Words & Paintery April Challenge

Hey everyone,

The time for the Words & Paintery April Challenge has come! You can find it HERE.

As usual you will have until the 15th to play along, so the deadline is May 15.

This was a hard one for me. Lately I haven't been inspired to use pinks AT ALL.

As it always goes, you think you'll have time, but then the deadline neared and we were away for Barcelone, leaving me only a couple of hours to create something. And I'm a slow scrapper...

I made something then though. But I didn't like how it turned out at all. And there was no salvaging. It was a pink disaster I tell you. People even asked if Connor made it. All the chipboard shapes were unrecognizable, even the sewing machine that looked like it had been set on fire due to an experiment with some new black Inklings...

Soooo I gave the pinks another shot Friday afternoon and was happy about the result. I used my recent inspiration from Barcelone. Mosaic patterns, a church window, Mary and Jesus.

(Which made sense too, now Easter is here...)

Yes, this project is okay to me.

Judge for yourself and if you have any questions about how I made it, don't hesitate to ask. (Didn't do step by step pics this time, sorry...)

You can find me on Facebook and Instagram, too.

HAPPY SCRAPPING, don't forget to join our challenge!

"Fleeting Moments" Altered mixed media Fan

Hi everyone,

I've noticed some fans being altered lately, you too? They made me finally work on the wooden fan that I had lying around too.

My in laws got this fan for me during one of their world trips and I had different plans for it initially. 

Until I remembered the vintage photograph of my mom holding up an umbrella. Her dark hair was up in a tight bun, which she hated because her hair was thick and heavy. Her mother had even sewn two of those bun-spunges together, to make it even worse. My mom was a living doll and she hated it. I depicted that by caging one of my old Frozen Charlottes in a birdcage. 

Needless to say once she was mature enough she was thrilled to make her own decisions when it came to her hair and clothes. From a young age she already learned to make the best of (her) life.

My grandfather, whom I hardly knew since he passed away a year and a half after I was born, loved to take pictures. I'm proud to still own his camera and so happy he took so many pictures/slides of my beautiful mom. Precious memories, even more so since she passed away too young as well.

I wanted to stick with the colors from the picture and guess what? They match the March challenge over at the 'Words and Painterly' blog. Again. And yes, again using a picture of my mom. LOL.

(I already did an entry with a heart-shaped canvas starring my mom as an angel, check one of my previous blog entries.)

I started out by painting the fan with gesso. White was my first choice, but I realised black would make the picture pop even more. So I gradually blended the white into black.

By the way, I took these pictures with my new cellphone and I absolutely love them! I can do decent close-ups and the colors are almost perfect as is. The little editing I have to do is also done a whole lot faster than with my previous phone. I'm so happy! 

Once dry I sprayed everything with several Glimmermist colors: 'Cranberry Zing' (which turned out to be too purple for this color scheme), 'Crimson' and 'Pink Coral'.

I altered some of the embellishments I wanted to use. Covered the clock and Frozen Charlotte in crackle medium, then added some paint and ink.

You don't want to know how many mediums I put on the swirl. It didn't do what I wanted it to do. First I painted it with black gesso and then I added a crackle medium. I finally used one of my new Prima Opal Magic paints, pink gold. The idea was that it would crack and show some of the black gesso underneath. It didn't crack though. (On another project I noticed it didn't work either, but I blamed it on the wood surface being too coarse and soaking up all the medium.) I tried some black crackle Nail Polish and sanded everything. Not the result I wanted either. So I mixed another Prima Opal Magic paint, blue pink, with Tim Holtz clear rock candy crackle medium. That sort of worked but the color wasn't really what I hoped for. Later when I sprayed everything the color blended nicely.

The Scrapiniec ornament above the picture was done with several layers too. Black gesso, Prima Opal Magic paint pink gold, some Rusty Paper, etc.

The chipboard words "Fleeting Moments" are from 13Arts and I painted them with Prima Opal Magic paint pink gold, then added clear crackle medium and a bit of pink ink later on.

To enhance the 'Chinese' feel of the picture I made and altered some chopsticks sticking out from behind the picture. 

The little fan-like chipboard piece is from Scrapiniec as well and was simply covered in Glimmermist 'Crimson' and a bit of white gesso.

The branch underneath the picture was covered in Rusty Paper and later some crackle medium and pink ink.

The metal leaves, frames and birdcage were covered with white gesso and some Glimmermist 'Crimson' as well.

Added my glittery branches, flowers (sprayed them with Glimmermist Crimson and added white gesso) and bead/heart string for the finishing touch. Fussy cut the picture because it looked better.

Hope you like it! Comments and questions are always welcome!

Come find me on Facebook too: 

"Less is Bore! "

Or Instagram: mandylessisbore

Happy scrapping!

Getting published in "Creatief met Foto's"...!!!

So, here's the second update of my much-read blog...NOT...;)

I am not sure whether I mentioned in my first blog that some of my work has been published...?!

I am just your average scrapper, nothing special, but I thought I would give it a try and send pictures of a mini booklet I made, to a Dutch Scrapmagazine called "Creatief met Foto's". The picture shows the issue I am referring to. =)

Yet, I was either talented or simply lucky enough to be picked!!! Lucky enough to have used that line of paper, too. I guess. I used Pirate Princess by Rusty Pickle, which was girly, yet tough. Lots of pink and black. Love those colors! I was kinda pleased with the result of my booklet, especially the exterior. The "back" of the booklet was decorated with pink ribbon weaved through eyelets, corset-like. Pirate-girly-like...


I felt so proud, special and appreciated. Something I had made with my bare hands was going to be published! "I" was going to be available in most bookstores and scrapstores! How exciting is that!!! ( I even cried out of happiness, how cheesy am I...!?)


Anyway, after a long process of emailing back and forth, I sent my booklet over to their store, and they took pictures of the whole thing. I wrote a little text as well, about myself, the booklet, the paper, etc. The rest of the text was made up or even embellished ( so to speak...) and approved by me after another telephonecall.
So, finally, the April/May issue hit my floormat. And it was surreal seeing pages I had created myself inside the magazine I usually turn to for inspiration. It still hasn't hit me, because I know those pages well, they're mine, so seeing them in a magazine, is like seeing them in reallife, I guess. The article turned out great, the pictures they took of my pages were beautiful and fun. The writing was good, not too extended, but still honest.

The booklet was about my 30th birthday (26 September 2007) which was a big deal for me. I had gone through an extremely rough time after losing my mom March 2005 and I was geting myself together again, finally. So, to close off that period of time, and begin a new era, a celebration amongst loved ones, family and friends, seemed the right thing to do. After all, you never know how much longer you'll have. There may not even be a tomorrow...
So seize the day,

I say! ;)