And they all lived together in a little crooked house

One of our March swaps was to create a scrappy house. The inspiration came from here. Those houses were quite large and made of wood and other scrap. Because we swap by post our houses had to be scaled down in size and weight to fit in an envelope with what I call a "fat" stamp but is moe properly a "large letter" stamp.

The main background is another ghost print from my gelli plate. I used the same paint to colour some coorugated cardboard for the roof. I think I have said (many times) that I never throw anything out - well here's the evidence... the door is constructed from miniature planks cut from stirring sticks collected when I drink frothy coffees.

The windows are cut from painted funky foam glazed with glossy accents.

I think it is rather fun and a change from ATCs and postcards.

More black

I had so much fun making my "new black" swap that whilst I had all the materials out I decorated the cover of a note book that came free from somewhere with a sponsor logo on the front. The book cover was chosen because I have just discovered The Mirror Crack'd blog. The sentiment (keep everything, even broken mirror) made me smile and I was drawn to their "no cards" mixed media challenge.

I think the picture is a bit overexposed and doesn't show the metallic effects to the best advntage so I'd best explain the various products applied.

The first layer is dry embossed mirri card cut into sections. As it turns out I didn't really need the metallic effect on the card because it all got covered up so, lesson learned, use cheaper plain card in future.

All the shapes of cogs, washers and letters are die cut from funky foam. I set eyelets or brads in the centre of all the cogs - any old colour will do so use odds and ends. The final layer of texture is made from snippets of magic mesh and dymo "printed" words.

I then painted the whole cover black to harmonise all the miscellaneous colours and provide some tooth to hold the subsequent media. I then painted layers of Lumiere paint in different shades of blue, green and copper. I highlighted various textural elements with gilding wax and finished with some rusting powder and there might be more than one spritz of mica spray too.

I think I might do more of this yet. I love over the top shine and glitz and gilding.

Sometimes I hate to be right

Our March gelli technique swap was to use masks. This technique is demonstrated with fabulous results on theGelli Arts blog here. They make it look so easy but I was right, it is getting trickier.

I don't think the odd assortment of paints I used were entirely suitable though - our swap hostess recommended translucent ones but mine were rather opaque so I ended up with horrid dark prints. Well that's my excuse anyway. And you can tell they were bad because they went in the bin and it is not often I throw things away without at least trying to redeem them with a little bit more of something.

I used the second "ghost" prints for my post card in the end. Because I printed an A4 sheet and then cut a postcard size out the pattern was rather large in proportion to the post card. I couldn't resist adding some background stamping in similar colours to balance the overall background.

The technique for next time is dry prints which sounds rather intriguing so watch this space.

Gelli time again

Following from January's Additive technique, our February Gelli technique is Subtracting and I love this simple technique.

Here I have used two superimposed subtracting prints. The first layer is made by brayering dabs of blue and yellow to mix them on the plate. I then placed a stencil and plastic canvas on the plate, pressed down and them lifted them off to remove paint. This was print one.

Then I brayered black paint onto the plate, layed down another stencil (flowers) and this time brayered over the top until most of the paint was lifted from the gaps. After removing the stencil all that is left are outlines where the paint close to the edges of the stencil doesn't get picked up by the brayer. I pulled this print over the top of the first.

To complete the postcard I used Glossy Accents to add dimension to the circles in the centre of the flowers without concealing any of the print.

I think the easy challenges are over now. The March swap sounds more complicated, involving masks, so I'm off to practice now.