Kickstarting Creativity!

 Making small collages for the last couple of weeks has been a good way to kickstart my creativity.  However, sometimes I struggle with what to do with the blank piece of paper in front of me - so I've come up with a prompt jar.  I've written colours and themes on different coloured paper squares and I can dip in and get a starting point for my next collages.  I've thrown a few 'techniques' into the mix as well in case I'm really stuck!

This week I picked out 'yellow' and 'tree houses'.  The combination didn't exactly thrill me and I was tempted to re-pick, but that's not really in the spirit things.  I also felt week one was a little early to give up on the idea, so I went with it and started enjoying myself!

12 little squares being worked on - a mix of home made collage papers, some wrapping paper and a few old postage stamps thrown in - and a bit more of an emphasis on ladders than I was expecting!

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Mini Grid Collages

 I decided to try and kick start some creativity this week by creating a grid of 6 little collages.  I was recently inspired by Angela (@Felix the Crafty Cat) to make my own collage papers.    It's been fun and quite addictive - I'm already planning my next lot of collages! 

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Silver Acorns

In my previous post I showed some silver pendants in production stage that I was making for Christmas presents, and here they are finally finished - all given and well received!   The tiniest one was very fiddly, it's only about half an inch long but it was for my sister to wear alongside an oak leaf that I had made for her a while ago.

Sitting on my desk this week are some prints that I did at a photo printing workshop several years ago.  I brought them home and promptly lost them - it's always niggled me that I never knew what happened to them.  Well this week  they fell out from between the pages of one of my old craft books that I apparently don't look at very often!  They aren't as nice as I remembered - the more frustrated I got at losing them the nicer they became in my mind!!

I can't remember how we made them but it involved real leaves, photo paper and plenty of shaving foam and sudacreme!  Now I'm sitting looking at them wondering if I could use them for anything - the mind is a blank at the moment!

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW.

Silver Pendants and WOYWW

 It's been such a long time since I blogged and I don't even have the excuse of having moved over to Instagram!  I've just been unmotivated and rather preoccupied with other issues and I've really not been in the right frame of mind for being creative.  However I couldn't give Christmas a miss, so lately a little crafting has been happening.  I made some silver pendants last week, the ones at the front of the block are white because that's how they come out of the kiln - they need to be wire brushed to bring the shine up like the two at the back, and then they all need to be sanded and polished.

The one at the back of the block I made for myself, from a mold I made of a lump of quartz rock. I finished it last night with some green onyx stones (right-hand photo) and it will match perfectly with a favourite winter top of mine. The smaller pendants are Christmas presents - it won't take long to polish them and add a jump ring to the smallest one.  I'm going to have a go at soldering the jump ring closed if I can - it's not something I've ever done before but I've seen the Hubs soldering and it doesn't look that difficult!

    Wishing everyone a happy and healthy Christmas and New Year.

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW

ATC Swap and WOYWW

 I so enjoyed last week's 14th Anniversary ATC swap for WOYWW.

These are some of the ones I sent out...

...and I've received these little lovelies over the last week - such happy mail...

...thank you so much Julia, with the fab little badge, Angela (Felix the Crafty Cat) and Mary Anne whose ATC is so ingriguing and clever I'm still trying to work it out!

I'm still sorting my rubber stamps and this is the floor by my chair where I'm chucking the ones I don't want!   The desk is clear at the moment before I start on the last box, but I think the garden might win my attention today as the sun is shining and it's in need of some TLC!   

I'm linking up with the deskers over at Julia's place at WOYWW

WOYWW 14th Anniversary Swap

  This week we are celebrating 14 years of WOYWW - what an achievement!  A huge thank you to Julia and Jan who keep this going each week - it's a wonderful group, full of friendship, creativity and fun.  

To celebrate we are holding an ATC swap.   I completed mine last night, forgetting that although I made them in plenty of time (smug face) I forgot I had to stamp and attach the labels on the back, then fill them in - so a last minute job after all! 

  

Here are some beauties that I received over the last few days - I do love getting happy mail and these were a joy to open - thank you Angela (Crafting with Jack), Jan, Helen, Twiglet and Wipso.

 

And now I'm off to join in the celebrations over at WOYWW!

Collage - Layered Tissue

 This week I have had to clear my desk from the ghastly mess of rubber stamp sorting that I was doing last week in order to concentrate on ATCs.  Once they were finished I made a quick collage using the next prompt in The Collage Workbook by Randel Plowman.  This one is using layers of tissue paper.

I used some very old Gestetner paper I had in my stash - anyone else remember using the old Gestetner machines before photocopiers came along?  I think I'm showing my age!   I also added a strip of acetate across some of the collage - that's the reflection showing in the photo below.

I'm off to mess up my nice clear desk and do some more stamp sorting, but before that I'm joining in with Julia over at WOYWW.

Finger Paint Collages

I've just finished off two collages that have been hanging around half finished since October.  The prompts I've been following are from The Collage Workbook by Randal Plowman.  This prompt was all about adding finger painting to a collage.  

And now on to the absolute disaster that is my desk this morning - it's very unusal  for me to have anything on my desk as I always clear away as I make - but yesterday I decided to use a stamp for an idea I had.  Despite the fact my stamps are all catalogued and can be found by drawer number and then inside the drawer by a specific box number, the stamp I wanted was missing.  I couldn't find it anywhere so decided to have a combined search and sort out of all my stamps.  This is drawer 1 and I have a small pile of stamps 'to go' by my radio and an overflowing box of stamps that I don't know if I want to keep or not but will probably let go.  I can forsee regret in the future!

The catalogue pages are bottom right and new pages are being made with tiny stamps that I never bothered cataloguing in the past - after all if I'm doing this ghastly job I might as well do it properly!

I'm joining in with Julia over at WOYWW this week.