBG

Buttons with ribbon & wings - Miss Vivi @ SBG

Buttons & bow on hat - Itkupilli

Altered tin can

Here is another project I made for Rubber Road Adventures. I originally got the idea from Linda Elbourne, whose altered cans are much more elaborate than this. (Her blog 'A Crafting Journey' is well worth a visit.)  I decided to stick with simple.

If you want to see how I made my altered can  CLICK HERE and then follow the links.

'J'

For a while now I have had a cardboard 'J' stashed away, so I thought it was about time I did something with it. I covered it with little pieces of patterned tissue paper using matte medium. Once dry I added some sprays of Glimmer Mist and added a rose that I made ages ago, which was also just sitting in my stash. As a final touch I added the metal tag and ribbons! The photo doesn't quite do it justice, but it's fairly close.

Study in pink - Venus

When I was young I loved the colour pink. Now, I would rarely think of wearing it or using it in my art so I thought I would set myself a challenge. This is the end result.

I still don't think pink is 'me', but I guess it's not bad.

I started out with a piece of thick cardboard onto which I painted a layer of gesso. Then I stuck on a snippet of text and stamped text at right angles to it on the opposite side. After sticking on the image of the woman, out came my paints and, when I had mixed various shades of pink, I started adding some colour to the piece. I used a stencil to paint the word 'Venus'. I outlined various edges with grey, black and /or olive green. To set the piece off I added the tickets and flower. My pink collage!

Itinerary 24

One of the prompts from Art Journal Caravan this week was to look out of the window and think about the first thing you see with blue in it. For me, this was the blue railings of our 'balcony'. This led me to think about division and diversity and here are the pages that arose from those thoughts.

My digital page focuses on the verb 'cheer' and art.

Credits: T Baxter, A Sexton for the elements and Maya for the quote, all at SBG.

Roses

That's the theme from Sunday Postcard Art this week. The roses come from photos that I have taken on various holidays. The woman & butterflies are by Ruby Rynne.

Bird frame

I made this piece this afternoon.

It started out as a plain wooden photo frame. I painted it black. 

Whilst the frame was drying, I prepared the metal pieces. First I stuck card to the metal using Humungo Tape and then I embossed it using my Cuttlebug. I covered it in black acrylic paint and just before it was completely dry I wiped the excess paint away, creating an antique effect. I then sprayed it with Glimmer Mist. Whilst this was drying I applied Inka-Gold to the painted frame, except for the recess at the top.

I made the embellishments from Grunge Paper using Tim Holtz Sizzix dies, painted them with black acrylic paint and then added some colour with Inka-Gold. I added brads to the bottom of the cage and used another in the 'artful' Idea-ology piece.

The last stage was assembling it all. I was pleased to find that one of the papers from my Tim Holtz Paper Stack was just the right colour, so I cut out the map and placed it into the frame.

Finished - now I just have to decide where to hang it!

Another necklace

Metal plaque

This is a piece I made for Rubber Road Adventures.

If you want to see how I made it  CLICK HERE and then click on the link.

Award

Today I received an unexpected but lovely surprise. My friend Penny at Creative Overflow gave me the Beautiful Blogger Award.

 The idea is that I tell you ten things about myself that you don't know and pass the award on to 10 blogs I admire. So, here goes:

1. I moved to London when I was eighteen and have been here ever since
2. I have been married over thirteen years
3. My hair is naturally curly
4. I work in a hospice
5. I hate Marmite
6. I love the smell of orange blossom
7. I have published two professional articles
8. I cannot eat scallops or peppers (much to my annoyance!)
9. I have traced some of my family tree back to the 1500s
10. I have never been an inpatient in hospital

Blogs I admire (in no particular order):
1. http://acraftingjourney.blogspot.com/
2. http://herminesplace.wordpress.com/
3. http://truutske.blogspot.com/
4. http://rustycage11.blogspot.com/
5. http://artic-blonde-creations.blogspot.com/
6. http://martinas-stempel-gewerkel.blogspot.com/
7. http://piabau.blogspot.com/
8. http://thegatheringnest.blogspot.com/
9. http://artyjen.blogspot.com/
10. http://nettiesweb.blogspot.com/

ACF 78

This week, Art Creations Friday have given us a picture of different coloured sacks.

This is how I used it:

Credits: Words by Clementine Designs @ Deviant Scrap; overlay by Nicecrane Designs; Cock by Ztampf @ SBG

Altered altoid/mint tin

This is a little mint tin that I altered sometime ago for Rubber Road Adventures. If you want to see how I made it  CLICK HERE and then click on the link.

Alice mini-book

Here is a mini-book, 15 x 15 cm, that I've made featuring Alice in Wonderland .