My post-box over floweth!

First, a disclaimer. My spacebar is broken - it fails every third or fourth time, so I'm having to go back and put the missed spaces in manually. Apologies for any words I've run together.

All the following art I've received recently in the mail for various swaps.

Here's the collection of pages for my chunky angel book. I've yet to make a cover for, but I love looking at them en masse like this. What a mountain of inspiration!



In Stamphappy's 1-4-1 ATC raklist:
Vicki Whittington - thank you! It did make me smile.


Carolyn Weiss (the foil background is actually royal purple - the camera sees it as blue, which is very mysterious.)


Lynn Gosney - the beautiful pearlescent finish on this card is also not showing up too well. It's very pretty, though.


Linda Aldred - lovely background made with beadz.


Janet Gardner - a lovely, sparkly flapper.


Melanie Smith - this sweet little girl is called Denice, apparently.


Barb Conroy - I love this gang of cowboys, they look like such rascals.


Look! My mum (Loretta) sent me an ATC, too. It's made with some kind of new magic film stuff that I've never used, but find very fascinating; it has all the colours of an oil slick.


Quilty Conscience postcard from last month's challenge which was painted fabric:

Karin Hutchinson - love those lush, red flowers.


Stephanie's sandy beachscape


Coralee's postcard, which reminds me of a lavish corset. (I'm seeing corsets everywhere, probably because I'm very into this month's theme, which is drawn from the movie Marie Antoinette.)


Debbi Baker's lovely stencilled bird. Another one where I wish the sparkle came through on screen. It shimmers.


Debbi also sent this gorgeous fabric ATC with our postcards. I feel very lucky!


The best thing about being in all these swaps is the gorgeous, gorgeous stuff that appears in my mail box. Yay!

Blog Award!

I haven't posted for a while! I've been on holiday from work - not with big plans to go anywhere, but taking lots of day trips and overnighters to places. It's been lots of fun, and very relaxing. Also, Daylesford is very, very, VERY cold at this time of year. *shivers* Thank goodness for electric blankets.

I've been very lucky - one of the newest bloggers I'm reading lately has nominated me for a blog award. Thanks Diane!



Here are the rules (or guidelines, as I prefer to think of them):
1. Put the logo on your blog
2. Link to the person who nominated you.
3. Nominate seven blogs you love to read
4. Link to those blogs
5. Let those bloggers know with a comment that they've been nominated.

People I've nominated - please don't feel obliged to do the same. These memes are fun to do, but sometimes they can feel a bit like a chain letter. I can talk for hours about the blogs I love to read and why, but the people I've nominated shouldn't feel pressured to do the same.

Seven blogs I love to read! (Only seven? That's hard.)

The first person has to be Debbi Baker. Her blog got me into blogging about my art, and probably helped me get my feet solidly under myself after my hiatus from art. She's a great insipiration, artistically and as a friend. She's a great Aussie artist, we've been in swaps together for a long time, and I'm really glad to have her blog on my reader. Thanks Debbi!

France Chevalier's blog is fun and entertaining, a bit like an awesome, eclectic cafe that always suprises you with the menu. There's art - at the moment, France is doing some great polymer clay work with jewellery and Krafty Lady molds. Sometimes there's recipes, sometimes there's philosophy, she always has interesting links to places I wouldn't normally come across while browsing. Her blog is a cool, chatty place to hang around.

Julie H makes the most astoundingly gorgeous found object jewellery, actually, her blog is chock full of to-die-for art. I love her blog for the visual inspiration it provides, but also I love her posts about her home and her pets. It's a very grounded place, very inspiring.

Barb P is another friend from the email list days. (Listen to me being all nostalgic when those lists are still going strong!) Barb makes gorgeous cards, loves to try new techniques, and frequently goes travelling on great adventures.

Inspirato is Stacey Apeitos' blog. Stacey is an innovater, no matter what she's working on. She's the organiser of the fabulous Paperific conventions, which are so good that they nudged me out of my hobbit-hole and all the way to Melbourne to attend.

Annette Husband is a phenomenal artist from way, way up north. Her art is lavish and colourful, and she makes wonderful video tutorials to explain some of her really clever techniques. She does amazing things with Opals and beeswax and paint. She's a bit of a crack-up, too, sometimes!

Creativ Spirit is Rob's blog. She's recently taken over as list-owner for my favourite new email-group, Chunky Books. I have one of her pages in my first book from this groups! We follow a lot of the same challenges, I think, like Gothic Arches. I've only recently added Rob's blog to my reader, but I'm already enjoying it.

I have some art to post later but for now, I'm going to be catching up on everyone else's blog - you guys have been so busy!

First time for Gothic Arches

The Gothic Arches theme this week is 'Crowns'. I've really wanted to make something for this weekly challenge, because the arches I see each week are really beautiful.



Unexpectedly, I made two.

Productivity of this level is a bit shocking, frankly.

Inbox and Outbox

Point the first: Quilty Conscience postcards are done and posted. The challenge was to use painted fabric. I used vilene that I had dyed and over-painted with acrylic, then stamped, then stenciled with xpandaprint and then embroidered. *falls over exhausted*



Point the second: I've been very lucky, with many gorgeous 1-4-1 ATC swaps arriving in the mail. It's so much fun, and I'm getting to swap with a lot of new people.

From Left to right: Diane Whatford, Roz Veevers and Jude Wagner


Lisa Manyweathers and Janet Hamblin


Roslyn McGechan and Ann Lawton


Point the third: I've made a couple more of my own to send out, using quotes from Peter Pan:


All business now attended to! Now, to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics!

Skinny Book Swap

Here are my pages for the skinny book swap - it's been a while since I had to make a large number of anything, and I completely miscalculated the amount of time I needed to get through. But I survived, and I really enjoyed making the pages - I played a lot with my pastels to get the shading on the earthbound angel's halo, and for the edging. It's the first time I've used my own handwriting in my art, too - that was fun and a little bit daring. And Stephanie was invaluable help with trimming edges and cutting things to size. She's a mathematical whiz. *hugs* Thanks, Steph!



The back was just pure collage fun - I got to use some gold paper edging, and a lot of gold paint. Bliss!



I'm really looking forward to the rest of the pages coming in to me - then I can decide how I'm going to bind it, and make some covers.

Debbi and other Quilty Conscience people - I am so, so sorry for holding you up another week - the postcards are all but done, they just need edging. A thousand apologies for being such a slacker.

Treasure from the mail man!

Treasures and delights have rained down upon my head! I love getting arty mail.

I'm really excited to have the first few pages for the Angelic chunky books swap on [chunkybookartists]. It's the first art-book swap I've gone in for a few years, and I'm really looking forward to it.
From left to right: Teresa Crouch, Ann Spiteri, and Carol Sweeney


Some [Stamphappy] 1-4-1 ATC swaps:
From Gwenyth Zwaan, and in a beautiful envelope with a lovely quote by Goethe.


From Sharon Batchelor, in a beautifully made folder with some German scrap tucked into one pocket.


From the left, cards from Narelle Cox, and two from Kaeren Sutherland


Again from the left: Rikki Showell, Pam Addicott and Julie Price


Here's what I've been up to, in between frantically finishing my Quilty Conscience postcards:
This one was a challenge to myself to make an ATC using only rubber stamps.


Guess what I bought? A white gel pen! Hooray! Let's put it on everything!


I also bought a big wooden box to put my pastels and pencils and watercolour tubes in, so they're all a lot easier to get to now. Hence, there's a lot of pastel shading on these cards. Pastel shading, and more gel pen. (Actually, I had to hide the white gel pen from myself. Seriously, little white dots are even more addictive than Shiva stiks.


These three are studies for what I'm going to be doing on my own chunky book page:


Now! Back to sewing! Sewing, sewing, sewing, because the postcards were due 16 days ago. *hangs head in shame*

TMTA and Inch by Inch

This is a super quick, middle of the night post, for two challenges that are closing soon.

For the first time, I've been organised enough to get something in for Inchbyinch, where the weekly challenge is Black and White

I would like to note that it was a very hard palette for me to use - I had to drag my hand away from the gold paint. Also, I may be unintentionally breaking the rules by using sepia images. *frets*


Secondly, TMTA's theme is Tickets. I've tucked a ticket under this little girl's arm.


And that's it for me - it's far too late to be up and blogging.