Hello there, Horace here for your delectation!!! Do you find crafting therapuetic? I do, and I can often be found at the desk, journalling my feelings. While the other bears are getting into little arguments, tempers are fraying and fur is being ruffled, I climb up to our little craft area, and start journalling.
Here's a page i came up with the other day, after trawling the Internet for challenges, and finding this fab Alice in Wonderland challenge blog. My furry brain started whirring with ideas straight away.
I took inspiration from some of our new 'paw'chases. Our Kaisercraft brick stamp features on the background to this piece, as does the new Dylusions alphabet stencil, although it seems to be largely hidden by the subsequent journalling.
Anyway, to begin, I misted the pages in Dylusions turquoise, bubblegum pink and whatever the yellow one is called (memory block setting in my furry brain here). I then sprayed more mist through the dylusions mask, and stamped over this in chipped sapphire distress ink.
I journalled my statement in several alphabet stamps, which were then paw-drawn over in white jelly pen, for added emphasis.
I chose the theme of 'eat me, drink me, whatever, just grow up'. To depict Alice's change from young childhood to adolescence.
Here's a close up of the left hand page, Alice is stamped twice into shrink plastic, in the large tag I've left the stamp in its original size, but stamped in shrink plastic as it gives a ghostly image of how Alice may be if she does grow up, on the smaller tag, I've heated the shrink plastic to its smallest form, to depict Alice's fright at the changes she is experiencing.
Here's a close up of the right hand side. Alice is stamped and coloured at her full size. The tag is made by tearing a page from an old Alice in Wonderland book, serendipitously torn from a page that included a quote from Alice, wishing to be 'a little larger'. The tape measure ribbon was bought last year at a Colchester craft fair. We knew we'd find a use for it sometime.
What fun. I shall return to this challenge blog again for sure.
Hello there, Horace here yet again. Goodness, I'm beginning to think the other bears are taking advantage of this bug and malingering in bed now! Anyway, I'm starting to feel a bit better, so thought I'd make a start on this year's crafting.
I decided to begin with this fabulous challenge A year in journalling. We do love our challenges and this one is great as it lasts all year.
Although journalling every day for a year sounds like a daunting task- thinking of writing something every day fills most people (and bears) with dread - the challenge is doable as the idea is to make one calendar page per month, add small squares for each date that month, then journal a small amount each day. The squares will probably take a sentence or two at most, depending on your paw-writing.
I used a Newton and Windsor A4 spiral bound sketch book, which I dashed to The Range to buy, as I didn't want to fall behind too far in the journalling - I'd only just discovered the challenge or I'd have bought the journal in advance. For my journal squares, I foraged in our 6x6 patterned paper stash. We have a veritable mountain of this,thanks to various magazine freebies, and never use it, so we may have enough for every month without any repeats.
First I played about with the sizing of my squares, I needed to fit 16 on one page, and 15 on the opposite page. These squares were made using the Sizzix framelits dies, these squares were made with the second smallest die.
To make the background for my page I began by using my distress inks, for the main colour I chose mustard seed. I slowly added colour to build up layers.
I then stamped directly onto a heat resistant mat with Dusty Concord distress ink, spritzed with water...
and dabbed the colour onto my page through a mask (another lovely Christmas present).
To add more interest, I spritzed water through the mask, left for a few moments
then blotted with kitchen roll, to take some of the ink from the page.
Yet another effect was achieved by spraying Dylusions inks, both through a hexagon mask and directly onto my page.
So far so good, but in my opinion, more is more,
so, once I'd adhered my journal squares, I stamped my page title with yet another lovely Christmas present, alphabet stamps.
I added other stamps to the page for more interest, in co ordinating colours.
Here it is, the bears' January journal page, I wanted bright and zingy colours, as December and the start of this year have been a little dismal for the bears. What better way to brighten things up than with a cheery page to look at? Now we can have fun adding our antics each day. I bet the other bears decide they've recovered from their malaise now the hard work is done!
Wow, the second week of WOYWW this year already, soon be Christmas again!
Are you wondering what the acronym above stands for? It's What's on your Workspace Wednesday, and is a chance to have a legitimate sneak at the desks of crafters worldwide, courtesy of Julia at Stamping Ground . why don't you try it, it's fun and addictive. I don't think us bears have missed a week since we started, even when Horace went AWOL on his hols!
Anyway, would you like to see what's on our workspace this week? Well, it's covered in purchases made from our local craft store, Papermaze.
This is a fab little shop in the Suffolk countryside, the owner, Vanessa, keeps up to date with all the scrapbooking and papercraft trends, and is always on hand to offer helpful and friendly advice. We love our visits here.
So, what did we buy? Well, we set out with the intention of buying two monthly kits, one for us, and one for our dear Florence, as we owed her some money from some craft goodies she had bought for us previously. We did achieve our mission, unfortunately though, as often happens in craft shops, these
also fell into our furry little paws. Kaisercraft clear stamps. We love these stamps, and probably have almost the whole collection now!
While we were waiting for our kits to be made up, this
fell straight from the shelf, into our paws, and stuck fast, you know how that happens? We just couldn't prise it from our paws, no matter how hard we tried!!!! Do you think Wilbear will believe us when he gets the credit card bill for this little lot?
We're off to see if there are any new purchases on other WOYWWers desks.
Hello there, it's Pooh here today to create something, and as usual for the bears, it's something from a challenge blog.
Our lovely blogger friend AJsuggested we try a challenge that she enjoys taking part in. It's called Every Inchie Monday, and as the title suggests, the idea is to make a piece of art each Monday that measures 1" x 1".
First I cut some 1" squares. Goodness, they really are small!!!!
Next, I coloured some of the squares with distress ink
And dabbed the excess off on Podgy's trash magazine.
Next, I inked up a star stamp we received free with our Craft Stamper magazine. I either stained the inchies then stamped the image, or stamped the image and rubbed the stain over the top.
I like the effect of the stamped then stained image, top left on the picture below, best.
These are very simple images for our first challenge but I had fun. We'll look forward to seeing what next week's challenge involves. If you'd like to play along, look Here, there are some great inspiration words to get your creativity flowing.
Hello there, so sorry to be posting this late, but we're thinking our New Bear Resolution may be to embrace 'better late than never' mantras or excuses.
For our January challenge, we have decided to go a little more contemporary than our usual classics. Moving forward into a New Year means moving forward in our book choice.
But, just to be a little subversive, our challenge is going to be all about looking back; we thought, as the New Year comes, people's thoughts turn to the past, what has come and gone, what they've succeeded or failed at, what they would go back and change.... So with this in mind, we came up with a book we enjoyed a while back,
The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffeneger. We read this book some time back, and absolutely loved the concept of travelling through time. We think Amazon's synopsis is better than anything we can write, so here it is:
This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
Our challenge is
Create a project, either a journal page, ATC, card, tag, anything else that takes your fancy.....
There are so many directions to take with this challenge, you could base your creation on travelling back in time, or forward, you could illustrate what you would change in the past, what you would do again, a favourite time in your past, or something you've learnt from the past.
Alternatively, you could imagine travelling to the future, your wishes, or what you imagine the future holds.
Yet another idea would be to illustrate a quote from the book, or journal what Clare feels with all the strange comings and goings of Henry over the years, seeing him at different ages throughout her childhood must have been extremely confusing.
What about Henry, all of those sudden transportations, losing his clothing along the way, having to extricate himself from some embarrassing or potentially life threatening situations, how on earth must he feel, trying to win Clare's trust, and eventually her love and loyalty over her childhood years, until their eventual 'first' meeting, years later for Clare.
This book is just perfect for journalling, not only for the endless ideas it brings up, but just because it really is such an intriguing read, if you've not read it yet, we thoroughly recommend it.
We can't wait to start out challenge piece, and will keep the challenge open until the last day in January, so as to allow time to join in.
We hope you'll play along with us in our first challenge of 2013.
Hello there lovely bloggers. Our first WOYWW of the year, see Here for our lovely host. so, what have we got to show for it? Sadly little. The bears are STILL feeling sorry for themselves with their bug and post bug malaise. Tsk, once again it falls to me, Horace, to crawl out of the sick bed to post something on the blog.
Well, as it's me who's been brave enough to make the effort, I think it should be one of my journal pages that's showcased today. Here's one I made over the Christmas period, the page says it all really (moan, sigh, etc)!!
In fact, I'm so unwell, I'm now looking blurry
Sympathy welcome
With love from the bears.
PS from Wilbear - this bear is unashamedly trying to elicit your sympathy with his pawly poses, feel free to give him a cyber kick to get him going, as for me, oh my aching paws!!!
