By The Skin Of My Teeth

Talk about last minute, but I have been away on my holidays, to La Belle France, which apart from a couple of days was very windswept and stormy. That said, Brittany is beautiful whatever the weather, and I had a great time relaxing, walking and eating lots of lovely seafood (and of course drinking some rather splendid wine). I told myself that I deserved that after the roughest crossing ever on Brittany Ferries from Plymouth to Roscoff, even the crew were being seasick!

                                      

 Here is the Pointe du Raz (I think this is the French Lands End) very appropriate as we were in Finisterre.
                                                          
 The street sign is one I saw in the old walled town at Concarneau. There is something that I can't resist about flowers growing out of walls.      
                                                 

Anyway, now I'm home should I do the washing or get a little art fix? No contest really.
I'm so glad Linda has extended the Compendium of Curiosities Challenge No.10 at Studio L3  for an extra week, and I'm still just squeaking in.  As you know this is THE challenge for celebrating all things Tim Holtz, but you do need his book Compendium of Curiosities Vol. 2 to find full details of all the techniques he uses.
This weeks challenge is to make tissue paper flowers as shown on page 37.  The challenge this week is sponsored by The Funkie Junkie's Boutique

I decided to make a canvas (8" x 10") and having collaged a few bits of patterned paper and painted with Golden Fluid Acrylics in Cobalt Teal and Sap Green I did a bit of stamping using Christy Tomlinson stamps from Unity, and some messy spraying with stencils and Dylusions inks.

The stems and leaves are garden twine, and I forgot to say that I added some bits of canvas tape to the canvas for extra texture. This little canvas is a version of one that I made earlier this year as part of Donna Downey's Canvas Create on-line class.
Now I need to go and catch up with all the fab stuff I've missed in blogland over the last couple of weeks.

Recycled Butterflies

Where have the last few weeks gone? I am ashamed to say that I've missed two CC2 challenges, but have kind of had a bit of a blank spell with all my inky bits and bobs.Having only managed to get as far as day 4 of Creative Chemistry so far, I thought that I could combine one of my tags from that, with this weeks challenge over at Studio L3 so wonderfully hosted by Linda.
Our remit this week is to follow the technique on page 62 of The Compendium of Curiosities Vol. 2, by Tim Holtz.
So here is my tag, combining both the techniques that Tim shows us.

I have recycled some plastic packaging to completely cover my custom stamp pad butterfly tag.

For some reason the embossing didn't take on that slightly frosted look that usually happens, perhaps it's because its incredibly humid today in a rather grey and slightly damp Wiltshire.  Still that is not going to affect  the Jubilee celebrations over the weekend, but I've got a feeling that by the time I reach Tuesday I probably will not want to see another trifle, scone or Victoria sponge for many months!
PS Have you seen Tims June tag?  It is absolutely up my street. LOVE IT.