It's true... I am.  I'm missing being able to visit regularly and see all the marvellous things going on in Craftyblogland - though I did manage something of a catch up over the weekend.  But the countdown is well and truly on now, and pretty soon I hope to be sending postcards from New York.

In the meantime, we're having a bit of a Magpie Day over at Country View Challenges - with lots of postcard inspiration for you (postcards you might write from the beach, for instance!).  Here's mine to get you started...  UPDATE - Oops - I delivered mine early! My team-mates won't be sending theirs for another few days yet... Apologies all!!  I knew something would get messed up in the madness here…

UPDATE TWO - But now, at last, it's the right mailing day, and you can see my team-mates' fantastic postcards here!!


My team-mates have made some wonderful postcard-themed creations - and many of them have lovely words at the heart of them, so you could also count it as extra inspiration for the WordPlay challenge theme this month!





The Tim Holtz PostCard header was in one of the first stamp sets I bought when this whole thing kicked off two and a half years ago.

I should use it more often... it always gives me such pleasure when I do!  It's stamped in Jet Black Archival, and I drew the dividing line with a PITT pen.








I'm also a little bit stuck on the meadow grasses from the Spring Sprung stamp set, as you'll know if you saw my Busy Bee tag the other day.

This time they have a more autumnal look - stamped in Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain, applied direct to the stamp in "stripes" from top to bottom.





I used a photo cut from one of the Tim Holtz paper stacks, and a tag from a Prima set of ephemera.

Once I'd distressed and inked the edges, I layered them up to one side of my postcard.








The typical postcard greeting is from the Simple Sayings stamp set and, coupled with all these rusty fall colours, it's not just been put down without thought.  Somebody is definitely really missing someone!

It's mounted on padded tape so that it stands proud of the other layered elements.









The rusty heart is another sign of the heartache present here, and the cogs and gears churning away to keep things ticking over while the lovers are apart.





Over at the other side, the Lincoln stamp comes from the Idea-ology Ephemera packs, and some more cogs are working hard to bring our writer back together with the recipient.  And which direction are we going in?  Well, towards our heart's desire of course.

So that's my vintage postcard for you today.  Thanks so much for stopping by... the cogs are turning and the countdown is on, and once I've made it safely to the US, I hope to get back to visiting more regularly.

And don't forget you can now see some more fantastic postcards over at Country View Challenges Magpie Day!







No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
Robert Southey

Ingredients available at Country View Crafts:
Tim Holtz stamp sets - Spring Sprung and Simple Sayings
Idea-ology Ephemera Pack - Expedition
Idea-ology 8x8 Paper Stash - Menagerie
Idea-ology - Compass Coins
Idea-ology - Sprocket Gears
Distress Inks - Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs, Walnut Stain
Archival Ink - Jet Black
From my stash - Tim Holtz Postcards stamps, Prima tag, textured card, padded tape, rusty heart

Hello everyone; hope you're all having a great week!  It's my birthday today, so I decided to indulge myself in catching up with one of my favourite projects.

I was so excited to be invited to Guest Design for Calico Crafts on their blog in February, but I only gave a sneak peek of the projects here at Words and Pictures.

I've caught up with one of them, but it's time to get add the other to my full collection here.  I use this blog like a virtual scrapbook of my work, so it feels important to get them all "under one roof".  So, forgive me if you've seen this before...

Hello all!  And welcome (back) to the second post today... if you're looking for the new Sara Naumann PaperArtsy releases, they're here.

In this crazy week, I was wondering whether I'd get time to play the very tempting Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge to create Something Messy.  Though I had got extremely messy making some of the PaperArtsy projects, it didn't feel right to include those.

And then I just started playing with some Artistic Outpost stamps in preparation for an AO DT piece, and before I knew it I had a whole mess of ink and paint (watercolour "ground" actually) in front of me... so here's my project.



It uses stamps from two of my favourite AO sets - Think and Wonder and Generation Redux.  I picked the "pairs" from each set.


















They all seem like sibling pairings to me, but whatever sort of partnership each of them is, they clearly face the world together, strong in their togetherness.


For the background, I cut up a cardboard packaging box and ripped away one side to reveal the corrugated texture beneath.

Sometimes the ripping's really easy and sometimes it takes ages, clawing with your fingernails.  This was a pretty simple one, and left those areas of feathery paper which I really love for the extra shabbiness they add.








Then I took Distress Stains in Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain and doused areas of the card pretty randomly.

I followed that with a rough application of ground across the card (fabulous medium, gesso-like but much thicker than any gesso I've used, though there do seem to be different gessos around), and left it to dry.





In the meantime I created another mess of Distress Stains on the craft mat - Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Picket Fence - and did Tim Holtz's wrinkle-free distress technique to prep my paper for the stamping.


I stamped the images in a combination of Sepia, Coffee and Black Archival inks, blended onto the stamp.






When it came to layering, it was very clear that the sisters needed lace behind them; after all, it's right there on the stamp itself.  This is a really ancient lace doily that I liberated from a bag of fabric scraps decades old.












I tried lace behind the others but it didn't seem right, so I grabbed some of my go-to burlap fabric.











It looked great behind the children, especially with some added Distress Stains and ground, but now I needed something of a different texture to go behind the two brothers.









Diet coke can to the rescue... I cut it up (carefully!) and ran it through the BigShot with the Riveted Patchwork embossing folder and then started playing with alcohol inks to colour it.

I'm a huge fan of the wonderful die amelie (a.k.a. Claudia) and her amazing work with alcohol inks, and whenever I visit her blog I think I don't play with them enough - she creates glorious pieces.





I can't remember precisely - but I think Ginger, Rust, Slate, Currant and Black all played a part in this.  I debated really grunging it up with some black paint sanded away with wire wool, but in the end I decided I liked the burnished autumnal look of it without that.









I used some more inky paper to cut the word IMAGINE using the fabulous Movers and Shapers die and added it to the arrangement on my corrugated card "canvas".

It was all looking quite promising already, but it needed something extra though I couldn't think what exactly.  So I left it on the craft mat overnight and, sure enough, I woke up knowing what I wanted to do.



The fabulous Trace of inkypinkycraft recently did a great step-by-step of metallic flowers over at Frilly and Funkie.

Now, I don't have the Ranger foil, and in any case I wanted to alter the idea a little, so that my flowers would reflect the three textures behind my separate sets of siblings.










So as well as running some embossed, inked cola can through the Tattered Flowers die, I cut some burlap ones, and lastly some crushed paper ribbon ones (I thought lace wouldn't work terribly well, being mostly holes!).









I had great fun layering up my flower variations, bending and crushing the materials for dimension and distressing with some extra ink in places.













The tiny white flowers are cut from the Tattered Flower Garland decorative strip die.  I used some Artemio brads - some tiny ones, and some shaped as screw heads - to hold them all together.  Very pleased with the result!








The IMAGINE was still sitting there a little baldly, and there was a phrase that had been running through my head as I was playing, so I decided it probably needed to go onto the project.  I used my Hero Arts alphabet stamps to print it, and ripped and inked the edges.





Final touches include some rusty hearts, with the by now compulsory application of some ground, and rusty wire to hang the whole thing up by.







And there they are: siblings who've known each other pretty much their whole lives - always there, whether in the background or the foreground, a source of support and shared memories.  I certainly can't imagine life without my brother.  And I don't say so often enough.  So while I'm something of a V-Day curmudgeon (let's not get into it!), I am saying it for once with this project.


Thanks so much for stopping by today... I know it's been a busy old time here at Words and Pictures, and I so appreciate your time, support and incredible generosity.  It's not quite over yet, I'm afraid - watch out on Monday for the beginning of one last chapter in my February madness!

Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something.
From Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid, by Lemony Snicket

I'm entering this in the following:
I'm sharing this in Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals challenge - great prizes on offer, so why not play along?
Simon Says Stamp and Show are inviting us to create Something Messy
Frilly and Funkie have a Lacy and Heartsy Valentines theme
The Inspiration Journal would like us to Spread Some L.O.V.E.
And at Tando Creative Challenges the theme is Love, Love Me Do (and now we're all singing along, or at least humming internally!)