Footy fever

The Euro 2008 is coming to a conclusion this evening with the final between Germany and Spain, the city has excelled itself with an amazing month of flag waving, patriotisim and cool events. Of course I felt obliged to make a footy cake for J's birthday!

laughable lamingtons

laughable lamingtons

this one is for you Carole! by the time I realised
how poor the picture was I couldn't take another one as I'd eaten them all!

Spools

chill chips live another day, not quite sure as what yet?
giant spools with fabulous photos and stuff!!
Nancy Maxwell James did something similar in
the latest issue of Somerset Scrapbooking & Heritage Art
http://vintagepapers.blogspot.com/search/label/publications

Bit of a blurry backview...

Cover

Astonished at myself for finishing this one!
I'm quite pleased with the way it came out
especially the little inchies on the front, just used
pics from a mag stuck onto card, sanded them
and dipped the edges in a bit of brown ink.

Book box

I recently went to an artweek where one of the women showed me how to make a treasure box from an old book by cutting out the middle and sticking the pages together with paper mache glue. Then decorate the box however you like (mine is still a work in progress) she used scrapped/stamped luggage tags to fill it with wishes, dreams etc

I cut out some letters from the newspaper as I didn't have anything else at the time

Tall tree

I did a lot of tree themed pictures at painting but this is my favourite done for my extra
tall son, it's tough being so young and tall but his time will come. I started with a large pot of
white acrylic to which I kept adding colour starting with yellows, I wanted the final
green to contain all of the same base colours, I ran out of paint and decided to stop rather
than creating a new colour batch.

I love how the colours work together on this one

At the beginning of this year I set myself an art challenge, to create one art card per week for duration of this year. The only restriction has been the size, 18 x 12cm, otherwise I'm free to do as much or as little as I like. Some of them represent what I was doing at the time and others have been techniques or ideas I've just wanted to try out. I've put each completed work in an envelope and put it away in a box, nobody has seen what I'm doing and as time's gone on I've forgotten a lot of what I've done. On Dec 31st I'll pop a bottle of bubbly and open my major mail stash...

My mother

Mum flying in a teacup, why?? I have no idea

Brighton, UK 2007

If I could be anywhere....

Old Maps

My painting teacher gave me an old map to paint on, really interesting paper, old and oily. The paint decided where it was going to take, I started with a layer of gesso then added layers of acrylic, it all went horribly wrong half way through and I knew the teacher thought i'd ruined it, (so did I!) I then ripped it up and sewed it back together. I found the alphabet tiles in the kids Börse, in a fabulous old soap box that was fairly smelly! I used tissue technique to give a bit of texture to the compass.
A transparency of me dipping my fingers in the sea of life

Work space

Small flat, small workspace but always growing...

Take Two

Second time round, not quite as good as the first batch but still ok. I then forgot to sign all the cards so of course nobody had a clue where they came from, the mystery bug lady I am...

I spent ages preparing these mini cards for a Hint of Spring swap only to discover at the last minute they were the wrong size! I then pulled them to pieces to make a new batch but decided to keep here comes the sun as a souvenir.

In this house

I was totally inspired by my new book purchase, In This House by Angela Cartwright and Sarah Fishburn.
Shopping Queen aged 5! So cool to think this was our car for so many years!

Bird Paravan

I used Cavallini papers, stamps and acrylic paint for this project and am quite pleased with the finished look. Thank you Lisa for the little decorative sticker which finished the piece!
This is the first time I've seen Cavallini papers in Switzerland so I just had to have them as I've seen them so often in mags and have felt quite envious, hideously expensive but well worth it!