Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : January

A new year and a new challenge from the Craft Barn, this year the challenge is based on Sara Coleridge's poem, The Months.

January brings the snow

makes our feet and fingers glow

Click here for the link to the challenge page to join in.

This year I had a plan which is a massive improvement on 2016 when I had no plan for the alpha/dictionary challenge other than the dictionary itself. My original plan was to make postcards and send them to people each month but my plan is now modified. I am going to make a mini book with twelve pages in it, one for each month. Now, the postcard idea was still in my head so that is how I dealt with Mickie's twist challenge for January which is to include a bird in wellington boots. I had to draw the boots and the bird but I have made it into a postage stamp and stuck it on the page.

About three years ago I went to a workshop at the Craft Barn by Kay Carley, the first craft class I had ever attended! We did two lovely winter scenes using Lavinia stamps so I thought I would revisit that style for my January entry. Here it is:

Stamps used:

Lavinia Stamps : Spring Trees

Kanban : Stag and Doe

Woodware : Deck the halls

Paperartsy : ELB30 by Lin Brown

Clarity Stamps : postage stamp

The background is made using distress ink : Milled Lavender, Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire. The trees are stamped with stormy sky and the fir branches are stamped with silver ink, I think you can see those silver branches if you look closely, they are subtle. 

The rhyme is from the poem on the Lin Brown set which I fortunately have so hope to be able to use it for all the pages in the challenge over the year but I think it might be a challenge to do that as the text is small.

I finished it off with some Stampendous Frantage shabby white embossing enamel to make the snow, I love that stuff, gorgeous little bits of gold in with the white.

OK, thats me done for this post, enjoy your weekends wherever you are and thank you for dropping by.

Alpha/Dictionary Challenge 2016 : N

Here is my offering for the Craft Barn Alpha/Dictionary challenge. The letter this time is N so I chose Nautical, another one of my favourite themes - oh, I know, I have loads of favourites.

Stamps used : Kanban
Watercoloured with Inktense pencils.

There are other nautical theme words beginning with N, like navigate and navy but I chose nautical because it is more generic and for practical reasons, it appears in a good position on the dictionary page.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
Sea Fever : John Masefield

Alpha/Dictionary Challenge 2016 : T

When browsing my dictionary for a good "T" word, I came across the perfect word, or words - Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Delightful, I get to do an Alice themed page! I couldn't believe they are actually in the pocket Oxford dictionary.

Definition : Pair of things or persons neither easy to distinguish nor worth distinguishing from each other.

So, there we go, learned another new thing today. Here is my page for the Craft Barn Alpha/Dictionary Challenge:

I stamped Alice and the twins in black archival ink and masked them out before stamping the trees in Potting Soil archival. I think that works, I wanted the trees to fade into the background and not detract from the characters. The tree stamp is from Kanban, the Alice stamps were from a very old set of mine that I no longer have the details for. The images were coloured with watercolour pencils. I used water on the characters but left the pencil shading on the trees so they looked more sketchy.

What a coincidence, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland film is on TV tonight, I might watch that again. I've seen it a few times but just love Helena Bonham Carter as the red queen and Johnny Depp is a perfect Mad Hatter.

“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”