Let the adventure begin

It’s time for a new challenge over at Try it on Tuesday, which for the next two weeks is Small Things.

For my small things, I created a page in my mini art journal adding some small sticker pieces as part of my design.

I started by covering the chipboard page with Pébéo white gesso using a brayer and left it to dry. Then I added the daisies that were recycled from a brown paper shopping bag. The “Let the adventure begin” wording, green borders, postage stamps, butterflies and tile pieces were all stickers from Kaisercraft.

For more inspiration please pop over to Try it on Tuesday to see the amazing small inspired creations from our Guest Designer and the rest of my Design Teamies.

My page was also created with holidays in mind, as my hubby and I have just returned from our travels; hence the postage stamps saying “love” and “you & me”, and the two butterflies representing me and my hubby.

But where did we go? Do you recognise this town at all? My page has a white distressed background a bit like the white marble this area is known for. It also features a recycled bag from our travels and I’m hoping my design is stylish and has a nature vibe, like the area that inspired it.

More clues: we went to a crescent-shaped strip of Mediterranean coastline straddling between the south of France and Tuscany, defined by its rugged cliffs, turquoise coves, pastel seaside towns and every town seems to have a castle and a church (smile!).

Yes, we went to the Italian Riviera, which is synonymous with Italy’s Liguria region. I hope you’ll join us on on travels over my next blog posts, as my page says “Let the adventures begin”.

Hoping that you all stay safe and well! x

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Sisters

This page was inspired by my sister; we go to Aqua Aerobics every week together where you’ll find us singing along to the songs and giggling (a lot – smile!).

Purple is my sister’s favourite colour, so I started by painting a purple wash around the edges of the page; gradually pulling the colour into the centre so that the purple faded out in the centre. Then to make the centre brighter, I added some white acrylic paint blending it with the purple using a baby wipe. Next I used a stencil, around the edges of the page, to add some Ranger Texture paste which I had coloured using DecoArt Glamour Dust Purple Passion Glitter Paint, and then I left it to dry. The wording was a Kaisercraft sticker and reads “Giggles, secrets, sometimes tears, sisters and friends, through the years”. I added some little hearts that were cut from the sticker cardstock using a heart shaped punch. Finally I arranged the paper flowers and assorted gems, which my sister gifted me one Christmas (thank you!).

There’s still another week to join our Inspired By A Song challenge over at Try it on Tuesday; me and my sister always enjoy singing and “Sisters” is a favourite of ours.

Of course, the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye lip-synced version is fab and so much fun (smile!); both are from the same film, White Christmas.

As part of my birthday present this year, my sister kindly treated me to some Purple Moose beers; here we have Elderflower Ale (Pale Ale), Chocolate Moose (Chocolate and Vanilla Porter), High Hops (Tropical IPA), Antlered IPA (India Pale Ale) and Navigator (Red IPA).

My gift included this amazing glass, if you look closely it has lots of little white mooses all over it – yay! As T Stands for Tuesday, I’m sharing my glass and beers with the T Gang – cheers and Happy T Day!

I hope that you are staying safe and well!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Alpine Punch

It’s time for a new challenge at Try it on Tuesday, which for the next two weeks is Add Some Text.

As you can see, I used lots of text on my page; recycling a menu and book pages for the background and also some tea packaging.

I started by covering the page with text; I collaged torn pieces of Dictionary and cyclopaedia pages and also Andělský Pivovar menu, which was from my previous post (as the tea shop, that we bought the tea from, was located in the same area of Prague).

The papers were stuck in place using a glue stick and Liquitex matte gel medium. Once dry, I added some colour using an Iced Chai Faber-Castell Gelato and edged the paper pieces using a Dark Sepia Faber-Castell marker; smudging the colours onto the page with my finger. Next I backed the red snowflake tea packaging onto cardstock and cut out the labels. I also used the packaging to die cut a teacup, hearts, and snowflakes using three different Sizzix Thinlits sets; the Thinlits were Tea Time by Olivia Rose, Falling Hearts by Tim Holtz and Cosy Winter by Tim Holtz. I arranged them onto the page with some winter foliage, to match the wreath on the packaging, which was also die cut; from linen textured cardstock using Funky Festive Thinlits by Tim Holtz. I arranged everything onto the page using a glue tape pen and I painted some steam rising from the cup, using a sponge to apply white acrylic paint, before sticking the hearts and snowflakes in place, so they stand out more.

For more inspiration please pop over to Try it on Tuesday to see the amazing creations from our Guest Designer and the rest of my Design Teamies (smile!). I hope you are inspired to join our challenge; it would be lovely to see you there!

When we visited the Anděl district of Prague, we purchased a Christmas blended tea. The tea is called Alpský Punč, which means Alpine Punch and is a blend of black tea, raisins, apples, cinnamon, raisins, orange blossom, walnut leaves and cloves. As T Stands for T Day, I’m pleased to join Bleubeard and Elizabeth with my tea inspired page and photos – Happy T Day!

I hope you are staying safe and well.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

I’m pleased to be able to join the following challenges today:

Art Journal Journey which is being hosted this month by the lovely Erika from BioArtGal; she has chosen It’s On The Calendar as her theme so I’m joining with my Alpine Punch tea page.

Mix It Up Challenge – MIUCB #69 Anything Goes + optional Mixed Media

Anděl Angel

Today we are in Prague, which we visited just before Christmas. My page captures a brewery that we visited, called Andělský Pivovar which was located in the Anděl (which means Angel) district.

For my page, I created a wood grain effect by colouring the background using some Tea Dye, Brushed Corduroy and Ground Espresso Distress Ink and then stamping a woodgrain effect stamp over the top. I added some thicker stripes of Dark Sepia Faber-Castell marker to create wood panels and then I covered the whole page with a layer of Liquitex matte gel medium. When fully dry, I drew the angel wings onto the page using a black marker. I recycled the beer mat and some images that I cut from their menu, arranging the pieces onto the page with some gingerbread stickers.

Andělský Pivovar is a restaurant and microbrewery that we found whilst exploring the Angel area.

They offer a range of lagers, IPAs, beers and stouts.

Andělský means Angelic, so here I am being angelic whilst enjoying my Gingerbread beer which they brew especially for Christmastime – it was so delicious! As T Stands for Tuesday, I’m also sharing our beers and wishing you all a very Happy T Day!

We had such a lovely time in Prague, it’s the perfect place to go if you celebrate Christmas; here we are enjoying the Anděl Christmas market – do you like my new hat? I always buy one from the markets when we visit Prague (smile).

I hope you are staying safe and well.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

I’m pleased to be able to join the following challenges today:

Art Journal Journey which is being hosted this month by the lovely Erika from BioArtGal; she has chosen It’s On The Calendar as her theme so I’m joining with my Prague page.

Mix It Up Challenge – MIUCB #69 Anything Goes + optional Mixed Media / MIUCB #68 Winner & Top Picks

Happy New Year 2024

Here’s wishing you a wonderful New Year!

To create this page, I started by covering the page with some recycled white tissue paper using Liquitex matte gel medium, and I scrunched the tissue paper as I applied it to the page to add some texture (because I wanted to emphasis it using a heat embossing technique). Next I coloured the whole page using Aqua Green and Cerulean Blue Liquitex acrylic paints and when the paint was dry, I heat embossed some Gold Ranger Embossing powder over the top, to emphasise the tissue paper texture, creating my wintery night sky. The gold moon was the seal from the top of a new pot of Liquitex matte gel medium which I recycled. To finish, I added the gold stars, houses and wording which were all outline stickers; it reads “Here’s wishing you a wonderful New Year”.

How about welcoming in the New Year with a cocktail of pineapple gin and cream soda; the pineapple gin was homemade by soaking pineapple fruit pieces in gin with some sugar for 4 weeks – so yummy!

We could also have these Piña Colada cocktails that we had one evening (well actually, more like every evening … ha, ha) at our hotel when we were on holiday in Spain (2023) and they were so delicious – cheers!

As were having pineapple gin and Piña Coladas, I’m happy to say hello and welcome to Bleubeard & Elizabeth and all the T Gang over at T Stands for Tuesday – Happy T Tuesday (smile!).

All the best for 2024, wishing you peace, good health and happiness! x

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

I’m pleased to be able to join the following challenges today:

Art Journal Journey which is being hosted this month by the lovely Wendy K from Wendy’s Craft Journal; she has chosen Above Us Only Sky as her theme so I’m joining with my starry New Year sky.

Winter Snowman

So do you wanna build a snowman … well I had fun building mine for this fun seasonal page (smile!).

For the wintery sky, I covered my chipboard page using Villainous Poison Distress Paint which I blended with some white and black acrylic paint using horizontal brush strokes. Next I hand cut some white cardstock to form the foreground and die cut the tree using a Woodlands Sizzix Thinlits by Tim Holtz; they were edged with Seedless Grape and Black Soot Distress Ink before sticking them in place. Then I spattered the page with white acrylic paint. The snowman was die cut using a Mr. Frost Thinlits set by Tim Holtz from some white and black linen textured the paper. I coloured the edges of the main body of the snowman with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink using a blending tool, the scarf and hat band using red and green TriBlend Spectrum Noir markers, his carrot nose using Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and the twig arms using Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The die cut pieces were layered together using Liquitex matte gel medium and I added a holly gemstone embellishment to the hat, then stuck him onto the page. To finish, I added the wording which was from a Tim Holtz Christmas Sticker Book and read “Far across the snow, on the frosty hills”.

Here’s one of my Christmas cupcakes; it’s a chocolate cupcake and the snowman was created using marshmallows, a Rolo chocolate, chocolate sprinkles, buttercream icing and some candied orange – super cute (smile!).

Hoping that you are all staying safe and well and are having a wonderful Christmastime! x

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

I’m pleased to be able to join the following challenges today:

Art Journal Journey which is being hosted this month by the lovely Wendy K from Wendy’s Craft Journal; she has chosen Above Us Only Sky as her theme so I’m joining with my snowy winter sky.

Get closer to nature

I enjoyed creating this wintery page using some recycled old magazine pages and some pretty die cut snowflakes which were gifted me by my dear blog friend Tracey – thank you!

I started by covering the background with Rustic Wilderness, Prize Ribbon and Brushed Pewter Distress Paint, blending them together with a paint brush and leaving them to dry. Next I ripped and cut out the magazine images and wording and they were arranged onto the page with some large die cut snowflakes using a glue stick and some Liquitex matte gel medium. To finish, I edged the images and wording using a white Uniball gel pen and I splattered the page with white acrylic paint.

I love the pretty nature magazine images on my page, the little bird is a Coal Tit, which often visits our garden; they are very fussy and throw most of the seeds away until they get a black sunflower seed or sunflower heart (smile!).

I hope you are staying safe and well!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

Art Journal Journey which I’m pleased to be hosting this month and the challenge theme that I’ve chosen is Nature, with my Get Closer to Nature page.

Take a chance

I love to recycle and use up leftovers from previous projects on my pages, so here’s such a page to inspire you to join our Nature challenge over at Art Journal Journey, which I’m happy to be hosting this month. I hope you’ll join us there!

For my grungy background, I recycled some paper kitchen towel which I’d used to mop up Distress Inks; they were layered onto the page using Liquitex matte gel medium. Next I added the two butterflies and lots of die cut foliage and flowers that were in my craft stash; as far as I remember, the butterflies were stamped using a Paperbabes Stamp set using black Archival Ink onto some ink stained tissue paper, and the flowers and foliage were die cut using a Wildflower Thinlits set by Tim Holtz from yellow and brown tissue paper, and also from some black/white cardstock that was recycled from some cookie packaging. I added the wording “Take a chance don’t ever look back” which was a Kaisercraft sticker. Then to finish, I splattered the page using black DecoArt acrylic paint.

This page was inspired by these colourful flowers that we saw whilst walking to Riva from Torbole in Lake Garda, Italy.

I love Red Hot Pokers and these looked picture perfect with Riva and the mountains in the background.

Thank you so much for joining me and I hope you’ll join us over at Art Journal Journey.

Happy Journaling! Hugs, Jo x

Challenges

MIUCB #68: Nov 1 – Dec 15 — Anything Goes + optional Stamping (rubber/clear – no digis)

Triple B Challenge Blog – Birds, Butterflies & Blooms – November Challenge

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge – Grunge It Up

Natural Vibes

It’s the first Friday of November, so it’s time for a new challenge over at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog, which as always is Anything Mixed Media Goes.

My mixed media page was inspired by Nature; I hope you like it!

I created the faux woodgrain background using one of my favourite techniques using ink and gel medium. I used Ground Espresso and Vintage Photo Distress Ink, dragging the ink pads horizontally across the page and then applying some gel medium over the top using a paintbrush, ensuring the brush strokes were horizontal too. I did this a couple of times to build up the colour and effect, making sure that the gel medium was dry before adding the next layer. The images and wording were cut from a Forest Paper Pad by Stamperia, and I arranged them onto the page with some strips of green paper that were left over from the same pad.

For more inspiration please check out the amazing creations from our Guest Designer and my fellow Design Team members over at Creative Artiste too. All you need to do is to use three different mediums on your projects to join our mixed media challenge; I hope you are inspired to join us, it would be lovely to see you there!

We definitely felt natural vibes when we stayed at our hotel in Torbole, Italy earlier this year; this is a view from our hotel balcony towards the mountains – so beautiful!

Here’s another of the views (smile!). Torbole is at the north-end of Lake Garda and is surrounded by mountains; it was once an inexhaustible supply of firewood and game (hence the images on my page), but now it’s a protected area because of its rare flora, some of which are only native and restricted to the area.

Talking of flora, these pots of flowers outside our hotel were so pretty too (smile!).

I hope you are staying safe and well!

Thanks so much for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Challenges

As well as Creative Artiste, I’m pleased to join the following challenges:

Art Journal Journey which I’m pleased to be hosting this month and the challenge theme that I’ve chosen is Nature, with my Natural Vibes page.

Nature at Art Journal Journey

I’m so pleased and honoured to be hosting Art Journal Journey this month, and the challenge theme that I’ve chosen is Nature.

I love nature and there are so many possibilities for this theme; your pages should encompass “the physical world and everything in it (such as plants, animals, mountains, oceans, stars, etc.) that is not made by people”.

I enjoyed creating my autumnal nature page, using one of my favourite techniques, collage. I used a woodland image from an old magazine to provide the autumn tree backdrop. Then I added some map paper by Craft Sensations and plant cell cardstock from a Forest pad by Stamperia. The butterfly image was recycled from a greetings card, I cut it out along with the backing card for the hedgehog, squirrel and fish; which were from the same Forest Stamperia pad. I layered them onto the page with a Pocket Card by Tim Holtz and some washi tape stickers of fungi, flowers and ferns. The Nature wording was created using a letter sticker set and I highlighted the letters using a white Uniball gel pen, which finished the page.

I hope you’re inspired to join our Nature challenge too. I’m really looking forward to visiting you and seeing all your art journal creations!

Autumn is one of my favourites seasons, I love the colours that nature creates for us and here are some of the beautiful trees that we saw on one of our walks at Lytham Hall; they reminded me of my page (smile!).

Thank you so much for joining me and Happy Journaling! Hugs, Jo x

Challenges

The Four Seasons Challenge Blog – November 2023 – Anything Goes FALL Challenge