Our Creative Corner: Words, Words. Words - Wings to Fly

For August at Our Creative Corner the theme is 'Words, Words, Words'. Click Here to learn more. I was so inspired by all the wonderful 'Wordy' projects from the Design Team and this is a challenge that really appealed to me. I tutor students in English Literature so words are a big part of my life; but where to begin?

Well, an idea started to develop when I spied this novel in my local Hospice Shop. I loved the cover, which suggested flight and all associated with it to me. I had been so impressed with Margie's altered Jane Austen book that I wanted to have a go so I started to fold my 'Guide to the Birds of East Africa'.

I painted the inside covers with a blending of Paper Artsy Fresco Paints in Sage, Mermaid, Guacomole  and some Snowflake to 'Knock back'. The book, I discovered, is not a bird-watching guide, but a romance about two rivals who try to win the hand of lady ornithologist by competing to see who can spot more species of rare birds in the area of Africa where the story takes place. I think this is such a romantic idea and that flight has so many connotations, the ideas started to come to me!

The colours I had chosen initially reminded me of the colour of birds' eggs so I decided to distress the book pages with Tim Holtz distress inks in Walnut Stain and Peacock feathers to carry through the subtle eggshell tone. I made a paper feather in the same colours, stamping it with script. The winged lady and man either side are from Paper Artsy 'Ink and the Dog' plates. I snipped tiny slits into their wings to create a more feathery effect. I added some Retro Cafe Art Gallery paper cuts of birds and eggs and a Graphic 45 butterfly. I stamped grasses in Versamark Olympia Green on the inside covers. There is also a distressed page of script on the left-hand inside cover with a little Treasure Gold on the curled over corner. Birds and words and a tiny bird in a frame, peep out from inside the pages. Please click on the images if you would like to see in more detail.

These are two of the sentiments I used from the Ink and Dog plate, 'Wings to Fly' and 'Take Flight'. My favourite sentiment, however, is this one from 'Crafty Individuals'!

If you open the page a little you can read, 'Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.'

As well as the added text on the theme of flight, the book text remains at the centre of this project.Thank You, Margie, for the inspiration to 'take off' with my altered book.

Dragon's Dream: Paint, Stencil, Ribbon

Hi and welcome to anyone who is dropping by Magpieheaven and to my lovely new followers. I feel really privileged that you're joining me: I really appreciate all the kind and talented followers who drop by to look or comment, it means a lot. Today I wanted to use some very special stamps by Lynne Perrella, which I won in the Paper Artsy Draw recently. I thought they would be ideal to explore Helen's recipe of Paint, Stencil, Ribbon over at the Dragon's Dream. Dragon's Dream Tag it on Challenge is a great opportunity to play; to see  other crafters' interpretations and to be challenged too, so click HERE if you would like to dream with the dragons!

It's my step-sister's birthday this month, so I decided to fix my tag to a card for her. Please click on the images if you would like to see in a little more detail. My step-sister, Merle has always been a great traveller unlike stay-at-home me; she now lives in Switzerland, but she has worked in the US and in Russia so my tag has bit of a travel theme - that could be the Kremlin on the lady's hat, couldn't it? Merle also loves to play Bridge so some vintage playing cards have found their way onto the tag! Now for the recipe!

1. Paint. I love Paper Artsy Fresco Finish paints so I really went to town with these, as I think they go so well with the Lynne Perrella images. I used Snowflake and then blended Sage, Mermaid and just a touch of Elephant to create a vintage look on the tag background. I attached my central stamped image on a piece of torn card, painting her with the same colour scheme except for her collar, which I painted with Claret. When all the paint was dry, I distressed the edges with Distress Ink in Soot and applied some Treasure Gold to the curled corners of the image. I attached some torn pieces of script from another PA plate, a Hot Picks one. I added a pediment to my tag, Crackle Glazing it and painting over with a strong contrasting shade - Bora Bora.

2. Stencil. I used the Crafters' Workshop stencil with a harlequin pattern and used Leandra's bumping technique - do take a look at this on the Paper Artsy video - to create diamonds on the background, carrying on the playing card theme.

3. Ribbon. I used two kinds of ribbon from my stash. There is a narrow strip of a goldy-bronze colour along my pediment, which echoes the colour of the Graphic 45 butterfly. I have started to put scissors to this gorgeous paper but every cut hurts me deeply!

And then - hope you can see it - I threaded some distressed seam binder coloured with Peacock Feathers and Shaded Lilac through the hole in the tag before I fixed it. I punched a hole in a tattered floral die cut from Graphic 45 - ouch - it so hurts to use that lovely paper! I don't have any charms of my own, but since discovering Polyshrink, shrink plastic I can make them. I made the cage and little bird by die-cutting then shrinking a TH bird cage and a Paper Artsy bird!

Thanks for dropping by at this busy time of the year and Thank You Dragons for letting me dream with you!  Now I must get to the post with Merle's tag it-on card!

WOYWW - Top Secret!

Please bear with me if you're popping in from WOYWW, I have a little story to tell, which explains why What's on my Work-desk is TOP SECRET and guarded by my trusty paper dragon.

 If WOYWW are just a collection of meaningless letters to you you need to hotfoot it over to the wonderful Julia's 'Stamping Ground' and click HERE to join in the fun! But back to my story! Why is my Chinese dragon keeping guard over my work desk?  A couple of years ago I wandered into a pretty  little shop near The British Museum called Blade Rubber Stamps. Once over the threshold I was in an Aladdin's Cave crammed full of inks, papers and the most amazing rubber stamps. My favourites were a quirky collection of designs rejoicing in the name 'Paper Artsy'. I couldn't resist buying some and I settled on an 'Ink and the Dog' plate. I noticed Paper Artsy had a blog, so casually I checked it out. I was hooked! I fell in love with Lynne Perrella's designs for Paper Artsy and started buying the stamps online. When a mistake was made at HQ and I was sent the wrong Lynne Perrella plate, I was allowed to keep it and Leandra kindly replaced it with my original choice free of charge! The elves, she told me, did sometimes make mistakes when under pressure! Wow! Such generosity and they employed elves too ! Then last spring I expanded my crafting activities, having a go at making some exploding Victorian boxes from Cafe Retro Art Gallery, which I heard about on Helen Cain's blog! I decorated Kristin's RCAG boxes - she's also a supplier who really takes an interest in customers' work - with PA images. I sent a pic to her and Leandra just to let them know how much I loved using their products. Kris featured my boxes on RCAG Facebook page and Leandra sent back an email saying I really ought to blog! Me blog? How? Magpies and technology = nervous breakdown! But she assured me it was not so very hard and - although I have not always been the most accomplished blogger - Magpie Heaven kind of got off the ground, thanks to advice from lovely people who started to follow me, and since April it's been amazing creative fun and I've learned so much about crafting! Thanks to WOYWW I've made lots of crafting friends and creating has become a huge part of my life and - I have to add - kept me sane through some tough times. Now that is why WOMW is TOP SECRET this week! Still puzzled? Well, towards the end of August all will be revealed! What I can show you on my workdesk/ dining table (!) this week are materials I'm planning to make into a card for my step-sister in Switzerland, it's her birthday in August. It's going to be my first chance to use the Lynne Perrella stamps I won in the Paper Artsy draw a while back.

 I'm off now to take a peek at other desks and a little bird told me there are lots of secret craftings going on out there!!!

'Just for You'

Darcy has been absolutely phenomenal over at Paper Artsy this week! If you want to check out some of her incredible projects, including an adorable giraffe - yes - a giraffe! Click HERE.
I wanted to play along, but just before Darcy posted fabulous garden party ideas, we had a party to celebrate Mr Magpie's early retirement. I would love to have thrown another party just to have a go at these brilliant makes, but - well - call me a wimp - 2 parties in a week seemed a bit excessive! I've always wanted to make my own paper, but I didn't think there would be time and the giraffe - well that was way too ambitious: I haven't even had a go at the Geisha kitty yet from last time yet! There was the tin watering can, which I loved, but I had nothing like it to alter! Then I remembered! Lin @ Art from Herts had sent me two little tins to alter. I decided to make them into hand-painted gifts.

I painted the tins with Gesso as Darcy did her watering can.

Then I decorated the insides by painting with Fresco Finish paint in Guacamole and lining with some Prima paper. I painted the outsides with Fresco Finish greens and blues.

I also made some wrapping paper using Darcy's idea of brown paper painted with Fresco circles and stamped with PA images. I used a Hot Picks plate and carried on the theme with a couple of corrugated cardboard tags.

And here are the gifts inside, one for Isaac and one for Matilda - our Magpie Brood! I painted a scene with puffy clouds on my tin lids and stamped on some leaves and grasses, embellishing with shrink plastic medallions of  Lynne Perrella Geishas in shrink plastic frames covered in Treasure Gold. I received a consignment of Polyshrink from Paper Artsy earlier this week and I wanted to experiment, so I also made little tiny shrink plastic birds from a Tim Holtz die!!! Here is a close-up.

Matilda has been in Cyprus and we've all missed her, so on Wednesday we'll celebrate her return to the nest with little gifts! Thanks Darcy for inspiring me to paint on tin with Frescos and to make my own gift wrap - so much more personal and thank you Lin for those lovely little tins to alter! Have a great weekend anyone who had a peep and thanks for dropping by Magpie Heaven.

ARC - Into the Woods!

Time for the ARC hosted by the incredibly creative Darcy at Art and Sole again. Click HERE if you would like to find out more. This month I've been reading 'Gossip from the Forest' by Sara Maitland. I originally bought this book for my husband for Christmas because he loves woodland walks. After last week's rather disappointing choice, reading this has been heaven! Sara Maitland devotes one chapter to each of the different months of the year and in each she describes a walk she's taken in a different area of woodland. What she reveals is that woods are truly enchanted places! Not enchanted in the sense that you have to have a degree in necromancy to understand, but in an everyday way. Magic happens in woods, they are places of transformations - caterpillars turn into butterflies, tiny saplings grow into ancient oaks, fungi sculpt themselves into weird and wonderful shapes. Her descriptive powers are so vivid that you truly imagine yourself with her - or if you prefer - in the solitude of whatever area of woodland she is describing, your mind rambling along the paths she hints at. This book is not just about the woods alone, it is also about what fertile ground they can be for the imagination and Maitland discusses the importance of woods to Fairy-tale traditions. The sub-title is 'The tangled roots of our forests and fairy tales' and she skilfully explores both!
Curling up with this book has been like walking with a wise and well informed friend who never wearies you with information, but just stimulates your imagination and encourages your spirit of adventure and discovery! I love how before the book even begins she explains that the meaning of the word gossip has changed to become something quite negative as so often words associated with women's lives and lore have done. To begin with a gossip was a name for a godparent, someone contracted to be a spiritual sponsor at a baptism, then it changed slightly to mean a woman's female friends invited to be present at a birth until eventually it becomes a word for idle chatter! Maitland says the 'gossip' of her title refers to spiritual talk that 'we all need in times of trouble' and she goes to the woods and the ancient store of fairy lore for this! At the end of each chapter she re-tells a fairy tale for modern times.
I can genuinely say that I loved this book. It made me realize how magical our woodland heritage in Britain is and how much the forests have shaped our imagination. Of course forests all over the world are equally magical and equally under threat! The sun-dappled ambiguous light of woods is exactly the right light in which to see fairies, so for this reason I chose to decorate a fairy shrine from Retro Cafe Art Gallery for my artful response. If you click on the images you can see in a little more detail.

These shrines are basically fairy shaped with wings and a little chamber at the centre and you can decorate them any way you choose. I decided to make mine an Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking-Glass fairy. This is because woods are a kind of wonderland in which extraordinary things become ordinary like in Lewis Carroll's dream world. I made a stand for my shrine from chipboard dabbed with Paper Artsy Fresco paints to look like grass and I sandwiched a Crackle Glazed frame between the two sections to suggest a mirror opening out and leading into magical worlds. I gave my Fresco painted Alice Crackle Glaze wings. I gave her antennae because I imagine fairies to be like a species of insect and that they might actually resemble insects in this way. Alice is all about shape shifting, something fairies are heavily into! And woods are, of course, full of shape-shifting plants and creatures. Alice experiences being very tiny and very tall and complains about this, but the caterpillar explains that this is something he has to accept as the norm! The Graphic 45 butterfly resting on the toadstool at the entrance to my Alice Fairy Wood may well have once been that very caterpillar!

Here is a close-up of the miniature wood inside my Alice Fairy. There is a tiny imitation tree and a paper-cut bird's egg. Behind the mini-playing card is a painting of the miniature wood beyond. As I created this I thought about the magic of hearing a rustle in the undergrowth and a tiny creature darting across your path so fast you could hardly glimpse exactly what it was - a rabbit in quite a hurry to get somewhere maybe? Or sometimes that rustling is a bird eyeing you suspiciously, and what a magical metamorphosis happens every time a brood hatches from an egg in a nest cradled in the arms of some ancient tree! Maitland talks about the magic of the woods partly being about seeing that particularly butterfly land on that particular leaf!

Because the shrine is 3D I wanted to decorate the back too. This paper cut of a little boy's head from Retro Cafe Art Gallery reminded me very much of how my son looked as a child. Although he is 22 now sometimes he comes on walks with us in the woods and one of his favourite stories remains 'Alice'. The tiny block on the back of the shrine is meant to be a stand; I have turned it into a book, painting pages edged with gold onto the sides and adding a tiny piece of book text describing the white rabbit. Alice gazing at the little boy so far and yet so near to her is cut from a RCAG collage sheet and placed onto a tiny water colour I did of the grass and the sky. I like to imagine that Alice on this side has just emerged from the enchanted wood. I'm off now to view other reviews and artwork. Thank you so much for stopping by Magpie Heaven to read my review and take a look at what I created.

WOYWW - Phew!!!

Hello and welcome to my work desk today! Hi there to Artwolf, my new follower, all my followers and any visitors dropping by Magpie Heaven today. I have to admit that this is What's on my Work-place Tuesday not Wednesday! If you haven't a clue what I'm chattering on about, click HERE and discover the best blog hop around ! Julia Dunnit's the hostess  of WOYWW, where you can snoop around crafters' desks and make lots of new crafty friends into the bargain. Wednesday is going to be a busy day with the Magpie daughter, Matilda leaving for Cyprus at 4.30 am and then the newly retired Mr Magpie and I are off for a day out. I'm not sure where we're bound yet, but I hope it will be somewhere with lots of shiny things to see! Here's what's on my desk today!

It's my journal spread for The Alpha/Dictionary Challenge over at the Craft Barn. At this point I'd almost finished. Sorry for the bright sunshine that makes it difficult to see. By the time this goes out it will be posted so hope that's OK! If you would like to see in a little more detail you can click on the image. It's so hot and humid at the moment I feel as if I'm dissolving into a little magpie puddle. I've also been working on one of the Fairy Shrine Kits from over at Retro Cafe Art Gallery for the Artful Reading Challenge on Darcy's Art and Sole blog, which is, I think, this Friday.

If you turn it around this is on the reverse side!

It's shaping up to be a busy summer in Magpie Heaven too! It all kicked off with a garden party yesterday to celebrate Mr Magpie's early retirement with some of Mr Magpie's ex-workmates - a lovely day spent in really nice company. Kevin is returning to continue with the kitchen 'make-over' at the beginning of August and Mr Magpie has lots of days out planned - no doubt to escape the mayhem! Once that kitchen is done I'm going to be busy creating Magpie Treasures to make the kitchen homely. And - Dianne - those key fobs are looking great on my key plaque! I think how pretty they are every time I pass them in the hall. I'm going to try to get round to as many desks as I can before we go out! Hope to see you and catch up with what's on your work desk!

T for Tryst! - Craft Barn Alpha/Dictionary Challenge.

I can't believe we're onto another letter in the Craft Barn Alpha/Dictionary Challenge already. Click here if you would like to find out more about this challenge to illustrate dictionary definitions either in your own altered dictionary, or in an art journal or on ATCs - the possibilities are many, but why not just take a look over at The Craft Barn and you'll discover just how a whole collection of talented artists and crafters are exploring words and their meanings in original ways.

 I've chosen the word 'Tryst' for this week's letter T: a journal spread about secret meetings in secluded places.

Although in my dictionary, tryst was defined as a pre-arranged meeting, I have always associated it with lovers, especially those of long ago whose liaisons were forbidden or - at least - dangerous! A couple of years back I taught students 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' and I was struck by how certain descriptive passages were reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. This was a novel about forbidden trysts and the consequences for women of risking their reputation for a few snatched moments with an admirer. For my journal page I took two Pre-Raphaelite paintings and did little copies in the middle of my journal page, which I then hid behind a stamp by Crafty Individuals of a shuttered window stamped onto card painted in the same colours as my background. I cut round the shutters carefully with a craft stiletto so that it is possible either to peep through into this past world of clandestine meetings...

or to open out the whole image like a card.

The page on the left is based on Hughes' painting 'April Love' and it reflects Spring, new love and daytime.

The page on the right is a farewell tryst and I tried for a twilight feel with moths instead of butterflies and more shadow than sunlight. If you click on the images, you will be able to see in a little more detail.

For the backgrounds on both my pages I dabbed on Frescos in shades of green: Hyde Park, Tinned Peas, Hey Pesto, Limelight and Sage. I stamped leaves on in Versafine green and added tissue leaves and a poppy from paper napkins. My moths are Paper Artsy stamps and a Retro Cafe Art Gallery paper cut moth. I also stamped some script from a Paper Artsy plate on the inside of the window shutters with Coffee Archival ink.

I used a die-cut of a Tim Holtz book-plate for my definition, painting a layer in Fresco Holly, Crackle Glaze and then a layer of Guacamole. I edged this with a little Treasure Gold.

The butterflies on the left page are cut from Graphic 45 'Steam Punk Debutante', a design alas no longer available.

The blue butterflies were stamped onto the background in Peacock Feathers distress ink and then embossed with clear embossing powder so they do glisten in real life! This technique was inspired by a beautiful canvas I saw on Alison's blog 'Words and Pictures'. Her dragon fly really gleamed and reminded me of Ellen Terry's beetle wing costume. The bird is a Retro Cafe Art Gallery paper cut.

It's been so hot while I was painting and photographing and writing up, I'm worried I have not made much sense! Everything seems to have been created in a kind of stupor! I began to envy these doomed lovers in their shady rendezvous! I'm off now to check out other Alpha-Dictioneers who I hope have not melted away in all this heat!