National Craft Month

So March is National Craft Month in the US, and it's a great time to expand your stash of craft supplies and to try some new things because a lot of manufacturers, sellers and other crafty types will be putting together some special offers this month!

Here at The Scrappy Tree we'd like to try this out on a smaller scale, so we're inviting you to take part in a March Spring Clean!  It's time to get organised and sort out those scrappy supplies to make room for some new ones, so if you'd like to swap or sell some scrappy items you no longer want/need/have room for, we'll be opening up an album on our Facebook branch where you can post some pictures of your items and hopefully make contact with another group member who could use them!

To take part, visit the March Spring Clean album at The Scrappy Tree Facebook Branch and upload some photos of your items with a description, specifying whether you prefer to sell and/or swap.  If you see items you're interested in, please leave a comment under that picture in the album or contact the person directly to let them know!

Happy Spring Cleaning!  We'll be keeping the album open for the month of March, so hopefully people will join in and get some great items!

March's Art Journal Friday

Welcome to another Art Journal Friday! If you haven't played along before, please feel free to come and join us - all welcome! On the last Friday of every month I post a journal prompt to encourage you to get your pens, paints, paper, glue, plus anything and everything you can lay hands on(!) and to have a play. We have an Art Journal Friday group set up at our Ning Community if you'd like to share your pages with us - you're sure to receive a lot of love :) click here to visit our Ning site.

I haven't had a lot of time lately to do the things that I enjoy, like reading for example (well, reading for pleasure rather than study!) and I am very much looking forward to getting some quality fiction time in in the near future! It got me thinking about how much the different books I've read have created pictures in my head - I can still conjure up very clearly the mental images from books that I read many years ago, the people that I read about and the places that they went.

This month's journal prompt is to pick a book, a character or a place that really struck you and journal about it. You could pick a favourite book and journal maybe about the things you enjoy about it and the feelings it gives you, or perhaps a book you only read once but which created particularly vivid thoughts or images for you that you still remember. Maybe you have a favourite character who embodies something for you and you feel engaged with in some way (I am still mourning the death of Dumbledore by the way, maybe I need to work through that! lol). Perhaps a location in a book was created so well by the author that you feel as if you have been there yourself.

This challenge is just for fun; whether or not you create a page, or decide to share a page, is entirely up to you :) photos can be uploaded to the Art Journal Friday group; please leave some love if you stop by and see a page that you like :)

Happy weekend and happy journaling! :)

Gayle xx

National Craft Month - ATCs!

So as part of National Craft Month we wanted to share with you some simple little projects for Spring that might get you thinking about trying something new. If you like the look of this project, check back on the last day of March, Wednesday 31st, for news of an ATC swap and competition!

Now, I am a huge fan of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) - it was my first step away from the more formal scrapbooking/card-making that I started with, because there were no real rules apart from the size of the space I was working on (2.5 inches by 3.5 inches). It's a small space to work on when you've been working on 12 by 12 pages, but a fun challenge nonetheless and I think less intimidating to work on when you don't have the 'rules' to follow (such as including a picture, a title, journaling etc).

Our theme for this month is springtime and blooms, so I worked on a flower themed ATC using a flower stamp - I used a couple of different techniques so I'll explain as I go along!

Starting with a plain ATC card measuring 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches...

...and a flower stamp (this one is made by Papermania)...
I stamped two flowers onto the card with embossing Distress Ink....
...and sprinkled on some Tim Holtz Distress embossing powder (this one is Walnut Stain).
This is what you get when you tap the card...
...and then heat with a heat gun and leave to cool. You can then rub the image with your finger to remove some of the powder to get that distressed look.
I stamped the same image onto the card in Fired Brick and Mustard Seed Distress Ink, and added some gold Stickles to the main two flowers to emphasise them...
I edged the card with some Fired Brick Distress Ink....

...and accented some of the background flowers with orange and yellow Sharpies...

I went over the petals of the two main flowers with Glossy Accents...
...left it to dry and then spritzed with Glimmer Mist...
After it was dry, I outlined the two main flowers with a white pen to make them stand out from the others...
...and inked the areas around them with a sponge, using the Fired Brick and Mustard Seed Distress ink, and this is what I ended up with!

The main thing I love about ATCs is that it's a small space to have fun trying some things out - why not give it a go!

Join us again tomorrow for March's Art Journal Friday challenge! This will be running all weekend and we'd love to see your take on this month's theme which will be announced tomorrow.

Thanks for looking!

Gayle

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day or Mothering Sunday in the UK. On Mother's Day here, the mums get spoiled! My brother is coming over to make breakfast, and I am in charge of making some carrot cake muffins for my mum and for my parents to take to my grandmother when they visit her today!

I always ask my mum what she would like as a gift so that I can get some ideas. This year, my mum asked me to make her an altered tin with a fairytale theme, and this is what I came up with...

I painted a layer of gesso onto the tin and then used DCWV Once Upon A Time papers to cover the top and sides. My mum adores the DCWV line, so I knew she would be expecting me to use that as part of the project! I used some ribbon from my stash to border the paper at the top and bottom of the bottom half of the tin, and some DCWV ribbon to border to edge of the top half.
I used some flowers from my stash with a Jenni Bowlin button and some Sassafras Lass brads to embellish the top of the tin, along with a bird from K&Co and some pearl gems as a border. I also added some DCWV chipboard stickers as a caption.
The Once Upon A Time paper is beautifully embellished anyway (which is why Mum and me love it so much!) but where there were natural gaps in the paper I embellished with a K&Co butterfly and some Once Upon A Time die-cut shapes.

I hope she likes it!

Thanks for looking :)

Gayle

Domino fun!

Well it's National Craft Month and we want you to try creating some new things this March!

Thought I would share an easy project today - if you have some spare dominoes around the house you might feel like giving this a go! I started out with an ordinary domino...

...and turned it over so I could use the blank side....
I inked up a Tim Holtz ink applicator with some coordinating alcohol inks ('bottle' and metallic gold)...
...and applied them to the domino all over...
...after leaving this to dry, using black StaZon ink, I stamped on an image of a fairy from a Dovecraft fairy flourish set...

...I added some Hero Arts gems...

...and varnished with some Mod Podge...

...and hey presto! A card topper, a necklace, a charm, an embellishment...

...you choose! I love what you can do with these - you can even use them to emphasise patterns on the project you are working on by printing part of the image you're working on onto the domino so that it appears raised. I would recommend using more permanent inks (such as alcohol inks and StazOn) for this project and then varnishing on top - even with the permanent inks, they can easily be scratched on the surface of the domino.

Happy crafting!

Gayle