Tags and bookmarks

On UKScrappers I am taking part in two swaps.  The ongoing one is a monthly tag swap where we alter 6 tags according to the month.   This month is Spring and Spring colours.








I'm also taking part in a bookmark swap. 
This had to include a quotation.

The quote I used is a Chinese Proverb: 'A book is like a garden carried in the pocket'.

Blank Canvas

On Thursday I went to Artist Trading Post for a Mixed Media Canvas Workshop.  I love going to the workshops at ATP ~ Anneliese is such a great teacher and I get to meet people I wouldn't normally meet otherwise.  ATP is at least 50 miles from home and mostly the journey isn't too bad especially once I get past Lichfield.

Anneliese gave us a a 39x30cm blank white canvas to work on.   First we used Distress Inks all over and then some Claudine Hellmuth paints.

Anneliese demonstrated various techniques that we could choose to use on our canvases.   Then it was playtime.

I stamped onto the canvas and I stamped onto tissue paper which I adhered with melted beeswax.

I added some chipboard flowers and a piece of printed cardstock.                      

It was still looking rather too much like the clothes I was wearing in terms of the colour so I added some more blue paint.  I heat embossed the word Dream and stuck on some painted chipboard letters for BIG.

I also added some chipboard butterflies and smeared them and the flowers with Distress Stickles.   Underneath the word BIG I have handwritten 'dreams'


I still feel it is unfinished but I'm currently not sure what to add to it so I am going to leave it for a while and come back to it.

Anneliese took a photo of me working on the canvas.

Can you have too much creativity?

Or maybe that's too much opportunity for creativity!  I have signed up to several Circle Journals and Swaps on UKS.   I already host one called Circular Journey.  Each person chooses a theme and my theme is Favourite Stamp.  As the book gets to each person they have been asked to use their favourite stamp for a layout in my book.  The one I have to do at the moment from this CJ has the theme of 'Twilight'.   Since I have neither read the books nor seen the films, I'm a bit in the dark!  (Excuse the pun!)

I am also hosting a new Circle Journal which is alterd art/mixed media.  My theme for that is Children's Literature and the book will be called 'Once Upon A Time, when I get round to making it.

The third CJ I'm in is called 'All My Own Photos' and you send the photos you want putting into the scrapbook and each team member does a layout around your photos.  My book is about my 60th birthday.  It is called 'sesenta' which is the name of the dog Andy & Naomi gave me for my birthday.  Sesenta is Spanish for 60.

The two Swaps I am doing are the Monthly Altered Tag Swap (March) and the Artsy Bookmark Swap.  These are both at the thinking stage.

In addition to all these I am also making a 2010 Minibook which has two page layouts for each month.  Here are the pages for January and February.

And then of course there's 'Something From Almost Nothing' that Shimelle's starting on Wednesday that I mentioned before!

I obviously have no self-control.  Perhaps it's hidden under all the papers, paints, embellishments, stamps, tools and all the other requisites for creativity!