Tuesday's Thoughts (or Monday's Musings a day late!)

This is was supposed to be last night's post but I got distracted by more pressing matters and it didn't happen! Stuff to share - I am pretty sure (positive actually!) that I have worked out that my recent allergies are due to Nurofen - everything fits symptom wise (hives and swelling of the tongue, lips and face) and I think in my case my intolerance has developed over the couple of years that I have been using Nurofen for my neck pain/headaches. But no more - I have to detox first but I will be avoiding NSAIDs from now on! Feels so good to have worked it out - I was starting to worry about when I would next feel unwell and have sausage lips!

Other stuff to share - these two pictures are of my pages in Jacky's Altered Book. I have had quite a break from Altered Books until this year and I must admit I want to do more! Might have to just work on some of my own that I started a few years back but never finished!! The first one has a Twinkling H2O background, white embossed stamped images by Stampin'Up and some doodling. The second one has a background made from spraying various products over a Tattered Angels Mask on a brown paper bag with some Tattered Angels swirly stamp images (my newest and current favourite stamps!!)

This is my ATC for a trade with Deborah K in South Australia (no blog, as yet). It also has a Twinkling H2O painted background with the same Tattered Angels stamp as well as my favourite Hero Arts text image - yet again!).

And this is Deborah's sweet ATC for me!

My Calendar Girls Postcard for November

This month's inspiration for the Calendar Girls Postcard exchange is this picture below by Arthur Rackham and while it provided heaps of inspiration, I was mostly drawn to the tree shapes, particularly the branches and canopies. So I decided to stamp a tree branch image on some hand-dyed fabric. The stamp is a large one from the Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Collection. I added some text stamping as well as the picture naturally makes me think of fairy stories! And of course I just love text images and will use them whenever I can!! This one is a long-standing favourite and is by Hero Arts.

I had to have a couple of goes at the tree image as it is quite a detailed image for fabric stamping but I had much better luck the second time once I had heavily re-inked my black Fabrico ink-pad. The fabric was dyed using Adirondack Colour Washes and I over-sprayed it, once stamped, with Moon Glow Glitz Spritz in gold. It makes the fabric really sparkle and look quite luminous but unfortunately the scanner doesn't pick it up. I thought about adding some beading but decided I liked it as is. My postcard goes to Carol T this month.

Check out the Calendar Girls blog top see what everyone else is doing this month.

Results of the Red Fabric Inchie Swap!

A few blog posts back I posted some photos of my red fabric inchies made for a swap my friend Annie and I were hosting on the Aus_NZartquilters yahoo group and today's post is show you everyone's inchies and my temporary display of about two thirds of them. I am still thinking about a more permanent way of displaying them, but for the moment this is it! Apologies for some of the blurry photos - I am building up to buying a better camera but I figure I need to be willing to actually spend some time on my photography skills/knowledge first!

By Sally Westcott

By Pauline Brewis

By Nia Tilley

By Kerrie Bowles

By Jane Symes

By Fionie Williams

By Annie Laing

By Anieta Barendrecht

A single special one by Andrea Carew

By Andrea Carew

A different photo of my higgledy-piggledy temporary display - amazing how the colours vary!!

Happy Halloween!

Well here I am again saying that yet another week has passed!! I've been travelling out bush again with my job most of the week, we have had a hard drive failure (thank goodness most stuff was backed up on the portable drive!) and, to top it off, I'm still having allergic reactions to "something" - or actually somethings as I am suddenly getting hives for the first time ever as well as a swollen numbed face!But it is Halloween and I thought it would be good to share some recent art for Halloween aficionados! Both are small canvas boards and stamps are of course by Oxford Impressions. More art tomorrow - I'm still reloading software etc so that I can function properly so this is just a quick little post!

An ATC Trade

This month Anne Lugherini from France (still no blog to my knowledge) and I traded ATCs again - Anne makes the most amazingly detailed cross stitch ATCs and this one below is no exception!

My ATC for Anne is at the top of the post and is another Twinkling H2O painted background. I've used a partial image of one of the Stampin'Up stamps I've recently invested in. plus some favourite background type stamps. I like the silhouette look for a change but I outlined it with white gel pen for a bit of "pop"!

Today I am working on my "flowers" ATCs for a small group exchange. I just love spring and flowers just keep springing to mind whenever I start working on something at the moment!

My October Calendar Girl Postcard

This month's Calendar Girls inspiration was a bit tricky for me (see below for the Alphonse Mucha image we were using as inspiration) and I couldn't see past the circle element so I decided not to beat myself up about it and to just go with it! I've appliqued hand-dyed silk in orange and lime green to a piece of dyed muslin and then couched fibres and stitched and beaded until I was happy with the result! And yes the half circle is as wonky as it looks on screen as I really wanted it to look a bit free-form (although maybe not quite so...)

PS I've been away a lot with work, had family visiting and then had some computer issues, hence the blog hiatus! Plus I've been reading lots of escapist books...

Halloween ATCs

By Meagan

I am not a big fan of Halloween - maybe because I didn't grow up with it and maybe because I'm actually pretty easily spooked but over the last couple of years I have enjoyed making some Halloween themed art. I just don't go for the really macabre stuff! A group of four of us in Kalgoorlie have started monthly trades (the first round are shown here) and this month Renaye chose Halloween as our theme.

Both by Renaye

Anyway Renaye made two ATCs for each of us (bit of an indication about how much she loves Halloween) and I haven't caught up with Christine yet but I just had to share the results of our exchange so far. The first ATC at the top of the post is by Meagan and the next two are by Renaye (neither have blogs unfortunately). Renaye is even running a special kids' Halloween craft event at her shop "Keepsake Krafts" - wish I still had little kids I take!

This one is mine. It started with an experiment when we decided recently to try making Annette Husband's"Opals Paper" - vilene with various colours of Opals (thick embossing enamels) ironed onto it. I used orange and purple Opals (must have been thinking Halloween subconsciously!) - they have fancy names but I forget what they are. I added some orange Starburst Stains to cover up any white patches. This is what it looked like before I cut the vilene into ATC sized pieces.

Once it was cut up I used StazOn black ink to stamp my Oxford Impressions tree and tiny bat images onto the vilene. The image was patchy as the Opals surface is not ideal as a stamping surface (noting however, that it is ideal for stamping "into") so I used a permanent black marker to fill in the gaps. I added the checked ribbon and black German scrap sewing the vilene to a strong mat board base. I rubbed the black scrap and ATC edges with orange acrylic paint and then covered the rest of the ATC with several coats of clear UTEE as I didn't have any of the clear (Franklin) Opals. This was the least successful of the four ATCs so I kept it for myself but I forgot to take a picture of the others before trading them. The glossiness was more even on the other ones. I'd definitely try the vilene/opals technique again for a different sort of background - see here for information on the technique.

PS A couple of nights ago I happened to check my blog stat counter and the number of hits was sitting at 59999 - I thought it was pretty freaky but I guess it would have even been more so if it had been 60000 just as I looked. Have to say thanks to everyone for continuing to visit - I know I post a lot less often now that I am travelling so much with my job!