Theme Thursday - colour purple & 4x4

This is my first post here at Theme Thursday. I have to admit that I don't use this colour very much so it really was a challenge. Luckily I remembered I had this stamp in my stash from a Christmas card sent by my brother-in-law & his wife a couple of years ago, they live in Adelaide. Hope is is purple enough!

This is a little card that is a mixture of traditional paper & digital (hybrid). I matted & layered a couple of different texture purple card and papers. I then created the background digitally by altering an image of an Australian stamp that had a koala bear on it and then printed it out. I scanned the original envelope that had the purple angel and air mail stamp on it and printed it out at a smaller size to use behind the main image. The main image of the stamp was printed out at a larger size & printed onto photo paper to add a bit of gloss and matted onto a piece of the shiney purple paper.

The kitchen is not far off being finished so perhaps I'll get a bit of crafting in this weekend. Here's to an Arty one!

Drink Wine Card

Just a quick post that I thought might be interesting. If you saw my earlier post for the Arty Girlz challenge #52 this is the same only as a totally digital image. You can see I swapped the music part around (I now remember it was a bit of 7 Gypsies paper I had left over). Sometimes it is quite easy to make a digital and a hybrid project look alike sometimes not. This was one of the easier ones.

Have an Arty day. :)

Arty Girlz Challenge # 55 Clip Art

This weeks challenge at Arty Girlz is to use clip art in your work and amazingly I found nearly all the parts in my project on the Microsoft website. As soon as I saw the ship bow an idea started to form. Please, please tell me it is a Viking ship and not something else!!

The background was left as is with its lovely scrolls in the corners. I extracted the Viking ship from its blue sky background (cutting paper digitally) and made the quotation follow its outline. I digitally cut the compass image with a knife tool to serrate the edges and knocked back the transparency to about 50% to try to replicate vellum and attached it with a couple of staples. The image of the rope was only altered by adding a slight transparency.

I added a bevel & emboss filter effect to some circles for the brads, brushed a pastel effect in blue to grunge the background a bit and added a couple of tattoo type images from my Serif programme to add a salty seafaring touch! Simple I hear you cry, well yes I suppose except that it has taken me two and a half hours to complete. However, during this time, I have been learning as I went. I think it is essential to "Learn something new every day". It is a motto that I like to live to. Have and Arty week and I hope you learn something new today!

Santander

Here are the photo's of the girls trip to Santander. I could not decide which to use so I made a bit of a montage of my favourites using a template that was a freebie from Designer Digitals I think you might find it under ad or web challenge. I have added more segments to it to accommodate more pictures. Just click on them to enlarge.
We left Plymouth on one of the very few sunny days we had in July and the crossing was really smooth. Very impressed with the ship. There is a cinema on board, live entertainment bar and a piano bar, 2 self serve restaurants and a more formal (and less crowded) restaurant plus a great shop and duty free. It does feel a bit weird though that you are on your way to Spain geared up to speak a bit of Spanish and the ship is French so you have to rethink and speak a bit of that - like Merci, bonjour! All the crew do speak English though and are very nice. There is also a pool. It really is a mini cruise.We arrived in Santander to a bit of a dull day on the Monday but it steadily improved and it could not have been hotter in southern Spain I'm sure! The coach from the ferry to the Hotel Chique was in with the price and El Sardinero beach is a real stunner, although it does shrink a little at high tide. We had a relaxing time just wandering, soaking up the atmosphere, stopping for a drink at a cafe, & long lunches - hey - we had to sit down, it was too hot to walk around all day!! One of the best was in the park on the headland. There is a cafe there and we had the best chorizo concoction ever. Do try it out if you ever get there. However the best meal of the trip for me had to be the Italian (yes Italian in Spain!) it was the most fun night which was helped along by the attentive waiter, the meal itself was pretty good too. The crossing back on the Thursday night was a bit rougher and one of the girls felt ill and had to miss the evening meal. I felt fine but you could tell it must have been rough as during the night I kept being woken up as the rocking of the ship made you feel as if you were going to fall out of bed! Honestly, I did not get my land legs back for nearly a week after we got back!! So, I would go to Santander again it is a great beach resort. In many ways it reminded me of Torbay in Devon as it has the same backdrop of green hills behind the town. Next time it would be nice to have a car and see a bit of the country side around. Hope you enjoy the pictures. :)

Meeting the girls for an evening at Wetherspoons (it's birthday time for Jacqui) and realised I have not posted any photo's of Santander yet. Must try to do over the weekend, my excuse is the past few weekends have not had much in the way of free time, and then I have been too tired to do much, perhaps it's my age!!! Also trying to get our kitchen units fitted and all the rest that that entails. Hubby is doing a fine job during the week and doing as much as he can on his own and as his health allows.

Here's to a productive weekend! (Best go easy on the wine tonight then!)

PaperArtsy Christmas Card

I thought I would post an image of the card I made last Christmas. Seeing that I make about 80 of them I am always faced with the same challenge to make a design that
a) does not take forever to make and

b) does not cost a fortune to produce! (It's the monetary challenged thing again).

I bought the ready scored card base & envelopes to match from a stall at Exeter Westpoint last year, I seem to remember they were a bargain - Creative Stiches & Hobbycrafts - the show is on again this coming weekend and my boss has said I can take a holiday day on Friday to go, he's a star! Anyway, I digress.
The backing paper is actually wrapping paper and the corn dolly type star embellishment was from a pack of Xmas decorations, both from IKEA purchased the year before! Don't you just love it when you get an idea that makes use of your stash?
I stamped the image (Paperartsy Xmas plate 3, I really love these stamps and like them even more because I was lucky enough to win them in a competition) with a clear embossing pad onto plain white card stock (10 per sheet I think) and dusted red & green coloured chalks on the surface for a sort of grungy faded aged look and cut them out. I cut the wrapping papers with a decorative wheel on my Fiskars paper trimmer (another lucky win!), which saved an awful lot of time and attached the pieces of raffia in a criss-cross fashion to the front. I then mounted the stamped image onto the front with 3d foam pads and attached the star with silicon glue for strength. I printed out an insert on the computer as below.
I was pleased with the result considering it cost me very little to make, and I still have some of the paper & the raffia left!

Have an Arty weekend.

Just in case you can't read the small wording on the insert it says

" Star of the East, the horizon adorning!

Make a Moo or Two - Budapest

I seem to be doing a lot of firsts this week. Now I have found this site Make a Moo or Two through a link on another blog (don't have clue which one!). I do love a bit of grunge as you can probably tell from the moo's I have made here for this challenge on the theme of Steden van Europa/Cities of Europe which will only just be in time before the next one starts!!

All the images are my own. I was lucky enough to go to Budapest a couple of years ago, somewhere I have had a romantic notion about for years, and it did not disappoint. It was another trip with the girls and I would recommend it to anyone. I watch TW1 in the morning before I go to work to see the mountains of Austria, which I also love, and they show Budapest as well, it's nice to dream.
This is all done digitally, I am sorry if that does not count but I could not see anything that said it can't be and as soon as I saw this idea I couldn't wait to try it out. Anyway, I usually tweak my designs digitally and then get round to trying to replicate them in the real world! The horse statue is actually on the Buda side of the Danube and the Church is on the Pest side. The stamp is from my husbands collection he has had since he was little and I digitally extracted it for this layout.

Have an Arty day - wish it was in Budapest - ah well I will just have to dream.

Arty Girlz Challenge # 52

I am so new to this and this is the first time I have posted anything at Arty Girlz. Just found this blog and thought I would give it a go as there is so much to enjoy here. As I am monetary challenged I do my best with limited funds. Here is a hybrid card that uses digital designs that I have printed out. The background paper was a freebie from Scrapgirls.com, unfortunately I have lost track of where the others were from, very sorry. I printed out the Birthday wishes onto Safemat and made an insert to match. It says "Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Therefore, drink wine and be saved!"

Have an Arty day!

Christmas Blog Candy

Just been over to visit Crafters Kitchen and see there is some christmas blog candy on offer. Why not go and pay a visit and post a link yourself? There are some lovely designs to see whilst you are there.

All you have to do is answer a question - What is your favorite Christmas Eve Preparation?

This was my answer what will yours be?

"Christmas is great I just luuuurv it!! On Christmas Eve believe it or not you will find me boning out a turkey, stuffing it and cooking it. Yes I know life's too short but honestly it is worth the effort and you can't beat a warm turkey sandwich on Christmas Eve. Oh dear I'm salivating already!!!!" http://crafterskitchen.blogspot.com/ (Entries now closed)

New Baby Tag

Life just gets in the way of spending time crafting - Monday to Friday at work and before you know it Saturday & Sunday have vanished into thin air and it's Monday again. I still have not finished my little baby project but I have finally done the tag element that is to go on the front. This baby will be 2 yrs old before they get it if I'm not careful! I have been working on my Christmas card design for this year and that is finalised so that's a relief now all I have to do is make 80 of them. I could post a picture of that but it would spoil it for my friends so I will post a picture of the tag instead. I have used two of my own design digital papers on this. Hope you like. Have an Arty week!

Bebe Button Quilt

As I said the other day I have been working on a hybrid project for a new baby and the digital designs for it have been ongoing for a while. As the parents did not want anyone to know if their bump was a boy or a girl (not even my friend who is the Grandma was in on the secret!), I decided to go with the flow and try to design some papers that would be equally suitable for either. It has been a bit of a challenge!

Voila! Here is the first digital paper I am making available to you from this collection. It is a JPEG image and although you could grab the image by right clicking/save as etc you will find that as it is only 72 dpi it will be pixalated if you enlarge it and what’s more it has my copyright logo on it!

Soooooooo I have made it available in all it’s glory at 300 dpi, just click on the image to go to the download area. Please enjoy using it but don’t forget the copyright rules.

Blog Title Banner

Been working (playing!) most of the evening to make my new title banner. What do you think? I used one of my recent digital paper designs "French Faded Damask" for the backgound. I am working on a hybid project at the moment that uses this and will post the results as soon as it's complete. However, as it's a present for the parents of a new baby boy I'd rather they received it first before the rest of the world/few dozen others saw it. Hope you understand. Watch this space.

Guadi Girls Digital Layout

The girls are off to Santander this year via a mini cruise from Plymouth. Last year only five of us could make it to Barcelona but this year all six of us will be having fun in the sun! Here is the digital layout I created last year for everyone as a memento.


I use a programme called Serif which I find excellent to work with. I am a self taught digital artist and love to dabble, the time just flies by when I am immersed in design. I will be posting more designs in the weeks to come, work permitting!! It would also be nice to pass on some tips and maybe some digital freebies in future as well.
I am an eclectic artist and whilst I am totally into digital I can’t help but combine it with traditional paper for that hybrid look.