Yipee !

At last ! I am moving from my black period into…………brown.

For the past week I have been stuck in silhouette mode , everything I did was black , but thanks to Hels

 over at Sunday Stampers pinkleart.blogspot.com  
all that has changed. The theme this Sunday is brown and boy am I glad . It’s just the challenge I needed , I was beginning to wonder how it would all end.

My stamped image is from Crafty Individuals,  I used Ranger distress embossing powder in Vintage Photo, I distressed the edges of the card with SU Soft Suede and backed this onto some lovely silk and velvet fabric I have in my ( what is jokingly referred to as my stash ) added a piece of ribbon in brown of course and voila ! A lot of brown.

I only hope now that I don’t get stuck in well… erm a brown phase !

Marie x

A few weeks ago when I started blogging for the first time one of my entries was about how challenged I felt by challenges. Well it seems I’m over that I’m glad to say and my biggest challenge is finding the time to take part in them.

There’s no holding me back now I love them ! There are so many wonderful challenges going on all over the world with such wonderful artist taking part . I have met some amazing talented people and some of my design heroes have even paid visits to my blog and said some nice things !

This week I have been a little unwell, and let me say thank you to all of you for your kind wishes for a speedy recovery.The upshot of which is that I couldn’t take part in many challenges .So what I’m leading up to is that this next piece I  am entering for two challenges.

I feel a bit mean about it, I prefer to enter a separate piece for each one but I can see how there just isn’t enough time in the day. This particular  piece fits both perfectly. It’s quite a simple card as they all have been this week ,wasn’t really up to too much more but hopefully that will change.

The challenges are
wednesdaystamper.wordpress.com 
Their theme is take a letter so I took the letter B, liked the idea of this lots of possibilities with this but as you can see I kept it simple.
samnadia.blogspot.com
Bird is the word
Their theme is beautiful so this fits perfectly .

Hope you like it

Marie

Girls, girls, girls,…………..Now this is what I call a challenge !

My first big challenge was getting out of bed today ( I’m a little under the weather ) but I couldn’t wait to see what the girls over atjffchallenge.blogspot.com had in store this week. As soon as I saw it I got straight back into bed !Everything is a new technique to me even simple stamping so I was a bit more flummoxed than usual. Had a nap and found that my flummoxing was on the wane and so had a go.

Now these techniques to you lot of experienced,talented,beautiful,artists (can you tell I’m going for the sympathy and crawling vote )  may not be new but they are to me so here goes !

I cut two tags one with acetate and one with card and printed onto the acetate this beautiful Japanese flower design (is printing on to acetate a technique ? ) cut out a butterfly from the same acetate and layered it with a pink card butterfly. I then stamped and embossed with one of my In the garden stamps from SU onto a feather ( tricky little devils ) and there you have it.

Please bear in mind that no birds where harmed in the making of this tag .

Marie

P.s you might need to enlarge the image to see the detail on the feather

I have been playing around with Silhouettes all weekend as you can see by my earlier post, so when I saw the challenge over at inspiration-avenue-team.blogspot.com/
Their theme is Black,White and Pink, three of my favorite colours I just had to take part. I have been wanting to take part in their challenges for the last couple of weeks but have been a little intimidated by the quality of art submitted by everyone . Anyway I dived in this week ( I’m doing a lot of diving lately and caution to the wind throwing, cant sit on the sidelines forever )

Hope you like it.

Marie

Well this was a tricky one ! I loved the theme , I had the stamps, I have two sons, what could be easier !
Nope, once  again the ones that seem the simplest usually end up being the tricky little devils and this was no exception.

The theme over at themethursday.wordpress.com. is Men and / or boys .
After much too-ing and fro-ing  ( is that how you spell it ? ) and sleepless nights I decided to keep it simple.
Hope you like it.

Marie.

The challenge at The Three Muses this week is ” Ancestors ”  . thethreemuseschallenge.blogspot.com
I don’t have any ! Well I do we all do but I don’t have any photographs . So what have I done, Ive borrowed my good friend Barbara’s ,and besides her family is prettier than mine. !

The two children in the photograph are Anniki and Paavo born in Finland 1920 and Anniki is Barbaras grandmother and the little boy is her Uncle. Anniki studied Art and design and later became a photographer which was something unusual for a young woman at this time.

 One of her main hobbies was to travel and to capture these images with her camera.

She died at the young age of fifty leaving behind the most beautiful album of photographs documenting her life , her travels , her spirit and freedom .

This photograph is a tribute to Barbara’s grandmother who she never met but learned to  love her  through the photographs she left behind.

 Another great challenge over at jffchallenge.blogspot.com
The subject this week is  ” Mixed Media ” or in my case mixed up and confused media ! What’s a girl to do ? As I keep saying I’m a novice three months only in your world and am all over the place, but I’m having fun which is why I LOVE  those gals at Just for Fun. Theirs was the first challenge I did and they were so positive with their feedback that this is my third attempt . So thanks for that.

My little offering is something I want to develop on (not that it’s a new thing) stamping on wood but it was my first time.

This piece of wood measure approx 5 x 6 inches and is used here in Greece for Holy paintings using mainly gold leaf . I stamped both front and back using Crafty Individuals stamps. On the first one also stamped part of the image onto card and matted it and adhered it to the block which I then attempted to dab with my dabber ( well what else ) using cats eyes paints and when it started getting out of hand I stopped dabbing . This is where my imagination deserted me so I left it like that !

The second one is plain old black ink from Ranger a bit like my stamping really.( Plain )

For anyone who is reading my blog for the first time don’t be put off by these images I have better one’s  ( I think ) further down………..

Marie x

Love is in the Hair or air anyway mines a bit of both.

I stamped my background with SU little flowers wheel in old olive, the picture is from  the House of Three as is the butterfly  cut using my Silhouette machine which I edged with cats eyes turquoise ink and finished with some velvet ribbon .

Hope you like it.

Marie

                                                        Fly me to the Moon

After coming across yet another lovely blog tuesdaytaggers.blogspot.com they have a great challenge try it on Tuesday and the theme is ” Inspired by a Song ” I knew straight away what my song choice would be. Fly me to the moon by ‘ Ole Blue Eyes’. I have been waiting for ages to use this Stamp by Crafty Individuals,  I stamped the image onto vellum and placed it on card stock which I had previously dabbed with Ranger broken china distress ink to make it cloud like ( Well it looks cloudy in my house honest ) Oh hang on my glasses need cleaning ! Glossy accents on the stars with a bit of glitter , don’t usually do glitter but seemed appropriate. I matted it onto black card and then onto Colour Cor ‘ dinationations black card stock which I passed through my texture boutique sanded it and dabbed sliver ink on top. Phew ! goodness me it’s nearly as tiring describing it as it was doing it ! I enjoyed it though and hope you do to.

Mariexx

Firstly please ignore the background ! This time of night ( 12.30 ) I just can’t find a good spot to take a photo, mind you cant find one in the daytime either, so it’s leaning up against a picture frame which of course is visible. I spend ages making the thing only to ruin it with my non existent camera skills, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it ! This is taken with my iphone ,for some reason my scanner works intermittently , it has the final say in what I  post, and my camera takes a worse picture than my phone !

Excuses, excuses I here you say but it’s true I am technically challenged , I have all the gadgets but I don’t know how to use them ! So for those doubting Thomas-es you are quite welcome to visit me here in Greece to see my stuff up close and personal. This tag is for kardkrazy.blogspot.com tag Tuesday and the theme is postcards.

I used once again Crafty Individual postcard stamp ( I do love them does it show ? ) with an image from their mini book people and places , then stamped randomly with more of their postmark stamps and used Ranger brushed corduroy distress ink together with Stampin Up soft suede and tempting turquoise. The paper flower is also stamped with CI script and distressed  ( a bit like myself at this time of night !)

Marie