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The home of exuberant amateurism.

Saturday 3 October 2009

ABAA Challenge: Keys. September 2009. Cornflake Girl. Rabbit where'd ya put the keys girl?

The key thing is......... can you yodel as well as Tori Amos??

You mustn't sing this lyric, to get the full benefit of it you must yodel it with feeling.
Don't fret yourself now, as I promise, you will undoubtedly yodel better than me.

I love this song; Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos.
Especially once I had got over the whole "but, but she's doing Kate Bush, no, no! it's a KATE BUSH rip off" and then had a lie down in a darkened room for a little bit. :-)

I've wanted to do a picture based on this lyric for a good while now.
In preparation for this post I looked up the song lyrics on the web as they made absolutely no sense at all to me, even though I am word perfect in yodeling along; but of course.
I was still none the wiser having read and re read them.
Himself happened to mooch by, as is his way, and said "Oh that, she's talking about changing kiddy gangs in her childhood."
Cue the tumble weed rolling across my craft room floor (well, dining room really).
Yes! You're right my face did look just like that!
Then he smirked and admitted that he had read that somewhere.
Men gotta luv 'em. *cough*


This is a 12 x 12" picture. Click on it to make it bigger.




Can you find the two keys?


How I made it.


The background paper is one from DCWV Old World stack. Edged in brown chalk ink.
I used double sided tape (the strong bond one with the red backing) to stick the background paper to the cardboard.

I used the gorgeous My Mind's Eye 6x6" Bloom and Grow papers to make the trees that I drew.
The trunks are stuck to the foliage with white PVA.
Everything is stuck on the background with foam pads.

The big butterfly is a Debbie Moore clear stamp from a set of butterfly stamps which I think are rubbish quality (they are sticky as hell, rubbing over with a soft rubber doesn't help all that much and some of the stamps are uneven in thickness so it's almost impossible to get an even stamped image) however, the images are really nice which makes the quality issues such a shame. I stamped onto a DCWV pocket full of posies card. I used versafine vintage sepia ink to stamp the image and am so impressed with this ink pad, it's mighty fine to use. I stuck some gold bling gems on the wings with white PVA. The key is grungeboard (courtesy of the lovely ABAA Linda) and I painted it with Dark Bronze Cosmic shimmer watercolour paint. I had to have a little bit of shiny somewhere, I was getting the shiny withdrawal shakes really bad by this point.

The key in the tree trunk was painted with acrylics mixed up to match the patterned paper.

The little butterflies in the trees were some white embossed butterfly embellishments that came free with a cardmaking magazine. I painted them with cosmic shimmer in Dark Bronze, Tropic Yellow and Twinkling H20 Indian Copper. I tried to get the look of our British woodland butterflies.

Isn't the rabbit adorable? She is a Jo Kill design that she made for Papercraft Inspirations magazine Oct 2009, page 45 called Autumn Card Toppers. She designs wonderful animal cards and has done some fabulous ones throughout this year in the magazine.

I used some shiny embossed papers for the rabbit. There isn't a template for her in the magazine, the idea is that you use different sized round hole punches that of course I don't have.
But I made a set of circle templates out of 300g watercolour paper using a set of compasses. The trick to using a pair of compasses is firstly that your pencil is very sharp. You turn the paper not the compass to make the circle. If you want a very small circle you line the nib of the pencil up with the compass point so the pencil is shorter than the compass point. For a large circle line the pencil nib up so that it hangs lower (longer) than the compass point.
To cut without little jags, you never let the blades of the scissors cut right to the end of the blades. X-cut make scissors that deliberately won't cut to the end of the blades, so you can't do it by accident. Good on X-cut! And turn the paper not your scissors.
Thankfully I do have the right size circle punches for the eyes because cutting circles accurately that small would be torture.

The words are stamped by the individual wooden alphabet stamps made by Studio G which are excellent. I recently bought the same alphabet letters in clear stamps from Studio G which I think are awful, I can't get a decent stamp out of them not even after rubbing a soft rubber over the surface and then inking (I tried various different ink pads as well) which usually works with most clear stamps.
If I think it's rubbish I'm going to say I think it's rubbish, and yes I probably do sound a bit belligerent about this today but if your going to shell out good money for something then an honest review is surely a necessity, isn't it?

Happy crafting!
Gini

11 comments:

Lorraine said...

hello Ginni, like your canvas and I have just about spotted the keys..I love the way you chat on your blog..I need to chat a bit more I think..thanks for visiting my blog and awarding me all those brownie points. Noticed you live in Shropshire..nice countryside we camped at Wem in the summer..bye for now

Meikoningin said...

Oh so sweet !!! I did find the keys, lucky me :D

Rosie said...

I found the keys too (though I had to look hard for the second one)! I love grungeboard, it's so versatile. The trees are such a clever idea, I might have to have a go myself. Love your canvas and how your keys are hidden!! Very imaginative and thanks for taking part in our challenge.
Love
Rosie ABAA

Lynn said...

Lovely entry for the ABAA challenge, I had to look at the close up to find the second key LOL, very creative of you :)

Karen said...

Hi Gini, hee hee I couldn't yodel to save my life today...bad throat caught off an ever generous hubby...bless him!!!! But I did find the keys & I do love this picture HUGS XXX

SYLVIA-ANNE said...

Hi Gini
Fab. picture - love your trees and the cute little rabbit. Great use of the hidden keys too - you clever crafter!! Hope all is well in the land of Shiny. Have a great week, Love, Sylvia xxx

Linda Vincent said...

Hi Gini
Well I listened to the song....and it is truly batty!! Love your artwork though. And I always love reading your blog posts.
Thanks for taking part.
Hugs
Linda x

My Creative House said...

Oh what a wonderful and funny picture, love the trees and I found both keys.

Unknown said...

This piece is just so much fun! I love the hidden keys :)

We have a new guinea that looks like he could be Spanky's brother. His name is Moose :)

Rosemary said...

Love this, Gini, very clever where you hid the keys! You do lovely work with your projects and I like that you tell how you made something, that's helpful when one of us out here wants to try our hand at it!

I think the stamped letters came out nice, but I know what you mean about those stamps - a bit hit or miss there. I heard a hint, but haven't tried it myself, that you can take a fine emery board to the clear stamps and scuff them just a bit to give them some tooth. Wouldn't try it on an expensive stamp but what the heck with the cheapies!

Elisa said...

Thanks for visiting my blog, I took a peek at yours and am amazed by the variety and creativity on it. Each post has something interesting and completely different from the previous one. I am particularly intrigued by the owl ATC.