Hello & Christmas Cards

Hi Blog Friends, I haven't been around the blogs, or doing any crafting for a long time. I'm slowing selling off a few things I know I'll never use - but am still hanging onto a lot of stuff, in the hopes that my craft mojo might return... But it's honestly looking less and less likely.

I don't want to depress you, so I would like to mention that I still intend to send out Christmas cards to all my blog-friends! They won't be homemade but they will be Aussie themed!

So if you could please drop me an email with your address, that would be fantastic!

You can email me at:  emuupagumtree@gmail.com

I hope to send them out before the last week of November to they can make it around the world in time!

Did you know it's only 7 WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS? So do get and email me, and get ready for the silly season!

HUGS From AnnMaree xoox.

Be Fearless - Mixed Media Monday

Good Monday morning to you reading this, I hope it finds you well!

I have a page from my Art Journal to share again, for Mixed Media Monday.

Check it out:

A very blue page, done with Dylusions sprays first off. Then I used a damask stencil and sprayed through using white Dylusions spray. I used a female figure stencil and stamped through it with a damask background stamp. I also went around and outlined it with black and white Big Brush markers.

Then it was just a matter of using some other texture stamps in the background, and adding some further details in, like the 'bubbles' up the side and top. 

Which tied in with my letters that are round rub-ons which spell out

BE FEARLESS.

I hope you enjoyed my page today, and will stop by again soon.

Thanks for visiting and commenting!

Mixed Media Monday - Umbrella.

Hi Friends! It's a bright new week, which means it's time to see another page from my Art Journal. It's Mixed Media Monday time!

For this page I put down some of that meshy wall tape you can get from the hardware store. I thought it would give neat texture. I then went over it with Gesso and dried it. I sprayed some Dylusions spray inks onto my page, and blotted it off, to give it a more faded effect. I didn't blot the drips for the pink rain.

I sprayed some white ink through a raindrop stencil, but it didn't come out that well. So I used some blue and purple inks with a dot stamp for added texture and interest.



For my figure in a rainbow, rainboots and umbrella I used some papers I made on my Gelli Plate. Which is a new purchase I made. Wow it's so fun! A great way to make neat papers with lots of textures for my Mixed Media work. I simply drew the shapes on the papers and cut them out and inked around the edges, and added some detail with big brush markers.

For the flower I used texture paste through a stencil that I heat zapped, and them went over with Faber-Castell Big Brush markers. I liked the idea of the raincoat figure sharing the umbrella with the flower.

Which brings me to my quote:

Isn't that so true?

So Thank You for being my umbrella dear friends, and I hope you liked seeing my page today. Thanks so much for stopping by and all your lovely comments!

Love Collage - Mixed Media Monday

Good Morning friends, I hope you have had a great week!

I have a page from my Art Journal to share that was collage based - check it out:

I just started with scraps of patterned paper, some had flower punchouts in them, and I just collaged them down onto my page to cover the whole thing. 

I then went in with some love themed painterly rub-ons I had in stash for these squares of colour and hearts and sentiments.  

Also some flower and butterfly rub-ons. 

 This photo strip of vintage images is from Darkroom Door. I love this cute victorian valentine couple!

I am happy with this collaged page in my journal and the love/Valentine theme.

I hope you like it, too! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Late Mixed Media Monday

Hi Friends, sorry for break in blogging again. I've been a bit ill for the past week and a half, but thankfully I'm feeling better now.

So I have a page from my Art Journal to share:

Just a painted background with some stamping, and the figures are a dylusions stencil sponged with some paint. I like the bubbly texture effect the sponge I used made.  All the leaves were fussy cut. 

I'll just keep it short and sweet. Any questions let me know. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Mixed Media Monday - Girl/Woman/Lady

Good Morning all, time for a new Mixed Media page from my Art Journal.

 This is a page I wasn't entirely happy with, mainly because it was done in a cheap journal with thin paper and everything just reacted differently on it. But I figured it was worth sharing anyway. 

I really loved this quote I came across for this piece: 

It was done with various paints and stamping for the background, the lady's head is a wood stamp from my stash, and I drew in a body and coloured and painted it with big brush markers.

I had a brilliant weekend, where I went to the local 'seaworld' type place and saw gorgeous seals, dolphins, penguins, turtles and fish. I will have photos to share soon.

In the meantime I hope you all had a brilliant weekend, too and have a brilliant new week, also! 

Hugs

Photo Friday - Aquarium

Hello friends, Happy Friday to you. I hope you have had a great week! I hope you might checkout my previous post for my Mixed Media Monday art journal page!

Today I have some photos to share from a trip I took to the local aquarium. The Solitary Islands Aquarium. It's not huge, but not small either. Probably a dozen tanks, but there's still so much to see and lots of helpful knowledgeable staff that gave us lots of information, and even an hands on experience!

We got to touch a starfish, a sea urchin and a sea cucumber:

Sorry this one's a little blurry - The starfish was harder and more 'rocky' feeling than I thought it would be, while the sea urchin was as expected, spikey! The sea cucumber was soft and velvety!

One of my favourite things that we saw was a small snowflake eel;

I don't know what it is another these guys, but I just find them so cool. Maybe it's because they look like they just told a funny joke and are awaiting the response?


Another awesome thing we saw was a Marine Hermit Crab, different from the semi-land dwelling hermit crabs you might be used to, these type stay in the ocean, and amongst anemones.

This guy was enamoured with its reflection on the side of the tank, and one of the guides was telling us about how he places his favourite piece of round anemone on his shell, as part of its camouflage! When it changes shells, it will take off the anemone from this shell, and stick it onto it's new shell! Just like us moving home I guess.


 Yet another amazing creature was this beautiful Octopus:

He put on quite a show for us a few times - so I got video of him:



In one of the tanks there was a particularly beautiful starfish:

I just love the purple/blue with the deep red!

A funny thing was, each time we went to that particular tank this starfish would be in a different spot -  but we never actually saw it move! I kept waiting trying to witness it 'move' around! But it never did while I was watching! lol!

Here's a pic I got of it's underside when it moved to the front of the tank:

I love the detail on this shot.


Of course there were clownfish and anemones:

and some other fish, starfish and urchins - this urchin was called a lamington urchin, like the coconut covered choc-dipped cake!

You see the resemblance, right?

Kinda.

We saw so much, but I don't want to bombard you, these are just the highlights for me, so I hope you enjoyed seeing them. Here's one last pic of some of the coral and pretty anemones in one of the tanks:

Thanks for stopping by!

Elephant - Mixed Media Monday

 

Good Morning friends! I have some Art Journaling / Mixed Media work to show you, that I created.

I recently got a new Dylusions journal, the pages are thick and stand upto lots of paint, spray, ink and water, and don't warp like my old journal did! So I'm really happy with it.

Here's my first double page from it:

 For this page I started with multiple colours of Dylusions spray inks, and just covered my page with them, and sandwhiched the pages together, to get even covering on both sides. I inked through a numbers stencil with black dylusions spray on a sponge. Then added washi tape, and lots of stamping, in white and other colours to form interest in my background.

My main focal image was this elephant I cutout from a magazine! 

 I found a couple of quotes I liked online and printed them out from Word, and clipped them to pop them onto my pages. Beforehand, though, I went in with some texture paste and paint mixed together and went over some stencil images as more focal points for my page. Such as the key, the hearts, and the large heart bottom left.

 Here's a close-up of the heart done in texture paste:

 and the quotes:

 "Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole." 

 "Have the heart of a poet, and the skin of an elephant."

I hope you liked seeing my pages from my Art Journal today, I will be back next week with another page or two! Stay tuned Friday for some more photos, as well! Thanks for stopping by!!!

Photo Friday - Looking skyward

It's been a very long time since I have shared with you my photos - so I think I should start doing it again! This weeks theme is 'Looking Skyward'.

This week we had an amazing sunset here, it was talked about all over social media, and local news papers, websites and blogs! The sky was literally purple with pink fluffy clouds dissipating on the horizon! It was magical and unique - this photo even made it onto a local news site - so I was quite chuffed with that!

The clouds look like cotton candy, right?

A few days before, I was lucky enough to catch two rainbows, on two separate occasions.

Here's a pic of a tree at our house that bears orange mandarin fruit! I just loved the constrasting colours, the green of the leaves, with the pop of orange from the fruit and the bright blue sky. 

Here in Oz we are in the heart of winter, and although we don't have many deciduous trees here, there are some.

 I hope you liked my photos -  Thanks for stopping by! I'll leave you with a sunrise pic:

-AnnMaree.

AWOL - Two Tags

WOW! Has it really been over a month since I have blogged anything?

I have to admit to being in a bad creative funk for the longest time. I had found myself very disillusioned with the craft industry and people in it. I also became very frustrated at my attempts to create, all failing miserably! Which added to my funk.

So, I have been concentrating on my photography, and other things in my life. But I did miss being creative with ink and paper, so thought it was time to get back to crafting, and attempted it again.

I have managed to make a few Art Journal pages, and also a couple of tags. Today I will just show the tags.

The backgrounds were done with Dylusions sprays, on the right tag I put a leafy vine stencil on it and lightly spritz with some white spray ink, I flipped the stencil and put the excess white inked stencil onto the purple tag.

And embossed diecut circle was lightly inked, and added this diecut vine to my tag.

The images are a cute fairy girl from a clear Penny Black set in my stash coloured with copics and fussy cut out.

I have the sentiments with my Dymo embossing labeller.

So there you go, just two simple tags to start me off back into blogging, and crafting!

I plan to hop by all blogs this afternoon.

Thanks for coming to see me.

Regards