Art Journal
Wanderlust 2022: Weeks 1-7

Posted on 11th March 2022 by Neil

It’s been several years since I last did the Wanderlust online course (2016). It has gone from strength to strength, and this time it offers a year of weekly prompts, lessons and inspiration for mixed media art journaling. Unfortunately, it’s too late to enrol for this year’s course, but it is worth watching out for the early bird offers for next year which are usually 50% off the regular price.

The themed sections start with an introductory week, outlining the studio supplies and techniques that are coming up in the next six weeks. Then follows a weekly tutorial from guest tutors furthering exploration of the theme and showing off their individual styles during their tutorial. This can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half of teaching!

These are my pages from the first section of the course: gesso and gel mediums.

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Card Craft
AAA Cards DT: Sketch and silhouette (#210)

Posted on 6th March 2022 by Neil

This week’s clean and simple card challenge at AAA Cards is to use the sketch provided to inspire your own makes. There’s the added theme of ‘silhouette’ to throw into the mix. Here’s my design team card…

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Card Craft
LIM DT: Just One Word One Layer Card

Posted on 26th February 2022 by Neil

There’s another challenge for clean and simple card making at Less is More. This time we’re asked to make a one layer card – which means just that. No die cuts, very minimal embellishments and no matting of designs either. As an added challenge, any sentiment must be ‘just one word’. Cue lots of masking and overprinting!

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Card Craft
AAA Cards DT: One ninth with favourite animal (#209)

Posted on 20th February 2022 by Neil

In this week’s challenge over at AAA Cards, we’re set the task of using just one ninth of the card for our elements. Which ninth you use is up to you, as is the size of the card. I chose a dog as my favourite animal and worked back from there to get the right size card to fit into my ninth. Ok, it overlapped a little, but the essence is certainly there!

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Card Craft
LIM DT: Birthdays theme

Posted on 12th February 2022 by Neil

After a short hiatus over Christmas and New Year, it’s great that the Less is More challenge is back! This time, it being our 11th birthday, the theme is, well, ‘birthdays’. Make a clean and simple card (lots of white space and minimal elements) and enter the challenge 🙂

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Card Craft
AAA Cards DT: Colour scheme – B&W+1 (#208)

Posted on 6th February 2022 by Neil

Another challenge over at AAA Cards – it’s a colour scheme recipe with the guidance to be black and white and one other colour. As with all their challenges, the aim is to keep your card clean and simple (lots of white space, few, if any, embellishments and keeping elements to roughly one third of the card).

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Card Craft
AAA Cards DT: One layer + big sentiment

Posted on 23rd January 2022 by Neil

Another clean and simple card for you, featured in AAA Cards latest challenge: one layer with an optional extra of a big sentiment. The mood board for this week’s challenge included hearts, I’m sure, in time for Valentine’s Day. I looked out my only stamp to feature a heart, hoping it wasn’t too fussy for a CAS card, and used it along with a big sentiment for my card:

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Arts in Worship
Bible Journaling: Graffiti style

Posted on 17th January 2022 by Neil

We’ve had a couple of Bible journaling sessions where we have worked off the page with different themes. For the next session, we’re working back in our journaling Bibles. Our theme will be ‘graffiti’ and the main technique that we’ll be using is creating gradients with our coloured pencils. As always, there will be a traceable printout for those that consider themselves a non-artist or you can do your own thing. The next session is on 14th February at 7:30 pm – contact me to book your place. The printable is also available as a free download from my online store. Here are my sample pics for your inspiration:

Card Craft
AAA Cards DT: Mood board + snow

Posted on 9th January 2022 by Neil

This is my first post for AAA Cards, a clean and simple card design challenge blog. I joined the design team in January and will be posting inspiration cards bi-monthly (twice a month). Apparently, bi-monthly is both every two months and twice a month! Is it any wonder students find English difficult to learn?

The first challenge this year is a mood board (reproduced below) with the optional extra theme of ‘snow’. I took my colour scheme from the pic with the skier and the theme from the snowflake. It’s never too early to make a card for Christmas…

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3D Projects
Craft Label DT: Exploding gift box

Posted on 9th December 2021 by Neil

Just a quick post to show you an exploding gift box that I made using the First Edition ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ 12×12″ paper pad available from craftlabel.com (at the time of writing, it appears to be half price!). The box is die-cut using Simply Made Crafts Die Set Medium Exploding Gift Box | Set of 11 available from craftstash.co.uk. It features four boxes that fall sideways when the lid of the main box is opened. The fifth box in the centre isn’t included in the die set but is relatively simple to measure up and make.