Crazy Amigo - Splash

Here's my splash into 2009.

Wishing you all the very best of New Years.

Thank you for looking.

Sunday Postcard Art - Happy New Year

It's an open theme at Sunday Postcard Art this week so I thought I would take the opportunity to wish you all manner of good things for the New Year.

Elements used are courtesy of Pepeetje, EMS Arts and Graphics, Tartx and Irene Alexeeva. The air mail sticker I scanned from an envelope. Mabel of course is part of the family.

Fonts used are Optima and Persimmon.

Thank you for looking.

Thank God It's Friday - Mabel Gets a Social Life

A new social life for Mabel was not necessarily a good thing.

The Charlie Chaplin suit was Googled. Everything else courtesy of Irene Alexeeva. Mabel, of course, is one of the family.

Font : Sans stone

Mable Parties Her Way Through Christmas

The last I saw of Mabel she was having a wicked time celebrating the festive season.

Credit goes to 51291 for the handsome mask and hat. The background is made up of so many brushes I'm unable to name them, but say thank you for their use anyway.

The dress and stockings are my own design.

The font (much altered) is Chocolate Box.

Thank you for looking.

Nursery Rhymes

A new Quirkster Jane was the host for this week's Quirkle and she decided we should use a nursery rhyme, a piece of bling and a bird in our artwork.

Credit to Kubivet for the background, the altered moon and the blinged wings, MarialaFrance for the felt bird, and Mamacatscraps for altered crown. The 'Old Woman' is from my own photo collection.

Other bits were Googled.

Font : Chalkboard.

Sunday Postcard Art - Christmas

The theme is Christmas at Sunday Postcards this week so here is a Christmassy take on the challenge.

The lovely snow covered tree background (altered) is from a kit with the charming name of The Kiss of The White Princess by Glow Fairy Designs, the snowflake is courtesy of Elena Designs and the turquoise Christmas tree is from Kubivet.

Fonts used are Almonte Snow, Gang of Three, and Cantara Gotica.

Mixed Media Monday - Gold

I made this from Danielle Engebretson's December Doodles kit. The star I made myself.

Font : SpillMilk

Thank you for looking.

Simply Skinnies - Your Presents or Yor Life

Here's just a silly one for Christmas. I saw the pirate (Cardamome blogspot) and thought of this.

Credit also to FlashGraphics for the presents, BarbaraDerksen for the santa hat and the wonderful designers of the Neige Eternelle collab kit for all the snowy bits.

Fonts used were Snowshoe and Santas Sleigh

Thank you for looking.

A Moo Or Two - Alice In Wonderland

Alice In Wonderland is the theme at a Moo Or Two this week, and since I've just purchased a beautiful Alice Through the Looking Glass kit from Irene Alexeeva I couldn't wait to get started.

Having said that I've altered all the elements either by duplicating and blending, or recolouring to get a truly unique effect and then adding a final mosaic filter to the finished Moo.

Thank you for looking.

Artarazzi - Challenge 2

An excerpt from Mitch Albom's book The Five People You Meet in Heaven inspired this piece for Vron's second Artarazzi challenge.

Credit also to Outsider Artists for the image of the girl (altered) and to Kubivet for the window frame.

Font used is Stone Sans Semilta.

Thank you for looking.

Quirkle Challenge 67 - Mabel's Incredible Talents

Donna hosted the challenge this week and set us the task of using a timepiece, some glitter and some brush strokes to complete our Quirkle.

I had great fun and of course Mabel got involved.

Thanks go to Irene Alexeeva, 500 ml and Headley Designs for the elements and brushes.

Photograph is my own.

Font (much altered) is WhatsHappened.

Make A Moo Or Two - Christmas

GingerScraps provided these lovely elements for my inspiration for the Christmas theme at Make a Moo Or Two this week.

Art Creation Friday - Challenge 4 - Smoke and Mirrors

A really enjoyable challenge with plenty of scope for layer blending and filters, which I used liberally.

I duplicated the 'lady' layer, added a radial gradient overlay which I inverted, and gave it a hard mix blend.

At this point I flattened the layers and added a 'paint daub' filter.

The frame I also duplicated and then used a hard mix blend to get the coppery colour.

Thank you for the lovely image of the lady. The gold frame was courtesy of Numbumm.

Art on the Dark Side - Masks

Aah a lovely new challenge, a little bit on the dark side, with a theme of masks ..... Yaay I love it.

Well lookee here, I don't know where this came from but I did enjoy doing it. :O)

All images and bits of images (much altered) were Googled.

Theme Thursday - Mabel and the Perfect Present

Mabel saw her opportunity when she saw this week's circus theme.

The window is courtesy of Kubivet, the photos are my own and the bits and pieces were Googled.

Font : WhatsHappened.

Who will get those shoes?

Mabel and the Snow - A Quirkle Challenge

Donna chose the colour purple, a number or numbers and some dots to be used in our Quirkle this week.

As I've just made my first foray into making my own templates I thought the numbers should be used as templates, so that's how Mabel is looking out of number 25 and showing Albert the snow.

The background is courtesy of Can Designs, and the photos are from my own collection.

The fonts (much altered) are slugfest and WhatsHappened.

Frameworthy Challenge - In the Style of Randal Plowman

Each week at Scrapbook Graphics there is a challenge where participants try to emulate the style of a famous artists. This week it was Randal Plowman.

Completed entirely with brushes by 500ml in Photoshop.

Font : Copperplate Gothic.

Sunday Postcard Art - Fairies

This week's theme is fairies at Sunday Postcard Art.

I used Enchanted Forest Collab (designs by Vicki) to layer and blend a pink background paper and pink flower, and to get the lovely rich red I used colour burn. The word art I duplicated, then used multiply to give depth and richness. I added fairies, bubbles and cream flower, resizing as needed. Finally I added the child image from Christine Annette's Free Image stock and blended her into the two backgrounds to create an ethereal feel to the piece.

Gothic Arch - Trees

Trees is the theme at Gothic Arch this week.


I chose a festive slant on this and used Ginger Scraps' Whoville kit as it's so colourful and Christmassy.

Artarazzi - Challenge 1

Vron has given us the theme Beautiful for this her first challenge.

Here's mine and of course I added just a little twist.

Credit goes to Outsider Artists for the image of the girl, and to NumBum for all other elements.

The font is Skia.

Thanks Vron.

Theme Thursday - Children

This week at Theme Thursday the theme is Children.

I had lots of fun with layers and filters and this little girl from Art E Zine is busy imagining herself as a famous ballet dancer.

My own backgrounds and hat.

Font : Shoplifter.

Daily Art Stop - Dolls

My Mum often tells the story of when she was a child and two beautiful dolls came into the shops for little girls : one was the Princess Elizabeth doll, and the other was the Princess Margaret Rose.

Mum was a tomboy, but she said she wanted that Princess Margaret Rose doll soooo much.

Like lots of things in life though we don't always get what we want, and with a wistful look she tells me she never did get that doll.

So here's a Princess Margaret Rose doll Mum.

The frames are courtesy of KlarissH and the photographs are my own.

Font is Chalkboard.

Simply Skinnies - Party

Come and join us at Simply Skinnies where this week the challenge theme is Party.

I used balloons and happy birthday from Memories Made Easy, and the little girl from Art E Zines. The papers are my own.

Mixed Media Monday - Home Sweet Home

Marie has chosen the theme this week at MMM.

I used the shape of a house, overlaid this with a Christmas tree background paper from Kubivet which I reduced in opacity. I painted a blue background behind the house to give a demarcation between house and sky whilst keeping the tree background as part of the sky.

I added the vintage family, reduced opacity, then duplicated the layer and blended the layers using colour burn, to get a good deep, warm yellow highlight and bronze contrasts.

The heart is meant to represent the heart of a home, so the heart was layer blended using Difference and then moving it into the blue sky zone.

Finally I added my quote using Fonts : Actionis, BahiaScript, Burtons Nightmare and Almonte Snow. I chose the colour for the fonts by using the colour picker tool to pick up the shades of red/brown in the vintage photo.

To complete the look I gave a slight drop shadow to the text and a much larger one to the house to bring it away from the sky. And that's it.