Black, White and One

Hello! For the first time in ages, I'm participating in a challenge! The challenge over at Challenge YOUrself caught my eye. It's black, white and one - and you have to include yourself in the photo. I'm a bit of a fan of  black and white so I thought I'd give it a go.

We had a recent holiday in Queensland and I thought I'd scrap something from that trip but not many pics had me in them! I eventually found one, and it relates to a story I really wanted to scrap, so it was perfect.

The fun challenge about this was that the chook was purple and it was obvious that purple had to be my 'one' colour. This is not a colour I use often but I think it suited the topic well.

I had my first real play with some of the leaves from the new Trees & Leaves stack over at ArtStacks. They were so much fun! Being printed on mixed media paper, I could colour them with watercolours to match my page. I left one type white in keeping with the black and white theme.

Going to the Tambo Chook Races was a hugely funny night. Aussie friends, if ever you get the chance to go there, do it!

I'm joining in over at Challenge YOUrself.

Happy scrappin'!

Heather

 

It's Spooky Time at More Than Words

Hello. Have you heard - the More Than Words Mini Challenge is back! This month, you have to create a card, tag, ATC or postcard with the word SPOOKY on it.

I created a tag:

Almost everything on the tag is from ArtStacks - the tree, the cat, the background paper and the cute, somewhat worried-looking little boy! The boy is from Lorraine Haight Moraine's CoreStack. I think he's adorable!

Will you join us this month? Head to the new More Than Words Art Cafe to join in!

Happy spookin'!

Heather

Christmas Card Recipe #1

Welcome back!

I'm running a new series of tutorials called Christmas Card Recipes over the next couple of months. These tutorials will show you how to make cost-effective yet eye-catching Christmas Cards. I give you a list of ingredients (most of which you will have in your stash) plus costs and how to put them together.

This is Christmas Card Recipe #1. The full recipe is available over at ArtStacks so, rather than have me re-write it all here, just head to www.artstacks.com.au/blog/ 

I hope you can join in the fun!

Happy craftin'!

Heather

It's Manga Time at Kraft Plus!

Manga! Ooohh yes, this is a challenging challenge isn't it? There have been some great interpretations of the challenge already though. This topic is more flexible than you might first think! 

I'm lucky that both my kids loved manga as they were growing up. Courtney has made some amazing manga drawings and paintings over the years so I thought I'd create about some of those. For a fun twist, I embellished the page with ArtStacks flowers and butterflies as Courtney drew those as well. 

Will you join us over at Kraft + this month? 

www.kraftpluschallenges.blogspot.com

Happy scrappin'!

Heather

More Than Words is Back!

Hello and welcome to some exciting news! After a few months' break, More Than Words is back!

We have made some changes and the first one you'll notice is that the new More Than Words Main Challenge is for art journals only. Yes, a dedicated art journal challenge!

Here's the first challenge board:

What a cool challenge! Here's what I made for it.

I used the 'write' theme as inspiration for my title. This tissue title from ArtStacks was perfect. I LOVE how the ArtStacks tissue just disappears into the background. I also wrote some journaling at the bottom of the page.

I made an image transfer from a magazine, then cut the words form the same magazine to describe my girl's story plus I used some paper from the same magazine as backing for my page.

I can't wait to see what you create! Head to www.morethanwordschallenge.com for all the details.

Happy journaling!

Heather

Nanny's Flower Quote

Hi there! Today I have a step-by-step tutorial showing how you can use scraps to create beautiful backgrounds. I made this background entirely from scraps from The Homemaker stack plus a piece of paper that I geli-printed myself.

I started my art journal page by adding some colourful scraps of paper behind some pianola roll paper from The Homemaker stack. The dots on the pianola paper allow the coloured paper to show through, creating a cool effect.

I then layered on random scraps from The Homemaker stack plus some more of the coloured geli-printed paper.

I really like the rows of coloured dots created by the pianola roll paper over the coloured paper so I decided to reinforce this by making rows of larger dots. l used a standard hole-punch to punch out lots of small circles and glued these in rows. I also added the negative strips from those dots plus some more coloured paper. I painted pink around the edges of the pages and added a rose, again from The Homemaker stack.

I wanted to add my crazy stitching around the edges of the page but I had other art on the back of these pages and the stitching would show on them so I took more scraps from The Homemaker stack and added lots of stitching to them then glued those to the page.

The final step was to add butterflies, a flower and a quote from the Anemones & Friends CardStack. In the stack, the quote is attributed to Walter Hagen, however my mother-in-law used to use this quote a lot so I'm attributing it to her! I finished by using a black pen to finalise the border and highlight the rows of dots.

I love using up leftover scraps to create with!

Happy creating!

Heather

A New Kraft + Challenge!

 Hello there!

Oh gosh - the new challenge over at Kraft + is a beauty this month. You have to be inspired by Laura Horn. Laura's work is beautiful - I really love it. There's lots of watercolour and abstract shapes.

I created my background using Laura's work as my inspiration then added an Altered Ancestor figure and a quote from Lorraine Haight Moraine's new stack over at ArtStacks. There's a double-artist inspiration on this one!

I'm still using my collaged sheet made up of leftovers on my desk that are largely from "The Homemaker" stack at ArtStacks. I cut rough circular shapes from it to add to this background. I really love these!

I hope you can join us at Kraft +. You can find the challenge details here.

Happy creating!

Heather