Kate Crane's Calendar Challenge

My friend Katrina has been doing Kate Crane's Calendar Challenge and has completed some lovely pages.   I decided, as it is January I would have a go myself.  I saw Kate's page on her blog and loved it, the grey colours make it look so wintry and when I saw snowy Fran I just had to get her!!

My new stamp arrived from A Sprinkle of Imagination on Saturday which mean't I could get to work creating.  I had to have the grey background in various shades and used Fran in the corner like Kate (sorry Kate I had to copy this but I loved the page so much!)

Looking forward to doing the February page.

Canvas Art

Some more Donna Downey inspiration!  I signed up for her class for 2012 which is called Canvas Art (can be found here www.donnadowney.com) and is a series of 12 workshops with a different canvas each month incorporating different techniques.  This month was a layered background, Donna did use some masking tape on hers for texture but it didn't really work on mine so I have left it out.  She showed us how to make a flower using a rounded paint brush with gesso then going over with acrylic paint.  Then the scary bit, after you have painted everything you get to write over it with india ink!

Some photo's of my finished canvas below.  Hope you like it.

Painting the Background

Adding the flower

Detail of the flower

The Finished Canvas

Inspired!

Inspiration Journal

I have been watching Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesday videos and particularly like the fabric journal she uses.  I noticed a download on her website with instructions on how to make your own, so I did.  I used some of my quilting fabric (of which I have a bit!!!!) and some canvas on a roll.  The canvas was quite stiff so was a bit of a challenge to try and turn it right sides through but I persevered and managed to pull it through.  I used three eyelets down the spine to tie in the insert.

For the insert I used 6 sheets of white card cut to 9 x 12in and various tags, decorative papers and envelopes between each piece of white card.  This was bound to the book with ribbon.

I then felt inspired to do a couple of pages in my new inspiration journal.