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Saturday 22 November 2014

We welcome our November Guest Designer ...

.... Karen Brierley with her delightful take on our inspirational artwork this month, Tra-la-la by Antje Collis.


Criteria is Doodling

and remember "doodling" can be as simple as a hand drawn border !




My tip for reluctant doodlers:  Use a patterned paper base as a kind of template, and just embellish it with a pen or brush.  I chose a paper from a very old Scenic Route collection.  The original pattern was a simple array of different sized circles.  Every little bit of black that you can see is my pen work.  I had lots of fun with lines and dots and other simple doodles. I also fussy cut some leftover circles from the same paper, and doodled each one to make my title.



Hello!  My name is Karen Brierley, and I live in a beautiful semi-rural area of southeast Queensland with my husband, young teen daughter, and an assortment of chooks and ducks.  I work full time (rotational shiftwork) in the public sector.  Scrapbooking is my "happy place" - I love capturing memories of our family trips, our home life, and special milestones.   I have yet to discover what my 'signature style' is; I just scrap what feels right at the time.  When I'm not scrapping you will find me sewing or gardening or hiking or volunteering as a rural firefighter.  I also love to hang out at quirky cafes and secondhand bookstores.


I blog about my scrapbooking creations at beingkaren.blogspot.com ~ please visit if you have a spare moment.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to guest design at ARTastic this month.



Two of my favourite layouts from 2014:


SWaK - first time I used paint splatters on a layout (using a pipette) - I had heaps of fun with this one!

* Woolgoolga - one of my favourite photographs from summer vacation last year - I played with gesso and embossing powders on this layout.


Thank you so much for guesting with us on ARTastic this month Karen. Your work is just wonderful.

Remember ....


You still have time until the end of the month to upload your own take on this challenge.  We'd love to see what you can do with our inspiration this month.

Saturday 15 November 2014

October winners and more November inspiration ...

Welcome to our mid month reveal and the announcement of our October winners. Some gorgeous pages amongst our entries last month - thank you everyone for playing along with us.

We'd also like to thank our sponsors this month - Time to Create and Flourish with a bling

Time To Create is a family business. We share a passion to create, share and develop the best that we imagine!  We only stock products that we use and believe in. Our stock is always priced at the keenest costing we can do. We support Australian manufacturers and many Australian suppliers and try to have as wide a variety as possible.


And our winners are ....

Chris Sexton who has won a prize pack from Time to Create.
 

Evelyn who has won a lovely prize from Flourish with a bling.

and our random draw prize (courtesy of DT member Wendy O'Keefe) goes to  Regina Chandler.

Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me at jjjustjane@bigpond.com with their postal details.  Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar. 

Our Creative Team favourite this month is Wendy O'Keefe who will receive a little something from me.



And now some gorgeous inspiration from our remaining design team using this sweet little artwork by Antje Collis called Tra-la-la.

Criteria is Doodling

and remember "doodling" can be as simple as a hand drawn border !



As it is getting nearer to summer "down under" I chose to make a colourful and summery page inspired by the doodling from the inspiration picture. I doodled my own background and used patterned paper with doodles and left the page clean and simple. 

Want to have some fun with doodling? Come and join in  and show us your creative side :)

MARY

Originally when I saw the Challenge I was going to do a layout of my GD Dancing, then one day at work we were talking about free range hens and the word scrap bucket was mentioned. Childhood memories came flooding back ! We always had chooks and we had a Scrapbucket. As luck would have it my son had taken photo's of his Grandma pottering around doing her chores including feeding the chooks. Not as pretty as a ballerina, but all of a sudden this memory became very important for me to document. I have doodled circles in a white gel pen and doodled around the edges of the layout as well.

JANE

I have combined the chickens with the doodling with this bright and happy page.

STINA
I love this colour combination so I had to have it on my card. My "doodling" comes and goes, but now it has been a while since I´ve used it so it was fun to be reminded of it. 

DI
With the inspiration from ARTastic this month, I have taken the doodling to the extreme, making sure I added elements of loops and dots/ spots as part of my design. I also added music notes (because the hens had to be dancing to music!). Most of my patterns have been done in black on white cardstock. However, I also added a wedge of black paper and used a white pen for the design and used pan pastels to colour some other sections. I've kept these to fairly soft colours: blue, lilac and pale green. The photo is of self, aged 21, taken at a night out with my husband.

LESLEY
The first thing that got my attention was the swirls and squiggles, it reminded me of some photos I took of my husband teaching my girls to fish. So that was the start of my layout! I found some lovely black and white doodled on paper and added some colour by doodling on it with distress ink and an H2O pen.

Now it is your turn ....


 Remember we happily accept all forms of paper crafting for your entry including digital and encourage international submissions.  All we ask is that you create a new entry for our challenge although you are most welcome to combine with a sketch and/or colour challenge if you wish.  You have until 11.55pm on the last day of the month to submit your entry.
  

Next week we will be introducing you to our delightful November guest designer, Karen Bierley.

Sunday 9 November 2014

November 3T's ...

Welcome to another round of Tips, Tricks and Techniques, this time brought to you by team member Di Hasthorpe.


Hi everyone!

For my 3T's this month, I've continued the 'doodling' theme and have created some card fronts  to be used on cards. I've used stamps, Archival Ink, Distress Inks and Ulta-fine Sharpies. The paper they're made from is a laser colour copy paper, which is really a light card weight. This has a low sheen and takes stamping and colouring with various types of inks really well.

With all of the card fronts I'm showing today, I've stamped the design, drawn a frame roughly the shape of the stamped image around it, and then drawn rays from the frame to the edge of the card. Mine are freehand, but you could rule them or have a different shaped ray.. curved, wavy, zig-zagged.

Card 1.




This was designed to be a masculine card. I've also looked at some of the elements of the stamp design; circles, curved lines and triangular shapes, and have used some of these to create patterns.

Card 2.







With this card I have coloured with Distress Inks first.

Card 3.


With this one, I have coloured sections of the stamp image with ultra fine sharpies.

TIPS
If you wish, you can lightly pencil in the designs until you're satisfied and then go over them with the black pen. Any pencil marks can then be erased.

If you do a design that you don't like the look of when you are finished, take a piece of the same copy paper, cut a section from it to fit over the design you don't want, adhere and redo with a different design.

When putting the designs together I try to have some areas lighter than others. This is regulated by the amount of blocking in I decide to do with the black pen.

You don't have to stick to black. Any colour can be used, even white, gold or silver on black card.

This type of doodling is not restricted to cards or ATC's. Next week, my post will show how I've used it for the background on a layout.

I hope this gave you some ideas. Have fun if you decide to try it.


Cheers, Di



Don't forget to enter this month's ARTastic challenge.  All the details are in the left sidebar.  Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.

Saturday 1 November 2014

And then it was November...

and we are a whole heap closer to Christmas!

This month we are being inspired by this very cute, dare I say even quirky but truly delightful artwork by Antje Collis called Tra-la-la



Criteria is Doodling

and remember "doodling" can be as simple as a hand drawn border !



A little about Antje Collis ...

Antje Collis was born in Hamburg Germany. She migrated to Australia with her parents when she was a baby and grew up in rural Western Australia, spending her school years in Geraldton and Morawa.

Having been educated in Australia, it was not long before an easy alternative was found to her German name, (pronounced "Unchair") and Antje became known as Anne.
She is mainly a self taught artist and the development of her appealing and sometimes quirky style has come about as a result of taking what has appealed from various subjects without allowing other styles and techniques to inhibit her progress.

Antje aims to keep her style simple and uncluttered with her philosophy being that it is often more about what you don't include that makes a painting appealing. She has used her imagination and flair to develop a fresh and individual style that includes a variety of subjects and mediums. Antje works with many media including: watercolour, acrylic and other water based media. She often mixes these mediums in her paintings.

Her work is featured in selected art shows and galleries around Australia.


This month we have two main sponsors.

 Julie from Time to Create


and 

and Kylie from Shop and Crop


and of course every month we also offer a prize pack totally by random draw.

(this month donated by DT Di Hasthorpe) 


And now our delightful vintage photograph inspired layouts from our amazing team ....

ELAINE
For this page I used the colours from the chooks and doodled a border around my page and around the different elements on my page.


I’m not a ‘dooddler’ or particularly ‘artsy’ – so if I can manage this one, you can too! I took the yellow & red from the chooks legs, but then brightened them up with some stronger colours. My main inspiration came from the repeated images on the canvas, which I’ve done using the suns. I also tried to keep with the ‘whimsical’ look on my LO as well.


JULIE
Chooks don't do it for me but doodling certainly does.  I doodled with  a couple of different pens on this layout.  It almost went into the bin but a sleep and some problem solving and HERE it is.


DEB
I took my inspiration for this page from the chickens in their ballet shoes. I’ve doodled with paint on my background first then in pen around the border, the flowers on the photo mat, the chevrons and inside the negative of the alpha stickers.


HELENE

I doodled a circle around the photo to highlight it.


I was inspired by the cute chooks in Tra-la-la by Antje Collis. I don’t have chickens but I do have visiting ducks so I used them as the subject of my layout. I used doodled elements – cloud, birds and butterflies. I also used a doodle type heading and doodled my journaling around the edge of the page.

And now it is your turn ......


Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on November 30th, 2014.  We'd love to see your new paper, digital, or off the page entries.  Please no back-dated submissions.  

 You may combine our challenge with a sketch and a product/technique challenge (so two additional challenges).  You MUST include our inspirational picture as well as provide a link back to ARTastic on your blog post and clearly state what our challenge is and how you were inspired by it.  

You may enter more than once in any month as long as each item is with a different creation.  International entries are very welcome however please be aware that some of our sponsors may not post overseas. 


Please pop back on the 8th for The ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you this month by our delightful team member,  Di Hasthorpe.  I am sure you will be inspired by what she has done.