ArtyFartyAnnie

Hi everyone! Just to let you let know - Jennifer is having another Blog Event weekend called Frosty Festivities The last blog event at Jennifer's Jumbles was so much fun AND I won a fab prize! It's full of tips and tutorials and challenges and giveaways and it's ALL FREE!!! If you go over there now you can enter a giveaway already - you just have to tell people about it (facebook it, tweet it, pin it, blog it or whatever) and you are in with a chance to win a MME collection. Go on ... you know you want to ... :o)

Hi all - I have THREE tags to show you tonight ... the first one was inspired by the wonderful Tim Holtz, who has been posting an amazing tutorial every month for the 12 Tags of 2012 . Every one is truly inspirational and even though I may not have all the supplies he uses, I've learnt a new technique every time - check it out, you'll be well impressed I promise you ... Anyway, here is my not-quite-so-impressive version! The next one is for the inspirational Tag Tuesday - the theme this week is Hallowe'en and I thought I'd try something a bit different - Beetle Jooce - yum yum! I used a fab rubber stamp to create the outline of the beetles, then had great fun colouring them in with Wispa markers. I like the way the script background shows through. Then I used Glossy Accents to pick them out. The bottle was an image from the Graphics Fairy  , which was cut out and coloured with Distress Inks and then I used Glossy Accents again to give it a glassy effect. Here...

What a gorgeous colour scheme this week, lots of inspiration and brilliant ideas for journalling. Here's the Case File (click on it to enlarge if your eyes are like mine!) I decided to do a fairly formal layout for me - I wanted it to look a bit like a portrait such as my Granny might have hung on her sitting room wall. I love this picture of my Great Grandfather proudly posing with his son, my Great Uncle George, who looks so sweet in his little sailor-style frock! Very sadly, my GGF did not come home from the war - he went to France with the BEF in the very early days of WW1 and was killed in action in January 1915. The picture lifts to reveal a much later photo which shows Great Uncle George as an elderly man visiting his father's grave in a war cemetery in Belgium. The Scheme: I used all the colours The Evidence: Ribbon; foliage; flourishes; b/w patterned paper The Testimony: frame journalling; used an older photo and tied the past to the present with my jou...

I was so short of time this week that I nearly didn't do this week's case for  CSI  but the colours were so tempting I couldn't resist a quick dabble. It only took me a couple of hours, which is very quick for me - 30 mins rummaging about in my stash,  60 mins shuffling stuff about on the page,  30 mins eating cake and looking at the page  30 mins to stick it all down... oh another 15 mins trying to get good photo of it!  But anyway, here is the Case File (you can click on it to enlarge) The colours are the sort of "muted brights" which I love to work with - you have to use all 5 in the Scheme to solve the case. You also have to use at least 2 pieces of Evidence and 1 of Testimony. Here's my Speedy Solution The gorgeous background paper made it easy peasy really. My Evidence: wood grain; texture paste; polka dots; flowers; My Testimony: I journalled around the edge of the page in white pen as follows, "The secret to happiness isn't...

The theme this week is "Seed Heads and Seed Pods" and I had all sorts of arty farty ideas I was going to do with honesty from the garden - it's just at the stage where the seed heads have gone all pretty and papery ... but no, it just would not work out how it did in my head, so I had to Think Again ... and I think that pea pods are still seed pods so this isn't really cheating ... It's photographed against one of my gardening books - inspiration for the herb garden I'm intending to create next year - the tag is cut from a vintage advert to look like a seed packet, then I made the pea pods from scrapbook paper, wrapping it around beads to make the pea shapes. Luckily the paper was quite heavy weight so happily bent into shape. If you would like to have a nose what everyone else came up with, just go over to Tag Tuesday - always inspiring with so many different takes on the same theme. It's BRILLIANT!!!

We wanted to find a really  tasteful , useful and unique housewarming gift for our friends Kate and Michael and we decided that this was the very thing - every home needs one! I started with a vintage Cindy and gave her this stunning makeover whilst watching back to back catch up Downton Abbey. Then I decided to make an accessory set - a Fascinator, Corsage and Hanky ... and 4 extra faces ... this is how she looked with my own face Sppoky or what?! I also did a Trina mask and one each of our hubbies too - HIGH larious!!!

The weather was a bit unpredictable this year so my veggies were Well Confooozed - the courgettes were a hug disappointment after last year's mammoth harvests (this seemed to be partly due to the fact that some of the plants seemed to be male, therefore not fruit bearing - although weirdly some of them swung the other way towards the end of the summer - transgender squashes???). The Tumbling Toms were very late developers, hence I ended up with eight jars of Glutney (see previous instalment); the so-called "climbing beans" could hardly be bothered to leave the ground; the basil finally decided to get going about a month ago, just in time for the cold to kill it off; and the experimental aubergine spent so long deciding whether to come out to play or not that it was just too late - this poor little thing was not destined for greatness It looks all very fine and promising, until you put it next to an apple to show the scale (this is NOT a magic Giant's Ap...

Last week the theme over at Tag Tuesday was Rainy Day - this was my interpretation, based on a story about "Dancing Pennies" which my husband told me His Dad had an interesting turn of phrase by all accounts, and on rainy nights he used to tell the children that they would see "dancing pennies" caught in the headlights of the car as the raindrops bounced off the puddles in the road - you watch next time...it's true! I cut the tag shape from acetate, coloured it with alchohol inks, added gems and irridescent Stickles and a little row of sequinned droplets at the bottom - if you hold it under a light bulb, squint your eyes and jiggle it about a bit it looks much more convincing honest! This week the theme was "Rust" - not surprising after all that rain! Here's my take on it Rather ironically, it is displayed on a copy of Samuel Pepys' diary ... Yes, it's that Tim Holtz die again, and my favourite rustifying technique using heat em...

Gorgeous happy colours for Case File#40 over at CSI  - the Gallery is just mouthwatering this week! Here's the Case File (click on the image to enlarge) These fab colours were perfect for a page about my hen party, because they're like a brighter version of our summer garden party themed wedding colours and they're just so much fun! The CSI Coordinates (brilliant free printables) were amazing as usual and I used lots of them - maybe I will print off a few more to finish my hen party album .... Anyway, here's how I solved the Case The Scheme : I used all the colours and added black The Evidence : ribbons; scallops on the lace; dots and stripes; circular things - acetate frame, buttons, doily, word spot, acetate waste bubbles, sequins; banners; big flower; transparent frame and buttons; numbers - date cut from Coordinates. Testimony : I used the Inspiration Words wish, happy and special. My journaling reads " My hen paty was so special - the girls knew I di...

We had a lovely walk in the Autumn sunshine today - it was so beautiful (if a tad muddy towards the end, but we won't go into that ... well, John went into it, but ...) Anyway, I was inspired to do my tag for Tag Tuesday - this week the theme is Autumn leaves and Carolyn has created a beautiful backdrop for us all to set our creations against - pop over and have a look. Here's my version, photographed out in the garden in that gorgeous sunshine It only took about half an hour to do - I used an embossing punch to cut the leaves from scrap papers, then sanded them a bit and used Distress Ink in Walnut Stain and Orange Marmalade, and finally scrunched and folded them to make them more realistic. I must say I was well chuffed with them and very impressed with the punch, which has been languishing all unloved in the back of a drawer for ages. The finished leaves were stuck on to a Joe Brown clothing tag I'd squirrelled away and I added a piece of unravelled garden twine ...

Case File #39 over at CSI  was full of gorgeous inspiration as always, with a fabulous set of printable Coordinates to go with it of course. Here's the Case File (Click to enlarge the image) As you can see, this month we've had a sketch to follow in order to solve the case, as well as including all the colours in The Scheme, at least two pieces of Evidence and one piece of Testimony. Here is a (particularly poor)photo of my effort ... I think you may be able to tell that my head is all over the place at the moment! I did have a lovely time with it though and that's the main thing!  The Scheme : I included all the colours plus neutrals - I cut out the colour strip and tucked it under the LHS Evidence : rub-ons over the title; leaves - twinkly one and some bright colour skeleton ones; star from the Coordinates; little bits and pieces - lots of rescued items on this page; chalks on the background of the photo; wings on the W, diecut for my butterfly body,...