Celebration Give-Away

Hi Everyone

Gio has become my 400th Follower, so welcome Gio and all new bloggers who have joined since before my holiday. I am so happy you have become part of my creative journey, which has certainly taken a new turn in the last few weeks. As you know I have joined the Crafty Individuals DT, which is very exciting, so there is lots to celebrate which is a perfect reason to have a Give-Away.

This is what is on offer for my fabulous followers -

Halloween embossing folders by Tim Holtz

The jalopy stamp on wood, again by Tim Holtz

Papermania chipboard album

2 x Christmas dies

A tiny tin for altering

3 packets of decorative brads

If I find anything else before the end of September I will add it into the collection.

To be eligible please -

1. Post this picture on your sidebar.

2. Make sure you are a follower.

3. Link to this post using the inlinkz below.

4. Leave a comment telling me you have entered.

The Give-Away closes on the 30th September and I will draw the winner using Random Org soon after. Anyone who is not eligible will not be included. I will post worldwide.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to visit and to those who also leave fabulous comments, this is such an amazing and supportive community. I have made so many blogging friends and acquaintances and have been privileged to meet some of you in person.

Good luck with the draw and have a happy, creative September.

hugs {brenda} xox

Thanks for joining the Give-Away, please leave your link below. 

12 Tags of 2012

My second post for today and Tim's September's tag has been posted. I haven't managed to keep up with all of them but was determined to have a go at this one straight away. 

It features the faux riveted metal look and as I haven't tried this one before I had to experiment to see how it works. Well I will certainly be using this again, such an amazing look and a clever technique. Check out Tim's tag and tutorial  HERE.

So lovely to be playing and experimenting for a change.

I hope you have a creative Sunday.

hugs {brenda} xox

PanPastels #34 - All about stripes

This week at PanPastels UK the challenge theme is all about stripes, so make sure you show us your interpretation and remember you do NOT have to use PanPastels to be eligible to enter.

My sample today is rather different for me. Rather than make my own backing paper I have used DP from The Station paper pad by MME and added some PPs to it.

I have also used spellbinders labels 20 and stamps to create the focal piece and sentiment.

I hope you are having a great weekend, but before I go I thought I would share a few more holiday photos with you.

Me and Ella (aged 6) - photo taken by Maddison (aged 4)

Becca, Ella and Maddison

Ben (my son) and Bev and the girls

Pelicans everywhere waiting for the fishing boats to come in.

Couldn't resist the Coke truck!! At the outlet centre - well we had to shop sometime didn't we?

The outlet was very near the Mexican border. 

These two girls just love to play around - that's Maddie (my daughter) in the background.

More photos to come another day - hope you won't get bored with them lol.

Take care.

hugs {brenda} xox

UPA RAQ - Off to Collage

You can tell it's the first of the month, so much to show you this weekend and this is my second post for today.

Glue Book for Unruly PaperArts.

A glue book is whatever you want it to be, but generally it is a 'sketchbook' for mixed media work. It invariably includes glue and can be about practise runs, just letting your creative expression free, but there are no rules, just the ones you create for yourself.

I started a glue book some time ago, there isn't much in it, but I thoroughly enjoyed my free expression for this RAQ. So often I am designing for DT samples which confines me to specific themes or rules. Here there weren't any, other than I wanted to have some fun and try something different to my normal style.

My favourite artist for experimenting with collage effects is Claudine Hellmuth (I did her creative collage course last year), so I thought I would do some "Beyond the Expected" techniques from her book (same name). Creating Poppets as she calls them.

This is me playing and just having fun. Nothing like Claudine's Poppets really, but even so I have had to think about form, shape, colour, perspective and some journalling using the actual pages from my Glue Book itself - see a wondrous novel indeed.

The journalling reads - 'Luckily the Uphams sent her out into the garden and there sat the poor thing all alone in the arbour. I spoke to her over the fence. She is such a delicate child, poor Amy.' The words and phrases were all chosen from the text of the book before I painted the pages with gesso and then acrylic paint.

Do you use a glue book? What have you been 'playing' and experimenting with lately? Do pop over to Unruly PaperArts and see how your work could be featured on the blogozine.

If you haven't seen my exciting news please pop two posts back to see how lucky I am to be part of a new design team. Woo hoo, excitement or what?

Have creative fun.

hugs {brenda} xox

Challenges for a change

Lots to show you today, this is post 1 and a tag I made just for me. Of course it has a dress form and a kinda sewing theme, but then it would wouldn't it????

It is ages since I entered any challenges, so I thought I would do something for just that purpose today and I chose Frilly and Funkie - now how could I resist that one lol; Simon Says Stamp and Show - Summer distress colours and Rogue Redhead Designs - use a circle, square and rectangle.

The tag was stamped with embossing ink which resists the summer distress colours that I blended over the top. I added a square of circles (does that make sense?) and rectangles of tissue paper which I blended with the DIs, the chicken wire and a piece of netting beneath it are also rectangular. To those I added a Crafty Individuals dress form (plate CI-306), also stamped with embossing ink and again the DIs blended over.

Other bits and pieces finish it off. I would like to thank dear Terry for the fibre card and tiny cotton reel as they were in a package of goodies she gave me when I visited her a few weeks ago. Thanks Terry, all my lovely bits are now in my 'sewing' box.

If you haven't seen my exciting news, then please scroll down to the last post. I am still in shock and can't believe my luck.

Wishing you happy times this weekend. Post 2 coming up soon.

hugs {brenda} xox

My News - Crafty Individuals - Altered Frame

Hi Everyone, I have some amazing news today, Jean at Crafty Individuals has asked me to be on her design team. You can imagine how excited I was when I received the email and of course I said 'yes' straight away, what an honour and how fabulous to be working with such a brilliant, versatile and vintage range of stamps. I have collected a number of their stamps together and I hope to be using some new ones to the range soon as well.

So this is my first piece to introduce myself to the team and the blog. I chose to use some images from the ephemera sheets and make this textured, altered frame. I would love it if you popped over to the CI Blog to leave me a message there.

I began by giving this paper substrate triple frame a coat of household undercoat paint and once dry I used a range of cream, beige and blue paints, applying them with different utensils and stippling with a brush to get a textured feel to it. Into the paint I added some torn tissue tape and torn pieces of paper - just cheap copy paper blended with some PanPastels then stamped with CI 161 text, CI 308 and CI 307 ticket stamps. This also was used for the frame backing papers. After that I mixed white acrylic and rock candy crackle paint and stippled over in various places to get more texture.

The CI 'Life's Journey 1' images were adhered to brown painted mini canvases with some stamping, lace and buttons.

The sides and insides of the frames were covered with tissue tape and the bookplate, banner and other embellishments finish it off.

Thanks for looking today. I look forward to showing you more pieces using those fabulous Crafty Individuals stamps and products that can be found at the on-line store.

Have yourself a creative day.

hugs {brenda} xox

Thought I would look for a few challenges this fits -
Out of a Hat Creations - Favourite technique or product (This includes several favourite techniques and of course my most fave products at the moment are from Crafty Individuals) Good one girls.

Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes

Everybody Art Challenge - Anything Goes

Try it on Tuesday - Travel

The Shabby Tea Room - Summer Cottage

Designs by Ryn - Fish tag

Quite a while before my holiday I had an email from Ryn asking me if I would make some samples using her stamps and once I had seen her designs I couldn't resist, especially these fishy ones.

I made some background card using paints, die-cut a tag and stamped the school of fish over it using stormy sky DI. 

Some others were cut out and added for dimension. The Koi were stamped in black archival over alcohol inked mirri board and cut out. They were edged with a black Sharpie pen to give them a clear outline and definition.

These are beautifully drawn stamps with a fabulous sketched effect and they are very deeply etched to produce excellent stamped results. Do go over and take a look at what Ryn designs and sells. She is also on Facebook here.

Stamps I used -

Let me know if you have any stamps by Ryn and what you make/made.

hugs {brenda} xox

WOYWW and Holiday photos

Well I am back to reality and a touch of normality especially with all the rain we are having today, so different to the extremely hot weather we had in California and Nevada, in fact it got to 114F or 45C at Pirates Cove near Needles on the Colorado River. That was the hottest I think I have ever been!!

So today I thought I would take my first venture into the WOYWW and show a peek of something I am currently working on, but not much of it mind, really only the embellishments I am going to use on it. The project is for something very exciting that I can reveal very soon. If you are already a WOYWWer then thanks for visiting me, if not go take a peek at all the wonderful workspaces and creations out there, hosted by Julia at Stamping Ground.

Well as I am writing this Blogger has decided it won't let me access any photos, so I shall finish the writing and come back to it later - what a bind. (OK I finally got these in by changing from Chrome to IE, don't know what is happening, but I am not the only one experiencing problems.)

The holiday photos I want to share with you are those of dear Terry and myself when Ken and I went and met up with her and Steve in Valencia.

We went for a lovely meal at BJs and as Lucy and Marjie might say I got corrupted with trying a Margarrita, actually the truth be knbown, it was my suggestion and I thoroughly enjoyed a lunchtime drink.

We then visited Michaels, because I said I had never been to one before.

Then Terry took us to Scrapbooking Made Simple, a super little scrapbook store not too far away.

The photos show us shopping and deciding on what to buy.

Needless to say I came away having spent a small fortune on bits and pieces and dear Terry bought me the Prismacolour pencils I wanted. She really is such a lovely lady and I feel so honoured to call her a friend. One day we will meet again, I hope she might come over here but that would be difficult with her dog and birds. So until my next trip to CA.

Have a great week everyone. Thanks for stopping by to see me today.

hugs {brenda} xox