Goodbye 2012, Happy New Year

A little creation I put together for all my blogging buddies - click on the image to enlarge - 

 it says 'sending you greetings .... Happy New Year'

Thank you for visiting my blog this past year and thank you for any comments you may have left.

The flower postcard was from the Graphics Fairy, I just changed the text. The other postcard was my own.

Hope to see you in the New Year, Linda

Fashion Dolls

More dolls from my culture sketchbook [sketchbook 20]

The top one is fashion from 1820 and the bottom one is from 1921.

The top doll folds over to reveal the one below.

Tiger and Lion

Two more altered images from the Naturalist's Library.

The top one was just altered with wire, craft wire, it really is that colour.

The textured background below was a photo I took at Finchale Abbey, not exactly sure what it is now, but there was no water on it. The lion has a surprised look on his face so I thought I would leave on the large ivy leaves.

Eagle and Falcon

The bird images are from a book called the Naturalist's Library published in 1843, which I now have on DVD. I've arranged the top one [Egyptian eagles] on some textured artwork and the one below [falcon] is on a photograph of a stone wall. [photo taken at Whitby]

More pages from Sketchbook 26

More pages from my sketchbook, some are just for backgrounds, some have doodles and one has doodles and a found image [the deer]

Queen of Hearts [3M]

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas or holiday.

Today a new challenge from the Three Muses -Queen of Hearts.

I've done a new digital collage from old stuff I had. This queen was free hand machine stitching.

Also on the collage is a playing card, an altered playing card, drawing of queen and a drawing of a heart which was a brooch.

Some years ago I did this 3D piece which included a queen of hearts.

And as she was surrounded by tarts she became known by a new name..

Tree and Santa's Little Helper

Tree, angel and reindeer are images from the Graphics Fairy and the baubles are from a photo I took myself.

Click on image to enlarge.

Below - Santa's little helper [photo taken by Emma, my daughter]

Snowflake Design and Christmas Trees

This is the fabric design I have done for Spoonflower's snowflake contest. I know a snowflake should have six points - but this developed from a doodle and I thought it looked like a snowflake so I used it. I have noticed that the BBC are using an eight pointed snowflake this year......

Voting is on now. This link works for me for all the snowflake entries, hope it does for you, but if not - go to the Spoonflower site and look for the weekly contest.

We got a new artificial tree this year, the old one fell down last year... it is very old. This one looks nice when the lights are on, more of them show up than they did on the last tree.

This is a reindeer I've had for a while which I like, one shot taken with the flash and one without.

This is my new tree ornament this year, a cute squirrel.

My son gave me the tree below to put in the conservatory. I was actually thinking of not having a tree at all this year, but now I have two.

Interesting Doors

I noticed when I was in Budapest that there were some interesting doors and gates, but I only started taking photos of them on the last day I was there, so I only got snaps of these four.

Pages from Sketchbook 26

Watercolours, wax crayon, water soluble crayons

I used old anniversary cards for the collage on this one.

I can't remember what I made the marks with around the edges on this one, but I hope it comes to me because I quite like it. The image in the centre was from a magazine.

watercolour, water soluble crayons, biro, liquid liner

watercolour and pen

watercolour, pen & water soluble crayon - I drew around some wooden letters [made by a friend]

watercolour, pen - I used the letter E

the texture was made with a glue stick and magazine print

watercolour, pens

Gifts to Arty Friends

The gifts to my arty friends were all based on a kind of Russian doll, I'll explain more further down.

My gift to Gill was three cards of art buttons. 

I altered Graphics Fairy images for the backing cards.

For Helen I made some earrings, on one side the man and the woman on the other. I printed my artwork on t-shirt transfer paper.

 I gave Marian a hand painted brooch. After painting I stitched around the lines and edges on the sewing machine.

Vicky was given a hanging doll of herself, one one side I drew her features and on the other the original photo. I used t-shirt transfer paper again. This particular type came out quite plasticky but it may have been because I didn't read the instructions fully[doh!], but it worked out OK for the gifts, it may not feel good on a t-shirt though. I have done something else since and it was not quite as plastic like but not quite so shiny.

I also designed some wrapping paper and gift tags which I printed on my inkjet. I also made little boxes for the jewellery and covered them in the paper. Click on the images for a closer look.

The project was/is to do with culture and I chose to concentrate on historical fashion presented on a Russian like doll. These are some pages from my sketchbook, the start of the project and I used some of these pictures for the above gifts and paper.