June Artists' Trading Card (ATC)

 Here's the latest of my ATCs - for June.  I knew the focus had to be roses, not just due to the verse for June, but also because my garden is full of roses in June.  I used a sort of leaf stencil and green paint for the background and stencilled the roses using texture paste.  I needed to infill the roses with paint as the green showing through was just too distracting.  I coloured the texture paste, but ended up painting the roses as well.

 They needed a little something extra, so glitter was added as highlights.

The gemstones I used this month were all pinks and purples and I tried to get an ombre look.  I used rose quartz, lavender amethyst, kunzite, peach moonstone, pink opal and pink shell. The gemstone for June is pearl, so I added a pearl charm.

The back of the card features the verse and some die cut roses.  The new rose dies arrived the morning I was working on this ATC which was serendipitous, so I made good use of them.  I am pleased with the end result - June is all about the roses!

February Artists' Trading Card (ATC)

Here is my February ATC (Artists' Trading Card), the second in my monthly projects.   I am really enjoying the whole process of making these - gathering the ideas, deciding on colour schemes, choosing images, making the gemstone pieces and using some of my stash! 
The base of the card is recycled packaging cardboard,  which is gessoed to give a lovely surface to work on.  My art journal is also made using this card for the pages.  The card has a gel press printed base of purple, white, silver and grey paint, with stamped 'rain' on half of it.  Half of the card has stencilled raindrops with clear texture paste and added glitter and the other half has stamped puddles, and raindrops with clear embossing powder.  The hearts stand a little away from the surface and are made from the cardboard, with satin board which has been embossed with an industrial pattern.  The gemstones are clear quartz, fluorite, kunzite, rutile quartz, white moonstone and an amethyst charm at the bottom.

The back has stamped raindrops with glossy accents over them to add a watery shine, a stamped snowdrop and the February verse. 
Now to start thinking about March...

January Artist Trading Card (ATC)

 Here is the first in my ATC project over the next eleven months.  The first is for January and was ready for the first of the month, but I have kept adding little bits and pieces.  I made the card and then had a brainwave to use some of my gemstones and to also include the month's birthstone as well.  For this card, there is a haematite round, clear quartz, sky blue apatite, white moonstone, turquoise and rutilated quartz, with a garnet charm at the bottom.

 The card itself has acrylic paint watered down and dripped over a texture paste pattern, then silver embossed shapes and grey stamping.  The colours are silver, grey, white and turquoise.

 On the back, I added a verse from the seasons rhyme I knew from when I was little - 'January brings the snow...' and some silver glitter die cut snowflakes.

 Here's a close up of the verse.

The ATC goes really well with the Scandi inspired felt birds and balls on the seasonal tree, alongside some rather glamorous glass bead snowflake decorations which I bought in a sale last week.
February's ATC will involve grey, white and purple, raindrops, a heart and amethyst...
edited to add...
I am going to enter this ATC in the Craft Stamper Take It Make It challenge over at Craft Stamper.  Wish me luck!

A night sky hare

As you know, I do like hares and have gradually built up a small collection of figurines and pictures.  Recently at a small craft fair, there was a stall with hare ornaments, painted by the stall holder.  I was drawn to the hare above with the night sky colours of navy blue, purple, white and silver (only £2.00) and thought I could definitely add a little something to it.
I had seen similar ornaments in ceramic (which I had coveted) in a local craft shop and also on Moonlight and Hares (Karen Davies makes the most beautiful hares which sell out in seconds, but I do have a hare card and print from her which I love) so decided to zhuzh (or zhoosh or zhush, depending where you look) my hare up.  As she (I think she is a she) had the night sky decoration, this dictated the gemstones I used.  Chris very kindly drilled three small holes along her tummy and I set to work creating the dangles.

I chose to use silver plated wire as it echoed the silver moonlight.  I had a lot of fun deciding which of my rather large stash of gemstones to use, but chose those which said 'night', 'moon' , 'ethereal' or 'magical' to me (and are also some of my favourites).  I used amethyst, rainbow moonstone, coated haematite and blue goldstone on the first dangle (to the left).  The middle one has a pearl, a haematite star and the original moon charm.  The third one (on the right) has a blue pearl, crystal quartz and a labradorite on it.  I created a wire spiral to hang her from and dropped a little silver pearl from the centre.  I am really pleased with the end result and she looks just how I imagined she would (which is often not the case, in my experience).

Here she is hanging up and making me smile every time I see her.
Edited to add: thanks to Briony for the idea - here are some photos with a ruler to give you an idea of her size -

She's about 16.5 cm in length... 

...or about 6.5 inches

...and about 6.5 cm or 2.5 inches from the top of her ear to her tummy.

More kumihimo necklaces - finally completed

 I have made a few of these kumihimo (Japanese braiding technique) necklaces now and have finally finished three which just needed the ends completing.  I chose colours that I wear at work in the winter.  The purple one above uses 6mm faceted and plain gemstones.

 The blue one uses 6mm faceted and plain gemstones too...

...whereas this blue/green one uses gemstone chips.  I wanted to use the Chartreuse S-Lon cord in a piece of jewellery, so decided to try it out here.

Here's a close up of the purple stones which include amethyst, fluorite, agate, lavender amethyst.

 The blue one has aquamarine, different agates, lapis lazuli and sodalite in it.

The blue/green one has peridot (which matched the Chartreuse cord beautifully), amazonite, apatite and aquamarine.
I really enjoy the repetitive aspect of kumihimo which does become a relaxing and meditative activity.

Update on the wall situation:  the wall man came to have a look at the damage and said that a fence would be cheaper, but a wall could be put back, although not with the old bricks.  However, this would involve foundations four bricks width each side, so would mean the raised border would have to go and I would need to save the plants I wanted and then start again.  We are waiting for the quote...

Learning something new - Kumihimo

This year, one of the things I really wanted to do was to learn kumihimo, which is a Japanese braiding technique.  I have taken the plunge and found a basic eight strand braid to be remarkably easy to learn.  A disc is vital, as is a kumihimo weight which helps with the tension of the braid,  

 This pink and purple satin cord braid was my first attempt and I was really delighted with how it took shape.  It is a meditative process - top right to bottom right, bottom left to top left and turn - but this is only the beginning and there is a lot more that can be made.

 I used organza ribbon for the blue braid, but it wasn't as smooth a finish as the satin cord and was a bit scratchy.  However, it was a good experiment.

This one used rainbow satin cord with black and worked really well.  However, as you can see, none of these have been made into jewellery.  This is because I am considering how to finish a braid off.  You can buy kumihimo ends, you can make your own using wire, you can use ribbon cord ends... A bit of experimentation and practise may be in order.
Of course, apart from all the patterns you can create using different colours, different numbers of cords and different disks, there is the excitement of being able to braid beads and gemstones into the braid as you go.  Now that is something I definitely would like to try!

Spring colours - jewellery and bargains

I decided that I was going to make a piece of jewellery for myself.  I have a huge stash of gemstones to choose from (oops) and initially, wasn't quite sure which I was going to use.  In the end, I decided on larimar, amazonite (one of my favourites for the blue/green shades it has), rainbow moonstone and silver pearls.  (That sounds so indulgent, doesn't it?)  However, as I used gemstone chips and memory wire, it was quite cost effective.  As I have mentioned before, I find threading the chips onto the wire to be quite a meditative process and the best thing is, I have got a lovely piece of jewellery which I'll really enjoy wearing. Although the photo above doesn't show it, the moonstone does have lovely flashes of blue when it is in the light.

 As for the bargains, well, on a recent trip to Horncastle (a place well known for antiques and charity shops), I found this little embroidered tray cloth in a charity shop (50p).  Of course it had to come home with me.  I was bought it and the primroses by our friend who we had gone to see.  I know primroses aren't cowslips, but I thought they went together well and do a sterling job of representing Spring colours!

(I did wash and iron the tray cloth, but it does look a little creased in the photo - ho hum!)