Saturday 27 April 2013

Text in a shape

On Friday over on 12 Months in View, Valerie Sjodin shared a technique video with us.

And here is my version of creating text in a shape.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Messy Little Details

My friend Carolyn has started a new weekly Meme.  She has called it Messy Little Details.  

This is what Carolyn has to say about it:
"Each week I will share one of these photos, something that caught my eye and I had to photograph. A simple thing. A detail. A colour. A texture. The post will be short, a photo and a few sentences at most, it is the photo and the reason I had to take it that I want to share."

And we can join in too!  By sharing a photo from our blogs or from Flickr with the linky she is attaching to her blog.   Go on, join in.  You know you want to!

I haven't taken many photos recently.  I know, shock! horror!  But life got in the way a bit.  However I do have some older photos (last Autumn) from the wool museum in Wales.


I took this photo because it reminded me of the past - of my childhood and of the more recent past - well 10 years ago - when I did more sewing! And I love the colours!  And how great that the aqua appeared almost on a sweet spot according to the rule of thirds!

Thanks for popping by.
Bernice

Travel diary

There was a giveaway of digital papers on 12 Months in View designed by Anita van Hal.  I used some of these papers to make a book

And I took it with me to Florida.  Before I left I stamped the days of the week into the book.
Each day I filled it and stuck in labels and bits and bobs.  I taped in the welcome pack from the Ladies Conference I went to.






I still have the last two days and the cover to finish.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

The Glover’s Son


I don't know how long ago I wrote this poem but safe to say it's a long time ago because the copy I have is typed.  As in, on a typewriter!

I am using the poem and some of my photographs in response to the challenge on 12 Months in View on April 23rd.  I may do a journal page later.

The Glover's Son
The shepherd, Constable and carpenter,
Ale sodden drunkard and the village fool
Were players on life’s stage each market day
While citizens thronged through the vendor’s stalls;
The glover’s son passed by these busy scenes
And on towards the river where mute swans
Slid silently upstream to Waterside
To nest on land beyond the waggoner’s way.

Another day might see a travelling band
Of vagabonds pass near the town. To act
The tragedy of Denmark’s righteous prince,
Or play the fool in some poor comic jest.

These sights provoked the glover’s son to leave
His well loved Warwickshire, and London bound
Did seek his fortune as a player king,
With Kemp and Burbage, all the Chamb’lain’s Men.
The written word, dramatic lines in verse
From tragic myth to comedy and love
Brought forth the fame which he desired
Not acting in the theatre’s wooden ‘O’.

At home in Stratford was his dear wife Anne
But London held his heart, the unknown love
In sonnet form address’d, the Queenly court
Where William’s plays were frequently performed.


And near four hundred years have passed, and still
His words are heard, and myriad murmurs walk
The willow’d way to see the graceful swans
And crowd the street toward the place
Where John the Glover lived, and walk the paths
Where once the bard of Avon walked with Anne
Through narrow streets and past the mill race weir
And up the hill ‘whereon the wild thyme blows’,
Or to the church where Shakespeare’s bones are laid.
To leave the town with all their homage paid.


Almost over the limit

I have just got back from a trip to Florida where the weather was warm and the sun was shining.  Apart from when there was torrential rain and a thunderstorm!

I loved these shadows on the porch where the hanging basket shadow looked like a palm tree.

This is the sporty little Chevvy I hired.


I spent 40 minutes at the beach in 80F sunshine.


And this pelican floated by while Betsy and I were having lunch at Capt. Hiram's.

When I flew out to Florida I had 10Kg spare capacity for when I came back, but in the end had to leave some things behind because I was well over the limit.  And that was with 10Kg hand luggage allowance and 23Kg stowed baggage allowance!

However I have brought some fabby things back with me.

Placemats from Bed Bath & Beyond and kitchen tools from the Dollar Store to use with my Gelli Plate.

Stencils and Stamps

Assorted bits and pieces

Manila folders, a Dylusions journal, some Kraft card and a sheet of foam to make stamps.

A very nice box to keep things in!  Gesso, Gel Medium, Golden paints, and other things

And Kaere was selling off things from her online store so I bought lots of things from her and had them sent to Betsy's house.

Of course, now the problem is where to store it all!

Friday 19 April 2013

Introducing Zine making

Last night I met with a group of Floridian friends and introduced them to Zine making.  We also made a book each.

There was a great time of fellowship and of course, coffee and cake.













We all had such a lovely time.  Thank you ladies.

Monday 15 April 2013

Using Anita's digital papers

I decided that I would make another small book with Anita's lovely pages.

I printed off the 6 background papers on card using the PDF and printed two smaller versions of the papers.
 
I also gathered together an empty cereal packet, a green and a yellow Distress Ink Pad, two blending tools, some double-sided tape, a gluestick and some sticky back canvas (which isn't shown here!)

I cut the white edges off the papers and made sure the six sheets of card were all the same size.  Then I folded them in half with the pattern on the inside. I cut 2 pieces of card from the cereal packet to the same size as the folded white card.

I put doublesided tape around the outside edges of the first piece of folded card and a piece down the middle.  Then I went over the card and the tape with glue stick.

I placed the next folded card on top carefully aligning the folded edges.  I taped and glued on the new top layer and put a folded card down.  I repeated this until all six pieces of folded card were stuck together.


In the same fashion I stuck the card to the back and front pages. You can see the folded spines showing here.


The book lies flat when you open it like this.

At this point I had to decide whether I wanted the canvas spine cover to show on the front of the book or not.  I decided I didn't so that meant add the canvas first.  At this point I could have inked the canvas but decided to leave it plain.   I peeled the backing off and laid it sticky side up on the table.  I put the spine of the book onto the middle of the canvas and pulled the book down onto the sticky.  Then turned it round and did the same with the other side.


When you open the book out the canvas ruffles up but that's fine because you need to be able to open flat.

I taped and glued the card and the canvas.

I cut the pages for the front cover.  These had been printed on the setting for printing 2 pdfs on one page but turned out to be too small for the cover so there is a big white band at the top and the bottom.

I inked the white card with the yellow and the green Distress Ink.  This is the front cover.

And this is the back.

I also inked round the edges of all the pages with the green ink.  This is really useful if there are some white bits showing where the pages didn't quite match up!

Come back later in the month to see what I'm going to use this book for.

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice

Friday 12 April 2013

Take One Stamp

The challenge on 12 Months In View today is to take one stamp and find different ways of using it.

I took a large piece of paper and cut it into 4 equal pieces that I knew would fit into my journal.

For the first technique I stamped with Embossing Ink onto the paper. I'm not sure whether you can see the image!

I inked over it with Distress Inks but found that I hadn't really got the embossing ink juicy enough on my stamp so the image didn't show up very well.   I sprayed the paper with water and dried it.

There was a faint image from the stamp so I thought I would use it as a shadow.I stamped the image again using Distress Ink and put it slightly to one side of the original.

For the second image, I put Distress Inks randomly on to the stamp and then misted it with water before stamping it onto the paper.

For the third technique, I stamped the image with the embossing ink and then used Pan Pastel to highlight the image.
 

For the last technique, as I don't own one of those rainbow ink pads I did lines of colour using distress ink.

I stamped the image with embossing ink and put clear embossing powder over and heated it with the heat gun.

When it had cooled I inked over the whole paper with Black Distress Ink and then wiped off the embossed part.   I forgot that embossing powder will stick to Distress Ink if it isn't totally dry so there is added speckle!

I inked round the edges of the papers and stuck them in my journal.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice