Some Free Vintage Imagery

Sorry I've not posted all week, my mind's been a bit preoccupied as I was due to go for an MRI scan on my neck today and I've not been looking forward to it at all - for one thing, I get quite claustrophobic in confined spaces and I was worried about being inside the "tunnel", also thought I might start coughing or something and mess the scan up.  Lindsay's been telling me not to be such a coward about it as she had to have one a year or so back, when she got an ear infection, and said that it was an interesting "experience"!  Well, anyway, I have to admit, the scan wasn't as scary as I thought it would be and took place, not in the local hospital, but in the brand-new all-singing, all-dancing health centre not far from where we live - first time I'd been inside and it was pretty impressive, I think they must have a department for every kind of health problem there is, both physically and mentally! 

Anyway, the scan .... I got over the claustrophobia bit by closing my eyes and drifting off into a dream-like trance, quite relaxing in a strange sort of way.  The reason for the scan is that I've got reduced strength & grip in my left thumb and forefinger, it's been getting worse for the past year, and I finally insisted the local GPs refer me to the specialist - the consultant isn't sure why I'm having this problem (it's not carpal tunnel syndrome or RSI, which I thought it possibly could be) so he ordered the neck scan in case that was where the problem lies plus I have to go for some nerve conduction (?) tests on my arm - still waiting for appointments for that - then I see the consultant again in October (yes, I know, seems a long way off) .... so it's all a bit of a mystery really, I hope the cause can be found so that at least, if there's no treatment, I'll know what it is.

Right, that's enough of me and my problems!!!  I thought today I'd put up some vintage pics of family groups from my collection of old cabinet cards - please feel free to download them onto your computer (click on each pic to enlarge it, then right click to save it) and use them in your artwork - would love to see pictures of any art you create using them! 

Mia has been growing increasingly bold these past few days and has decided she wants to climb everywhere - she was eyeing up a tree in our garden yesterday and then was clambering about all over the car roof.  And for some reason, has now decided that the worktops in the kitchen (it's a long galley kitchen so there's a good length of worktop) is a great place to wander around and explore.  Mia jumped off the first time I told her to get down, but then waited till I'd turned my back to jump back up again, the little minx, and I think we're fighting a losing battle keeping her off there all the time.  Only this evening I heard a clatter, went into the kitchen, and there was Mia sitting on the worktop, a picture of innocence, and on the floor the sugar bowl (stainless steel so didn't break) surrounded by a pile of sugar!  Whatever next! 

Mia loves dashing into my "craft/computer room" any chance she can - as she's addicted to having balls of paper thrown for her to fetch, she absolutely loves a good old root around amongst all the crafty bits and pieces - here's a picture of her in one of her latest favourite resting spots - on top of my "tower" where she can peek out at me or reach a paw up to grab me as I'm working! 

(Mia isn't really as evil as she looks in this picture - she's just a very mischievous and determined young lady - but a real cutie)!!

And finally, please don't forget the "Africa" ATC Swap that's running this month - perhaps everyone's too busy with other projects or on their summer hols, but I'd love to have a few more sign ups for this one; if you're interested in joining, just let me know either by email (contact address in my "profile" section) or in a comment on my blog. 

A Little Bit of "Grunge" ..... and more Vintage Gentlemen

First of all, I hope everyone has had a lovely Easter break, whatever you've all been up to - mine has been fairly quiet and I was able to spend some time creating a few cards and another page for my "grunge" chunky book (so now I have two pages completed).  Here they are .....

"Vintage Journeys"

"Heavy Metal"

Here are a few more vintage gentlemen images for you to make use of - if you fancy joining the April Fools ATC swap (details in the sidebar), remember that you can use any of these images on your cards if you wish.  There's still plenty of time to take part in this swap - the closing date is not until 30th April. 

Here is a card I made for the April Fools swap, using one of these vintage images .......

Thank you to everyone who joined in the Butterflies and Dragonflies swap - I received some wonderful cards and I'm happy to say these have all been swapped out now and flew out to you all today.  I'll wait a few days, so as not to spoil the surprise element, and then post pics of all the cards that were created for this swap.

Mia has been causing havoc again! ..... she zaps around so fast, she can hardly keep up with herself.  One of her favourite things to do is to launch herself at top speed into the kitchen (it's a long narrow one), jump onto the wastebin and then onto the windowsill, still at lightning speed.  So last night, I was there in the kitchen, making a brew, when she tore past at what seemed like 100mph and the next thing I knew there was a tremendous crash and the sound of something(s) clattering down onto the stone floor - Mia had been unable to put her "brakes" on and had collided with a jar of marbles I have sitting on the windowsill - the jar amazingly was not broken but there was a shower of marbles spilling out all over the floor in every direction - of course, by now Mia had flown out the room and was hiding upstairs ("nothing to do with me, mum"!) - what a handful Mia is, the mischief she gets up to .... we just wonder what to expect next!

New Swap Posted ...... April Fools ATCs

Well, here we are, 1st April - and so I thought it might be fun to make the theme for this month's swap April Fools (see the sidebar for more details).  I'm also adding some new images of vintage gentlemen for you all - you are absolutely free to use these images any way you like, but you might also want to use them on your cards for the April Fools swap.

In the meantime, Mia decided to play a real "April Fool" on us this morning!  I'd just let her out the window whilst I made a cup of tea and she was chewing at a mint plant growing in a pot outside (she seems to like the flavour of it) when all of a sudden she appeared to get something stuck in her mouth.  Well, the fun we had after that ..... she wriggled out of my arms when I tried to pick her up, flew into the house and upstairs, all fluffed up, with us in hot pursuit behind.  She was making a horrible crunching sound with her teeth and I was really worried she was doing some damage to them.  Tried wrapping a towel round her to calm her down (got scratched for my troubles) and opening her mouth (no, she kept her jaw clamped tight shut)!  We just had to let her go and then she seemed to calm down, settled in her basket and Graham reckoned whatever it was, she'd got rid of it and was going to be fine.  He then popped out to the post office up the road.

As soon as he'd left, Mia got up and went to her bowl to try and eat some food, but it was obvious she wasn't able to - she was still making the crunching sound and doing a "wretching" action.  The vets (luckily, right at the top of our road) were about to close in 10 minuts so I rang them up, said please would they still be open if I dashed round now and then I scooped Mia up into her basket, hopped into the car and drove round fast as I could.

When the vet examined Mia he said, oh yes, she has definitely got something caught in her mouth!  He let me look and it was part of a thin twiggy stem from the mint plant, but it was caught at the back of her throat, running horizontally from side to side - there was no way she would've been able to get that out by herself or be able to eat and it could've turned out quite nasty; he pulled the twig out with tweezers and Mia was very brave, not a whimper or a wiggle; had a little bit of inflammation where it had rubbed so she was given an injection and some liquid drops to help ease it over the weekend.

Phew!  What a start to the day!  And now, here she is - none the worse for her adventure!

I just love the way she sticks her little pink tongue out (butter wouldn't melt - she's about to launch an attack on my arm)!

Some more Vintage Children Pics

Here are more vintage images of children for you from my collection of cabinet cards, please feel free to use them in your artwork and on your ATCs.  I find these old photographs fascinating to study, the more you look at them the more you see in them - I love the little dolls (one of which is wearing a knitted dress) in two of the pictures and the solemnity on the faces of the children because they had to stay so still. 

I will post the "how to" steps for the Nature's Beauty ATC next time.  In the meantime, here are some ATCs I finished today for a Tim Holtz techniques atc swap (sorry, Joanne, this is the nearest I've come so far to making my TH-style "grunge" pages - I'm still at the "thinking about them" stage)! 

                                                                                                                                                                   

"Destination"

TH/Rangers items used:

Alcohol Inks

COM005 Hotel Stamp

Grungeboard Arrow

Metal 'Journey' Embellishment

"Life"

TH/Rangers items used:

Distress Inks

Background (X's) Stamp

Archival Ink - Plum

Metal 'Life' Key

Alcohol Inks

"Flight"

TH/Rangers items used:

Distress Inks

Paint Dabber

Archival Ink - Sepia

Distress Stickles

TH 'No Journey ....' Stamp

Vintage Children Images and some more ATCs

Thought I'd post a few vintage images for you to use as you wish in your artwork - they're from my collection of cabinet cards, two feature babies and the third a young child. 

I've many more vintage images (of ladies, gents, children and family groups) so I'll continue to post pics from my collection every so often - in fact, I have plans to feature some of them in the next monthly swap.  (The butterflies are flying in now for the current swap and lovely cards they are too, so if you want a chance to receive some beautiful ATCs yourself then there's still time to sign up).

A few days ago I lost a chunk of tooth (a back wisdom tooth) whilst eating a sandwich - I felt a bit of a crunch and thought it was eggshell, but apparently not - it must've been the old filling coming out - yuck!  Anyway, it meant a trip to the dentist the next day for a rather large filling and as a consequence over the past few days I've been feeling very sensitive with my teeth, trying to avoid anything too "crunchy" and taking painkillers as it's still very achey (just hope it settles down)! 

As a consequence, I've not spent as much time as I'd have liked working on atcs and journal pages.  But here are a few pics of the ATCs I've managed to create in the past week - some were for a monthly swap on one of my Yahoo groups, we have a new partner each month and swap three cards (any theme).  The other cards are extras I've made for my swapping stash. 

These three cards were sent to my partner Liz for the March swap.

"Fill Each Day with Joy"

"Nature's Beauty"

"Paris Passion"

"Psychedelia"

I've treated myself and booked onto THREE workshops that my sister Lindsay is running at Dawn Bibby's Design Studio in Oswaldtwistle - I've promised to behave myself and not heckle at all *LOL*.  Well, everyone always looks like they're having such a good time in the pictures Lindsay posts on her blog and I wanted to join in the fun myself too.  The workshops I'm signed up for are her Mirror Frame in April, a Secret Canvas in June and Rangers Techniques and ATCs in July (check out this link to Dawn's shop if you want to book on any of the workshops).  I'm really looking forward to them!

Vintage Birthday Image

Thought I would post this vintage postcard image of a young girl with flowers for you tonight.  It may appeal to some of you to add to any cards you're making. 

I like the dreamy faraway look in the little girl's eyes and the subtle colour tinting.

I finally got round to doing a little bit of embossing today for a swap I'm in.  We had to create a 6" x 6" square tile and 12 inchies, all from matboard, using a particular colour range from turquoise through green to terracotta.  The only techniques allowed are inking, stamping and embossing - no embellishments!!! (which is tricky for me as I'm a great one for adding a few "twiddly bits")!  Anyway, I inked and stamped the "tile", lightly embossed a flourish around each corner, and then used clear UTEE to triple-emboss (well, it was double-emboss really, it didn't need a third coat) to cover the entire tile.  For the inchies I used a rubber stamp that Lindsay had given me - it was ideal because it has 12 cat images on it, each one 1" square.  The stamp is called "Kitty Tiles" (4578) from Hampton Art Stamps.  I made 24 inchies in total so that I could keep extras to use on some future ATCs.  Again, I "double"-embossed each little inchie.  So these will probably get posted out tomorrow and then Ali (our hostess) is going to mix up everyone's tiles and inchies so we'll each get back a tile complete with a pattern of assorted inchies on it.  I just love these colours!

I've also made a couple of ATCs for a Lucky Dip swap, we each choose from a list of titles - my choice was "Midnight", "Botanical", "Caged Bird" and "Weathered".  Here are pics of "Midnight" and "Botanical".  Two down, two to go!  I also made another botanical-themed ATC and have another two part made, as I had enough vintage bits of paper left over from the first one.  I used distress inks over the rather shiny plant paper and on the torn strips of paper from an old encyclopedia.  I used gel medium to adhere the paper strips to the background and as a coating over the whole card, which got rid of the shininess.  The card on the "Botanical" ATC is one of those old picture cards that came free in our tea boxes, the equivalent of cigarette cards, do you remember them?  I've added a flower shaped button, threaded with gauzy green ribbon, a skeleton leaf and a rub-on word.

Of course, I had to use Lindsay's "owl" stamp on my Midnight card - I've been using it a lot lately, plus her technique for blowing ink with a straw to create the stark tree branches the owl is sitting on.  I do like those techniques that turn out so random, you just never know what they're going to end up like!

I had the final set of instructions for completing the zetti pages I've been working on too - having added outlines and extra patterns to the pages with crayons or pastels, we now have to spend the next few weeks/months adding journalling to our pages, whatever we want, whenever the mood takes, and on which ever page fits the words (or vice-versa).  I've no idea how my pages are going to turn out, I'm not sure that what I've done so far looks "zetti", but .... we'll just have to see.  Apparently, there's no right or wrong way to do this, I guess I'll know when I've done enough on each page, then I send one out to each of the other participants.  Check out Elena's blog (My Name is Elena) in my bloglist to see what she has done - Elena has really got the hang of this zetti art and is turning out some wonderful looking work - well, I think so anyway, I know it won't appeal to everyone!