About Me

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Hi I'm Clare, I live in the South West of England in the seaside town of Torquay. I adore playing with inks, paints and generally getting messy. It is the calm place which fits in between my hectic life whilst working as an outreach support worker, looking after my son, daughter, foster son and hubby. Not forgetting our gorgeous springer spaniel, Suzi.

Sunday 24 July 2016

Oodles of doodles!

Hi folks, no smonday feeling for me tonight, it's the start of the summer holidays,  time to kick back and relax!  After suffering withdrawal from my craft room I managed to skip back in there today to finish a project that I had started three weeks ago.



I've been avidly following the wanderlust projects and this particular canvas was inspired by Magda Polakow.  She creates amazing whimsical art and also designs stamps for Stampotique.

 
On canvas I collaged  scraps of paper before painting with Dina Wakely acrylics and Posca paint pens.  I drew my little owl character, painted with gesso and added watery colours with inktence pencils.  The flowers were made from a previously painted piece of deli paper.


I really enjoyed creating this project, the whole process was very therapeutic.  Now what crafty mayhem will I cause next?  I have a couple of ideas on the boil but before then the craft room needs a tidy....so I can make another arty mess.

That's all from me tonight but I look forward to sharing some more of my makes with  you over the coming weeks.

Crafty hugs,

Clare X X X 

Thursday 14 July 2016

I'm up on Paperartsy 3UP!

Good evening folks, as you can imagine I was uber excited to find out that I was to be included in Paperartsy's  3UP project.  When the stamps arrived I could hardly contain my excitement and I set about planning my project.  The challenge was to use JoFy stamps along with inks.  Using JoFy's stamps are never a chore more of a joy and I'm always thrilled with the crisp clear stamping that the stamps produce.


I decided for this project that I wanted to work on a small box canvas.  Read on to find out how I created my mini canvas of blooms and flutters!



I started of by applying some torn dictionary pages, I then scrapped some gesso over the canvas to leave behind some texture.



I applied my chosen colours of distress inks to the canvas using a blending tool.  Peacock feathers is one of my favourite distress ink colours.





Through a JoFy stencil I scraped through some grunge paste to give the canvas some more background layers.



I stamped the dandilion heads from set #38 with clear watermark ink and heat embossed with holographic embossing powder.



To the grunge paste dandies I added some aquamarine Treasured gold and later added some dots using a white pen.



With the canvas set aside I stamped the images onto watercolour card and some old dictionary pages and  heat embossed with embossing powder.  I watercoloured the plump blooms with seedless preserves Distress Inks and fussy cut around them ready to sit on the canvas.



The dragonfly, from set #13, was stamped first onto a dictionary page and heat embossed with holographic embossing powder and then onto some watercolour card.  I water coloured with seedless preserves.  The wings were fussy cut and applied to the dictionary dragonfly.  He looks as though he may flutter off the canvas!

Remember to pop over to the Paperartsy blog where you will find two more fabulous projects using the wonderful JoFy stamps!

Thank you for taking the time to stop by I love to hear your comments and thoughts on my project.  If you have enjoyed your visit feel free to follow and see what I get up to next.

Happy crafting,
Clare x x x 

Friday 1 July 2016

I am proud to announce........


Hi guys,  this is so exciting!  I'm here today to let you all know that I have been invited on to the Design Team for The Mixed Media monthly challenge!

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge offer you monthly, themed challenges and guest designer. There are some amazing prizes available each month.

So without further ado let me tell you about this months challenge.  The theme for this month is 'Reach for the Stars'. This months guest designer is no other than Seth Apter!

Let me share with you my creation for this months starry themed challenge.


Using my Dina Wakely heavy body acrylics I put down a base colour onto my blank canvas using lime and white.  Using an old credit card I put down an assortment of black lines around the picture.  With some die cut stars to use as a mask. I placed them on the canvas and using Tim Holtz stripes stencil I applied some texture paste and removed the masks.  I added some smaller stars from a Dylusions stencil by drawing these.  




Once the paste had dried I went back to my Dina paints I used turquoise, lime and umber to blend over the top of my previous layer but leaving the original colour peeping through the stars.  



I stamped in the voided stars with Seth Apters star stamp and heat embossed with frosted embossing powder.  I added some walnut distress inks so that you could see the wonderful detail from the stamp.  




I wanted one of my large stars to have a bit more dimension so with a couple of layers of hard board I die cut a star and glued them together.  I covered in tissue paper and spritzed with Dylusions turquoise ink.  Once dried I stamped Seth's star stamp once again with black ink and once again heat embossed.  Using some more Dylusions stencils (dots & alphabet). I sponged over the stencils with a mixture ofwhite and turquoise paint.  For the finishing touches I added in some shadows around my stars with a black inktence pencil and some white doodles with a Posca pen.





Thank you for stopping by today.   Remember to pop over to The Mixed Media Monthly challenge blog  to check out the challenge rules  and submit your entries.  The star that  I have used in this project is included in this months prize!


Crafty hugs,

Clare x x x