Touchable textures

Last week I attended one of Brenda Brown's workshops. I really love going to them as Brenda always has such unique ideas for the projects. Last week was no exception and the name of the workshop was Taking the rough with the smooth". It was all about creating different textures using Decoart products.  This is Brenda's board and she took us through all the 9 different textures, 1 at a time.

Brenda's board had a French theme but I decided to try a different theme...the season's.
A very pleasant day was spent creating the 9 tiles and I learnt so much.

 Here is Brenda in action

Here is our group in action, well actually eating lunch whilst crafting ;0) 

 I sat at this space on the right next to a lovely fellow crafter called Hazel,

Hazel used pinks and reds for her colours. Here she is finishing up, I loved  her boards.

Below are my spring and summer boards coming together.  

I managed to get all my textures bar 1 finished at the workshop. I need to make the last tile and the backing board at home and I finally got some time to do this on Thursday.
This is the tile I finished below.

I added WOW embossing to the wet texture paste which you will see in the photo below.

I added some seasonal die cuts and remnant rub numbers so that I can check out which technique it represents. I put some rivets through my board, added the string and here is my finished seasons' texture board.

and here are the textures seasons by season.

Spring showing stamped texture paste and stencilled crackle.

 Summer showing textured collage and rusted enamel.

 Autumn showing crinkled low and highlights and layered shapes.

 and Winter showing subtle layered shapes and textured wallpaper

 The centre tile is weathered white....I decided to add some die cuts from each of the seasons to the 4 corners to link my board together.

I will hang my board up in my studio, it will be a useful reminder of the many textures I can use with my mixed media work. It was a really lovely crafty day, thanks to Brenda and I look forward to the next one.

I would like to enter my textures board into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground  3/3 #212 I used a snippets of card for my die cuts flower and a snippet of twine for the hanger.

Crafting from the heart anything goes
Rhedd's creative spirit anything altered art

Crafty friends  anything goes

Simon says stamp Mondays  best friends Brenda is the very best of teachers and also a great blogging friend too ;0)

We love to create  #2 anything mixed media

WOW embossing challenge anything goes  

Anything but cute Ring out the old...bring in the new all these Decorart products are new to me, my favourites are the gorgeous crackle and the blue paints I used for the winter tiles.
Crafty calendar something new these are mostly all new texture techniques for me.
Country View crafts Be inspired by Bottles...I was inspired by dozens of gorgeous Decoart acrylic paints and chose the ones above.
Moving along with the times 1/3 wet or dry embossing I have used wet embossing on tiles 4 and 9
Winter wonderland 1/3 something new my new are all these great Docrafts paints and lovel textures.
Craft heaven 1/3 something old something new old are the die cuts I added to my tiles my new are all these lovely Decoart paints and textures.
Craft your passion 1/3 anything goes

Thanks for all the birthday wishes you left for my Hb on Wednesday. We had an amazing day and lunch at the Shard was just incredible...and the sun shone too. I will have a sort out of my photos I took and will be back with a post (and a Moment) very soon.

 Another weekend is here again and it looks like milder temperatures are returning here in the south. It has been a bitterly cold week so it will good to warm up a little again.

Enjoy your weekend and I hope you get some time to be creative, it's certainly not gardening weather! Welcome to my latest follower too, it's great to see you joining my creative journey here.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Simple HeArt

At the weekend we had a pre-birthday party for my Hb. I shared some photos from our sunny but cold Saturday afternoon walk in my last post. Here are a few photos of Daisy having fun in the swing park there.

She would not put on her gloves but obviously was quite chilly as she let us tuck her up warm in her pushchair for the walk home. What a way to travel, I wish there was room in there for me. 

She loves the little waterfall and the ducks.

On Sunday we woke up to a light dusting of snow,which Daisy had not seen before. When we were up and dressed she told me she wanted to go into the garden....I thought to look at the snow. I insisted she wrapped up warmly and put on her welly boots. She took me by the hand and led her Nanna outside. Although I showed her the snow she had other things on her 2 year old mind.....yes she was leading me to Nanna's studio and some crafting!

Brrr it was very chilly but how could I say no to my little sweetheart? We went into my chilly studio, put on the heater and immediately Daisy spotted my trays of distress inks. I suggested she chose some colours and we would have a go at swooshing some distress colours onto some watercolour card. She helped spritz the ink with water and when I said I would take a photo put on her serious concentration look....LOLOL!

 She had fun dipping in the card

 and seeing all the patterns.

I then asked if she would like to add some stencilling and she choose a star one.

 I held the stencil in place whilst she added more ink, some with a blending tool, some with her fingers (such a useful tool).

More serious crafting faces ;0) We also added some embossing powder which she loved...she stamped D for Daisy with an alphabet stamp. 

and more embossing around the edges.

So once we had made this piece I let Daisy have free reign with the ink pads.....and she just swooshed and inked and added embossing powders. Obviously I used the heat gun for her...she marvelled at how the powders melt and shine.

 and just look what she made...lots of stamping of her D for Daisy. We added some red and blue embossing powders and again she loved the shine appear as I heated them,

I loved this....so simple but so beautiful. Now you are wondering where the "Simple HeArt" comes into my blog  title...well sadly Daisy got this ready to take home and then it got left behind on the dining room table, together with a few of her Daddy's bits. As I am not seeing her for a couple of weeks I decided that I would make her unique piece into something for her and send it in the post. There is nothing like getting real mail is there?

As I looked at her creation  I could see so much love there that I decided I had to make this into a HeArt wall hanging for her. 

I added a couple of Nanna handmade elements...another embossed foil heart (to represent love from Nanna) and a die cut and inked flower to remember Nanna's garden. 

Here it is;

I added some lace for it to be hung up by..Daisy lace of course and finished it off with a little mauve heart brad. I have posted it off to my little sweetheart.

Now the thing that really amuses me in that Daisy has actually used the colours of her jacket (mauve), tights (blue) and the bottom of her welly boots (red) with just a little bit of green...could that be the grass in the park. Now I love to colour coordinate my Moments...do you think she has started early ;0) ?

I would like to enter my HeArt wall hanging into the following challenges;

PaperArtsy Hearts I was inspired by Leandra's great intro especially the primitive simple hanging hearts she showed.

Crafty Ribbons  anything but a card

Crafty Boots ribbon or lace

Pixie's snippets playground  2/3 #212 I used a snippets of card for my die cut flower and a snippet of lace for the hanger.

Noor anything goes

Bunny Zoe 3/3 hearts 

The Artistic Stamper anything goes

Stamping sensations 3/3 anything goes with dies

Crafting from the heart anything goes

Crafty friends  anything goes

Simon says stamp Mondays  best friends Daisy is my very best crafting friend (and granddaughter)

We love to create  #2 anything mixed media
WOW embossing challenge anything goes  

So perhaps I when I craft with Daisy I should call her my crafting SweetHeArt....I can see we are going to have such fun over the years. She must be a very serious crafter as even I would not have gone out to craft in my studio on Sunday morning....brrr!!

Keep warm, it is very chilly here but no more snow so far. I really hope it stays clear for tomorrow as we will be 31 floors up the Shard enjoying my Hb's birthday lunch. Of course my camera will be joining us too. It's been a glorious cold but sunny day here today, this was my back garden at sunset....

freezing cold but so clear........we may be lucky with the view tomorrow...fingers crossed.

Thanks for visiting, keep warm.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A brand new art journal

My last post shared my final page of my small Dylusions art journal. Thanks so much for all the kind comments you left.....it's always hard using your own photo to create a journal page...not something we usually do.
Today I am going to share the very first page of my brand new large Dylusions journal. As I said last week there really is a big jump in size. Here is the old and the new together.

 I am not sure whether I prefer this or not but will see how I get on during the year. My initial reaction was wow....lots of lovely space.
My first project is a combination of several challenges as I do love entering them.

Over at the Craft Barn they have a new challenge starting which is the dictionary challenge. They are mixing up the letters and the first challenge is to use a word beginning with B .
My word beginning with B is beginning as I thought this was so apt for my first journal page.
I wanted a sentence to contain my word and came up with;

Every day is a new beginning.

I get so much inspiration from the area where I live and from my garden that I decided my first page had to feature flora and fauna. I decided to hand write my sentiment across my pages.  I wanted use lots of floral images and stamps to remind me of lovely sunny days in my garden and walking locally. Every time I open my journal I will have a sunny page to greet me, whatever the weather.


So here is what I got up to. I have a fun old dictionary which I use for some of my mixed media work...yes shock horror I rip out the pages.
I picked it up in a charity shop for a few pounds

I turned to the page for beginning and tore it out.

 I added the whole of the page in strips to my journal...keeping the "beginning" definition at the top left page. I added texture paste through several stencils.

I then added some green and blue acrylics, mixing around until I was happy.

 I highlighted my "beginning" words in yellow...like the sun in the sky and framed it with a Cheery Lynn heart die cut.

I also added my hand written sentiment and lots of floral stamping.
After lots of lovely paint and ink play this was my finished pages.

 Here is my dictionary page highlighted in a Cheery Lynn heart frame. If you look closely you will see some eye stamps...it represents me looking to nature for inspiration. I added some Tim Holtz, Crafty Individuals  and old tiny tapestry floral stamps. I needed some glitter too.....

 I coloured up a Tim dragonfly with inks and also added some sparkle to the wings.

I also added some PaperArtsy leaf stamps and some Cheery Lynn flowers with some sparkle.

I really loved creating my new beginnings pages.

I would like to enter my journal pages into the following fun challenges;

The craft barn dictionary challenge B is for beginning
Pixie's snippets playground  1/3 #212 I used a snippet of dictionary paper and a snippet of card for my dragonfly and flowers.
Cheery Lynn sweethearts
Sweet stampin 1/3  things with wings
Noor anything goes
Simon Says stamp Monday stencil it
Penny Black and More 3/3 one for the girls
Open minded crafting  3/3 something new my art journal is new.
Crafty catz  2/3 word art
Pile it on Use your first initial mine of course is J and this is J for journal pages.
Anything but cute Ring out the old...bring in the new this is my first page of my brand new art journal.
Bunny Zoe 2/3 hearts there are hearts surrounding my dictionary paper.
Crafty calendar something new this is my first page in my brand new art journal.

We had a wonderful first visit of the year from Daisy and Co yesterday. We were also joined by our son and my parents for a pre birthday party for my darling Hb. We managed a walk even though it was freeeezing out... can you see how I am  inspired by these surroundings.................?

the setting sun was so beautiful

We had a few flurries of snow this morning but nothing really lasted. It stayed very chilly though, so I had just a very quick visit down to my studio with Daisy Jane this morning. Every time she comes she points to Nanna's studio and takes my hand....how could I refuse ;0) Of course we had time for some inky play...I will share it soon.

Thanks for visiting and a warm welcome to my newest follower, it's always lovely to see someone new joining me on my creative journey. Keep snug everyone and carry on crafting.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x