Sketchy Thursday's and Colour room

Hi all,

I have a LO to share today and pics of the lovely stash I bought at Alexandra Palace last weekend. :)

First up, the LO.
I really liked the look of this week's Sketchy Thursday's sketch, so had to have a go and use it. It's also been quite a while since I took part in a colour challenge, so thought I would this time. I really love colour challenges, and often look at the Colour Room's weekly palettes, so this week I decided to use their gorgeous current palette. The combination of the two challenges left me with this LO :)

Here's the sketch

And here's the colour palette

This sketch was such a great sketch to use, and I love that collection of colours, the deep red, white, pale yellow and pale brown looks great together :)

I hope you like the LO, here are a few close ups

 Seeing as the LO is all about my art, and the long summers spent drawing for my art GCSE (even on our family holidays!!) I decided to actually sketch a little on the LO. I have seen others do this, so thought I'd give it a go and quite like it. I have also stitched a grid behind the two focal areas with a sewing machine, and numbered it, to mimic the type of grid you draw in art when you are copying from a photo etc.

 This rose has been created following Sutty's most recent flower tutorial, I just had to try them :)

I have used lots of washi tape on this LO. I LOVE this stuff, it is absolutely super. On this LO I have used washi tape bought from John Lewis (the colours were such a great match) and also some of the new hambly screen print washi tape (bought at Ally Pally)

Edited to add : I have just had a lovely comment from Beth Moore telling me about The Kraft Journal challenges. I am so pleased she has introduced me to this challenge, I love Kraft so it's the perfect place for me :) I have linked up this LO to their current challenge, 'lavish layers' :)

So, now onto Ally Pally.

Mum and I had a great day, we really enjoyed it. It's a long time since we last went to the show, and it really made us realise how much our styles of crafting has changed. We were walking past stalls that once would have caught our attention for ages. 

Anyway, it was beautiful weather, so the walk up from the station was lovely. The building is so gorgeous.

Mum took this photo using her iPhone (love this app, I want an iPhone too now :)

We spent a good few hours at the show, and I spent most of the money I'd saved :) Here's what it was spent on

Do you see that moustache Hambly Screen Print? Yes...well I was extremely excited to see it there, so excited I bought 2 of them!! I have been looking for this for quite a while, I have photos that I've been waiting to scrap, just so I can use this once I had it. So pleased :D 

A lovely little collection of embellishments. I LOVE those little retro style appliances, I just had to have those. Also, do you see the scalloped calico ribbons? These are great, so versatile, I have used these in the LO above, spritzed with ink through a stencil :)

And lastly, this little collection of goodies :)

There were a great collection of stalls there, and I can't wait to get tucking into more of my new stash.

One of the highlights of the day for me though was helping out on the Scrap Revolution stall. I spent 2 hours helping out, restocking, working on the tills, and it was really good fun. It was also lovely to see my kit LO on display :) Speaking of which, the tutorial for the flower I created for the kit LO has been posted on the scrap revolution blog, so do take a look :)

Thanks for looking, sorry it has been such a picture heavy post, well done for surviving through it :)

Bye for now,

Hannah :)

P.S. Have you heard about the new UK scrap magazine, SCRAP365? It is amazing, I came across it a few days ago as some of the lovely people I follow are on the new fabby DT. Do check it out, I am so pleased to hear we will soon have a great UK scrap magazine, I've really missed not having a magazine since Scrapbook Inspirations stopped. I subscribed at Ally Pally, so can't wait for the first issue to arrive in November :)

Found my own style

Today I thought I'd share with you 2 of the 3 She Art girls I created at the weekend. I am very pleased with them all, I feel I have really developed my own style now and it is recognisable in the last few I've created.

'She expressed herself through art'

I planned this girl a while back. I had kept the paint palette from the first few girls I'd created, with the view to using it as a background. I added a bit more paint to the already colourful palette, then added texture paste, bubble wrap prints, almost all of the technique's I've learnt from Christy. The pictures don't really do the texture of this piece any justice, because it was a paint palette their are lumps, bumps, bristle marks, all sorts of texture all over it. I really wanted to try this artist girl, and I am so pleased with the way she came out. I am pleased with the apron, the brushes sticking out of her pocket, and I wouldn't mind a pair of those spotty trousers myself !! :)

'She was the heart of the family'

This is another girl I have had planned out in my head for a while. I'm pleased with the finished product, I like her clothing and hair, plus, as with the first, I have loved the way people on the flickr group have been mixing lettering for the words, so have tried it on both and loved it. She is on a sheet of chipboard measuring 6x10", as have many of my previous girls. I am planning to bind them all into a book once I've decorated them, plus do the odd one on canvas to go around the house (like the 3rd one from this weekend which I shall show you soon :) )

I hope you like them both.
Bye for now,

She Art Girls

Hi everyone,

I couldn't resist, I saw so many of these gorgeous She Art girls from people taking Christy Tomlinson's workshop that I couldn't resist when I saw her advertising the second workshop. So I joined up, it started on Monday and boy am I glad it's the holidays as it's meant I didn't have to resist the big urge to have a go. As soon as you start watching her videos your creative juices start flowing, so here is my first canvas.



I am really pleased with her. The background is very busy but I think it needs to be as she doesn't take up a very large proportion of the canvas so it needs to be an interesting background.

I hope you like it. Doing this first practise girl has made me realise which extra things I need, so I have my shopping list written!! :D

Bye for now :)

Crafty goodness and module results

I've a few crafty things to share with you today.

First of all, a birthday card. One of my friends turned 17 this week and this is the card I made for her.

She loves dogs, so, after persuading Mum to buy this cute dog digi stamp from Bee Crafty downloads, I suddenly realised a perfect use for it. I've coloured it using my Pastel pencils (it was great using them again after buying them for my Art GCSE and not using them since), wrapped brown and white bakers twine around the front of the card with a slit cut in the spine, and then stamped the greeting. She liked the card, which is the most important thing :)

Now, some more crafting. I've managed to do pencil lines sketch 228 this week, and used it not once but twice!! During the week I made a digi page using the sketch, here it is,

And today I have sat down and done the 'paper and scissors' scrapbook page I'd been planning in my head all week. I am really pleased with it, here it is

I have used Tim Holtz distress inks to stipple around a hiedi swapp bracket mask, and I now absolutely love the technique. I've seen so many people do this technique and use inks and paints on their pages, but I haven't tried up until now. I'm sure it's something you'll see more of now I've tried it though :)

For this page I've used the colour scheme that Emilie set on her blog last Sunday. I don't use challenge colour schemes very often but am very glad I have with this page as I wouldn't have combined these colours otherwise, but they look great together. Thanks Emilie

All of the flowers on this page have been handmade, both a mixture of crepe paper twisted flowers, layered felt and a new flower made using a fab tutorial I've just found here.

I've interpreted the pencil lines sketch by using one photo and leaving the space that should be for the second photo as blank paper. The twirled line of journalling under the photo lent itself to the trail of a butterfly brilliantly, so that's what I've done. The journalling reads :-

I took this photo to help with my Art exam. She was so well behaved as I took lots of photos.

The small butterfly trail reads :- Thanks Amy, you earn't me an A*

There is a real theme to both of my pages this week, they are both about my Art GCSE. The first is photos I took for a coursework piece and the journalling comments on the fact that I was willing to look stupid lying on the floor of a hairdressers taking photos. The second is a photo I took of a family friends baby, for my final exam piece, and as the journalling says, I got an A* for my Art so I owe a big thank you to the baby for all of the photos I was allowed to take.

On to some non crafty news. I had my AS module results back on Thursday. I'm so happy with them. For Biology I got 85/90, an A, and for my two maths modules I strangely managed to get the same score on both, 94/100, which is an A at the minute. I say at the minute because if I get over 90 in my next three A2 modules I can get one of the new A*, which is what I really really want. So as you can imagine, I'm rather chuffed with those, especially with Biology which I find quite a tough subject.

Anyway, that's it from me for today, I should hopefully be back tomorrow with some portrait photos to share :)

Thanks for looking,
Hannah :)

Such a bad blogger!!!

Sorry everyone, I don't know where the past 4 weeks have disappeared to, but here I am writing on my blog four weeks after my last post!! There's been many things to write on here, just not the time to write it.
I've been off school today, I have a horrid cold and spending a day in Cambridge and sitting outside to eat really didn't do it any good yesterday, so I've spent today at home, with many warm layers and hot vitamin C drinks to boost me. Oh and dare I miss out the fact that there's no rest for the wicked, I've been doing work all day and now finally have some time to update you all.
As I mentioned, yesterday we had a trip to Cambridge. Our maths department organised the trip, which took 30 of us to Cambridge to look around one of the colleges and then attend a maths inspiration talk. The college was lovely (as ever) and really inspirational to look round. That's now the third of the Cambridge college's I've been round, and every time I return home determined to make it there, to work my socks off and become a Cambridge undergraduate!! I can dream and aspire can't I, without that there's no chance of it becoming a reality. The talk was great, the speakers were funny and the things they taught very fascinating.
I received an award at school a few weeks ago. It was an award for my maths last year which I am very pleased to be given as recognition for my effort and achievement.
Still on the school topic (sorry I will get to some recent crafting later), I have been able to collect and bring home most of my artwork from GCSE art. I have collected all my sketchbooks and piece of art apart from the two pieces up on display. It was so good to look through my work again, I can't believe how much time I put into it, it was worth it though and now I need to find somewhere to keep it all!! Anyway, I decided to take some photos and show you a few of the pieces I still like from my sketch books.

There's a real mixture of coursework and exam preperation there, I hope you like it all. It still doesn't seem real that I got an A* for Art!!

Now to some more recent creativeness, the beginning of my christmas cards. I have been really inspired this year from all the amazing blogs I follow and the great websites and magazines to do a homemade christmas. I plan to make all of my friends gifts, make all of my cards and also make some decorations. Mum and I love looking at this blog and have been given a lot of inspiration from her. We both now look at everything in shops in a different way, and mum spotted this table scatter in Paperchase a few weeks ago. So when I had the chance I took a look at it for myself, and these are the goodies I purchased.

I really liked the look of these, and had the idea of some very simple, modern christmas cards. They were not the cheapest of items, but I plan to make quite a few cards from them. The box of table scatter you can see in the photo above is these reindeer. They come in 3 different colours and this is the card design I have for them.

I really like this card, especially the writing that I have spent ages perfecting.

Here's another card design made from a different box of red Christmas tree table scatter.

I am still to decide on a design that uses the larger christmas tree decorations, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

I'm feeling very much in the christmas spirit allready. A few weeks ago our rangers group helped out with the local guides trip to a gang show. It was great fun, the show was good and we beforehand we shopped to our heart's content in all the lovely christmas shops. I have also signed up to Cheryl Johnson's free 12 days of christmas photography course. I have always managed in previous years to either take horrendous christmas photos or take none at all, so the inspiration and challenge will be fabulous and I may end up with some photos worthy of scrapping :) I can't wait. I'll blog my piccies when the course starts.

Bye for now,

Hannah :) xx

Monkey Madness !!

Hi everyone,

I have followed Helen's amazing craft blog for a while (click here to visit it), she creates some brilliant little gifts which have inspired me for gifts this christmas (dare I mention it!!) Helen also has another blog, her monkey blog, which I just love. I stumbled across it and thought the monkeys were so gorgeous, at first I thought Helen had knitted them, but when I found the post mentioning buying them from ebay I couldn't resist.

So here they are, our monkeys which we managed to win for a brilliant price. I've told James he can have the small monkey, which he has named Boris, but am still to come up with a name for mine, so any ideas would be welcome.

It's coming to the end of our half term now, I've been a bit naughty and not really got much work done, but plan to over the next few days. I did have an aim to start and complete a piece of artwork for my bedroom wall over this half term, I've started, but I'm not sure it'll get finished!! I'm not even half way through it yet! This is how it looks currently, it's a collage of things I care about and are special to me, plus bits that just look pretty!!

(Sorry about the colours in the photos, I've taken them this evening so the lightbulbs have made it look orangey!!)

I hope you like it, I'll blog any more progress I make.

In the meantime, any name suggestions for my monkey are welcome, and I hope you are well.

Hannah :)