Sue's Book

OK so here is the card that I made using the Lindisfarne bricks as a background, sorry the picture is a bit blurry! It was for Sue Roddis, who had a book signing for her first book (of many I hope!) at Paddy's Stamping Place in Prestwich, Manchester yesterday. I went along and got my book signed - the book is published by Search Press and is called Handmade Decorative Books. (available from Paddy 0161 798 5115) It is absolutely brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because I consider Sue a friend, I would buy it even if I'd never met her! She had brought with her many of the actual books that she made to put in the book, and they are so great to see and to handle, if you get the chance, go and see them, and her, and buy the book! Even though it's about making books, the ideas would apply to cards, scrapbooks, altered art, mixed media work, all sorts of things.

For this card I started with a white card blank, and applied Vintage Photo and Black Soot Distress inks around the edges, then I overstamped with a gorgeous little border stamp from Elusive Images ATC plate in Black Soot. I dried this all off with a heat gun then gold embossed small EI flourishes in the corners. I used a Tim Holtz mask set called borderline, sponging the same inks over them onto heavyweight brown paper, then I embossed the calligraphic alphabet from the EI plate in black over the barbed wire part and tore a long strip out, then tore the border out and used that to attach to the edge of my photograph. I mounted both these onto my card. Then I took a black chipboard tag and edged it gold with a krylon pen, stamped 'congratulations' all over it (another EI stamp) and embossed in gold, then stamped the same onto scraps of the brown paper and embossed with black detail powder, chopped out rough shapes and stuck them on the tag. I finished the tag with a twist of wire from a bamboo fence panel, which is a bit of a "Sue" touch! Anyway I hope she liked it.

The last couple of days have been chaotic because I lost my diary on Monday and only found it last night - it was in the ironing basket, where it would have languished for months if it had not suddenly come into my mind that that was where I had put it! (After searching my house, work and car for the previous two days, driving everyone mad asking if they'd seen it!) Anyway, luckily I hadn't missed anything crucial, but it would have got nasty very soon as there was lots in there that I had not remembered!!! For example, I might not have realised that I've got a day off today, but as I have, I'm going to have a go at the latest RSS challenge now!

Isn't this great? I was thrilled to little mint balls to be awarded this Blog award by my lovely friend Sarah Anderson, (http://sarahanderson1.blogspot.com) who I have met through crafting. She is a wonderful craft teacher, I have been to her workshops, we have been to the same ones with other tutors, and she has even been to mine, so there is a lot of sharing going on! She is single-handedly responsible for an awful lot of art journalling that is going on from Crewe north to Rossendale and Bolton! I want to pass this award on, but she and I share a few crafty friends, and she has passed it on to those who blog already, so I will just add one, (http://hickydorums.blogspot.com) and say to other crafting friends, who have not yet started blogging - you know who you are (Carol and others) - go on, go for it! You might even get a blogging award! And one day soon, I am going to remind myself how to type a person's name so that if you click it you go to their blog, instead of me having to paste the blog address in! I am not the most IT literate of people any more.

Unusual backgrounds

Recently I took a working trip to Northumbria, and I visited various places of interest (my job has its perks!) including Lindisfarne, Alnwick, Bamburgh and Durham. On Lindisfarne, I spent an hour or two looking round the ruins of the Priory, which is lovely - even on a dull day, it just looked beautiful. I am not religious, but the sense of peace and tranquility is amazing. It was not even spoilt by the rudeness of one of the people who worked in the shop there - I've always kind of imagined that working in a place like that would have a mellowing effect on people, but this man was just downright lacking in manners! Anyway, in spite of him, I had a great time, and his colleague, who was working in the entrance 'hut' to the actual Priory made up for him in helpfulness, knowledgability and charm.

I noticed the effect of the years, or should I say centuries, on the brick and stone it was built from, and as well as taking photos of the buildings I took some close-ups of the walls, just because they were so striking. Later, I thought that they would make great background paper for scrapbooks or cards, or any artwork really! Especially as they can be manipulated digitally and printed out whatever size my printer will allow. Wish I could remember to remove the date stamp on the camera settings when I take this kind of pic though. Never mind, that's what the "crop" button is for I guess. I've already used the top one on a card for a friend on a very special occasion, but it's not till tomorrow and she reads my blog, so I can't post it yet!

Here are some of the photos, hope you like them: