Friday challenge

Every Friday on Alter Native we are issued with a challenge to be compleated by the following Thursday. Last Friday the challenge was to make 2 ATCs using card for the base, which you must not be able to see and then use only fibre to cover the card and finally add a charm and give it a fancy arty name. One will then be sent to another artist who also took part in the challenge and I will receive another artists ATC. I had great fun with this challenge, both making them and thinking up the arty names with Andrews help. In the end we called the lilac one "lilac in a mellow tone " and the brown one " Nigerian sunset spirit "

I have just found out I won the challenge prize !! I'm so chuffed !!

ATC colour swap

I have just finished my contribution to an ATC colour swap on Alter Native. I chose to use the colour white, which in the end wasn't easy. I decided that for the design to stand out I would have to cheat a little and use a colour for the base, but to make up a bit for the cheat I covered the coloured card with white crumpled tissue paper. Then worked on two designs, white as snow and white as fleece. The sheep have baa written on them with beads. The white paper is my own handmade paper. I had to make 14 in total and am looking forward to receiving 14 different colours from 14 different artists in return.

My Valentine

Instead of a card this year I wanted to give Andrew something different so I drew and cut a heart out of grey board and then covered it with several coats of Blond Moments sweet ruby UTTE powder and on the last coat sprinkled in some of the Blond Moments savoury Autumn UTTE powder . Whilst the UTTE was still wet I pushed in my wing stamps, waited for it to cool the removed them, adding a computer printed "my heart " to finish

Austria in February

We love to holiday in Austria and go several times a year if we can, each time I like to make a diary to write whilst I am there, this is my diary for our week in February in St Wolfgang this year, a great holiday but a little green for the time of year . Great weather for walking though, which we did plenty off and to see a huge bank of Hellebore's that continued as far as the eye could see made up for the lack of snow. I did have a day in the mountains in the snow and built a snowman, so I was happy !

Home sweet home

Instead of a Christmas card for Andrew this year I used an idea I found in a back copy of Somerset Studio and created a little Christmas collage that he could hang up as a Christmas decoration. I enjoyed making it so much I made one for myself and then wanted to work on a larger size, the Christmas ones were only 4x4 inches, and different shape and so came up with this one which can hang in my craft room all year.

I cut a piece of grey board and then collaged book pages over the surface and painted using scraps of paper cut out the shapes needed for the house and ground, printed and antiqued the words using distressing ink then finished it off with a button cat and flower, added the wire ribbons and metal hearts to give it a folky look