FINALLY - VIRGINIA'S EXQUISITE CORPSE

I know I know I've taken an absolutely age (and a half) to get this posted.  There was a reason honest, firstly was the dilemma over which way some of the pieces went (I kid you not), one piece in particular worked well two different ways, we were confused, anyway eventually I decided that as it was my Exquisite Corpse then I would have it the way I wanted (despite protestations from said hubby and said 12 year old at the time).

Then was the 'how to frame it dilemma' which caused weeks and weeks of soul searching as I really did want to show it off to it's fullest, so here we are with a final unveiling!

Fanfare please...

The roof section is Pam's, the next section down with the bright Gothic window is Katie's piece, the next piece down is Rebecca's and the bottom floor was mine,

And the reason why we've taken so long is that I didn't want the beautiful stained glass elements to be lost, so look what hubby did for me!!!

And this is how it works, an open doored frame which was originally a pin board, with mirror card and led lights.

Up close detail, the ground floor

 The stained glass windows that Rebecca had done, and all that checker board, so much detail (lights off on this bit)

 Lights on to show you the detail of the stained glass

 And the little tiny dots along the top of the spikes, so much work!

And Katie's fabulous brick work, again so much detail!

 Pam's cobwebby roof space

Thank to everyone who contributed and I hope you'll forgive me for taking a while to blog it but I'm sure you'll agree it was worth it!

Rebecca's Exquisite Corpse

Here (finally) is my fabulously freaky face from the exquisite corpse project. Sorry it took so long to get it up here but having no camera is seriously affecting my blogging!

Top left - Me Top right - Glittery Katie (living up to her name!) Bottom left - Pam Bottom Right - Virginia

Thank you all ladies - I luuuuurve my freaky lady and she hangs in my craft area to inspire me. I think she's beautiful.

Cheers, Bex

Rebecca and Sonja Pair Journal

Here is my amazing pair journal back from Sonja. I love what she has done with my backgrounds and odd bits that I had started. There were also notes inside to explain her thought processes for some of the pages which was a beautiful touch.  A big thank you to Sonja too for sending me the photos as I forgot to take any of mine before! Here are some of the pages.


For this one, I started out with just a bird cage die cut, some silver paper and some sheeet music tissue paper so not much to go on. Sonja gave it a beautiful blue wash with slightly darker blue flying birds as the background, some embossed silver flourishes and silver and blue embossed bird images with a quote from one of my favourite writers, Maya Angelou, which ties it all together. I have no idea whether or not I will add anything to this as it's gorgeous just the way it is.



This page started as just a splodgy green and yellow page with some deliberately messy stamping. Sonja has enhanced this with a lovely quote and some subtle overstamped and embossed images, including a Stampotique (and I love those). some cirle motifs which remind me of dandelion seed heads and a butterfly. It looks like the Stampotique girl is finding her path. It has real depth in the flesh which doesn't come out too well in the photo.

This is a page that Sonja started (hence the plain before page at the top). Lots of lovely tone on tone misting, inking and stamping  with another quote. I can see myself having loads of fun playing with this page.

The only thing linking my before pages was the monochrome feel. I wasn't really sure where I was going with this, so I just left it to see what Sonja would do with it. Beautful spraying through a mask (I so want Sonja's stash!) and the action firgure with "keeping it real guys" really made me smile.

Again, another blank page from me which Sonja covered in Scottish one pound notes partially painted over and with crown rubons jauntily placed on the heads. Love it, especially as my partner is Scottish!

And yet another blank page to start with. I should add that there were some pages I did that Sonja didn't add to so you'll get to see those next time I'm sure. Fab inky sprayiness with black chevron embossing and a couple of magazine images. I already have some ideas for this but I am so reluctant to cover up the wonderful background.

This page started with just a bit of torn kraft down one side and Sonja has transformed it with a superbly textured brack wall effect and a fab dynamic start to the right hand side. I can see me going all street art on this.

On this page I was just playing with a new stamp  and just repeated it in a range of colours. Sonja has matched these colours really well with some patterned papers and introduced some straight lines and points to what was a rather too swirly page. Love how she has overlapped the two while still keeping some white space.

And finally, for now at least, a lovely paper background with the same Stampotique girl and crown that appear on some of the previous pages with a light touch of a chandelier and florishes bits, leaving plenty of room still to play.






Huge thanks to Sonja - this has really inspired me to up my game for the next round.  Cheers, Bex.

Rebecca and Sonja pair journal - part 2

Since Sonja has so kindly posted pics of her before journal here I won't repeat the pictures, but just show you what I've done with those pages. Some of the bits shown below are new pages as I rearranged the book before scanning it in!

I hope you like them Sonja.  I have really enjoyed doing this, and I will try to reduce my reliance on black ink for the future! Looking forward to seeing mine back and getting this one back in a couple of months.

Cheers for now, Rebecca

Purely Collaged Postcards

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my late post. These are the glorious postcard backgrounds I received from Bex.

Both already pretty fabulous and I was so worried I would ruin them. This is what I did before posting one on to Virginia and one to Sam... That yellow fish was what caught my attention most. Then I found a vintage advert on an old newspaper page I had. It read something along the lines of "if fish could read they'd buy this bait"(I don't think they would somehow...) but it tickled me so that's what I went with.

Next up, that brown square looked like a window to me and the woman looked a bit scared. Found a vintage dinosaur comic strip in my box o' bits and it pretty much made itself . The wording all came from a fabulous "Wonderland of Knowledge" encyclopaedia that my partner's Mum gave me... he had told her to charity it! Flipping cheek. It's a treasure trove of gorgeous colour plates and interesting articles.

If you'd like to see the postcards I received - I've blogged them here. Irene and Jazz I couldn't get your blog links from the sidebar to work but if you can let me know them I'll make sure you are linked in my post.

I really enjoyed this challenge, it pushed me out of my comfort zone and I now have huuuuuge respect for purely collage artists. I will play more with collage now I think... but also mixed with paint and ink. 

Thanks for reading :)

Mail Art Trail

Mr Postie has delivered two fab postcards this week for the mail art trail. The first is from Karen and I love the quote. I'm planning to take it to work for my desk I think so I can have a smile on a rough day.

The send is from Rebecca and it arrived very quickly from France having stood up to the postal service well. The background is great and I have been having a good study of it so I can recreate it. In fact I have been doing that with both the cards. It's nice to see these things up close in the flesh for inspiration.

Thanks you ladies for the lovely mail.

Purely Collaged Postcards

Mine are a little late in wending their way across the Channel but they have finally gone today. Hopefully they will make it to their new homes fairly unscathed!

Firstly, here are the fabby backgrounds I got from Jaz. Sorry about the wonky scan but it's the best one I have.

And here is what I did with them.

I really enjoyed doing this, even if it was a really struggle not to add just a little ink or paint!

Introducing ... Rebecca

Hi everyone.

I'm Rebecca, sometimes known as Bex, and can be found on UKScrappers as scrap3d (although it's been a while now since I've done any scrapping!). I live in France with my soulmate and our daughters, although that may be changing to Switzerland next year. I know some of you already and I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone else.

A little bit about my background. I loved art as a kid (I passed my art A level at 16 as I couldn't wait until 18 to take it!) and briefly entertained the thought of going to art school. For various personal reasons it was not to be, I went to study psychology instead and didn't do anything artistic for many years.

In the last few years I have slowly eased myself back into arty endeavours. I've come to love altering things and I have just started to embrace art journaling, although I am still very new to it. I've also found that I love doing things for other people - the challenge of making something out of my normal comfort zone has, I think, improved my work a lot.

Here are some bits and bobs that I have made.

Shakespeare themed domino book

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Romeo and Juliet

Art Journal Pages

How do I feel today?

So much to do ...

Chunky ATCs

Frida Kahlo Shrine

Halloween Witches

Altered Matchbox

Steampunk Fairy Shrine

The Reverse

I hope that's given you a flavour of what I do and I look forward to working with such a fabulously talented group of people.

Cheers for now - Bex x