March "Madness" - Part 2

Here are some more scans of projects. I was in a swap where I had to use a puzzle piece as a part of the design. I had purchased a few children's puzzles which were made up of large pieces and chose one for the cover of a purchased notebook. I stamped the flourishes on the cover and added the puzzle piece which I had decoupaged with printed tissue paper and a purchased embellishment, adding some fibers through a hole I punched with my Crop-a-Dile.

Oriental Stamp Art runs many swaps every year, and this is what I made for a mingle (send one card to your partner) - the theme was black plus one color. The crane stamp (Stampin' Up) was stamped on DSP (see previous blog to unravel the secret meaning!) and layered over blue. I highlighted areas with a clear glitter pen. The strip is embossed with a CB embossing folder and highlited with Versamark.

I signed up for a lighthouse card swap and later realized I had sold my one and only lighthouse stamp at a rummage sale! Not be be deterred, I used a picture for the backgroun from a Wisconsin calendar - a lighthouse in Sturgeon Bay on the Lake Michigan side. The shore scene is the stamped part. All stamps are from Seaside Stampin'. If you love the ocean, lakes, sea life etc., go to their website for a treasure trove of stamps.

Recently I tried my hand at a technique called gesso resist. It is sooo easy. Apply a few coats of gesso to a page of text. When it is dry, stamp and emboss an image, then color over the whole thing. The embossing resists the ink!

Arrtiscape 2009

Last April my friend Barbara and I attended Artiscape, a wonderful art convention with outstanding workshops in Ohio. We had so much fun that we are going again, this time to Columbus, home of European Papers which sponsors and organizes everything. I discovered this year that there is a Yahoo group associated with Artiscape; members may sign up for various fat books (hand made books whose pages are 4" X 4"). The theme this year is "The Age of Innocence." I made 44 pages, all similar but not ecactly alike. Here is a sample of some of the pages.

For more information on Artiscape, go to www.europeanpapers.com.

More OSA Challenges

I am still keeping up with the OSA (Oriental Stamp Art) theme and design challenges. These are the ones for the the month of March:

Year of the Rat

Dolls

Kanji or Text

Pagoda



For lots of eye candy, go to www.orientalstampart.com and look through the albums.

March "Madness!" - Part 1

I've been doing a lot of work in the grotto, but I just now sat down to load up some samples. The fish card was created by using Alcohol Inks with canned air, the type you use (or are supposed to use) to clean the dust from your computer. The technique is easy - put down a few drops of ink on glossy CS and hit it with a blast of air! I then stamped the large koi stamp on acetate and mounted over the background.



Below are two ATC's made for the Wisconsin Yahoo group's March swap. The background paper is from the Elegance line found at Joann's. Since I had to perform "surgery" on Haiku bunny so he would fit on the ATC, I used the leftover piece to Cuttle Bug a flower.

The butterfly is also cut and embossed with CB, then colored using Pan Pastels and highlighted with metallic rub-on paste.

I also made some more BD cards for Dick's "stash" - he likes to have a number on hand for mailing. I used a CB embossing folder and sanded off some of the color so you can see the simple flower design

The above card was simply stamped on a piece of DSP (decorative scrapbook paper - my new acronym for the week~) using black ink. This is much nicer than the gray card I made for a swap a while back!

====================================================================

Here's my canvas for Quote of the Month -I sure wish it were daffodil season, but they came up early last spring and got covered with snow and frozen, so I settled for paper. I decoupaged a paper napkin on to a painted canvas, distressed it with tan acrylic paint, and added the quote.