The Craft Barn Calendar Challenge - Doodles

Never been much of a doodler, but I have been waiting for a chance to try out some Zentangle, so this was a perfect opportunity to have a go.  I chose to "tangle" in the center a knot inspired by the Book of Kells, mainly because this calendar is for two of my best friends who are of Celtic descent.  I then embellished the outer edge with flowers as their beautiful garden is a passion for them.  Mounted on cardstock in black and white with a calendar of kittens, cats being another love of theirs, will make a great gift for them.  You can see the patterns in this closeup of the easel card closed.

Thank you for all your wonderful comments over the past few weeks, I have been tardy in replying due to health issues, hopefully now I am back in the swing of things.  

Altered Book - Lesson 18 Transfers and Pop-ups

The lesson this time was student's choice, transfers and pop-ups.  I will leave the transfer to later but this is my pop-up page and I have to admit I had way too much fun with these lips.  They open and close with the book pages.  The tutorial for the origami lips I found on YouTube HERE, thanks to  kazuko0326.  The background is sprayed gold and copper paint using a mask that is a computer keyboard protector.  Music paper sprayed with Indian Red glimmer mist and gold paint is torn and stuck along the bottom, cardinal Christmas ribbon along the top and plastic leaves and pearl beads tied with ribbon for the mistletoe decorate the page.  

Now for the transfer...............sigh!!!!!

I have never achieved a good transfer yet.  This one used gel medium.  Followed the instructions and the picture transferred but then disappeared when dry.  I will try another method over the coming weeks to see if I can get something reasonable.  Elizabeth gave us plenty of methods so I am sure I will get one eventually. 

Vegetable Garden Update - October

Probably not of much interest to most folks but I am trying to keep a record of how my garden grew for future years.  This should help with making adjustments for timing, germination rates, varieties and quantity harvested.  The two plots 5' x 5' pots of corn are doing well now.  Bilicious  germinated better than the white to start off with but now the white is catching up.  Tomatoes are beginning to do well.  The beefsteaks look good, the cherry yellow pear were slow to germinate but now doing well.   Very slow germinating is Brandywine.  Herbs beginning to show,thyme is being very difficult.  Peppers have stayed about the same size now for over a month.  Not sure why but I remain hopeful.  Starting to harvest the Cherrybelle radishes, nice peppery hot taste.  Bought some onion sets yesterday and planted them along the front of the flowered edge.  Black beauty eggplant and brocolli rabe are now beginning to grow rapidly, kohl rabi is slower.  

Not sure that I will grow the English scarlet runner beans again as they seem to be struggling,  I will wait to make a final call on that when I see the size of the crop.  Probably the heat down here.  Sowed some peas in between the beans. The cucumbers and squash have lots of flowers now and are beginning to climb up the trellis.  No flowers on the zucchini yet but growing vigorously.  Carrot and onion seeds have germinated fairly well, a bit difficult to tell what is onion and what is grass growing.  Daily weeding between the rows is necessary at the moment.   Pest control so far has been spraying with soapy water to get rid of aphids on the beans.  Yesterday I found grubs in the tomato raised bed so going to have to do something about them.  Sevin dust may work, may put collars around the base of the tomato plants.

2012 Calendar Challenge - White, Yellow, Green

The challenge over at The Craft Barn this week is self explanatory.  My daughter is law is a huge fan of the Greenbay Packers so this challenge was perfect for me to make her a calendar for Christmas.  Using the same easel base as before I mounted a photograph of her favourite player Aaron Rodgers and Packers badge on yellow, green and white cardstocks.  The note pad at the bottom has a graphic of a football player with a Greenbay colours football.  Stamped the word "notes" in green ink.  

The challenge can be found HERE

Heart Journal October - Wax Finish

This month's altered heart uses candle wax as a finish.  I used dark red cardstock for the background of my heart and stamped and heat embossed it with a white powder skull.  I then dribbled black gesso down the whole heart in places and let this dry.  You can't see it but I then stamped the right side with black ink branches of a tree.  Using my heat gun I melted a white domestic candle to drip over the whole heart except around the skull.  I stamped with white ink a spider's web in the top right section.  The words "happy haunting" and a few vine leaves around the skull were also stamped and then highlighted with fimo gold powder.  I then used the same powder to highlight the texture of the wax at the bottom of the heart.   Finally i gave the whole heart a spray with semi gloss varnish.

Wizard's Wands

Came across the way to make these on Pinterest.  Quite a few people have given details and I followed Kate's instructions which can be found on her blog HERE

Basically they are made from chopsticks rolled in construction paper and covered with hot glue a marble stuck in the end and painted.with metallic acrylic paint.  These two wands are for my twin grandsons for Halloween, I hope to make them a wizard's cape and hat each to go with it.

Thank you Kate for the tutorial.

The Craft Barn 2012 Calendar Challenge - Week #2

This weeks challenge over at The Craft Barn is to use any type of ink, paint, spray or not, colouring pencils or even papers on your calendars, as long as it's bright.  Continuing with my easel calendars I have one that has a beautiful bulrush and sunset scene and I wanted to reflect the water theme.  My watercolour painting has a dark watery background to highlight the brightness of the dragonflies and reeds and the intensity of the white of the bird.  I used water photo real paper for the background mount of the note pad with the word "notes" and dragonflies stamped in pthalo green.  Each of the calendar pages has a psalm at the bottom for the month.

This week's challenge can be found HERE

Altered Book Lesson 16 - Fabric

This lesson's homework, which I am a bit late in submitting, was to create a spread using fabric in some way.  I chose to cover two pages completely with fabric, as an aside this helped with the strength of my book which is beginning to burst at the seams.  I stamped a border of berries and holly about and inch inside the outside edge.  Another border of snowflake sequined ribbon was put on the outside edge of the stamping.  I cut snowflakes out of iridescent material and added smaller glitter snowflakes to the centers of each flake.  I coloured the berries and holly leaves with felt pens and added glossy accents to the berries to make them stand out.  

  

Finally I stamped the words "Let It Snow" in the top corner in white ink and added glossy accents to make it stand out better.  Once again I struggled with taking photos of shining material.  Perhaps a lesson on this would help me some.

Off to look around the other altered books of my colleagues and to catch up with our student's choice lesson.  Thank you Elizabeth for a wonderful tutorial as usual detailing dying fabric and the various methods to collage the pieces onto our books.  Love the fabric beads you made, will have to try these when I have more time.

Christmas Angel Decoration

I came across a paper angel tutorial on Pinterest and followed the link to Carol's blog.  There she gives full instructions, including video for this paper angel.  She also gives details of a couple of other variations which I will try out later to put on our tree later on in the year. 

 Carol's work and her blog is very interesting and the angel can be found HERE  I prefer her baubles with the dainty wire top but this was all I could find at the moment, perhaps after Thanksgiving I will have a better selection.

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2012 Calendar Challenge #1

The 2012 Calendar challenge over at The Craft Barn has begun, I have not been able to do this in previous years, but now I am setting my mind to follow along.  The challenge this week is to add some vellum.  At last I am forced into trying out my Pergamano set that I bought while visiting my daughter in the UK.  I have decided to make 12 easel calendars for friends and family, so I bought some pretty calendar tabs from Michaels in their sale to mount on the cards.

Firstly, I embossed and pricked the vellum into a pretty flower pattern and mounted it onto various mats edged with silver .  I cut two pieces of cardstock 6" x 12" and folded themt at 6"  and at 9".  This forms the easel part of the card, I reinforced it by sticking the pieces of cardstock together to cope with the weight of the calendar tab. I added a note pad edged with silver and stamped on the top sheet with a clematis vine stamp and the word "notes" The card when made lies flat and is about 1/4" thick and when it is unfolded it looks like this.

If you would like to join in the challenge hop over to The Craft Barn blog HERE