Footsteps in Seville

Hello I am back to share my first photos from Seville where we spent our wonderful recent holiday. We stayed in such a central location that we were able to visit all the sights on foot. As it is very hot and humid and we had a whole week to explore we were able to go out visiting for half the day and then come back to swim and relax around the cool swimming pool..and sip a cocktail or 2.

On the first day we had a leisurely wander around taking in the beautiful architecture

The Cathedral is the 3rd largest in Europe, only St. Peter's and St. Paul's are larger.

 The inside was quite dark so I knew my little camera would not cope so I just snapped a few beauties which had some light.

 This extraordinary crown is in the Treasury

 We climbed the Giralda tower and were rewarded with wonderful sights on the way up as well as from the summit.

After we came out we treated ourselves to a cool drink in this shady side street.

We also went to an intimate Flamenco show, with just 80 seats and we sat spellbound in the front row. The singer had a voice which made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. He was accompanied by the most talented guitarist and the dancers had feet which seemed to have speed that I did not know existed. It was a wonderful show. We were not allowed to take photos during the performance but afterwards they posed for a few.

The second day we spent at the Plaza Espana. This was built for the 1929 for the American/Spanish exposition and showcased Spanish industry and technology. The walls are lined with tiles showing the provinces of Spain. The building has a wonderful Art Deco feel, one of my favourite art periods.

 

I have been so inspired by our holiday that  I decided for the first time to try my hand at a piece of mixed media art to make a new "Moment" for my journal.  I bought several Art Deco postcards in Seville and chose to use one for the focal. I had the idea of using some pieces from the paper visitor's map which we used to tour the city. I ripped out a few pieces and added some grunge paste through my grid stencil I won from a recent We do doobadoo's challenge, to look a little like our feet walking around the city and leaving footprints. I also added some tissue paper which I scrunched to give some more texture.

I chose the colours which sing Seville to me; yellow,orange, green and red.

I painted orange flowers with acrylic paint through just the top of the flower from an Imaginations Crafts stencil and then started painting watered down acrylics onto my piece. I had penciled in where I wanted to put my postcard once the background was finished and dry
I then got so engrossed adding textures and colours that I forgot to take any more pictures! Sorry! Here is the lovely postcard;

I added some red lace to remind me of the passion of the Flamenco dancing and the red shoes the dancer wore.

The yellow rose is to remind me of all the gorgeous roses in bloom throughout the city and in the parks. It is a Visible Image stamp which I coloured with Distress inks.

You can see I added lots of layers including some stamping with a leaf rubber stamp using Archival ink and I added some remnant rubs numbers for the year. I also added some Tim Holtz chit chat works. If you look carefully you can see the little bits of the map I used and the grungepaste footprints. 

If you are curious about the little piece of green ribbon....it is from my glass of Kir Royale I sipped at our meal on the first evening at our hotel.........

and here it is on my glass ;0)

so finally the big reveal of my first Seville Moment

This will be stuck into Jane's Journal. I have lots of plans for another couple of Seville Moments.

I would like to enter my Moment into the following challenges;

The Artistic Stamper colour it red
Anything but a card summer lovin
Pan Pastel UK flora and fauna
Simon Says Monday anything goes
Craft Hoarders Anonymous spray/ink/paint/smear/emboss it!
Divas by design 3 or more layers
That's Crafty birds

I am off for some inky play again tomorrow in Southampton with Hels Sheridan and I will be able to see my daughter, SIL and Daisy in the evening as they are only 10 minutes away, so exciting. If you have missed how big she is growing, she is now 7 months and can sit alone! Hello from Daisy Jane xx

Back soon, enjoy the weekend, the weather in the UK is looking pretty good.....

I will be back on Tuesday as I am Guest Designing for my buddie Kerry of Ladybug Crafts ink...there is a lovely  new floral digi stamp release coming out , do come back and take a peep. 

Bye for now,

Jane x

Delightful Dylusions

Welcome to June,  let's hope it's a flaming one. This is how my little garden greeted me this morning.

 I do love June sunshine, it's so warm and just seeps into your body and soul. I had a great week, my girlies came to stay and Daisy is getting on so well. She is so interested in everything around her. Much to the delight of her uncle she loves giraffes.

and she loves the play bus we have here. 

Of course we enjoyed some drinking time out, this was at Costa's...do you think I  love this girlie just a bit?

On Wednesday I took the day off work to join my blogging buddy Brenda of bumblebees and butterflies for her Dylusions spray inks workshop. It was such fun and yes very messy...we sprayed into pizza boxed which made great sense as those vibrant colours have the potential to get everywhere.
We made a series of  "techniques" tags and worked through 11 different techniques. These are a few of the 18 tags I created. The techniques ranged  from ghosting

right through to distress paint resist

to scribble spray

and adding texture using gesso through a mask

and one of my favourite techniques, Doodle ghosting where we also added some doodles with white pen and ink to parts of the tag

We then made our own 2 tags using any of the Ty techniques we had covered.

I chose inks which are not my typical colours and went out of my comfort zone. I spritzed them onto my tag. I made a ghost copy and added elements to both the tags. I added some texture using distress paint through a stencil and then added some stamped elements by Lynn Perrella, using black archival ink. I stamped a very apt and then went over some parts of my tag with doodles using a white pen which you can see here

Here are the 2 tags

I actually prefer the light one on the left and I would like to enter the one below  into the following challenges

Loves Rubberstamps add some doodling

Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge arty stamps

My Mum's Craft shop Ink it up

Crafty Catz anything goes

Party Time Tuesdays anything goes

We do doobadoo different shapes

You will also have noticed a Dylusions creative journal in my photos. We had great fun making an inky spread in that too and I will share that with you in another post soon. Thanks Brenda for a delightful Dylusions Day.

I am back out in the garden again today planting up my pots for the summer...the bees are humming out there already...bliss. Have a lovely Sunday and week,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Creating vintage memories

Last Thursday I was up with the lark and caught the train to Flitwick in Bedfordshire to join my blogging buddy and uber talented crafter Brenda of Bumblebees and Butterflies . She was running a workshop for Country View Crafts and we were going to make our own vintage tag photo journal  using Tim Holtz techniques and products. I decided to personalise my little album so I took along some family photos which I printed out in sepia at home beforehand.

Oh what a fab day I had...I do love getting inky fingers. There was a lovely group of fellow crafters and we all got stuck in, first of all making the backgrounds for our photos.

 Brenda showed us the one she had made to give us some ideas.

 and also showed us the techniques we would be using.

We each then chose 3 colours of Distress Inks (DI) I chose Evergreen Bough, Tattered Rose and Weathered Wood. I then started lots of blending on my tags

followed by splatting and flicking with water

to create the backgrounds. I then distressed the edges and added some stamping so that my pages were ready to start adding my photos and other elements.

There were also secret flaps inside. We used treasury tags initially to put the album together as this also meant we could change the order of pages if necessary. We also used the DIs to colour the ribbons. The whole day flew past and before I knew it I was dashing back to the station to catch the 4.30pm train back to Farringdon. I finished my album over the weekend and thought I would share some pages with you.

Doesn't Billy look great in sepia?

this is the back cover

and here is the front cover complete with Tim Holtz's fab ruler binder.

There is also a great  tape closure.

I love my vintage memory album and it holds many cherished memories inside.

Thank you Brenda for such an inspiring day and thanks to Susan of Country View Crafts for hosting it so brilliantly. I am looking forward to the next one.

I would like to enter my album into the following challenges;

Fashionable Stamping tag along
Craft Room Challenge age of aquarius/water techniques
Pan Pastel UK anything goes
Ribbon Girl anything goes
Dream Valley No designer paper
A little big crafty celebrate
Artistic Inspiration anything goes
Crafting from the heart anything goes/fancy folds
The Squirrel and Fox use embellishments
Divas by Design anything goes
Make it Monday linky challenge #176
Party Time Tuesdays anything goes
Whimsy stamps something new my something new is everything in this album other than the distress ink..also it is a new technique for me as well.

Back soon with my promised photos of our day out in Greenwich last week,

Bye for now,

Jane x