Belated Bloggerversary - and blog candy!

(This post will stay at the top until 7th December - scroll down for newer ones!)

This past year has been quite an eventful one for me, for various reasons, and it seems to have flown by. Thus the anniversary of the starting of my blog, in October 2008, passed unnoticed! Not to worry, though, I can celebrate it now! To do so, and to say a huge thank you to all the lovely people who have followed the blog, left supportive comments, and generally made life in Blogland such a pleasure, I'm giving away some blog candy.



It includes unmounted stamps from Crafty Individuals and Joanna Sheen, a Crafty Individuals "Christmas" Miniatures book, Christmas stickers, paper flowers, Craftwork Cards button messages, Woodware Tag Board Book, a Memento Tuxedo Black Dew Drop inkpad, a photo frame (to alter??) and a hand made notebook.

To win all of those, just leave me a comment. If you also become (or are already) a follower, that will give you a second entry. Linking to this post from your own blog, if you have one, will gain you a third entry. (ie. Comment = 1 chance, comment+follower = 2 chances, comment+follower+link= 3 chances.) I will post the candy to anywhere in the world. The closing date will be Monday the 7th December, and a winner will be drawn randomly soon after then, so don't forget to check back & see if it's you!

Thanks again to everyone for your support and friendship, it is much appreciated.

Fab Stamp Man Blog Candy!

Jill at The Stamp Man is giving away some fantastic blog candy! The prize will be a choice from 3 of Kay Carley's recent designs, the gorgeous Aspects of Design Funky Flowers, Funky Frames, or Fancy Flourishes. Nip over to Jill's blog to stake your claim. These really are beautiful quality stamps (they're all on my Christmas wish list!) and Jill has some lovely samples using them on the blog. The closing date for the candy is midday on Tuesday, 15th December.

Quick Tip

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of this, but just in case anyone else hasn't, I thought I'd share it. I needed a black brad & didn't have one. So I tried colouring a different one with a black Promarker. It needed a few coats, but I was amazed at how well it worked. So now I won't have to buy lots of different coloured brads. Obviously for pale colours I'd need a white or very light coloured one to start with, but I can just colour one whenever I need it with whatever colour I'm using on my project & it will match perfectly. :-)

How many days until Christmas.....?

Another card made with the Brilliance Ink background. The flower stamp is from the Aspects of Design sheet "Summer Flowers", by The Stamp Man, (currently on sale at half price while stocks last!) and the sentiment is by Crafty Individuals. I used my Nestabilities and Cuttlebug to cut the circles and the label and punched a few flowers out of the leftover Brilliance-inked background paper.



Now I really should make some Christmas cards......

Ideas from The Stamp Man

I managed to catch The Stamp Man's recent show on Create and Craft, and really liked Jill's ideas for making backgrounds with Brilliance inks. She put the inks on to a craft sheet, sprayed them with water and then laid her paper on top to pick up the ink. It gave a lovely, shimmery, watercolour effect. The link above is to Jill's blog, where she explains how to do it. I've had Brilliance inkpads for years and never thought of using them in this way. Of course, I had to try it out, and here are the first two cards I've made.



I wanted a marble effect for the Roman gods, so I used starlight black, galaxy gold and moonlight white Brilliance inks. I inked up two pieces of paper. The first one took up some of the ink, then I picked up what was left with the second piece which gave it a lighter coverage. I used that piece for the background and stamped and clear embossed the image on the first piece.



For the second card I used pearlescent sky blue, pearlescent purple and pearlescent orchid. All stamps are Aspects of Design by The Stamp Man, except for the sentiment, which I think is by Papermania. Border punch is by Martha Stewart.

Meadow

Taking the colour removal technique a step further, I made this.



Using encaustic art card, the background was sponged with Distress inks, then the honesty seed pods were stamped in black and clear-embossed. I was thus able to remove the colour from them using a damp paintbrush without the water overflowing on to the rest of the background. I did the same for the campion flower near the centre, but having removed the background colour I then painted the flower with Distress inks. The remaining elements were simply stamped with Versamagic inks.

The picture was mounted on to an 8" x 8" card from Craftwork Cards, from where also came the background paper and the butterfly greeting. The butterfly was coloured with a Promarker. All stamps are Elusive Images from Graphicus, except for the trees in the background. The tiny fir trees are by Stampscapes, and the other tree is from Lavinia Stamps.

Bowing to the inevitable

Well, I've been a bit out of touch lately, having been away for the best part of two weeks, so I decided that now I'm back I'd better show willing & get on with some Christmas cards. I really don't know why the prospect doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. Maybe it's because I'd rather not start thinking of Christmas before December and then don't have enough time to spend on them and end up with rushed designs that I'm not happy with.

However, whatever the reason, I've managed to make a start. I've continued with the colour removal technique using Distress Inks as in my recent posts, with brass stencils this time to produce the backgrounds.

The teddy & cat stamp was free with a magazine, so I thought I might as well try it. It's a bit too cute for my liking, but that's okay because I won't be sending it to myself. I cut it out with one of my new Nestabilities Labels 8 set and coloured it with Promarkers. I wanted a border around it, but the next size up Nestie was too big, so I went around the edge with a Promarker instead. The greeting is from Craftwork Cards. The snowflake stencil was also a magazine freebie.

The poinsettia on the second card is made from a couple of Craftwork Cards flowers, originally white but coloured with Promarkers. Likewise the greeting. I couldn't avoid the gold lettering with the Promarker, but I found that I could remove the ink from it afterwards with the Promarker blender pen.The all-over holly stencil is one I've had for several years, and I'm afraid I can't remember where it was from. The scalloped border around the Cuttlebug-embossed circle, and the outer red border, were coloured with Promarkers to match the flower. Can you guess I'm really into Promarkers at the moment?! I love being able to co-ordinate everything with them. I nearly got carried away and coloured some ribbon to match as well, but then I found some paper lace hiding at the back of a drawer and decided to use that instead. Of course, I could have coloured that too, but I thought I'd leave it as it was to go with the white circle.



Well, that's two done. I feel better now!

Promises To Keep

On my blog header it says "Crafts, photography, music and life in general." I've mentioned my crafts and photography, and the occasional snippet about life, but some might have wondered where the music came into it. Well, it hasn't, until now! My day job is primary school music specialist. My main instrument is the piano, but my favourite one is my bowed psaltery. I guess some of you reading this will now be saying "your what?" I'd never heard of it either until about 15 years ago when I met the wonderful Tony Westran at a craft fair. (Also see Tony's blog.) At the time he was making and selling all kinds of early and unusual musical instruments. I got talking to him and he let me try playing the bowed psaltery. I'd never heard anything like it before and I was totally captivated by its beautiful sound. There was no way I was leaving his stall without taking one home with me.

Anyway, here's a picture of it. It has 32 steel strings and is played with a curved bow. The history of the bowed psaltery is questionable, but it is probably descended from the plucked psaltery of medieval times. I wanted to be able to play authentic music on it, but it was difficult to find any. Eventually I decided to play whatever sounded good on it, and also to compose my own music for it. In 1997 I achieved one of my life's ambitions and made a professional recording, entitled "Promises To Keep". It has 12 tracks, eight being my original compositions, and the other four my own arrangements of traditional folk songs. My electronic keyboard provides the accompaniment.

It is hard to describe the sound of the bowed psaltery. It seems that people either love it or hate it! I reckon the split is 95%/5%, in favour of the former. Those who love the sound commonly describe it as relaxing to listen to, which I would concur with. I haven't mentioned it before because I haven't had the means to link to a sound file on my blog, but now I have! Clicking on the link on my sidebar (fingers crossed that it works!) will take you to my Windows Live Skydrive page, where you will find some sample tracks from my CD which you can download and listen to. I'd love to know what people think of the sound, for or against! If anyone is interested in knowing more about the CD, please contact me via my profile.

Copyright note: I just need to point out that I hold the copyright for all tracks. I will be delighted if anyone wishes to download the sample tracks for their own enjoyment. However, please do not re-distribute them in any way (pass on the link to my blog instead) and please do not add them to any other internet site. If you should wish to use them other than for the circumstance described above, please contact me and permission may well be forthcoming! Thank you for respecting this.