Journals

I altered these journals as Christmas gifts for my playmates, Karen and Sue..

The journals are made by Reeves and have a canvas cover for you to customize. Great value and a good surface to work on.

12 Tag Book

I made 12 tags with Trish's Advent images and have put them together in a 'booklet', which is going to Rob Keogh together with her pay it forward gift. (Still one place left if anyone interested :) )

12 days of Christmas Swap

This swap, organised by Sweetpea on CCSwaps was the highlight of the swapping year. There were lots of participants and lots of excitement when the gifts went to their new owners. I hope that this will take place for next Christmas. Here is a photo of all the gifts I received, 24, as I participated in 2 groups. Each and every one of them was a delight to open.

Thanks to all the participants and to Santa Pea and her elf helpers, Maggi and Chrissy who had the mammoth task of getting all the gifts to the right place in plenty of time for Christmas.

Pay it Forward

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow, or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do
in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. So basically, if you comment and you’re on, I’ll send you something crafty that I’ll make!
Once you sign up, copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog, and three other lucky people will be recipients of your handmade work. I will check my blog daily to see who the first three sign ups are, and if they've joined this Pay It Forward exchange, they will be the recipients from me.

Make sure to leave your blog address with your message, so I can check your blog. I will also need your email address so I can contact you for details of where to send them.

Altered Hand

Today I unearthed some hands that I had bought some time ago, the plan was to alter them for Christmas presents. Well that didn't happen, but I did alter one today. This is the first time I have done anything like this. Here goes :)

The first picture is the hand as it came out of the box. As you can see it is jointed, and there is quite a lot of movement in the wrist.

I covered the hand completely with images stamped onto tissue paper, torn and adhered with PVA glue. making sure,as I went along that all the joints still moved.

Once this was dry I coloured it using a random mixture of Distress Inks, aged mahogany, broken china, peeled paint, mustard seed and spiced marmalade. I sprayed a little Tattered Angels iridescent gold onto a sponge and used that over all the colours.

I then dabbed all over with Opalite Golden Mist.

The embellishment is part of an old earring,

covered with gold rub 'n buff and attached with very fine thread. This is not quite the effect I had in mind when I started out, it is quite rich looking. For my next hand(!) I have another 3, I think I will keep the colours softer.

ATC Doll

Adrienne is running a swap for an art doll, which must fold up to the size of an ATC. This is what I came up with.

I used Distress Inks, Aged Mahogany, Spiced Marmalade and Mustard Seed swiped onto a non stick mat. Instead of spritzing with water I used Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist , copper. I randomly stamped the

patterns in Brilliance Lightening Black and drew around them with a Sukura Gelly Roll copper glitter pen.

I stamped words on the limbs. The crown is from a sun stamp, stamped on gold metallic card , embossed and cut out. The face is from my image

collection. Added a gold band, and a few jewels and put the whole lot together with mini gold brads. Hope my partner enjoys it. It was fun to make.

Klimt ATC

I made this ATC for a swap in a group I belong to. I had had the Klimt cube by Judikins for a while, but had never used it. I bet we all have stamps bought and not used. When I look through mine I sometimes think to 'What on earth did I buy that for? ', and then there is the the joy of finding a stamp you want to use immediately lol. This was one of those times, I quite like how it turned out.

The background was made using a mixture of Sticky Fingers lustre sprays, available from Carol and Aileen's Outside the Margins Sprays. This was stamped with the Klimt images in silver shadow ink. The mountboard was sprayed with the same colours and stamped with Brilliance Lightening Black. The words were printed from my computer onto vellum and I added a small metal embellishment.