Wizards

I spent the day keeping my sister company on the drive to London so she could have a doctor’s appointment. She’s fun to be with and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. One of the stops we made was at a Len’s Mill – an all-around discount warehouse like place. They sell pretty much every household item there is and likely more, including crafting supplies and ……FABRIC!!! My friend and I have decided to make some quilts to be auctioned off as a fund raiser for our local SPCA. ….okay, it was my idea and she just goes along with all my wild ideas…. They desperately need a new building and the fund raising is going strong this year and even though neither one of us has a dog or a cat, we are animal lovers just the same and want to help. So, I put a request out for dog or cat fabric to some of our quilting friends and we got quite a bit of dog fabric in but not much for cats. So I was pleasantly surprised to find on the clearance rack, kitten fabric…..really, really cute kitten fabric. I bought enough to make a quilt for the SPCA and one for my honourary daughter – my oldest daughter’s best friend who calls me Mom2 and I refer to her as daughter 3 ½....I tell people she is only ½ a daughter because her mother wouldn’t let me adopt her. I did pick up a couple more pieces of fabric that I absolutely needed and was on my list to get if it was on sale…and it was…but put some back that I carried around a bit because I’m trying to use up my stash, not add to it. It was hard to do people, hard to do, but back it went. I didn’t buy any crafting items except some Tacky Glue in very small bottles with tight lids that I can refill. Some times I have great restraint, sometimes none at all!

 When I got home I checked the mail box and to my surprise I had a hand painted post card from one of my followers. We started following each others blogs and quickly became blogging friends. This is the beautiful post card she sent me. Thanks Deb. I love it and my sister was in awe over your talent - she really loved it!

She is a wonderful artist. Check out her blog at:

http://learningtojustbreathe.blogspot.com

  

While I was recuperating from my cold last week, I spent some time colouring up some stamped images. Here are two cards, same stamp, coloured in different colours.

Both are coloured with Prismacolor pencils and blended with gamsol.  I actually coloured two with red coats and two with green coats but I just photographed one of each as they are all about the same. These are part of the latest release by Stamping Bella. The stamp came with a sentiment…..”Hope your birthday is pure magic”…..which is stamped on the inside of the card.

The background paper has quite a story! I made it! About a year ago I saw a YouTube video about painting, spraying ink and stencilling your own paper and decided to give it a try. I started out with some very ugly 12.x12 inch scrapbooking paper that I just knew I would never use so I started playing. I missed one crucial step in the process – dry between spraying and painting!!! Most of the paper came out dark brown…which is what happens when you keep spraying on ink without drying between coats. DUH! I figured it out after they were a lovely shade of various browns. 

So, I tried various methods to lighten them – extra gesso, more ink, more paint with limited success. Then I read that if you put gesso on ink, it will soak up the ink and remove some of the colour. See those circles to the left and on top of the wizard wearing the red jacket? That was white gesso applied over a stencil and it did pick up some of the colour underneath. Same as the lighter bits on the other card. I stencilled butterflies, circles and flowers and other things with gesso and let them all dry. It was interesting paper, but still quite ugly. I gave up and set it aside. Then when I made these cards I decided they needed a wild looking background and my ugly homemade paper seemed to jump off the shelf saying use me, use me…so I did….and I’m glad I didn’t toss the ugly paper like most people would have done! Some times it pays to be a bit of a hoarder.

That’s all for a Thursday

Cheers

Violet