It's the Final Countdown

Hello all and a slightly belated happy New Year!  (Anyone singing along after that post title is revealing their age!)  Just squeaking in under the promised wire (to share the rest of the Advent Countdown tags before the end of the 12 Days of Christmas - 6th January)... here are the remaining December tags, with a shot of the whole collection at the end.

Here's a sneak peek of the final arrival...

The last of the juniper berry backgrounds (using my PaperArtsy EAB28 Juniper Edition) were the last of the red and green collection... 

And then it really became all about the winter delights of Uncharted Mariner Distress Ink as a colour.  Obsessive, me?  Really?!  And texture too, of course... 

These two don't actually belong together as a pair, but they got made and posted at the same time.  Each of them does have a partner in the collection - you'll see them united at the end of the post.

Some more juniper berries to finish things off... and we all know who appears at the end of the Advent Countdown!

The making and posting wasn't quite daily, but when you work with pairs, trios and groups, you end up with enough to cover the full 25 day Advent Countdown even if you're not making something every single day!

Some of these pairs and trios were made together.  Some collections came about from a bunch of backgrounds all made at the same time, but then each individual tag was finished off separately - but usually done to "match" whatever had gone before.  Batch making does save thinking time!

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I know for lots of you Christmas is a dim and distant memory now, but I'm enjoying the final days of peace and quiet by the tree before it comes down.  

Chaos is about to kick in, as I'm heading to the UK for three months of work with the Royal Shakespeare Company again.  I'll be packing a travelling stash, of course, but I don't know how much time or energy I'll have for creating.  Working on a show is always pretty demanding, and I'm going to miss the Czech countryside very much (and my mother too!)... but digging deep into Shakespeare again is going to be a really stimulating and satisfying way to start the year.  

I hope that 2023 is offering you the right balance of peace and excitement, and I wish you all the very best year possible.

Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

And now we welcome the New Year... full of things that have never been.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Dreams, Thoughts, Moments

Hello all, and thank you so much for stopping by.  I'm in denial about the date (moving is imminent), but I can't deny that it's Friday and time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey.  The wonderful Toni is our host, and she's looking for Pairs, Trios and Sets.  This is definitely a challenge after my own heart - I create in pairs, trios and sets more often than not, so here's what I came up with...

There's obviously a wealth of inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides over at A Vintage Journey, but before you go, let me share a few close-ups and details of this leafy tag trio.  I'll try to keep it short, as I don't have many spare moments as I try to bring my dreams and thoughts to fruition by moving to a new country in the middle of a global pandemic!!

I'm mostly crafting in quick sessions and then throwing things together from those sessions.  So the backgrounds were from some quick inky playtime to start the day before packing.

There are both Distress Inks and Oxides here - a range of colours, not sure I can be comprehensive with a list of colours...

... but somewhere in there are definitely Vintage Photo, Crackling Campfire, Faded Jeans, Broken China, Walnut Stain, Rusty Hinge, Stormy Sky.

And then just lots of dipping and smooshing and water-spritzing, always drying between layers to get the inky splotches I love.

The other crafting session was one inspired by Tim Holtz's Saturday demo on leaf-making... not that I need any encouragement to make autumn leaves, as anyone who's been paying attention around here lately could tell you.

But I did have a lovely time playing with inks, dies, embossing folders, stamps, mica sprays, and gilding wax to create this pile of leaves ready for shushling through.

Many are cut using the Fall Foliage Thinlits dies, some of which have stamping to give the impression of vein texture while some have the wonderful 3D Leaf Veins embossing folder adding glorious actual impressions.

Some come with their own embossing built in - the dark Impresslit leaves, for instance...

And some come with their own embossing folder included with the die - these large Layered Leaf ones, which have been longtime favourites.

The shimmers of Treasure Gold White Fire gilding wax add to the burnishing of the Distress Mica Spray which you can see gleaming in places.

So, with the backgrounds and the leaves all ready to go, it was just a question of grabbing a couple of other bits and bobs to create my little collages for each tag.  I try to position things so that it creates a nice journey for the eyes travelling from tag to tag as well as looking at the whole set.

Photobooth photos often seem to do the trick.  They're really useful when you're creating a set or group because you have an element which is the same, but always different because each face, each personality is different.

Though I will confess I deliberately sought out some nice cheerful expressions for this particular trio... trying to keep my own chin up as moving day draws closer and there still seems to be a LOT to do.

The cheesecloth scraps serve a double function - creating a pale layer between the leaves and the background, so that they show up better...

... and creating lots of movement and delicious organic randomness with the frayed threads escaping all over the shop.

The film strip offers great vertical architecture to give the otherwise organic and scruffy collaging a sense of structure.

It also catches the light beautifully - which, as regulars will know, is an ongoing obsession in my creative journey.

There have to be words - this is Words and Pictures after all...

... so I did a bit of snipping of some Quote Chips to get individual words to suit my mood and the look of the tags.

And a bit of Rusty Hinge/Crackling Campfire/Vintage Photo blending around the edges makes them pop as well as tone in with the autumnal theme all around them.

Some simple fine twine to top things off, and we're pretty much there, I think.

I hope you'll be inspired to create some Pairs, Trios or Sets this month with us.

There are some wonderful projects over at A Vintage Journey to help kick you into action so do take a look.

As always, we'll be picking some of our favourites to feature on our Pinworthies Pinterest boards at the end of the month.  So I hope we'll see you somewhere down the road with your group projects!!

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  Stay safe, stay well out there - or even better, stay in and stay creative.  See you all again soon.

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and colour are their last days.
John Burroughs

Country View Challenges are playing Anything But A Card this month so I'd like to play along

At Tag Tuesday the new theme for this fortnight is Texture - plenty of that going on here!

Almost all these leaves are dry Embossed so I'm sharing them at Try It On Tuesday

Spring Greens

Hello all!  I hope you're enjoying some spring time weather (if you're in the northern hemisphere, of course... otherwise perhaps you're enjoying some cooler days after the summer heat).  Even if you haven't got actual spring, I've got some fresh spring greens and vivid light to share with you today in one of my art journals.  (It's one of those long posts about the twists and turns in the creative process, so make sure you have a refreshing beverage to hand.)

It's doubtful whether I'll ever actually complete a whole journal, since I have so many of different sizes, shapes and papers on the go at once, but this Dina Wakley Media Journal is starting to look pleasurably bulky, even though there's still a way to go before it's even half full.






This page was definitely triggered by the Green theme over at Art Journal Journey this month.  And there are a couple of other green-tinged challenges around at the moment, so it will fit in nicely with those too.













But mostly I was inspired by that breath of spring in the air that has been doing its best to break in despite the winds and rain.  Every now and then, one of those fresh spring mornings dawns clear and bright and blue-skied, and the air feels softer on the skin as you step outside.












The birds are full of song, and the trees have those vivid light green leaves and buds so particular to this time of year.  Spring flowers brighten garden beds, hedgerows and roundabouts, their delicate heads bobbing in the (still pretty stiff) breezes.












It's a magical time of year, and I hope some of that feeling has rubbed off on my art journalling spread.















I started with some Idea-ology tissue paper, torn and glued in place on the side I planned to use.















I then gesso'd over it all to soften the look.  As I was adding the white, some of it got on the facing page of burlap so I deliberately added more gesso to that scrumptious texture, thinking that it would be a good start for whatever eventually happened on that page.













Almost before I knew what I was doing, I'd torn some more of the tissue, glued it down and gesso'd that too.  Seems like we're doing a double-page spread after all!












Next step, stencilling...  And since this was happening quite early on, I wanted to make sure it would stay put as much as possible, so I used Archival inks in Olive and in Leaf.













I blended them on, alternating them to get the shifting tones of green, as though sunlight is dappling the leaves.

They make me very happy, just as dappled sunlit leaves do in real life!








It took a while to work out what I wanted to add next.  But after discarding a couple of half-made tags which I'd thought might work (they just didn't make me happy)...







... I decided I couldn't go wrong with adding some crackle texture while I was debating.  You can see the before and after on either side here.











It was a happy accident which led me to this glorious photo of the tiny spring seedlings sprouting up through some moss.  It was tucked in a pile of scraps and tags on my craft table.












I think it may have come from a Neal's Yard Remedies catalogue, or possibly a Woodland Trust magazine.  Either way, it was love at first sight.  I don't work with photos much (other than people - Photobooth pictures or Paper Dolls), but this one I snipped out and put aside for future use. 

It came to the surface at just the right moment... springtime serendipity.











I was still faffing over the idea of using my springtime tags as background layers.  Pure chance, but the colours worked brilliantly with the photo... but in the end I followed my gut instinct which wanted an altogether lighter, less blocky look.












Tim Holtz's lovely new ephemera, all nature expedition-based, arrived just in time to play a part in this page spread.














Anyone who's a regular here won't be surprised that I yielded to temptation on these designs.

They complement my crafting obsessions too well for me to resist.  Tucked in and around the photograph, they add a touch of the Victorian naturalist, collecting and labelling every specimen.














Over on the burlap side, they adorn a couple of simple die-cuts.  I really love the handwriting added to the specimen labels.














I did some inky outlining of the photo and the ephemera using my dip pen with some white ink, which feels like adding some of my very own "handwriting" or at least mark-making to the mix.












This little chap is amazing... not that I'd like to catch him feasting on any of my plants, of course.

Oh look, that's also given away the author of the quote over on the facing page...














It's one of the quotes from my PaperArtsy EAB06 Spring Edition collection, and it's one that definitely makes my heart quiver in response... 












It's one of those times when somebody has managed to sum up in a few poetic words a sensation I recognise completely.














You probably caught sight of some stamping layered under the quote strips there...  Yes, I also yielded to the complementary stamp set, Field Notes.













It's full of little labels and botanical illustrations and I can see it being in almost constant use.















(If you check back on those spring tags which didn't make the final cut, you'll see I'd already inked some of them up for those too.)
















I used the Pumice Stone Distress Crayon to heighten the crackle detail across the pages.
















I really wanted the page to stay fairly light and bright - that vivid spring air, you know - so I gave it a good spritz of water so that I could wipe away all the crayon from the surface, leaving it just in the cracks.















I love how natural it looks, maybe like silver birch bark, and it's great over the tissue paper designs in the background, as well as over the burlap texture on the right-hand-page.
















I love the stencilled Archival inks over the burlap too.














I did try some burlap twine which I thought might create a nice echo tangled across the white page, but again I decided to prioritise my white space and that lighter-than-air springtime feeling.













You'll spot that the die-cuts got whiter and brighter in the end too, rather than pink and green.

I think it was the right choice - a better echo of the light white brightness over on the left.  And they also show up better against the burlap.















(By the by, I'm well aware of the pun in the post title... I've been eating lots of spring greens this week, so it was an obvious choice.)











This page spread really makes me very happy, just like the signs of springtime do in real life.  It's just as well given the difficult times we are clearly all going to be facing in the days, weeks and probably months to come.  We're going to need to remember to take delight in the spring breezes, in tree blossom and sprouting bulbs, in the trill of birdsong, and the ever bluer skies.

Of course, since there's no risk of infection in this online community, we can also take delight in the shared creativity here in Craftyblogland.  However isolated we may have to get physically, there's still warmth and communication and friendship galore right here.  Aren't we lucky?!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and bearing with me through this mammoth post - virtual hugs all round!  I'll be by to catch up (again) on some visiting soon.  Wishing you all a creative weekend - stay safe, and I'll see you soon.

When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.
Eihei Dogen

I'd like to share this at Art Journal Journey where the lovely Eileen would like us to play with Green
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they are also looking for A Bit O' Green (there's a bit more on this than on my previous entry!)
The More Mixed Media Challenge are playing Anything Goes with an Optional Twist of Green
Oh, and I've just spotted Use Some Green is the theme at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge too... done!