Mad for Meerkats!

Its been a busy week or two here in Dixieland - holidays with the family with a bit of crafting thrown in for good measure! The holiday pictures are going to be fabulous especially the ones of monkeys stealing items off the car as we travelled through their enclosure at Longleat Safari Park!

Perhaps my most favourite of the animals there though were the meerkats - I just love the way they stand on their back legs as if to say "look at me"! To be truthful, I've been bonkers about meerkats since the comparethemarket.com adverts started, to the point where I got given the autobiography of Alexsander the meerkat for Christmas last year.

So it was no surprise that when I arrived home to find a letter from Tesco telling me my cat insurance was due for renewal that I went straight to claim my free meerkat! I just had to share with you what happened once I confirmed my purchase...enjoy!

Resolutions In September?

Welcome to my new blog! It's been a long time since I've had the time to breathe, let alone organise myself to get some of my recent projects finished, photographed and uploaded so that I can share my work! When I finished teaching, I did so I could have more time to have a life outside of work, funny then that I seem to be busier than ever!


Anyways, as I have resolved to start this blog, I'll share my most recent work, which was the printers tray workshop at It's Crafting Time. This was a fantastic workshop, a really packed day filled with UTEE, Alcohol Inks and so many amazing techniques it's hard to list them all - you'll see some of them in the photo's in a minute. Jennie from The Artistic Stamper took us through the workshop, and after 8 and a half hours (plus a bit of homework), here's the finished article:

This piece is probably one of the simplest, yet my favourite piece in the whole tray. We poured UTEE into the mould with the frame resting on top, then once cooled I dusted some "Interference" perfect pearls on the top.

In the top right, you can see my masterpiece (Turner Prize winner?), which was a mini canvas rubbed with Terracotta dabber, and then covered in tissue paper which I had stamped with the word "Imagine". I had an old fountain pen nib which Helen had given me to use, and in a moment of inspiration stuck it over the "I"...Genius worthy of the light bulb next door!

This is Glassene paper which has been crumpled, brushed with perfect pearls and then heated to seal the powder on, with a button to embellish.

The bird is painted with copper Gleam, (which smells amazing!) and then once dry stamped with a sheet music image using "pearl" dabber instead of ink. I added a pearl as an embellishment at the bottom. The mini porcelain figure is set on a background of embossed glassene, which has ink rubbed over the raised sections. I've highlighted the raised areas on the statue with gold dabber.

The outside of the tray was the first thing we worked on, and although mine didn't turn out quite as well as it should, I really like the shabby chic look. This was done by painting the whole area in black first. Once this was dry, I stamped an image with embossing ink and then covered this with fine embossing powder. After heating with a heat gun so it melted, and then leaving it to cool, I dabbed over the top with three colours of dabber - copper, pearl and butterscotch. Once this had dried, I wet a cloth and rubbed at the surface - where the embossing was, the paint came away and let the black underneath show through.


I think you can see why this was such a packed class!