Top Talent For Mexico Moods Challenge

Good morning everyone. Julia here and it's time to share with you another Top Talent Spot. This wonderful artist won our Mexico Moods Challenge and it's my pleasure to introduce you to:

Anita Sæløen from Norway.

The hugely creative Anita has a blog called Niti's Art from Heart and I would urge you to pay her a visit and soak up the inspiration by clicking on the link.

Anita has answered some questions so that we can learn a little more about her. Let's hear from Anita:

 I am so excited to be the Top Talent and have the opportunity to be guest designer at Our Creative Corner.

I chose to make a canvas art based in the Nordic / Scandinavian light. Particularly light in winter. As you all now it is very cold in Norway, special in wintertime. Those little men and that little boat you can see in the light areas is rubberstamp made out of drawings of original rock carvings in Scandinavia that dates some 3000 years back. Isn’t that cool?

The heart is a symbol of Love. I called this art LOVE. It is a reminder that no matter how cold the world seems, one can warm themselves in love. Love yourself, love art, love life, love colour <3

1. Where do you live?
I live in the city of Bergen in the most beautiful country Norway

2. Do you live by any motto or philosophy?
I do have a motto, and that is: Remember yesterday, think of tomorrow, but live today.

3. What other hobbies/talents do you have that you may like to share with us?
Oh, I do a lot of things. I love crafting, so I’m doing a bit of knitting, crocheting, and renovation / painting of small Furniture. But most of the time I am Art Journaling. It became a near friend of mine and I have my Art Journal With me all the time. When I am traveling I bring my Art Journal and pens, scissors, glue and a ruler (Dylusions Journal Block) with me. And I also love Mixed Media Art on canvas. I do a lot of canvas as well in all sorts of shapes and designs, but I'm a close friend with strong colors so I make mostly art with bright and happy colors.

4. How long have you been crafting and what made you start?
I think I've been crafting all my life, since I was a little girl I’ve always painting and drawing. I do not know how it is in your country, but at the Norwegian primary School there is a study called electives where I chose rosepainting. I think that's how it starts. I did like rosepainting and I got a lot of positive feedback from teachers and classmates. Rosepainting is a classic old Norwegian way to paint roses and leaves in the primary colors of red, blue green and yellow. I am not so very fond of this technique now ;-) Art journaling, I started actually with having been on sick leave for a while and sat and surfed the internet and YouTube and discovered Dyan Reaveley. Now I have seen all her videos several times and she is absolutely amazing. She gave me the kick start.

5. Name three of your favourite crafting techniques and why you like them so much.
My three favourite crafting techniques is number one: inking. Just sit down take my Dylusions ink spray and just spray. I like the inks because they provide so strong colors and they have a little life of their own. One is never quite sure of the result. It gives me a bit of unpredictability.
Number two is painting with baby wipes. That gives me a good feeling. Just pick an acrylic paint, take the baby wipe and just let it flow. Both thoughts and paint :-)
And stamping of course. I love stamping. When I first get started, I cannot stop. I use a lot of stamps. Both background and for image.

6. If you lose your 'mojo', how do you go about getting it back?
When I lose my mojo I see a video or two on YouTube of my absolute favorite artists: Dyan Reaveley, Nika in Wonderland, Mimibondi and Dina Wakley. Then I just go step by step of one of their tutorials and I'm all in again with tons of inspiration and creativity.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I wish you all a pleasant and creative autumn.
Hugs, Niti/Anita <3

Thank you Anita for your wonderfully detailed answers. It's like sitting down and having a wonderful chat with Anita isn't it?

Let's now have a look at Anita's wonderful canvas:

 

Anita, your canvas is full of colour and love! The details are wonderfully put together and it's obvious that you have poured love into this canvas. That heart is stunning! Please remember to pop over to Niti's Art from Heart and leave Anita some love - she deserves some back in return!

Anita will now join our Top Talent hall of fame and I do hope she comes back to play with us again. Will you be our next Top Talent? To be in with a chance you need to join in our latest challenge 'Halloween Horror' which runs until October 28th so you have plenty of time and we'd love to see you there. 

Thank you so much for joining us today and reading all about our latest Top Talent.

October 2015 Sponsor Spotlight - Nicecrane Designs

Hello there

Did you know that you could go on over to Nicecrane Designs, a company with oodles upon caboodles of digital designs and choose your favourite, download it and use the image to do whatever you want with it?  How cool is that? 

I am telling everyone that asks that these unique make-up organiser babies are designer pieces from the Nicecrane Design Collection! They look suitably impressed that I have "designer" home accents, and I reckon it might seem completely plausible that this might be the case ;) because these are among other unusual print decor items I have in the same design.

To be perfectly straight with you, I have never really thought about the potential of this option until I went on over to the site and the design penny dropped!  You could customise just about anything with your favourite design (for personal use only ofcourse).  

Let's think about this for a second.  The accessories in your living room might need a bit of an update, you have been to the mall and scoured the decor shops looking for something you like, but nothing grabs your fancy or they might have the design print in one or two items like a cushion cover and a table runner, but that is all and you want the theme repeated on everything!!! You could even want that design hanging as art on your walls.

This I believe is the genius of buying a design off of Nicecrane Designs.  All you would have to do is buy the image once, and then you could use the same image over and over in different applications.  Technically you could makeover your entire room in the design of your choice.  You could have the design printed on block canvas, you could transfer the design onto cushion covers, table runners, curtains, candles, guestbook covers, decoupage it onto trays and vases.  Do you see?  This is an amazing way to decorate on a budget.

What I have decided to do is sort out my horde of make-up.  I needed something that would stay within the slightly steampunky vintage brown, black and cream theme I have going on in the room that I do my make-up in.  I no longer felt okay about digging through the piles of lipstick, eyeliner, mascara etc in the big bucket I had it in.  I wanted something a little more organised, in something cuter and in keeping with the theme.  I am in the process of decoupaging every pot, holder, container in the same designer theme, including upholstery but I thought I would share with you one quick project that I made with one of the awesome Nicecrane Designs.

So to begin with I went over there to choose a design - quite a task because the collections are amazing and it was hard making a choice.

I bought 2 MDF blank letter/mail organisers that looked like this to begin with

I smoothed out a layer of Dala Stencil Glue onto the unfinished blank.  Dala Stencil Glue is my favourite glue because its super tacky, super strong and yet also simultaneously liquid enough to slide things on.  It can also function as a repositionable glue - all in all, a really versatile all round glue.

The last thing I did was to get out all my make-up supplies, arrange them in the way that I thought would be most efficient and voila we have designer decor accents that are actually functional.  

I seriously am in the process of having everything printed with this image.  I made little boxes with this print to store my everyday blusher, Make-up remover wet-wipes , decoupaged around a coffee tin to store make-up brushes and hair brushes.  I am in the process of transferring this print onto a canvas block for some wall art.  I am going to transfer the print onto some cushions as well! I cant believe that it didnt strike me before to do a house make-over like this.  Not only is it refreshing to have a new look going, but it is way more affordable and then there's added bonus of crafting everything yourself.  Could living get any more fun?

While I am still here - if you want to win a chance to do a home make-over like this - be sure to play along with OCC's  Halloween Horror challenge this month.  You stand to be in the draw for a $20 voucher to Nicecrane Designs just by entering your project into the monthly challenge. You could do over the whole house with $20!!!!

That's it for me for today.

Happy Nicecraning!

Spooky Skull Tag

Hi everyone! Laura here with our Guest designer for October...I have been so looking forward to this!!!

    I LOVE this designer! She is someone who has inspired me since I first arrived in crafty blog land and I love her work. She is such a creative artist and her work is so wonderfully inspring - she does the most brilliant, informative step-by-step posts - with amazing detailed photos of her work (as you can see from today's post!) - so you really can never leave her posts without feeling so sparked with ideas galore!

    I have the wonderful pleasure of introducing the amazingly creative Anna-Karin from Layers of ink 

Over to you Anna-Karin.....

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I everyone! I am so happy to be a guest designer at Our Creative Corner. Halloween crafting is so much fun and today it is time for a spooky project.

I thought Tim Holtz new Skull die would work well for a spooky project, especially with some added dimension and distress. There are a few spiders hiding on the skull too. The inky background is fun to do, and can easily be adapted to other types of projects if you use different inks, papers and stencils. I took a few step photos.

Start by die cutting the skull from Wendy Vecchi's Clearly For Art Modeling Film.