Puttin' on my Top Hat

I'm not sure if I've shared with you my love of old MGM musicals.  I spent many a happy Sunday afternoon watching Fred & Ginger dance their way through misunderstandings to true love and also loved Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Danny Kaye.  So when the Soartful Challenge is 'Beautiful Men from the movies' it had to be someone from that incredible musical era.  

Now Fred Astaire's face could never really be described as beautiful, but what he could do on the dance floor was without a doubt the most incredible and inspiring sight that any young girl could see.  So here is my tribute to the master of movie dancing, Mr Fred Astaire.

A loaf of bread...

We've all heard the old saying

'A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou.

But did you know that phrase came from

a love poem.

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!" 

This is the challenge that was set over at the Soartful Blog and this picture was provided for inspiration, here is my take on quote and picture:

 The photograph is one of my own from Montelcino in Tuscany, Italy.  There are a couple of overlays from the Scrappin' Cop, the vintage couple are a freebie from Art Freebies Blog, various digital elements from designers at Scrapbookgraphics.

I am woman...

The Soartful challenge this week is 'I am woman'.  I immediately thought of the Helen Reddy song and wanted to include the 'roar' from the lyrics:

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an' pretend
'cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again

 

 The woman image was one provided by Jeanette for the challenge and is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is very beautiful, but not much roar going on there, maybe a silent roar!

Dioressence

The Soartful prompt this week is 'Fragrance' but rather than use the image provided, I decided to use an image related to the first 'proper' perfume that I was given, Dioressence.  My dad travelled a lot in his job and came back from trips to the US in the 1960's  and early 70's with a transister radio, a cassette player, at a time when these were unknown locally,  and lots of lovely dresses for me and my sister.  As we got older buying clothes was not such an easy task and so he started to buy duty free perfume in the airport or on the plane.  The first bottle he bought for me was Dioressence.  I loved the smell of Lily of the Valley, although it always made me sneeze!  Pefume still makes me sneeze, but I continue to wear it. 

The image is from a vintage Dioressence advertisement, which I have chopped, duplicated and generally messed around with! Over that is a scribble overlay from the Scrappin' Cop and underneath a pic of lily of the valley.

Carefree

Here is the fun image provided for the Soartful Challenge this week.  It reminded me immediately of the spiral staircase at New College Oxford.  I was fortunate to be able to stay there a couple of years ago for a week long course and took lots of photographs.

My lady has gone all arty but she is still sliding down a staircase!

Cat in a Hat

This pretty lady in her bonnet was the image provided for the Soartful Challenge.  I actually started out making a fairly dull and safe LO for this picture, but as I had posted my DCM yesterday I thought I would wait till today to post this and I then came up with something which was much more fun!

The cat face is from a photo of my cat James (I know, a bit of transgender going on here) spot the mackerel and the field mice - hee hee!  The photo has been 'posterised' in Photoshop Elements.

Bamboo Geisha

The Soartful Challenge this week has provided us with a bamboo background to alter.

I combined my background with some oriental images courtesy of Art Freebies to create my 'Bamboo Geisha'.

 If you are interested in working with digital images come along and join in on the new forum Show & Share Art

When a woman smiles, the dress must smile with her

It's digital challenge time again on Soartful  Here is what Jeanette posted on the challenge blog:

Here is a beautiful image of vintage
fashion. I was looking for an image showing fashion finery that
could be used as an Easter theme or not,
which ever way you wanted to go.
Dorthe had posted this in the Freebie section of June's (Dezinaworld) new
Show and Share Art forum. I promptly got in touch with Dorthe and
asked to use the image here at Sorartful. She very graciously said
yes. I think the colors in this are gorgeous.

So have creative fun with this lovely Easter finery (or not) image

 

 

And here is my interpretation of the image:

The brown paper, chalked frame and snapshot album are all by the very talented Scrappin' Cop.  The ribbon, bow and border are by Laura Boetto of Digital Craft Cottage.  The stamps and postcard are from Grannyart.blogspot.com and the kiss is from Digitreats.

Signs of a 'Soartful' Spring

It's Soartful Challenge time again. 

Here is the image from Jeanette and the theme is Spring.

And here is my piece, if you look closely you will see that the lady with the parasol is in the centre of the daisies.  Digital elements are from Digiscrap Girls 'Signs of Spring' kit.

Oops!

I haven't done the Soartful challenge for a few weeks, but I'm back to my usual challenges and this is the cute little image that Jeanette has provided to inspire our digital art works.
My Oops is courtesy of The Scrappin Cop for the(overlay and vintage slide and MLE Card of Digichick for the tea stains from the Tealicious digital kit.

Doubly Artful!

It was only when I looked at this week's Soartful challenge that I realised I had forgotten to post for last week, I'd made the image, just forgot to blog it! So the image above is for the 'Out of this World' challenge from last week and the one below is for 'Life is a bowl of cherries'.
Join in the Soartful Challenge HERE.

Mucha Sunrise

This is the gorgeous background that Jeanette at Soartful has provided for the challenge this week.

Here is my version. I've used a Mucha image from Last Door Down the Hall, some of my own sunrise photographs with a couple art masks, one from PTon and the other from Sine. The text and the border are from Cottage Arts and it is finished with a watercolour overlay from The Scrappin' Cop.

That Little Black Dress

I thought I'd use a different image to the one provided on Soartful this week. The theme is 'The Little Black Dress' and I found this fab image of Ava Gardner on the My Vintage Vogue blog. The quote is said to be by the Duchess of Windsor, but Wikipedia had no confirmed citation so it may not be.

Scrapbook papers and elements by Irene V. Alexeeva
and Franziska Altmann

Pogonip!

Jeanette at Soartful, has given us an interesting challenge this week here is what she says:

"One of the pretty things that I remember about the icy cold was seeing
what the Washoe Indians called pogonip. That is a heavy frost that

would accumulate on the branches of tress. Beautiful."

The image provided was very pretty and I didn't wan't to mess about with it too much so I have used some blending modes with some of my own frosty branch photos, then added a few frosty branches from Lisa Bowman's White Christmas Kit for Digital Craft Cottage and a sanded overlay from the Scrappin' Cop.

Ticket to Ride

She's got a ticket to ride....the Soartful challenge this week was to alter this image of tickets.
The Beatles song was the first thing that came to mind and I knew I also had these tickets from Miss CutiePie, a bit of internet searching gave me images of The Beatles and Ticket to Ride and some blending modes in PSE provided the rest of the magic. I hope you enjoy the journey!

A single rose...

The Soartful Challenge image this week is this Rose postcard. I wanted to use a quote about roses and found this one "A single rose can be my garden...a single friend my world" by Leo F Buscaglia
Planet Earth image from Google images, Friends vintage photo from Lizzie_anne for Collage Images on Flickr.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

This week the Soartful challenge gave us the image of a 'chaise' to alter, I thought I'd give it a colourful makeover with a touch of magic and rainbow colours.

Image of girl and background by Art Freebies
Stars, 'curtain' & bird by Irene Alexeeva

Dear Santa...

Over at the Soartful Challenge, the image Jeanette has provided is this pen, so I wrote a little note to Santa...


with all this snowy weather the thought of returning to warm and sunny Italy is very appealing.

Dancing with Joy

This is the lovely image provided by Soartful Challenges and the theme is Dancing with Joy

I used a lovely kit by Ellie Lash 'Pixie-mini' which provided the word art and the wings. The other papers and elements come from Ziggle Designs.

Jolly Holly-days

Here is the background provided by Jeanette over on Soartful for this week's challenge.

Here is my take on this background. The Father Christmas image is from Last Door Down the Hall, the ivy is from my own photograph and the snowflake overlay is by Flergs for Scrapbookgraphics. I did a little colouring on the holly berries in PSE too.