ArtyFartyAnnie

Hi everyone, Curious title right?! Bet it had you wondering what on earth I've been doing now! Never mind turning straw into gold - now you can turn toilet rolls into leather ... You Tube is full of amazingly creative people sharing their ideas and inspiration and I spend many happy hours watching them - usually on my iPad whilst I'm playing in my craft room. One of my faves is the lovely Einat Kessler . Some months ago I watched Einat create a gorgeous Steampunk-style mini book from toilet roll middles (plus a lot of ink and paper and doodads and whatnots). She showed how to treat the tubes with water and glycerine, scrumple them up, dry them and then use several shades of ink to create this leathery look. Wonderful!! Then she ran them through her Cuttlebug with an embossing folder. I'm not so sure about the look of the embossing and it nearly killed my Cuttlebug, so I might leave it natural next time, but here's how it turned out ...

Hi Everyone, Every 4th week of our Wanderlust adventure, we skip lessons and have the chance to catch up and challenge ourselves with some fun activities. One of the challenges this week was to create an AJ page in 3 ten-minute sprints - OMG!!! I found this REALLY difficult, but strangely liberating, because with only ten minutes to play with, I had to just go for it. The idea is to post a picture of the page at the end of each ten-minute stretch. Here's what I achieved with the first ten minutes on Friday night ... I applied some white gesso through a stencil, then blasted it with the heat gun to dry it off a bit before adding a lot of watery paint and allowing it to dribble down the page, Then in the last few seconds I rubbed some more gesso over the middle part of the page. On Saturday night, I decided to add some contrast with Distress Ink in Twisted Citron, then splashed some white Indian Ink about the place - the ink refused to dry, so I dabbed some of it off,...

 Hi Everyone, I'll be working when this posts itself tomorrow, but hopefully my lovely friend Zsuzsa will spot it and link me up over at Julia's Stamping Ground  and I can catch up with everyone over the next few days. Pop over and join us if you fancy showing the world What's On YOUR Workdesk Wednesday - or just come and have a good old snout around see what everyone else has been up to this week. Here's mine this as it looked this afternoon ... The beginnings of yet another miniature kit from China - a really cute caravan with a music box and working lights woooohooooooo!!! In front of it you can see a stencil which my son made for me on his 3D printer today.

Hi everyone, For Week Six of Wanderlust 2017 , we had a lesson with the amazing Amanda Grace , who showed us how to do an image transfer with sticky tape and create a beautiful background on which to write a love letter. Mine turned out very differently to Amanda's, but I was so inspired by her techniques ... My image transfer didn't work too well, wrong type of printer possibly, but I really enjoyed building layer upon layer of colour and pattern and texture with paints, papers and ink. I loved the way Amanda used white ink to write on the dark parts and black ink on the light parts, so I explored this idea and way off in a different direction. Here's a close-up, where I'm about to start layering over the background writing, using a stencil which my son made for me on his 3D printer ...

Hi everyone, Have you discovered Querkles yet?! They're another take on the colouring book craze that shows no signs of abating yet I'm glad to say. My good friend Trina gave me a Querkles book for Christmas and I LOVE it, because although the image is already there, it's kind of hiding, and you have lots of scope for creativity in how you choose to complete it. Here's one of my faves so far ... Jim Morrison - black ink When you first look at the page, all you can see is an apparently meaningless mass of overlapping circles - it's almost impossible to make out a face, let alone decide whose face it is. As you work, a familiar face starts to emerge and once you start it's really difficult to stop!

Hi Everyone, Well I just can't get enough of these miniature room kits from China - I've made four already and ordered some more. NO idea where they are going to go, I don't have room to display them - I just can't stop!! :o) I will probably finish them  off with the acrylic casings and give them to friends and relatives to use as novelty nightlights as they have tiny LED lights inside - so cute when they're all lit up! Here are all the ones I've finished so far ...

Hello everyone, My regular bloggy friends may or may not recognise this page in my latest art journal ... It started off like this ...

Hey everyone, Just a quick update on my recycled T-shirt project. So far, I have transformed my manky old T (which wasn't good enough for the charity shop) into this useful ... errmmm .... potholder!! I still have all of these to cut up and play with ... The fabric produced by double/treble crocheting the "yarn" is firm but flexible and fairly dense. I think it would make good rugs, bags and little baskets ... watch this space!! Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon :o) Annie xxx

Hello Everyone, I missed WOYWW #401 as I was away last week, but I plan to do some catch-up snouting later on today when I get home from work. Hopefully the lovely Zsuzsa from Inky Dinky Doodle will link me up over at Julia's Stamping Ground - why not join in the fun and show us what's been happening on YOUR workdesk this week?! Here's mine ... ...on which you can see evidence of the fatal consequences of too much tidying - in a fit of enthusiastic organising, I managed to knock my treasured 1/12th scale husband and wife off of a high shelf, breaking both the lady's legs and decapitating her husband. Hopefully, by the time t=you read this, I will have performed miraculous surgery and they will be restored to full health :o) Thanks for popping in today, I'll catch up with everyone over the next few days - see you at Julia's! Annie xxx

Hi everyone, You know how sometimes one of your faithful old T-shirts finally gives up the ghost and you really CAN'T wear it any more? It's not good enough to give to the charity shop, but it seems a shame to throw it away??? Well, I have several scraggy old T-shirts like that at the moment, and I've been toying with various ideas I've seen on YouTube for making good use of them. Here's the first idea I decided to try - you cut around in a spiral, gradually reducing the garment to a continuous narrow length of "yarn" ...