Altering, Distressing

Whilst looking back at the last month's crafty activities, I realised that out of all the things I have done, distressing and altering things is what I  REALLY like to do best.  I LOVED creating the 'Snow' scrapbooking page, 'attacking' all those edges gave me such a thrill, as did creating the vigorous flourishes on the butterfly card I made a couple of days ago.  I do have a conflict though, its not 'mainstream' stuff, not the type of thing my inlaws or your granny would approve of, or even attempt to understand.  I can hear my inlaws now, 'what's that mess?'  (although, maybe not to my face!)

You see, to me, these are the sorts of work I get excited by:

and

and

(None of which have been done by me, they are all by a very talented New York artist called Seth Apter)

..and I KNOW that this is not to everyone's taste, but this is what excites me and is the kind of area I want to explore further.

I don't necessarily want to distress EVERYTHING but sometimes I look at things around the house (such as the plain white kitchen clock) and think that would look SO MUCH more interesting with some swirls around the edge...

The motivation I got to do this creative activity in the first place was from a lady who's blog I stumbled upon a while ago (through Creative Stamper magazine I think) and I fell in love with all her wonderful journals, her artwork, and her alterations.  Her name is Trish Bee (http://trishbee.wordpress.com/).  Unfortunately she has suffered with ill health recently and has not been able to keep up with her artwork or blog but she has done so much in the past that it is still a fantastic resource and a great inspiration to me.

I've got out all my Tim Holtz craft materials, his book is open and I'm just about to have a play, see where my mood takes me, and maybe I'll have something to show you on here later...

But meanwhile, thanks for listening!