Number cruncher

I am so on a roll with these A-Z journal pages now, I'll be caught up in no time!

The trick seems to be not horrendously overcomplicating them - this was another nice, quick page.

This page - N for Numbers - celebrates my love of maths back in my school and Uni days - it was such a rush to solve a particularly troublesome equation - ahhhhh, sweet memories :)

It also touches on the fact that I am lucky enough to have carried my love of maths into my career as a statistician.

And it's no shock that I have ended up falling in love with hockey, the statistic obsessed sport :)



A quick how to.

I printed some graph paper from the internet, and aged it a little with old paper and antique linen distress inks.

The background is a Paper Artsy numbers collage, masked a little to ensure no overlaps.

The tags were dampened and crumpled and dyed with peeled paint and frayed burlap distress inks.

Each tag was topped with a little torn piece of sandpaper and a piece of 7 Gypsies number gaffer tape - and the appropriate number of small button brads.

Finally, I thought for once I would surround my journalling with the ubiquitous curly brackets - because on this page, they actually make sense :) They were cut freehand from black card.

th-th-th-that's all folks.

Until the letter O.

I got the music in me

And it's yet another A-Z journal page - that's 3 in 2 days!

And I am now officially 50% of the way through my book. Yay :)

This was a quick and easy one - all I can manage on a work night really.

I printed the band / crowd silhouette onto some textured card, sealed it with acrylic spray, and then went over it with a Versamarker pen and embossed with one layer of UTEE (because I like the bumpiness)

Then I sponged various colours of bright dye inks (Kaleidacolor, Adirondack and Stampin Up) into the "air" above the band, and using post it notes as a mask, I made spotlight beams with white pigment ink applied with cut and dry foam.

A bit of black pigment ink sponged around the outside as a vignette, and the stamped / handwritten title, finished it off.

I like how this has turned out - I can see me maybe using the same design one day for a quick teenagers' birthday card - my only regret is that the bottom Bind It All hole obliterated a cool rock hand :)

I am hoping I might even get another page done tomorrow night, fingers crossed.

Finally a bit of catch up on my A-Z Journal

I'm still behind, but now only 5 letters, not 7, and am starting to cultivate a glimmer of hope that I can catch up....

(not that I have the foggiest idea what I'm going to do for O, or for Q.... but will cross that bridge later)

K was a no brainer - this is supposed to be an A-Z of what makes me tick, after all. So K is for Kes.... my Krazy Kanuck Krush :) (ouch)

I was going for a pop art / offset print type of look on this one - but it has just ended up looking like he has kind of mutant shoulders :) Never mind, eh :)

(in reality, he has mighty fiiiiine shoulders, let me tell you :))



The second page features a beautiful photo of my mum, taken by my dad a long time ago. The original scan from my dad's photo album is below.

I used Photoshop to render the photo (extract it from its background), and sepia tone it. Then I printed the picture directly onto a sheet of cardstock that had been crumpled, tapped with distress ink pads in antique linen and tattered rose, sprayed with water and then ironed flat.

After sealing the print with an acrylic spray, I oversprayed it with a light application of Glimmer Mist in irridescent gold and then matted the page onto some paper with a houndstooth check pattern - which appealed to me for this page on my mum because she was such a snazzy dresser - always stylishly and immaculately turned out. So unlike her scruffy daughter.

The journalling for this one is on the back, a bit too personal for sharing.

I raided Connor's crayon stash....

...which turned out to contain precisely ONE crayon - I swear that child eats them.

So - for the latest GPP Crusade - wax rubbings and paint resist - I had one el cheapo orange crayon to play with - it did the trick though :)

Our challenge for this month was to find some interesting textures to crayon rub - and then bring out those textures by applying a wash of paint.

This was great fun - and I got my favourite result from the most unexpected place - the surface of my paper trimmer :)



St Tim's grungeboard also gave an excellent result, as did a Cuttlebug embossing folder.





I did try a couple of rubber stamps too, but found it difficult to get a good impression from these - I had trouble holding the paper still on them.



The photos above are the rubbings before I added paint - at the top of this post you can see the fab resist effect you get from applying a wash of paint over the top and then giving it a bit of a buff with a baby wipe. Here's a close up:


I couldn't wait to use some of these papers on a journal entry - so I used them for the big arrows on my latest A-Z page. J is for job.

I have all sorts of conflicting emotions about work at the moment - best not aired in public :) This page helped me get some of that worked out - especially the journalling on the back of the page :)

Cheaper than therapy, and a lot more fun :)

I is for Inked

I'm a bit behind with my A-Z journal - we're supposed to be doing 'K' at the moment, and I was only up to 'H'... so I thought I'd better play a bit of catch up today.

I'm a bit stuck on what to do for 'J' - but 'I' was a no brainer, seeing as I'm in the middle of getting my backpiece done...

You look at my skin
Outside not what's inside you will see
That I'll never change for authority
'Cause my ink's my mark on society
Read between these lines and you'll understand
That my ink is with me 'till the end
I'm inked 'till the end.

(I LOVE that show!)

This page came together nice and easy. The main photo is me getting my orcas started off, printed just on plain copier paper and cut out.

The main part of the background is a photo of a backpiece I liked torn out of a tattoo magazine - if you look carefully, it says hardcore, which is kind of cool. Not that I am very. Hardcore that is :)

The music is sheet music for a hymn that goes:
Wash me in the blood of the Lamb And I shall be whiter than snow
Which seemed appropriate in a wholly inappropriate kind of way

Oh and up in the top right there is a little bit of old book page - just because I had a gap there.

The background was lightly gessoed, and coloured with yellow and orange distress inks and then left to dry

Then I stuck my photo over the top, and sprayed the whole thing with matt acrylic sealant.

Over the top of that went the scroll and 'forever' rub ons (Hambly and Creative Imaginations respectively) - the forever rub on was open text so I coloured it in with a red sharpie just to add a bit of colour.

The barbed wire in the bottom right is a Viva Las Vegas stamp, embossed in silver.

And the letters for the title were stamped onto clear shrink plastic, then shrunk and glued on. I wanted to use the same lettering that I had used on letters 'A' through 'H', but they were too big to fit in the scroll - hence the shrinky.

I think that's everything. Still no idea what to do for 'J'... I might have to do 'K is for Kes' first :)

H is for Hockey

You know how sometimes you have a vague idea for a page, a layout, a canvas, a piece of jewellery, whatever.....and in your mind it really works....

And when you actually MAKE it, it looks crap :)

I have had SO many of those.

I am deleriously happy to report that for once, this one has gone the other way. It has turned out even better than I imagined it, and I am a chuffed chipmunk :)

This is the (let me count on my fingers, A...B...C...D...E...F...G...H...) 8th entry in my A-Z journal, a new entry every fortnight, where I choose a word for each letter of the alphabet that sums me up. Something for me to look back on in years to come and remember all the things that defined me in 2008. I've never really been one for the whole "book of me" thing (too shy), but this concept I can work with.

Anyway - H - had to be hockey, really, didn't it :)

The background of this page was made from bits of pages from Powerplay magazine - which is kind of the UK equivalent of the Hockey News. I made sure you could see SWINDON WILDCATS clearly up in the top left hand corner ;)

The torn snippets were glued onto the page with soft gel medium. Once the medium was dry I made a red stripe across the background by putting parallel strips of masking tape across the page and applying red chalk ink direct-to-paper between the tapes.

Then I used an old credit card to spread a thin layer of gesso over the top of the papers and red stripe (the centre line), and once that was dry I sprayed the whole page with a suspension of pearl and interference blue perfect pearls in water. That gave the page the look and feel of a game-ready ice surface. To finish the effect off I added some skate scratches into the "ice", by swiping the edge of the old credit card into pale blue metallic lumiere paint, and stonewashed dye ink, and then dragging the card along the surface of the page at varying angles.

The overlying silhouette of the hockey player was made with the stencil I cut earlier (see previous blog post). I blended purple, blue and black distress inks through the stencil, with cut and dry foam. I love the way the skate scratches show through the silhouette.

And as for the general sentiment of the page? This game means SO much to me. It gives me every emotion from euphoria through to utter despondency and despair. I HATE the off season. Roll on September!!!!

A to Z Journal - F and G

The great thing about jetlag, is that you are wide awake until about 5am, which gives you loads more time for playing around with paints and stuff :)

(getting up the next morning? not so much fun!)

But at least I am now back up to date with my A-Z journal.

Both of these were no brainers, as H will be (anyone for hockey??)

F had to be Frusciante - my muse, and for G what else to choose to represent 2008 me than geocaching, my craze-of-the-moment...

The background of the F page is ecoline inks sponged onto textured cardstock, and sprayed over the top with a perfect pearls suspension to blend and add sparkle.

The text (Stampers Anon) was stamped with Brilliance Pearlescent Rust

Once it was all dry I printed the render of John straight onto the painted background, and then finished it all off with the strips of gaffer tape and stamped text.



The geocaching page was simplicity itself. Two colours of pearlescent liquid acrylic onto white card, blended with a baby wipe. Pic of me triumphantly celebrating my first cache find stuck on top. A compass stamped up top in pink Stazon, and text stamped and hand written.

I have another long sleepless night ahead of me.....might do a CJ :)

A to Z Journal - D is for DNA

I'm up to date with the A to Z journal for the first (and probably last) time - yay!!

My D page is for DNA - and very appropriate for Mother's Day - as it's about my three boys, and how they will, hopefully, carry my genes forward to the next generation.

Background is gesso and paints over stamped cardstock. The handpainted squiggle is supposed to be a DNA double helix (I know it looks nothing like one, but hey, art doesn't have to be perfect lol).

The boys are printed onto transparency and stuck on via the magic of Xyron.

That's about it, nice simple one this week.

E is for Energy...

Yes...yes....I know I haven't done D yet :) Watch this space, I'm hoping to get it done today.

The reason I'm all out of order is that I was asked to be the "guest" over on the IACW pages for the letter E, which is very flattering indeed, thanks girlies for choosing me :)

This page is a bit of a mess really, but that was kind of the the point. It's supposed to represent how my brain never lets up, flitting from one idea to the next, buzzing with ideas (99% of which I never have time to realise), buzzing with worries, buzzing with questions....

Sometimes I wish it would give me a rest :D

The page was somewhat inspired by this exchange over on the UKS forums in a discussion about Geocaching....I was trying to think of a good name for my team...





I needed a pic of me looking particularly manic. Not a problem, as I look like an escapee from Claybury in pretty much every photo, but I settled on this one that I took on my mobile phone to show my other half my recent rather drastic fringe reduction:

The pic cuts the top of my head off though, hence my restyle courtesy of Ranger adirondack dimensional acrylic paint in raisin, I quite like it, maybe I will go that colour next time I go to the hairdressers :)

The background is made from various Christina Cole papers cut up like sun rays and gesso'd over lightly. I have then overstamped with various squiggly arrows in yellow, orange and red Stazon (sunset colours, my favourites, I always come back to them)

My photo was printed on a Selphy and finger painted all over (except the eyes) with irridescent medium, to give it a shimmer, and also bring the eyes forward to add to general air of mania :D

And then the title was stamped as with the rest of these pages using Creative Imaginations stencil style stamps, and the journalling (which, if you want to, you should be able to read if you click on the pic to zoom in) was scribbled on with a fine black permanent pen.

Onwards and upwards to the letter D....

C is for Chaos

This symbol might look familiar, as I used the chaos star a little while ago for a CJ entry also.

but hey, I was a huge Hawkwind & Moorcock fan in my youth, so old habits die hard, I guess :)

This is another entry for my A-Z journal, a quick one this time, trying to catch up...

And no, the state of my work table (original pic below) isn't a set up, I really do work in that mess :)

Pic printed on plain card, cut with the Cricut and treated with Judikins microglaze to protect the inkjet inks from spills.

Then all I did was stuck it on a square of black card,painted around it roughly with interference paints in blue, red and violet (I looooooooove interference paints!!!), and wrote/stamped the title in black

Easy peasy

A to Z Journal - B is for Brother

This page in my A-Z art journal is a tribute to my brother David, who sadly died when he was 6 years old, before I was born.

And to my brother in spirit.

Materials and techniques:

The background is pearlescent liquid acrylics (again!) applied onto canvas with a baby wipe. Some script and heart stamps applied with Brilliance pearlescent lavender ink, and the corner flourish stamped in violet Stazon.

The image of my brother is an transfer from transparency, which didn't come out as clearly as I had hoped, so I Xyronned the partially transferred transparency over the top, which made for an interesting, if entirely accidental, layered effect.

The wings and halo were painted in around him freehand, and silver leafing was applied to the wings.

Close up of the leafing:

A-Z starts here

The girls over at the It's a Creative World blog have an A-Z Art Journal challenge a goin' on....and I thought it might be fun to join in.

It's one page every 2 weeks, prompted by a different letter of the alphabet - so in theory by the end of the year I should have reached the letter Z.

Most of the other participants seem to be very organised, with themes, and book covers already done, and each page completed minutes after the fortnightly letter prompt comes out.

Not me :) I have no theme, and no book, and I've only just got around to doing my page for the letter A, 3 weeks late :) But I'll get there...

Here is my 'A' page - A for Alive:

The silhouette is me, in my jamas :) I'm supposed to be kind of paddling in the sea, and flinging my arms out in a joyful fashion - not walking on water lol. I don't really have a god complex, honest :D

The lyrics are Pearl Jam, and sum up a lot of how I was feeling last year, and still do up to a point, survivor guilt gets me at different levels.

But this page is mainly positive. It is fitting that this is the first page in a journal that will span the whole of 2008, as the first day of this year was a real turning point for me, left a lot of my demons behind, and stepped out of the fog.

I feel healthily alive for the first time in as long as I can remember.

That is brain healthy, not body healthy, I'm still overweight, unfit, and lacking in many vital nutrients :D

This was quick and easy to make. Selphy pic of me in my joy-to-the-world pose taken with camera on self timer balanced on a table. Background is painted with Daler Rowney pearlescent fluid acrylics and watercolour pencils. [ALIVE] is stamped and the rest is handwritten.

Next up, the letter B. for Brother.