A fern ATC

Been a while since I showed you an ATC I've made! 

This one is made with a printed out fern from the Picknix Studio 12 CD. I wanted to show that you can just go simple and bright and get a lovely effect. I used Portfolio oil pastels and drawing pens to colour and decorate it. I do love me a bit of bright!

Studio 12 from Polkadoodles- a giveaway

It's giveaway time over on the Studio 12 from Polkadoodles blog. It is a very easy one to enter..... you need to follow the blog, put a note about the Studio 12 blog on a post or in your sidebar and leave a comment on the giveaway post.

I came across this gorgeous green countryside image on the Picknix CD, and it reminded me of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. I'm already obsessed, I lurve the Olympics, and I enjoyed the opening ceremony immensely. For me, it was a slice of what it feels like to be British, a little bit tongue in cheek, self-deprecating, but very proud to be part of our country. So, I made a journal page to celebrate!

The red and blue swipes are Distress Ink pads- Festive berries and Salty ocean. The clouds have doodled strings, to echo the ones that were led round the Olympic stadium. The green hills and tree have flags made from sections of the fab measuring tape image. I did a little bit of journalling, but not much as I wanted it to stay quite open and clean.

Go Team GB!

I'm entering this into the following challenges:

Secret Crafter Saturday challenge- Bright and cheerful

Crafts and Me challenge- Anything goes

Try it on Tuesday- So very British

Flowers, flowers, flowers..... at Studio 12

Today I want to show you all a card that occurred to me when I saw the wooden fence image on the Picknix CD. I've been looking for a good fence for aaagees. So versatile!

I printed the fence out twice and overlapped them, so that they fit the 6x6" kraft card blank, and coloured it with watercolour pencils- I love watercolouring, the pencils are so forgiving!!! I used 2 colours of brown and a dark grey to add some shadowing. 

This card is a bit of an ode to recycling- the blue strips are from a colour catcher sheet from the laundry- I have a blue top that keeps on running! I always have a couple of flower and leaf punches  on my desk and I punch any scraps of coloured paper instead of throwing them away, so I have a big pot of flowers ready to make summery cards! 

I added green and blue glitter glue, and some fab little doodle dewdrops for flower centres. These are really easy to use, I just stuck them on with some clear adhesive, and they give the card an extra bit of shine and texture.

Studio 12 for Polkadoodles- my first DT project

Oooooh, here's my bit of good news for the month! The lovely Nikky Hall from Polkadoodles has invited me to join her new Design Team for her spanking new Studio 12 range. Lucky me eh? Now I know what some of you will be thinking- that's a digital range- and yes, tis true, I'm working with the Picknix CD, but Nikky has designed it to fit in with the arty, inky, messy crafting stuff I know and love. Hybrid crafting. So.......worth a try, eh?

First project- an art journal page.

I used one of the gorgeous ferns from the Garden kit in the Picknix collection, and enlarged it to fill the length of an A4 white card sheet.

I sprayed the whole fern with lime green and yellow inks- you don't have to be at all perfect about it, any extra splodges outside the lines will be covered up. When it was dry, I painted masking fluid onto the leaves and stem- the masking fluid dries as a rubbery coating and protects what's underneath it.

I then sprayed orange, red and black inks over the top, covering everything, including the masked off leaves. It needed a bit more texture, so I added some torn pages from an old telephone directory and white tissue paper, and sponged through some sequin waste with ink from red, black and white inkpads. 

Now it's time for the magic! Using clean fingers, I gently rubbed the masking fluid, it peeled off to reveal the green leaves underneath. The final touch was the doodling and journalling- the quote is from a film from my teenage years- anyone else remember Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

My idea was to bring some digital elements into my everyday messy crafting. That's what hybrid crafting's all about for me!!!