Die Branson Die!!!

I don't mean it really, I quite like Richard Branson. But his employees leave something to be desired. I've had no internet access at home now since first thing Saturday morning, and they won't be able to fix it until Wednesday.

Classic snippet from approx 4 hours of phone calls.

VM: "Sorry madam, we cannot re-activate your internet access as the modem you are using does not appear to be one of ours"

Me: "but...but...but... your engineer gave it to me, and it has a huge sticker on it that says "PROPERTY OF VIRGIN MEDIA"

VM: "Oh, there must be some other reason then"

Yes, yes there must be. any chance one of you could figure out what it is??????

Grrrrr.

But I can't keep you good people in suspense any longer re the contents of THE BOX - so I have brought a CD of piccies into work to show you....

Apologies if this blog post ends up being a little rushed/messy, but am busy at work so I can't spend too much time prettying it up...

Anyway - pic at top is how the parcel first looked when I opened it. Like christmas :) And it smelt lovely too.


the great paper many of the gifts were wrapped in - it says "girl can ROCK" :)


the gift bag says I rock, so who am I to argue?? :D


I wonder what's in this interesting looking scroll...?

OK OK enough teasers - onto the pressies!

In no particular order (other than I am saving the bestest till last), here are all my WONDERFUL goodies:


Tattoo themed scissors!!!


a HIM CD :) :) :) (my other half seemed particularly pleased with this and looked ready to spirit it away, but I managed to keep hold of it)


the contents of the mysterious scroll....a Chili Peppers stencil! (as modelled on the outside of the box)


and matching mask :)


POP ROCKS!!!! (my teenagers almost expired with pleasure when I shared these out :))


Custom guitar picks! (or plectrums to us Limeys)


treble clef paper clips - these are so cool


a fab felt chandelier embellishment....


...and matching notecards (these are particularly timely as I had bought some just like these in Canada in March but have nearly used them all up :))


a hand carved Chilis stamp

and....

this last one made me cry....

here's the box, the tag should have been a dead give away:


but I really wasn't expecting this:


a hand carved stamp of my ORCA!!!!

it is PERFECT, no way could I have made one that brilliant - not even on my imagepac.

I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it I LOVE it

this is genuinely one of the best gifts I have ever received

THANK YOU MICHELLE!!!!

I really really really want to share the contents of the box with you

I really do!

But my internet connection has been playing up since yesterday and I can't upload any pictures to Blogger without it falling over

aarrggghhhh!!!

As soon as I can, I will, promise

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Look look look what the postman just gave me

Look!!!!!

My prize! My prize!

I haven't even opened it yet - I am in love with the box :)



My very own spray painted Michelle Ward original!

And do you see what I see on the back????



A chilis star :)

<3

Going to open it in a bit, will blog again to tell you what's inside :)

Just after I have admired the box some more.....

It's stampy CJ time again, and we're back in outer space...

I've been trying to get away from the black and purple night sky thing - I really have!

But then a CJ turns up with the theme "stars" - what's a girl to do??!!

As well as the theme, we had this Lost Coast stamp to work with:

To be honest I struggled to fit the domino and stripy socks into my whole "comet lady being sucked into a black hole" theme, so I was going to just use the face and the wings, but in the end I used a UTEE face, so I just used the wings....I did use them twice, mind, so I hope that'll make up for it :)

A quick how-to.

The background was painted on canvas, and some stars were overstamped with silver and lilac ink. The border is black crackle paint highlighted with silver wax rub ons. The little dots (supposed to be galaxies being sucked into the black hole - you'll have to give me the benefit of the doubt here :D) were made by dabbing silver paint through a piece of paper mesh with little round holes.

The face is made from a mixture of white UTEE and a pinch or two of red embossing powder, heated and mixed in a melt pot and then poured into a face mould. If you look carefully you'll see it is covered in tiny air bubbles as I overstirred the mixture, but I really like the effect - a happy accident.

The face is set on top of a star, stamped with silver paint on black card and outlined with a Sakura stardust pen. Her wings were stamped in deep purple, coloured in with watercolour pencils and then overcoloured with the stardust pen again.

Her dress is made from muslin, primed with mod podge and then painted with pearl and lilac pearlescent fluid acrylics, and stickles glitter. I sewed all the seed beads on by hand - get me! sewing! - which was one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time, but ends up taking ages (which would be why I have only just finished this CJ entry and it is 2am, yawn)

The dymo'd lyrics are by Muse (Matty, my prophet :))

I think that's everything.

Here it is in the book:

Next CJ I promise no night sky....but I can't promise no black and purple....its theme is "black" and it has a fab fleur de lys stamp which wouldn't look sufficiently royal in anything BUT purple imo.

(stuck in a rut, moi???)

My son and his girlie celebrated their first anniversary this week

Don't they make a lovely couple? I love this photo!

More Little Boxes

I'm on the home stretch now :) 13 down, 8 to go

These four little buildings have one thing in common - they all feature image transfers from a tattoo magazine.

I'd forgotten how easy and how much fun gel medium transfers are from magazine pages - it's a lot easier than from a photocopy - less scrubbing to get the paper off.

I did one transfer into metallic paint on card, one onto cork, one over some vintage sheet music and one onto canvas.

First up a couple of little churches - these were made in pretty much the same way. The main body of each church was made by rubbing green and brown pigment inks over pale yellow textured card, and then sprinkling and heating some bronze UTEE randomly over the inked surface. I then cut the church shape, with a window, and stuck the transferred tattoo image behind. I stamped a Zetti image of filigree arches all over the churches just to add a little detail - and outlined the building and the window with copper Krylon pen. The little cross made from twigs from my garden and a bit of copper wire was the finishing touch.

The next building has a more traditional tattoo image - so I decided to make a tattoo studio for our little community - called the House of Pain :) Way to reassure the clientele :) The image transfer of the dragon tattoo is on a sheet of cork, which gives a nice texture. The roof of the tattoo studio is made from little vinyl brick stickers that I have had forever, and only remembered last night - they are perfect for this project. I have used platinum UTEE for the "cement" in between the bricks. And yes - I know a roof made of bricks is a little unusual :)

Finally I was inspired by the Japanese horse design on my last transferred tattoo to make an Oriental palace. I have a feeling that pagodas are more Chinese than Japanese, but hopefully nobody will mind my cross cultural faux pas.

The Emperor's horse was transferred onto canvas, out of which I cut the pagoda shape freehand. I painted roughly around the horse with red paint and stamped some kanji-like characters in black. Gold UTEE edging and an Oriental charm attached with red brads complete this piece, which was mounted onto card for stability.

I am so enjoying making these little beauties - and also receiving everyone else's, as the swaps are starting to come in now.

Please check out the gallery over the the Little Boxes web page to see some of the miniature masterpieces that have already been sent in - check back every weekend as I add more.

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 :)

the hlog Five, following on

1.) Which house chore do you dislike the most?

it would have to be anything to do with cleaning toilets - there's nothing worse than cleaning away the residue of someone else's excretions - ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

2.) Are you afraid of any kinds of animals?

I can't think of any irrational fears - I'm fine with spiders and snakes and all that stuff - but I'd be suitably scared if I came face to face with something that could eat me :)

3.) What is your favorite stadium food?

Veggies are a little limited when it comes to stadium food - especially if, like me, you're not keen on popcorn either. I did see some pizza on sale at GM Place but to be honest it looked not that great, especially for the price, so I went without and grabbed a Subway on the way home after the game...

4.) Who would you most like to go out to supper with? (anyone for any reason, doesn't matter if you know them or not.)

Ian. Haven't seen him all week and I miss the man.

5.) What song always makes you smile?

Two Princes by the Spin Doctors:

Friday Fiver - 6th June 2008

The original fiver is back this week:

1. What's your weather?

Variable - today it's springlike and beautiful (even if Yahoo Weather tells me it's cloudy) - sunny but not too hot, a bit breezy. Earlier in the week we had one day of torrential rain and flooding - and one day that felt like summer. That's England for you :)

2. Where are you on your way to?

Literally, the petrol station to get a sandwich (that's the only option round here, as I work on farmland in the deepest countryside).

Figuratively - I wish I knew :) Maybe if I knew what I wanted out of life I'd have more direction....

3. Are you good with directions?

Rubbish - both at giving them and taking them in when someone else is dishing them out. I get lost all the time.

4. Do you know your neighbors?

Not all that well - well enough to say hi if we pass in the street, and have a brief chat.

5. What do you smell?

Lovely fresh cut grass.

Nothing yet from the hlog girls (they are probably still busy celebrating or commiserating the Cup result - depending on whether they were gunning for the victorious Red Wings or the pipped-at-the-post Penguins) - I'll add their Five in when it comes through....

One of the brightest stars

A fitting tribute

Fans rally around No. 28 with donations to Canuck Place
Jason Botchford , The Province
Published: Sunday, June 01, 2008

It started as a simple and clever idea to pay tribute to Luc Bourdon on a Canucks Internet message board.

It has since exploded.

Hours after it was learned Bourdon had tragically died Thursday, Canucks.com message board contributor "RypienItUp" posted the idea that people should think about giving a donation of $28 (Bourdon's number) to Canuck Place Children's Hospice (www.canuckplace.org), which specializes in palliative care for children living with life-threatening illness.

"If you can afford to, please do the same," RypienItUp wrote. "We're a fanbase that is as divided as any, but hopefully we can come together in this difficult time to make a positive difference on a day that started so tragically."

Come together, they have.

"We started getting more and more and more donations," said Caroline Nybo, a Canuck Place spokesperson. "They started coming in from all around the world. There were donations coming in from Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden, New York, Seattle and all over the place. It was incredible.

"They have all been in some sort of tribute to Luc. Some are $28, $280 and even $28.04 because four was his old number. People find their own way of picking a number.

"It just caught on."

Nybo said at Friday's end, about 28 hours after RypienItUp first posted the idea, 195 people had given donations totalling more than $7,000. All of the donations had some variation on the number 28.

Many people who know Bourdon said it would be hard to come up with a more fitting tribute for a player who cared a lot about helping the less fortunate.

"I was very fortunate to witness the things that he did, to see how he gave back to kids," said Debbie Butt, the Canucks director of community partnerships. "You see the quality of the person in the way they treat people away from the ice.

"We have a fundraising event every year where we work with the Special Olympics. He had a young woman with Down Syndrome who he was partnered with and he held her hand the whole night. He didn't care what anyone thought. He walked her everywhere, and even went around table to table and introduced her to his teammates.

"I just thought what a fine human being he is."

Glad to see that people took up the idea so quickly - hopefully this will become an annual tradition.

I wonder if that 'Great Britain' is just me? Not many other Brits on CDC - although maybe there are lurkers. I hope so.

I hope this gives some comfort to Luc's family that there was love for their son worldwide, and also that some small amount of good is coming out of this terrible loss.

Another stampy CJ

I think this is a record for me - a CJ entry started this morning and finished by lunchtime :) I usually faff about with them for days on end.

The stamp for this entry was a fobwatch - I have the same stamp - I think it was a covermount on the now sadly defunct Simply Stamping magazine:

I decided to use it with the top bit masked off, along with a compass stamp I have that is roughly the same size, and some swirly things, for a "lost in time and space" type thingy....

Nothing fancy going on on this page, just a lot of masking (I do love me a bit of masking), but I quite like the final effect.

Here it is before I attacked it with my mini misters:


The eyes are from Third Coast - I love the reflections of sky and stars in the iris and pupil....

I coloured the eyes with watercolour pencils, and then covered them with clear sellotape before I sprayed everything with distress ink / perfect pearl sprays in red, blue and purple.



The text was embossed on metal tape, higlighted with deep purple acrylic paint, and then coloured with alcohol inks.

That's this circle nearly at an end now.... :(

no Friday Fiver this week....but the hlog girls came through

1.) Are you allergic to anything?
Yup - lots of things - most notably cats (aatchoooo!!!), pollen (although my hay fever isn't as bad as it was when I was a kiddie), lanolin (hence my nasty reaction to the cream my tattooist gave me for my orcas - I stupidly didn't check the ingredients), and the Philadelphia Flyers

2.) What do you like on toast?
Honey, or cottage cheese and pineapple, or cheese and barbecue sauce. Not all at the same time, obviously.

3.) Which stuffed animal was your favorite as a child?
I had a dog, called Ginger, that my great aunt (I think) made for me when I was a baby. He was a bit rock hard, and his fur was everso wiry, so he wasn't really the definition of cuddly - but I loved him anyway :)

4.) Do you have a pencil cup? What does it look like?
Nope, I have LOTS of pens and pencils - so I keep them all in a drawer, not a cup

5.) What is one thing you never leave your house without?
ummm....I can't think of anything I NEVER leave behind. I guess I usually have my phone, but not always. And if there's nobody else home I'd take my keys, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get back in :)

Tattoo themed altered book....

Last night was weird.

After I heard the news about Luc, I kind of just sat there staring into space for hours. And cried a lot. And wondered why it had hit me so hard (I still can't really answer that one). But the upshot was, I didn't move off the sofa for hours and hours.

It got to about half past one and I got up and stretched, and figured I ought to go to bed.

But then I caught my half finished altered book (to be used for a tattoo themed circle journal round robin) out of the corner of my eye.... and decided I didn't want to go to bed having achieved nothing but a lot of weeping and wailing.

So I stayed up half the night and got it finished. And here it is :)



This started life as a book on the Life of Wellington, dated 1885. Don't worry - I did check with the antiquarian book dealer I bought it from that it isn't in the slightest bit valuable. The fact he sold it to me for £2.50 was a big hint that it doesn't belong in the Smithsonian. So I don't feel too guilty for covering up the tatty but pretty cover with pictures torn out of tattoo magazines :)



Once the book was totally covered with magazine images, I put on a thin layer of gesso (scraped on with an old credit card), gave the gesso a bit of colour with distress inks, and then sprayed the whole thing with matte acrylic sealer.

A couple more magazine images were added (not gesso'd over this time) - and some swallows (Hambly rub ons).

Next, a niche was cut in the cover of the book. And behind the niche, the title was added (freehanded in sharpie onto a gesso'd book page). The niche borders were covered with a stitched black leather frame (and matching corners were added to the corners of the front and back book covers).









Finally, I added some tattoo themed charms to the spine, hung on black leather cord:
A swallow to represent old school tattoos ; a tribal charm for, well, tribal :) ; a skull and crossbones for the whole skulls and demons badass biker type style ; an angel's wing for religious and fantasy tats ; and a piece of celtic knotwork for the whole celtic style which sadly doesn't seem to be as popular as it was when I first started getting inked 20 odd years ago...



That's it. Oh - apart from the 7 Gypsies book belt. I bought this as I figured the book will end up pretty fat by the time everyone has finished playing in it - and the book belt will help it stay closed-ish. And it matches the leather embellishments used on the book cover, which is a lucky coincidence :)

You were quite the dancer, kid

I can't stop crying

I don't know what to say :(

I took this photo at GM Place in March. And now he's gone. Only 21. Unbelieveable.

RIP Luc



edited to add:

a number of us have each donated $28 to Canuck Place Children's Hospice in Luc's memory.

If you would like to join us, here's the link:
https://payment.csfm.com/donations/canuck_place/donate/

We went to Marwell Zoo on Saturday

and I took lots of piccies.

These are the ones that turned out best.


Wouldn't you just kill for eyelashes like that baby giraffe??