It's Those Snails Again...

It's been a long time since I made a waterfall card, so here's one using the Silly Snails from Art Neko again. Yes, I know technically a waterfall card should cascade downwards - but for some reason practically all the ones I have ever made run sideways like this one.

There is a little sparkle on the snails' shells, but it's hard to see. Also I wonder if maybe the Spectrum Noir glitter overlay pen doesn't work as well on a smooth surface such as the Polychromos pencils leave. I'm experimenting today to see if using one on watercoloured paper works better...

The coloured embossed background piece was in my scrap box, so apart from Liquid Pearls, I'm not sure what's on it. I was happy to find some ribbon that went well with it. I like stitching round the card to secure the strip that that waterfall is attached to, as a less bulky alternative to brads or eyelets.

I'd rather have my snails on a card than in the garden. I see that they have demolished one chilli plant entirely, and another one is rapidly disappearing.

Autumn....

...is nearly here. Well, if you go by the traditional Irish start to Spring on February 1st, St. Brigid's Day, we're already well into it. But I disagree; I don't think we have four three-month seasons here. Winter is pretty much November to March in my book, Spring is April and May, Summer is June and  July, and Autumn is September and October. 

Anyway, whether it's meterologically, my chronology or the traditional Irish count, there's a chill in the air and the leaves are falling, so it was time to change out my summer sampler and put some autumn into it;  this is what I came up with. I was disappointed to find that I only had one small scarecrow stamp which didn't really work, there were three squares that didn't make the final cut when it came to assembling the 9" panel - it's a 12"  frame.

And sticking with leaves, a card I made recently for the Art Neko blog...I did some stamping with leaves to create a setting for my stamped owl. The little nutshell one came from my grandmother's house, so he is not just wise but ancient. 

I'll be back in a couple of days with more cards as I pick my August favourites - and some more memories of France as I continue to chip away at culling and editing.

Bug In A Box

I wanted to make something a little different for my Art Neko project this week.  The Whimsical & Kind Sayings set includes "Sorry You Caught A Bug" as one of the sentiments. Much as I love making cards which have bugs in jar, I already have two in my stash waiting to use and I didn't really need to make another. So I thought a little, and, with a little help from C who suggested the flower, came up with this idea:

(The little clockwork ladybird comes from Paris. It turns a somersault. We got it in the wonderful bookshop in the Tuileries, just beside the exit onto the Place de la Concorde. I don't think we ever go in there without buying something, often children's books.

I used my Sizzix matchbox die to create this, stamping the sentiment and ladybird before assembling the box outer.

I made a little insert with a tab and another of the sentiments. For my test piece I hand wrote the "lift here", but since I hate my handwriting, and happen to have black on clear tape for my Brother label printer, I did print a little label for the finished version.

And inside is the bug - along with a sprig of Cornus. That too is a Sizzix die from the Susan's Garden range. Lorraine - I think of you every time I use those nail-art styluses. whether it's for scoring details as here, or for adding tiny dots of paint.  The bug was stamped on watercolour paper with black ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I used Inktense pencils to add colour, and went round the edges with a black marker after cutting it out. It's also shaped a little with a large stylus, and popped up on foam.
The flower stem is an ordinary piece of florist's wire wrapped round with brown florist's tape (although in fact both my supplies came not from a florist but from a cake decorating shop).

Here's the card I made to post to the Art Neko blog last week - if you want more details on the creation, they are on the blog HERE.

Great Snails!!

Thank you, Lorraine, for the "rout of snails" group noun, which I didn't know. I think many of us wish there would be a rout of them from the gardens.

Simply three here today - the Silly Snails from Art Neko.

One was a mixed media card I made as a sample for the Splitcoast challenges, so it's not really a design team card, but I thought my garden needed something more than flowers in it.

The second one is more by way of being a design team card since the only other stamp I used is also from Art Neko - Whimsical and Kind Sayings.
When I was making this one, I was trying to decide whether to have the wall-climbing snail able to see the end in sight, and show some sky above the brick wall. In the end, I decided it was more graphic to show nothing but wall to climb and no idea of how much climbing was left to reach the top.

The Kind and Whimsical Sayings set is mostly sentiments, but comes with the bonus of a little ladybird and a bee. I used the bee for another Dare To Get Dirty card.

The background was an embossing resist with Brusho powders; I can't imagine using the black very often but it looked good here. It was very difficult for me to make a sentiment with no punctuation, but I have a very basic Dymo label-maker which doesn't run to either an apostrophe or an interrogation point, so I had to ignore my grammatical inner voice.  The mason jar die is from Sizzix, it came with a matching embossing folder and is great fun to use. (Thanks, Di!).

Rabbits, Rabbits

When I think about it, it surprises me how many superstitions my otherwise very rational mother subscribed to - throwing  pinch of spilled salt over her left shoulder, greeting magpies to avert bad luck, and saying "Rabbits, rabbits" on the first of the month,  before speaking to anybody else. Even luckier, "White rabbits, white rabbits".

So here are some lucky rabbits  from Art Neko - white and brown - for the first of the month.
I used the Hiroshige Moon Viewing Rabbits, and some beautiful fabric paper for the first one. C was very impressed with the paper thinking that I had carefully stuck all the little gold leaves on myself - I had to disillusion him. Simple masking and sponging.

The second one isn't strictly a design team card, as I used stamps from various companies to create the retiform background. This time they are enjoying a harvest moon! Other stamps used were Timeless Textures from Stampin' Up! and an old Hero Arts script stamp.

My new blog header says it all for an Irish summer - wet. Apparently I only took 8 photos last August that I considered worth editing and keeping.

Snowy Egrets

We saw lots and lots of egrets - great, little and cattle - when we visited the Camargue in southern France. But I'll save those photos till I get that far in my holiday photo editing and posting.

On another of our outings, we visited Rousillon in the Vaucluse, and walked along the trail through an old ochre quarry. I used some Christmas gift money to buy some beautiful pigments. Since it was impossible to choose between the great range of earth tones and the wonderful bright vivid colours, I ended up treating myself to one of the larger sets.

And these are what I used to colour my Art Neko offering for this week:

I stamped the Shoson Five Snowy Egrets with wee calligraphy on watercolour paper, added a little colour to the beaks with pencils and then watercoloured the background.
I recently came across this spatter mesh from way back, and thought it would pick up perfectly on the snowy scene - so I simply added it to a black base, edged the base with a silver pen and edged the mesh with Liquid Pearls. To finish I added a button and silver cording.

Hoot Hoot

Another card with Art Neko stamps - this week I used the Wise Owl on a Branch with Calligraphy. He's stamped on a piece of wrinkle-free distress card, then I masked him off and reverse masked a moon. First I smudged the moon in with luster rub-ons and then I dusted it with one of the interference Perfect Pearls for some shimmer.
I could have sworn I had some perfect paper with Chinese characters on it but it must have all got used up; while looking for it, I found this beautiful blue marbled paper which said "night sky" to me - so I used it.
There's some embossed black stitching along the card base, picked up by the machine stitching at the top of the card. I added a die-cut feather  (Spellbinders)- and even had some owl washi tape to dress the inside up a tiny bit.

One of our trips in France was to the Camargue. We visited a bird reservation there. Almost all the birds were wild and free, but at the entrance there were a few enclosures with rescue birds which had been injured and which they weren't able to release back into the wild. One of the enclosures had some Eagle Owls.

Snails

You may have noticed an addition in the side-bar of my blog since I got home. I was honoured to be invited to join the Art Neko design team, so for the next few months you will be seeing a weekly card posting as well as my regular miscellany of stuff.

Well, today the postman delivered everything that had been on hold during our holidays, including my first Art Neko stamps. I'd been holding on to this piece of Tyvek because I thought the colours in it would make a good background for the Silly Snail.
I coloured and heated the Tyvek about a month ago, but I am pretty sure that this piece was just coloured with regular watercolours and left to dry.
Today I added some silver chain-stitching for the snail's trail, and some flowers punched from a reject scrap and stitched on with a sequin in the centre of each.
The snail was stamped with Memento Chocolate Brown, coloured with pencils and then I glazed his shell with Diamond Glaze.
A sentiment from the Whimsical and Kind Sayings set was stamped on kraft with the same brown ink, and highlighted with some sparkle - and a few simple score lines finished the base off.

I'll be along shortly with photos from France as I get time to go through them, cull the excess and edit some of the good ones. But for a start - here are some more snails.