The Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge - July

Never throw anything away has proved its worth this month for the Craft Barn Challenge. July's verse is "Hot July brings cooling showers, apricots and gillyflowers" and we have to include a gillyflower on our project.

My first task was to identify a gillyflower. The dictionary definition is-

1. Archaic. any of several fragrant flowers of the genus Dianthus, as the carnation or clove pink.

2. any of various other usually fragrant flowers, especially a stock, Matthiola incana, of the mustard family.

 

I don't have any carnation stamps but the Crafty Individual stamp I have includes some flowers which look a bit like stock - no, just squint a bit! An apricot stamp has also eluded my collection for some reason! However, as I was thinking what I could use my eyes fell on an old diary (1986!) sitting on a shelf in my craft room that I had  put aside for that proverbial rainy day. The diary has prints of watercoloured paintings of fruit, flowers, birds etc. I thought it was a bit of a long shot for there to be an apricot print but low and behold I found this page - perfect!

 

 

It was painted by William Hooker somewhere between 1779 and 1832 and is a Breda Apricot.

 

I started my page (measures 5.75 x 5.75ins) by using hot colours to make a wrinkle free Distress Ink (DI) background and then over stamped it with butterflies, bees and script using Ripe Persimmon DI. I stamped flowers on the corners of the page with archival ink and watercoloured them using DI and then added the water drops. I photocopied the apricot image (I didn't want to use the original as I may need an apricot image again - you never know!)  and cut out part of it before gluing to my page. My challenge entry was completed with the computer generated verse from the poem  "The Months" by Sara Coleridge.

Page Recipe
Card
White card 280mic
Anna Marie Designs Super Smooth Printer Card 200gsm
Inks
Distress Inks - Ripe Persimmon, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick,
Ranger Archival - Jet Black, Watering Can
Copic marker
Stamp
Flowers - Crafty Individuals CI-411
Raindrops - Designs by Ryn Water Effects 1 UM-M1
Other
Picture from old diary
Verse - computer generated with "Papyrus" font

The Craft Barn Song Challenge - What a Wonderful World

This month's song for the Craft Barn Challenge is the perennial "What A Wonderful World" and this time we have to add the lines of the song that inspired our project. I have chosen the first line "I see trees of green, red roses too" but I could have also used "I see skies of blue, and clouds of white."

I started my postcard making the background using the wrinkle free watercolour technique with Broken China Distress Ink. The trees were stamped with archival ink and then, using a natural sponge, I dabbed over them with Distress Ink (DI). I didn't quite get the effect I was after - I was hoping for a more dappled result. The girl's face was stamped onto card and coloured with a combination of Copic markers and DIs before cutting out.

I brushed several different shades of green onto a piece of card and die cut the leaves. The roses were cut from a larger stamped image and were watercoloured with DI. The left hand corner looked too bare so I filled in with the very useful little Crafty Individuals birds in flight stamp.

Postcard Recipe
Card
Anna Marie Designs Super Smooth Printer Card 200gsm
White card 280mic
Inks
Distress Inks - Broken Glass, Mowed Lawn, Peeled Paint, Festive Berries, Frayed Burlap
Adirondack - Pesto
Memento - Tuxendo Black
Ranger Archival Jet Black
Copic Markers
Stamps
Crafty Individuals - CI-209, CI-188
Kaisercraft - Botanical CS795
Other
Song title - Computer generated “Please write me a song” font
Song lyric - Computer generated "Papyrus" font
Die - Tim Holtz "Spring Greenery" 659573