All Present, Delivered and Correct....

Well maybe not correct, but pressie has been delivered to Katherine T.

Another altered box, which was just a plain pine jewellery box to begin with.

Katherine gave me some model magic so I wanted to have a play with that, and it ended up on her birthday present.

I rolled it very thinly, stamped into it and folded it, tweaked it, painted it.

This sits on a layer of painted and heated Tyvek.

I made a mould of a Gargoyle fridge magnet and used the model magic in that... its a very details and in parts undercut mould, and it came out much better than the ones I have tried to make with oven baked polymer clays.

Inside there is a removable tray. There is a working clock inside one of the compartments, the face of the clock is embossed metal, which i just doodled on. The bottom of the other compartments are filled with UTEE, coloured with Mica powders.

The lower tray has been lined with metal from Tomato Puree tubes... I love the colour of these and usually flatten them in my Wizard, but have left them creased here and covered them with clear UTEE and a few micro beads.

I have just noticed that some of these photos were taken whist the outside was matt black.. I have since sprayed it with a green mica spray.  The sides are metal, wire, beads, embossing powder and some fab felt like stuff that you can heat and it melts... oh I am so sad getting excited about such stuff!

Done it.... I hope it meets approval!

Well I took the plunge and once I got started it was alot of fun. I had no idea where I was going when I started (and I am not actually sure where I finished up!) but I decided to go with the colour scheme of purple and gold so that would go in my newly decorated bedroom.. which is surprisingly enough, purple and gold.....

The frame, which was already highly decorative and needed no addition of embellishments apart from colour, was decorated with Viva paints, Alcohol inks,  Rub 'n' Buff, Metallic Rub Ons, Gold Krylon pen - you name it and it is there! - Oh forgot to mention a few blasts with some pink/purple/gold mica sprays.

The centre piece has one of my favourite PaperArtsy stamps (well all PA stamps are favourites!) which although I love I never quite know what to do with it. But I think it sits quite nicely here stamped on some gold metal and glued on top of some model magic (see post below) which I rolled out, trimmed into a rather organic shape with some decorative scissors and stamped into using a PA squiggly ink tree and a leaf texture mat. The pierced holes around the stamped house are there because I was going to try and stitch it to the clay base, but I quickly realised that it wasn't going to work. It may be because I didn't leave the clay to dry enough, but I didn't want it to dry completely.. so whether you can sew into it is still up for experimentation!

I painted it with Viva Bronze precious metal paint and Viva Bio colour black/gold.. which I have to say I am not at all impressed with, it doesn't to my mind give the illusion of black and gold, but looks OK, just doesn't do what it say on the tin!

Gold Croco Crackle paint behind the lot and voila!

I am happy with it, and it looks lucsious on my bedroom wall, it has just got to pass inspection from Teacher!

Poor in pocket...

but rich in friends..... had just the best weekend with Mr and Mrs Bessie, some of you may have read about the Bessie's but don't know who they are... well I just had to share this lovely picture of them

that's them, bless their old hearts!

Ally Pally was as good as usual, met up with some friends and spent far too much, esp at LBcrafts and The Artistic Stamper.... yummy paints and yummy stamps and yummy goodies that one just had to have! Can't wait to have a play with them............ and my friend Debs gave me the most awesome thing to alter that she picked up from a car boot sale for me, so I have no excuse to get out my new paints!

Now AP is over, I can post a few things that I made and gave to some special people at AP... two very late birthday presents!

A pressie for Dee62 who had a 'significant' birthday last month

An altered Tuna Tin... grungeboard. For a smaller friend who we tease that she must live under a toadstool, who's birthday was in July!

No prizes for guessing who this is for, not a Birthday pressie, just a pressie for her new purple bedroom!

I was very chuffed with the 'Best Mate' bit, do you recognise it? I managed to take a mould of a 'Love Heart' sweet (which I have to admit I loved as a child and still love them, they are my guilty pleasure!) - anyway I took a mould and then made a polymer clay embellishment from it. Obviously you can't make and sell them, but great fun for personal projects.

Oh well back to real life again now... off to pack tomorrows lunches, check school uniforms, polish shoes etc etc

Finally Finished!!

Bittersweet moment, the AB I have been doing for an online Altered Book Course is finally finished.... well almost just a few tweaks here and there which may or may not happen.

I have really enjoyed the fact that doing a course does focus you and 'makes' you sit down and meet the 'deadlines' I have other projects half finished, which will get done one day but really I do work better to a deadline... usually someones birthday!

Anyway here it is... on the final pages we finished the niches that we cut at the very beginning. Now obviously when I cut the niches I knew what I was going to put in them as they are a very specific size and shape... well that was ages ago and now I have forgotten! But as the book has changed course many times then I;m sure that what ever it was wouldn't look right now anyway. The final page now signifies the end, and the words to Frankie's 'My Way' seem to me to be very apt! The Skeleton inside a Tic Tac box inside the biggest niche was not done by me but was sent to me by the very talented Trudy on the DC forum. Instead of sitting on my kitchen window sill it is now living in my book and will be admired and treasure now for many years, along with a few of my most favourite ATC's sent to me by other people which also reside here.

The Cover is decorated with my two most favourite mediums, polymer clay and metal, and as you can tell from the spine, my book has finally got a name 'Class 101' the name of yahoo group which runs alongside the AB Blog.

I'm a bit sad now it's all over.... now what to do??

Thank you to Elizabeth who ran the course, sure it has been a hard slog for her but it has been a very enjoyable few months for me!

One last thing..... it was said at the beginning of the course not to expect the book to close properly ever again.... well thats definately not going to happen with my book is it !

Bottle tops and more on my book! Oh and a question....

Well the British Summer has been and gone, back to socks and woollies and my snug craftroom, the nice thing about the British weather is that when it isn't good you have no guilty feelings about creating, so I have done a couple of things this week (well 2 and a half, but more about the half later!)

The very talented Tish challenged us on the DC forum to alter a bottle top... the beer kind! Mmmmm they were supposed to be charms, but since when have I done exactly as I was told and mine have turned into magnets! The nice thing about magnets on BT's is though that you don't have to glue them on as the magnet sticks to them as well, so it the recipient wants a charm they can remove the magnet and use that on something else. Having said this these magnets are so strong you have to prise them off !!

Oh look........... yet more clay! And a bit of grunge paper!

This week has been a free week on the Altered Book course I am doing, to allow people to catch up although you could do a spread if you wished to. I have done a two page spread using the clay leaves that I put through the pasta machine (post below) and inspired by Ingrid's button edges I have edged the pages as well with some grunge paper which extends further than the rest of the pages (as do the buttons) I really like this look, although it would counteract the effect if you did it on two many pages. A simple idea to edge you pages, but I wouldn't have thought of it so thanks Ingrid for your inspiration!

Not sure if you can see from the picture but I have found a few words on the pages and painted around them, making up my own 'quote' but this involved reading the book... mmmmm it's actually quite interesting, maybe I shouldn't have started altering it !!!

Now... My S.I.L. has come up with a brilliant fundraising idea for the Norfolk Deaf Association for whom she works, but it involves altering something................ can anyone can guess what it is?, I bet noone will ever ever guess.... Will post a piccy when it's complete , probably early next week!

Twice In One Day!!

Well the plan for today was to do a bit of washing... went to laundry basket to find it had magically been filled overnight I was sure it was empty yesterday! - SHOCK........... Kids had tidied their Bedrooms. HORROR..... This resulted in a load more washing!

Plan 2; Do the Ironing. Well that hasn't happened.

Plan 3; Attempt some altered bottletop charms for a challenge I am taking part in. Well I tried, honest I did, I flattened, I removed plastic bits, I made holes, I ran out of inspiration.

OK onto Plan 4; Prepare food for tonight's dinner... forgot to take meat out of freezer last night... that's OK , Lentil Roast prepared instead, that will keep meat hating DD happy.

Plan 5; Continue with the Altered Abacus I started at the beginning of the year.... yeah sommat has gone OK cos it went to plan (well almost) and is now finished. Not bad, I planned on it taking most of the year as I wanted to do it bit by bit as and when I had time and inspiration to do another bit. It's June tomorrow and it's finished and I am happy with it so all is well in Nicks world.

It doesn't really take much to make me happy... take a look at these two beauties! Playing around with a pasta machine, some clay and some leaves. Heidi uses alot of leaves with her silver work and silver clay, so I thought I'd have a play with my polymer clay. Just ran the leaves through the pasta machine along with the clay and then highlighted the clay with some mica pigments. As they are so thin they will go into my altered book as they are only the thickness of a stiff card. One uses a rose leaf from a rose OH brought in from the garden for me, and the other is a lily leaf and some gypsophilia that came in a bouquet recently sent to me from Mrs Bessie.... cool eh??? they look groovy and are a bit of personal memorabilia, well I'm happy LOL!!

It's Safe to Post Now Cos She Has Opened it..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FUCHSIA
Blimey Guv it doesn't seem 5 mins since we were sitting outside a cafe which is close to our favourite craft shop (well to be fair really the only craft shop in our neck of the woods, but it's a pretty cool place to shop nonetheless!) in May 2008 on a glorious sunny day, celebrating Fuchsia's birthday with a zero at the end...... but here we are a year later and surprise surprise Fuch has another birthday...... unfortunately as you will probably gathered by now, my mates get my tat for their birthdays... it's the penalty that they pay for knowing me !!

Fuchsia is a great cook and loves cooking for her family, so this year I have altered a napkin holder for her. ( YCJ has some great alterable stuff which will be on sale soon, well as soon as I can get the photographer aka SSO over with her camera. As you will have guessed and as she constantly points out, my photography skills leave alot to be desired! But keep an eye on our website http://www.yourcreativejourney.co.uk/ as they will be on sale soon.)

Back to Fuchsia... she is one of the nicest people you could meet and extremely talented, but I haven't nagged her yet into getting a blog up and running so you can't see her great work for yourself, but trust me she is good! She is also very patient with me cos she knows I am very slack at returning emails and that I have in possession of a few of her books she lent me an age ago!!


I am still having a bit of a polymer clay moment and a bit of a leaf moment and it seems a bit of a Paperartsy moment!
I tried so hard here to be more colourful and cheerful, once again it doesn't seem to have happened, think I am destined to be grungy and sombre in my colours!

Oh and... just before I go, I did a bit of blog hopping yesterday and came across this blog.... for all you women/mums/slightly insane mad people ...... take a look at http://slightlysouthofsanity.blogspot.com/ I was crying with laughter at this ladies blog and her very amusing anecdotes!