put the pencil down and step away from the drawing!

I have loved working on the one-eyed-women canvases, they are amazingly relaxing and I will be teaching them at a retreat in August for Cindy at A Scrappe Angels Heaven in Victoria.
I got out my watercolour pad yesterday and my Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils...of course the beautiful glitzy blue and pink shimmer you can see is from Lindy's Stamp Gang



I was going to use my lovely white paint pen to highlight but opted for silver...I think it was the perfect choice as she has such a great shimmer




yes she has lots of detail but it was so hard to know when enough was enough...I still don't know if it is enough...all I know is that I really enjoyed it and it won't be my last one-eyed woman



catching up and a card

I thought I'd share a pic of a class I'll be running next year...it's a card!

I know I have been pretty quiet of late but I am still unpacking from the move...I have so much stuff that I just can't find a place for, it is so frustrating to go from renting a large house to renting a small house. I don't have a studio any more, so it's back to the kitchen table for me and my crafty stash is in just about every room in the house...yup even the kids rooms have crates of my stuff. I am working on a few projects too! I finally had a play with my new Brother ns50 sewing machine yesterday while working on my apron for the international swap I am hosting through Facebook. I am really excited about 2012 because I have been asked to teach in New Zealand! I have a few friends over there and I really hope I will get to catch up with them.

Inspired by Louise Nelson

Before you all start scratching your heads and questioning the happenings of my blog and the appearance of scrapbook pages...relax! It's not my thing, it's not something I'll do a lot of because it's not something that interests me...I do however have quite a few friends who are really in to it, so from time to time I like to try and impress them with my take on scrapping. One of my friends is the founding artist of simplistic scrapbooking, her style is the complete opposite of mine. Louise Nelson likes minimal colour and technique with emphasise on the photo. When I talk to to other people about Lou, the easiest way for me to describe the look is "spit art"...now don't go looking horrified and running off to tell Louise that I am saying horrid things about her work because she knows I love, admire and respect her and her work and she knows exactly what I think because I am honest enough to say it to her. We have had chats about art/craft/scrapping styles and we both like each other. My work is dark and grungey...so what. Anyhoo...Aussie Scrap Source were running a little challenge comp, and Lou shared the link with me...soooo I tried my hand at the style...for me it was really very challenging...fun...but not something I would do again.

At first I found I used too much colour, so I layered crumpled tissue paper over it to fade it out

I used LSG's Starburst Stains to dab some "flowers", and then used a drop of distress re inker, sprinkled with salt, and while still wet I dragged some lines out using an awl...Why salt? because the salt stops the colour from running more than I want, it dries up some of the liquid and leaves a little texture...soooo why not?

a simple black and white photo stapled over a flourish and lace

End result...not too bad. It's good for the artistic soul to leap out of your comfort zone and try something new

A Crown for Jane Clark

My friend Jane Clark is a big fan of scrapbook/craft icon Tim Holtz...and so I decided to create a crown for her using only his signature products. I have kept the piece quite simple...the next T.H crown will be for another friend...and it will be quite different

TH patterned papers

TH die cut flowers

TH grungeboard

TH stickles, distress inks and distress re inkers