Still creating atc's

It has been a little while since I posted any atc's on here, you could be forgiven for thinking that I had given up creating in this format. However of course, I could do no such thing, I not only enjoy creating the small art works but havae made so many friends over the net that I could no more contemplate stopping than of cutting off my right hand.

My latest series were for a swap challenge on Flickr, many of my friends will also be members of Maggies Monday Musings (MAMMA). This week the challenge theme ( set by Nancy )was anything to do with water. Well I had to do a little thinking for this one. Once I had my thoughts gathered I then spent quite a while gathering the elements I wante to use. I ended up with enough material for several cards but only entered three, or I might have been swapping with myself. The three entered were:-

I found a number of WC Fields quotes on water which I liked and may well turn them into a series. Here is one which I made which I definitely do not like now that it is finished. But I post it here to remind me that not all cards turn how how you want them to.




I now feel that the background is far too busy for the subject and that the text does not stand out well enough. But that is why I called the blog, "the trials and tribulations ....etc". I am not upset by having to show the failures.

I also made one from a balsa wood boat in a frame which I was given, sorry can't remember the source, but my thanks to whoever it was. I find that filing bits and pieces is a difficult enough job and always mix up the little gifts losing track of where they came from. here is that atc:-








and finally for today's post, a postcard. I found in my altered book, and with other "larger" formats that the simplicity of my atc's is somewhat lost. I don't know wether it is because there is more working space available but I seem to get more elements on the larger formats compared to atc's. Here is the postcard, "Confuscious, he say........."

I also found a number of quotes from Confuscious, so there is another potential series in the pipeline. This was entered for a challenge on Paper, Digital Art and Images by Kim or PDA for short.

Maybe I will include a few more atc's in a midweek posting.....

country kitchen pursuits; wine, jams and chutneys

Here is another strange hobby of mine. Well not one I do much these days my old bones don't take kindly to being asked to stretch for those luscious fruits at the top of bushes and trees.

Sandra and I have always enjoyed foraging / collecting wild fruits for our larder. We always had a supply of jams, chutneys and wine and beers on hand throughout the year. However as we grew older ( some would say wiser), we took to wandering around farm shops and markets for home made goodies to buy.

This year however, My tomato crop has been disatrous, the whole greenhouse had to be emptied because of rampaging blight in the plants. I tried to control it by removing the affected leaves but by the time I gave up the stalks were a very sad site and the fruits were beginning to rot anyway. It has been a ver6y wet year in the UK for the third summer in a row. Maybe that it the reason, or contaminated fertilizer in the "inexpensive" growing bags.

Anyway we decided that this year we would make use of the freebies growing in the wild around our house, being lucky enough to have open countryside within walking distance. yesterday we decided enough was enough. We have collected crab apples, blackberries, elderberries, sloes, plums, damsons. Some have already been turned into jams and jellies:-

the plums will be converted into plum and cinnamon jam later today. (Did I say that Sandra does all the cooking, my job is the difficult to reach fruits and cleaning of them). BTW, the bottles at the back contain sloe gin - steadily maturing away. Great at Christmas.

Some of our crop has been frozen:-







and just a little eaten in pies and crumbles; thankfully no pictures, LOL

We seem to passed on this idea of food/drink for ree as our son, the one still at home, has been making wine, is latest is a batch of oak leaf wine. Just bottled from a crop of new leaves earlier this year. He also has an arty streak - notice the hand-made lables and the dripping wax seal on each bottle:-







What a week, I ache all over but it is so satisfying especially when it comes to eating it. Blackberry jam on my toast this morning ... heaven.

more craftiness soon............

Home made rubber stamps from erasers

OK I finally did it. I bought myself a set of lino-cutting tools from Ebay ( where else? ) and made a series of three stamps from soft erasers from my local supermarket. I set out in this first rubber stamp project to make stamps which I could use as to create backgrounds for my atc's. I will hopefully move on to more detailed images as I get used to the tools.

First here are photos of the stamps ( after use, as the inks seem to have dyed the rubber ) two of them are actually on both sides of one eraser.

Two are very similar and the third is an attemp at a scroll-like pattern.

The stampings from these look a little like the following:













The scroll pattern was a first attempt and I have now cleaned up the area which was cut away. The rubber is so soft (?) that it has to be a very deep cut to avoid spurious marks on the paper.

Finally here are a some atc's using two of the backgrounds:










and also







I certainly enjoyed the experience and will be making more stamps this way (and also using corks ) as soon as I can get enough time to gather my senses.

Try this yourself...

altered book project finished article

As promised here is a view of the completed book. I said that it did not shut properly, and that I should take out more pages in the future for another attempt. I guess it is not too bad however for this sort of art work, maybe I am too critical. However I am quite proud of it. I kept focused for quite a while to finish it ( 24 collages) and managed to use up quite bit of the stock of scraps and off-cuts ( and a few items that were sent to me with atc swaps). here it is..........

Don't forget to view my You Tube vid to see all the images as they appear in the book.

oh, one other thing, the book I mentioned was "Altered Books Workshop: 18 Creative Techniques for Self-expression " by Bev Brazelton. Lots of new ( to me) techniques, can't wait to put some of them into practice and start my next project. The only problem is that over the next few weeks we have a couple of holidays coming up and so it may well be October before I can find the time.

Finally, a video in a series on You Tube which was fairly instumental in getting me started on this project. Note the box of scraps, and the layering, etc - wish i was this fast, LOL

See you around.