ArtyFartyAnnie

Hi everyone, It's the last day of April, so there will be a new inspiration kit up on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog tomorrow. I've really enjoyed being a Guest Designer and I've made a special effort to use up as much as possible of my kit, which I called Spring is in the Air . Here's my last page, not quite finished, alongside the remains of my kit ... Thanks again to Master Forger Tina for inviting me, it's been a blast - if you haven't tried making a Counterfeit Kit before, check it out, it's such a great way to get you looking at that stash in a whole new way and enjoying using it all up! Can't wait to see what's in store for May :o) It occurred to me that I've been a Guest Forger and a CSI Detective at the same time this month - sounds like I'm some kind of double agent or something hehehe. Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon! Love Annie xxx

Hi there my Friends in Blogland, I've been on a mission to use up my April Counterfeit Kit  before the end of the month, which is .... tomorrow ... eeek!! One great way to use up loads of patterned paper and embellishments is to make mini books, so that's what I decided to do. Here are the FIVE little books I finished this weekend ... These all have loads of space for small photos, notes and mementoes. I think they'll make nice little gifts for friends and family - and they used up LOADS of stuff from my kit. The two in front are "meandering albums" made from one sheet of 12"x12" double-sided patterned paper. They're very easy and quick to make - you'll find loads of videos on YouTube showing you how - and each has seven pockets for tags. At the back, you can see three "trifold shutter albums", which are full of interactive elements, and space for pictures and mementoes. I watched Paige Evans making one of these cute l...

Hello Bloggy Friends, Today I've been busy using up my April Counterfeit Kit and I'm very nearly there - I think by tomorrow I'll have just a few bits and bobs left. Here's a page I made this afternoon - very quickly, because the design was already there on the patterned paper ... Mind you, as this page is all about my BFF Trina and I enjoying ourselves at a  GoGo Dayaway  called "Stitched Happy", I am itching to go back in and add some stitched details to this gorgeous paper, one of the techniques we learned at the GoGo event - so it's not really quite finished :o) I also mixed in some really elderly stickers and and assorted alphas from my stash - so good to enjoy using up all this stuff!! Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon! Love Annie xxx

Hi Guys, The challenge for April over at GoGoGetaway  is to be inspired by the word ... "Abundance" I decided to throw together an abundance of washi and watercolour to make a very colourful page featuring my lovely step-granddaughter Macy carefully holding her new little brother Finley ... I also used some of my abundance of eyelets and a few items from my current Counterfeit Kit "Spring is in the Air". Here are some close-ups ... Thanks to Claire from Scrappy Nerd UK for sharing lots of creative ideas for using washi tape - she has made a whole series of videos on her You Tube Channel . The great thing is that making this page has made me fall back in love with my eyelets and Cropadile and washi tapes. Thanks for checking out my blog today. Why not enter the GoGoGetaway challenge yourself? You have until the end of the month - share your page on  the FB page and you'll be entered in the Prize Draw :o) See you again soon! Love Annie x...

HI everyone, I've been enjoying playing along with CKC as a Guest Designer for April and today I have a page to show you which I made for Challenge #2. Our inspiration kit was this one from Button Farm - I loved all the fresh bright colours and watercolour elements. Click here to see my version, and there's a video tutorial showing how I made my Forgeries on the Fourth, playing with my Distress Oxide Inks to create watercolour effect embellishments. Here's Challenge #2 -  As Fresh as Springtime -  What is Spring like where you live? Do you do anything special in the Spring that you don’t do throughout the other seasons of the year? Is Spring special to you in any way?. Make a Spring-themed project (layout, card, pocket page, etc.) One of the things we love about spring is waiting for all the colourful bulbs to start flowering, it's a sign that warmer, longer, brighter days are on the way and the sight of a mass of cheerful daffodils never fails to make us s...

Hi Guys, When my BFF Trina and I heard about the GoGo Dayaway event in July called "Collections and Confections", using Prima Confections Pastel Dreams Watercolours, we really REALLY wanted to go, as we both had Prima Watercolour sets we hadn't used yet. Unfortunately, it clashed with other things, so we couldn't go ... and we decided to have our own mini workshop at home, for just the two of us. We called it our Watercolour Weekend and we had a brilliant time making pretty messes :o) I did a lot of experimenting beforehand, trawling the internet for different ways to use watercoour paints - there is so much inspiration out there! Finally, I came up with six pages we could make, using our watercolours and NO patterned papers whatsoever. Here's one of the pages, using heat embossing as a resist technique and then applying watercolour paints to create an ombre effect ... I love this beautiful photo of my niece Bex and her daughter Kerrilouise looking to...

Hi Guys, It's the 15th of the month, so it's time to reveal another Case File from CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration.  Super Sleuth Debbi Tehrani has found another interesting Scene for us to investigate ... I love the zingy yellows against the black, white and grey, and there are loads of details we can pull out to inspire us. Check the CSI blog for the full Case File - you can choose to follow all the clues, or just take your own inspiration from the image to create your scrapbook page. Here's how I solved this case ... All the colours in the Scheme are here; from the Evidence list you can see stripes, text pattern, circles, heart and frames; from the Testimony list, I plan to write my journaling inside that top frame, but I need to check a couple of details first! The home decor theme made me think of fabric and paint swatches as I was creating my page. No patterned papers were used in this layout, instead I enjoyed playing with my watercolour paints, m...

Hi Everyone, I'm really enjoying being Guest Designer over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge for April. Our inspiration kit for this month is this one from Button Farm  and I loved all the bright, fresh colours and watercolour effects. Check out my version, which I called " Spring is in the Air ". I also made a YT video tutorial about my Forgeries on the Fourth if you're interested to see how I made them. Today is the 12th, so it's time to reveal the first challenge for the month, set for us by Master Forger Tina  - Challenge # 1 Easter -  Easter is a big deal at our house with yearly Easter Egg hunts for the grandkids :) so lots of fun memories to scrap. Make a Easter-themed project (layout, card, pocket page, etc.) Here's my take on this challenge ... For us, the Easter Bank Holiday Weekend is when we drive up to Lincoln to visit John's Mum, the lovely Vivienne, shown here modelling an Easter bonnet made by one of the children who visi...

Hi everyone, My friend Trina and I recently went to a Tando Creative workshop and had the most brilliant time. We had a whole day with the lovely Di Oliver (the DO in Tando) on the Saturday, a mini workshop with the talented Hannah Oxberry  on Saturday evening, and finally the whole of Sunday with the inspirational Andy Skinner . They are all wonderful mixed media artists, we enjoyed every class and learned such a lot from them. As always, I am a slowpoke and still haven't finished the box we made with Di, or the little book we made with Hannah, but I did manage complete the altered sketchbook we did with Andy and i was just SO thrilled with it ... We started with a plain black hardbacked book, which we coated with gesso, then we added greyboard pieces from Tando as in the picture below ... Then came layer upon layer of various media to create a beautiful distressed effect with faux rust, chipped edges and cracked paint. There was a scary moment when we were all in l...

Hello Everyone, It's the 4th of the month, so it's time to reveal the "forgeries" I made for my April Counterfeit Kit , which I called " Spring is in the Air ". Click here to see a video about how I made these ... The inspiration kit from Button Farm had lots of die-cut elements such as tags, speech bubbles, banners and butterflies... I loved the fresh, fruity colour scheme and the hand-painted look of some of the papers and cut-aparts, with semi-translucent colours overlapping each other ... My kit included several Distress Oxide Inks, and I decided that this was the perfect time to use them. The colours I used were: Cracked Pistachio, Fossilized Amber, Worn Lipstick, Abandoned Coral, and Seedless Preserves. I love how these inks layer over each other and react with water to create such beautiful effects.  I hope you like my "Forgeries" and enjoy watch my little video. What would you counterfeit from this kit? :o) T...

Hi Everyone, Inspired by a lesson with the love Kasia for Wanderlust 2018, I took a photo of myself in the wee small hours of one sleepless night last week and had a go at a self portrait. Kasia encouraged us to write a positive message to ourselves in our hair - so I gave myself crazy wild hair and wrote my message in pink paint pen ... It was a strange experience, as my drawing seemed to morph through various members of my family - my uncle, my mother, my father, both my sons, back to my uncle again and finally it felt like me. It was a battle which I had to walk away from a few times before I was happy with it, but I'm glad I didn't give up.  My message to my self is "You are beautiful on the inside" (so don't worry about the funny-looking, baggy old face you wear on the outside) :o)xxx Thanks for visiting my blog today, see you again soon!  Love Annie xxx

Hi everyone, The monthly challenge over on the GoGoGetaway blog for March was to scraplift this lovely fun page designed by Terri ... For my page, I changed things up a little bit - only using two photos and starting with plain white paper, but I took the idea of mounting the pictures on tags over to the left over a painty background, adding clustered embellies around them, with a subtitle top left and the main title bottom right ... My watercolour paint set was used to create the painty background and freehand the word "Cool", which I cut out and doodled around. The tags and flowers were handcut from paper scraps and I mounted the whole thing on a black/white patterned paper to frame it.  Check out the GoGo blog and Facebook page, you'll find loads of inspiration there and each time you enter the monthly challenge, you'll be entered in the Prize Draw.  Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon!  Love Annie xxx

Hi everyone, Today is the 1st of April, so it's time for the first Case File of the month over at CSI: Color,Stories, Inspiration . This month, we have a gorgeous, whimsical image to inspire us ... In order to solve this Case, you can either draw your own inspiration from the Scene, or go to the CSI blog and scroll to the bottom of the reveal to find lots of clues to help you. You will also find some amazing inspiration from the CSI Detectives and all our Guest Designers for this month. Here's how I solved the case ... I don't have any llamas in my stash, but I loved the whimsical, hand-painted feel of the inspiration image, so I wanted to capture that in this page featuring my little step-grandson Finley. I used all the colours in the Scheme; several pieces of Evidence (included solid background, clouds, flowers and stamps; from the Testimony list, I chose to write my journaling directly on the page.  The only piece of patterned paper I've ...

Hello everyone, Welcome to my stop on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop. Hopefully you've arrived here from the CKC blog and your next stop will be Margie . Scroll to the bottom for a full list. I was very excited when Tina Campbell, one of the Master Forgers over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog, invited me to be a Guest Designer for April :o) CKC is a fabulous challenge - it really gets you thinking outside of the box and looking at your crafty stash with new eyes. There is always lots of inspiration on the blog, with challenges throughout the month and a link-up so you can share your projects. The inspiration kit for this month is the Button Farm "Everyday Documented Page Kit"  ... I loved the fresh, juicy colours in the kit and the hand-painted look of some of the papers and embellies. With all the flowers, fruit and butterflies it reminded me of spring (which is just arriving here in the UK), so I've called my version "Spring is in...