Where's Waldo???

Guess I've been suffering from "blog fever" and haven't updated my blog for quite awhile. I have been busy and will upload some pictures of my adventures including a trip to the Baltimore area (Columbia, MD) to vist my dear friends the Bakers. My other "fabo" trip was to Artiscape held in Sandusky, Ohio, sponsored by European Papers. My friend Barbara Hahn and I attended, not knowing much about the event, but confident that it would be great fun. And it was!!! One of the highlights of the event was meeting the Queen of Skybluepink. Many of us have purchased wonderful goodies, charms, doo-dads, punchinella, ad infinitum, from the Queen. I found out that she would be attending, and I requested a special audience which she most humbly granted. For the royal picture she wore her dress crown. Here we are -I'm the crownless one!!!!





She is as delightful as her weekly newsletters and full of energy and ideas. We spent some time discussing our mutual new passion - knitting socks! What fun!



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Besides wonderful classes and outstanding evening entertainment complete with great food (and a few glasses of wine as well), Barbara and I also enjoyed viewing the display of hundreds of ATC's. The picture below doesn't do the exhibit justice. The ATC's were left in the plastic pages and hung in strips to create a wall of beauty. This is only a portion of the display. Enjoy!!! More later on the classes.

Speaking of resolutions...

One of my resolutions for 2008 is to use the bits and pieces from leftover projects. CCSwaps is currently running a swap called "Little Beauties," small art pieces measuring 1-1/2" X 2-1/2". These are small enough to use on cards, ATC's, altered books, or other creations. Most of these samples are one of three, designated for the swap (I signed up three times!) And others are one-of-a kind. The Little Beauties were fun to make and now give me an excuse to save even more scraps!

Resolution: Use leftovers

One of my resolutions for 2008 is to use up leftovers. When I was working with the Shining Stone technique, I cleaned off the brayer by applying the residual ink to shipping tags. These are the fronts; the backs, except for one, are just designs. It was quick, easy, and far less messy than cleaning off a paint-loaded brayer. Versafine black stamped well over the inked surface. All I have to do now is add an embellishment or two and some fibers, and they will be ready to mail out.

"Gluey" Backgrounds

A recent challenge was creating colorful backgrounds using glue and various inks. Here are the samples I made using regular Elmer's glue and inks. The Textured Glue samples were created by spreading glue over card stock and adding some texture. After drying, various inks were applied. Here are the results. Next time I will leave more open space as the texture is barely visible.

The "gloppy" technique seemed to produce more interesting backgrounds. Glue was drizzled and "glopped" on, then allowed to dry. Inks were applied and burnished to produce some lovely backgrounds.

For more information on this technique, check out Trish's blog

http://trishbee.co.uk/?p=341

Some Swap Cards

I belong to a small Yahoo group comprised of mostly local gals. We have monthly swaps, each with a specific theme. Here's what I made for January. The first swap was to use new things, either gifts we had received or something which we had recently purchased. I came across a great bargain at the local Michaels - sets of 10 note cards for 40 cents! I loved the colors and the price, so I purchased them and then used one for this card. The image is from Trish's Advent Challenge - you've got to love the little girl and her dog!
The second swap was a Valentine card. I used alcohol inks to create the background for the stamped image and purchased paper for the card itself.

And one of my favorite color themes is black and white - another Advent image!

Altered Book Challenge - Faux Chipboard

As part of the challenge which I posted a few days ago, I created a double page spread in my Techniques Altered Book. I used Lumiere paint on the pages and stamped the sentiment and the Stamp Zia bough. I cut my Faux Chipboard sample in half diagonally and glued it down. Finally I added the little boy image from Trish's Advent Image Challenge and some gold braid. I haven't been working in my altered books for awhile and had forgotten how much fun they are. Next up is adding the Shining Stones sample to the Background Noise background technique book . Thanks, Trish, for keeping me busy - better than housework!!! Check this out if you are interested in all the things Trish is doing:
http://www.trishbee.co.uk/techniqueszone/

Challenges!

A wonderfully artful Yahoo group which I belong to is "embroiled" in a series of background challenges from our creative genious, Trish Bayley.

Shining Stones:
The first one is a relatively simple but effective background. Dye ink is brayered on glossy CS and set aside to dry. A paste is made with water and Perfect Pearls, then the CS is spritzed with water. The paste is applied, spritzed again with water, and finally "smooshed" with a paper towel. The results are beautiful which, unfortunately, don't totally show up very well in the scan. Here are two samples I made. I also tried it on black glossy as well as red. Here is a link to directions and more samples: http://trishbee.co.uk/?p=309

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Faux Chipboard:

The second challenge for 2008 is "Faux Chipboard." Again, this is simple and achieved with products/items in most mixed-media artists' stashes. Fun foam (!) shapes (such as the snowflakes I had) are glued down to sturdy CS, then lightly gessoed. When dry, acrylic paints are stippled on and left to dry. Finally, the entire surface is overstamped. Here is a link to more complete directions and samples:

http://trishbee.co.uk/?p=318

I tried a few different things such as using Versafine black on the sample to the left and regular dye ink on the sample to the right when I did the final stamping. I decided to finish everything off by spritzing with Radiant Rain. As you can see, the Versafine did not run, but the dye ink did. I like both effects and am glad that I tied both to see what would happen.

Now all I need to do is get my technique book started. I received a great sketch book for my birthday from my good friend Chrissy and covered it yesterday using some background paper made in a class that I took from Traci Bautista. All I need to do is add the title on the cover and include my first two challenge samples. I'll post when the cover is finished.