Celebrating my style as a favourite artist for Anything but Cute's first anniversary

Hello and a very warm welcome to Jane's Journal. Today I am absolutely delighted to be joining Anything But Cute's first anniversary celebrations. I had a wonderful email from Pamellia in April telling me that I had been voted one of their favourite mixed media artists of the year! What an honour, I was totally delighted by this recognition. The brief for today was to show my mixed media style to give some inspiration for their newest challenge here.

I have quite an eclectic mixed media style as I love learning new techniques and using new products. I could never just use "one" style and my crafting is constantly evolving. I really love getting inky and using mixed media. I am totally inspired my Mother Nature which influences all my crafting and I particularly love the seasons.

Spring is in full swing here and everything is bursting into life. I take my camera with me everywhere, even into my own garden. Inspiration is all around me...these photos were taken in my garden yesterday

and when I went for all walk blossom is exploding everywhere

At first I thought I would make a spring art journal page using my Tim Holtz tree die as the centre piece. However I decided for this special occasion to make a double art journal page to show my style and all the seasons of the year. I also wanted to share some of my favourite mixed media techniques. I do love adding textures so I decided that I would textured a tree for each season.

I started blending my paints....

I sectioned my pages into 4, 1 for each of the seasons. I made a "path" to "walk" through my seasons with some thoughts along the way.

I used the colours I associate for each season to ink each section. I added texture paste through some stencils and archival ink through others. (Sorry this photo is so dark). The path was created with texture sand which I added a little grey acrylic paint to.

Then I started to add the details, season by season.

Spring: Newly budded leaves and birds. I stamped PaperArtsy leaves onto book pages, others I die cut using inky off cuts. The sentiment stamped, embossed and coloured with Glaze pens.

Summer; hot colours, butterflies, a garden bench with watering can and a daisy. (every garden must have a Daisy ;0)

Autumn; golden colours, spiders' webs, birds, falling leaves

Winter; snow, a starry wintry sky and of course a robin. I painted the stars with silver acrylic paints and the snow is Decoart Snow Tex with some glamour dust added (which does not show in my photo, IRL this has such sparkle).

I added some Tim Holtz chit chat stickers and Remnant Rubs words and images to tie everything in. You can see that each tree has a seasonal colour/ finish too.

Here is my finished piece......4 seasons in one day ;0)

and a couple of close ups

I had such fun making this. I am a crafter who usually makes Christmas themed projects no earlier than September and I would never usually even think about Halloween until September! So getting out my Christmas and autumn dies and inks was delightful.

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

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday stencil it
Pile it on 2/3 garden creatures
Rhedd's creative challenge altered art/mixed media
We love to Create 2/2 anything mixed media
The artistic stamper 1/3 Collage

Memory Box for the birds my crows branch, the butterfly summer flourish and the tiny spring birds are all MB

Our creative corner 1/3 hit the books I used book pages to create some of my spring leaves.
Emerald Creek Dares Use the Bs... I have used blooms, butterflies, bright colours, bricks, bench and birds

I would like to say a big thank you to Pamellia and her talented team over at Anything But Cute for nominating me as one of their favourite mixed media artists of the year and for asking me show my style.
I am very proud to wear this badge in my side bar

Congratulations ladies on your first birthday and thank you for all your inspiring work you have shared over the last year.
ATBC have a brand new challenge to celebrate their 1st anniversary..celebrate your style starting today.

They would love everyone to be a part of it. Please pop on over here via this link to join the fun and to also see what the other favourite artists and the DT have created for this special celebration.

Thanks so much for visiting me here today and a very warm welcome to anyone who is a first timer.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

The Bombay Sapphire experience

For my Hb's birthday in January our daughter sent a gift voucher for the Bombay Sapphire Experience at Laverstoke Mill in Whitchurch, Hampshire. As keen gin drinkers Bombay Sapphire is one of our favourite brands and I love their iconic blue bottle.
We decided to wait until the spring to visit and booked tickets on their web site for a tour last Wednesday.

We could not have picked a better day as the sun shone and the sky was a clear blue. The drive from our house took an hour and a half and we arrived in the car park in plenty of time for our 10.45am tour. We were delighted by the sight of the restored mill buildings which are now the home for Bombay Sapphire and where it is distilled.

We  had time to sit by the river and have a coffee in the sunshine.

We knew nothing about the history of Laverstoke Mill and were very pleased that we had booked on the heritage tour. Our guide was so knowledgeable and we were surprised to find out that this beautiful mill is recorded in the Domesday book. In a previous life it was used and for the production of paper for none other that the Bank of England for bank notes. The Portal family continued to manufacture at Laverstoke for over 200 years. However in 1995 De La Rue bought out the company and the mill fell silent.

We were able to handle some beautiful artifacts (wearing white cotton gloves) from the days of paper making.

The Bombay Spirits company only bought the Mill in 2010 and saved the site from being demolished for housing. This is where all their gin is distilled. It is then transported to Warrington where it is bottled. The buildings have been so beautifully restored and there is still some buildings undergoing renovation. They opened the distillery to the public in 2014.

The river Test runs through the mill and has some of the clearest water I have ever seen.

We were shown some of the botanicals used in the making of the gin...the smells were delicious.

 I chose my favourites to find out what my ideal cocktail would be............

I went for The Laverstoke
Their design award winning glasshouses showcase those botanicals which I used in the gin production.

We also toured the actual distillery (no photos allowed of this for security reasons) and marvelled at the copper stills. We saw a display of the various bottles used over the years. The Bombay Sapphire gin heritage goes back to 1761 when the Dakin family started making gin in Warrington, Cheshire. The iconic blue bottle did not appear on the shop shelves until it was re branded in the 90s.

And at the end of our brilliant 3 hour tour we were served a complementary gin cocktail (well my Hb drove so he had an alcohol free one and was given a take home miniature) and sat looking out to the river as we relaxed and reflected on our visit. Yes that's me sitting upstairs reading the cocktail menu

and here is my delicious cocktail bought upstairs by the waiter.

It was delicious.

There is a small gift shop and of course we had to take something home didn't we.....a bottle of Bombay East, a gin stirrer and 2 lovely tumblers fell into our basket. When we got home you can guess what we finished off our day with ;0)

It really was the most wonderful day and when I got home I knew I had to make a mixed media "Moment" of our time there.

To represent the history of paper making at the mill I used a sheet of my very special Fabriano paper I bought in Sicily last year. If you missed that post this is a link to it.

My moment just had to be blue so I got out several shades of blue distress inks.
I blended and spritzed my Tim Holtz blue inks on my paper until I was happy with the background.

Then I added some simple floral stamping.

To represent the gorgeous restored brickwork of the mill I added some Decoart crackle paste through my Wendy Vecchi brick stencil.

I needed a way to make my own " gin bottles" so I die cut bottles which I stamped and stencilled. I found the perfect "Bombay Sapphire" blue shade of ink was TH's  Broken China.

To remember the clock outside the mill I die cut a weathered clock.

For the botanicals I die cut lots of TH sizzix wild flowers.

I stamped and embossed a very apt Visible Image sentiment and also embossed a Visible Image dragonfly whose wings I glittered and then added glossy accents for even more dimension.

It was then time to put on my creative hat and put my Moment together...

Here it is

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

More than words Moment and clocks

Anything but cute Earth day I was inspired by the gorgeous blues and the whole feel of Mother Nature especially the flowers.
Crafty Boots monochrome
Penny Black and More 1/3 anything goes with stamping
WOW use heat embossing my dragonfly and sentiment are both heat embossed.
The Artistic Stamper 1/3 collage
Pile it on garden creatures
Rhedd's creative challenge altered art/mixed media
Pixie's snippets playground #227
Noor spring flowers
We love to Create 1/2 anything mixed media

We really did have such a great day and when I drink my G+T now I can transport myself back to the beautiful Laverstock Mill and memories of that delightful sunny April day.

Thanks for visiting today and for taking the time to leave your kind comments.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

May Design team piece for Country View Challenge, use a stencil

Hello, welcome to May and it's time for my next Design Team  piece for Country View. The new challenge is to "Use a stencil" Now this is a really special month and here is the amazing announcement from our sponsor, Country View....you could win a BIG SHOT AND DIE BUNDLE!!!!

This month alongside our Challenge, we are also running a Blog Hop with a Sizzix Big Shot Machine & Die Bundle as the prize. To enter, you must be a Follower of our Challenge Blog and Hop along to each of our Design Team Members Blogs and leave a comment. We will still be running our normal monthly challenge and those who link their Use A Stencil projects will also be entered into our £20 Voucher draw. The Winners will be picked at random in early June.

Wow I am so jealous that I can't enter.

This is the order of the hop and the links

 Christine
Gabrielle
 Jennie
Rachel
Sue
Evelyn
 Doreen
 Nikki
Monika
Hazel
Brenda
Corrie
Jane........................you are here ;0) 

If you need to go back to the main Country View Challenge blog and start at the beginning this is the link there.

 As you well know I love using stencils in my crafting, the difficult part for me was deciding which to use!  There are lots of inspiring projects over on the challenge page too. You can enter any craft which fits the theme.


For my first piece of the month I decided to make a card, a special card for my SIL's sister who is getting married this month. I wanted to use some bold May colours.

To make my focal I stamped and white embossed my Lili of the Valley sentiment and die cut it out.  I then dripped it through some TH distress inks

 and dried it off with my heat gun

For the backing card I repeated the process....

I then added some hearts through my stencil using archival ink

and then some diamond sparkle medium through my Gothic stencil.

Then it was time to assemble my card and add a ribbon to finish it off.

and one last shot

My second DT piece for the May challenge is on  Friday 27th...I have made a complementary tag for the "set".

I would like to link up my card with the following challenges.

   Creative Card Crew wet or dry embosssing I have white embossing powder for my sentiment.
                                          Simon Says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Don't forget to leave a comment here if you are on the blog hop....and you need to hop along to all the other blogs too if you would like try to win the Big Shot.  Good luck!

For all my other "regulars" thanks for visiting and for your sweet comments. Welcome to May and enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x