Theme Thursday - Blue

This week's theme at Theme Thursday is "blue". My 4x6 postcard is an experiment with some mixed media techniques I'm learning from Roben-Marie Smith's current online workshop Mixed Media Mayhem. (You can check out the class details HERE) I had so much fun playing with text and music scraps, acrylic paint, gesso and spray inks to create my background then added pen doodles and stamping with both ink and gesso. The final touches are a Paper Whimsy girl, Tim Holtz tissue tape and book text.

Gothic Arches - text

This is my arch for the "text" theme at Gothic Arches Challenge Blog. My inspiration came from my box of vintage text scraps with the early 1900's ad on the right side that reads "Each invalid can not go to Germany to drink the Seltzer Water, but he can carry a portable Seltzer Spa with him wherever he goes, in the shape of a bottle of Tarrant's Seltzer Aperient." Well, how about that! Isn't it fun to read ads from vintage magazines? I had to add some German text to that and then created a collage with a masculine theme for my arch. Image: Enchanted Mercantile

Gingersnap Creations Color Challenge

This is my piece for the Color Challenge at Gingersnap Creations with colors of eggplant, avacado, and pumpkin. It's a canvas painted with distress crackle paint and I stamped the leaves on watercolor paper using 3 distress ink colors and water. Want to know the technique?

Tap the ink pads onto the stamp. I used rusty hinge first on the entire leaf, then tapped peeled paint in spots and finally just a little bit of dusty concord on the tips of the leaf.
Spritz the stamp from about 12 inches away with 4 spritzes of water from a mini mister, then stamp onto the watercolor paper and let it air dry. It will give you a terrific blended effect.
This is a close up of the leaf with the first generation stamp. All of the leaves on my piece were stamped this way.
What is really cool about this technique, though is that you can take the same stamp and WITHOUT re-inking, spritz it with a little more water and stamp again. In my picture you can see the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation stampings. I love using this technique on leaves and have used other color combos. I'm sure you'll notice it used on other projects I've posted on my blog this fall - it's so easy and the results are fun and somewhat serendipitous! So if you've got a project in mind using the colors eggplant, pumpkin and avocado submit it to the Color Challenge which runs until Nov.23.

Compendium of Curiosities Challenge #19

This week at Linda's Compendium of Curiosities challenge the technique is extreme masking. This tag is my 4th or 5th attempt, and while I didn't find the technique difficult per se, I wasn't all that pleased with my efforts because they looked rather.....oh, shall I say.....messy. I suppose this technique may not be my thing, hence adding the stamped "embrace imperfection"!

On a side note, and fitting so well with Compendium of Curiosities, I spent this past weekend at Absolutely Everything, a fun stamping/scrapbooking/crafting store in MA, taking 2 classes from the fabulous Tim Holtz himself! You can see pictures of the class on Tim's blog post (HERE). Wow what fun!!! Talk about an amazing teacher who is so willing to share what he knows. I came away with lots of different techniques to play with and made 2 fantastic projects - a dimensional canvas and a grungeboard mini book.
And.....I got an autograph in my Compendium of Curiosities book! Do you see all the green post-it notes sticking out of the book? Those are all the challenges we've done so far - such a wonderful way to work through this awesome book, and thanks Linda for running the challenges! :-)

Compendium of Curiosities #18

This is my tag made for this week's Compendium of Curiosities challenge were the technique is dabber resist. I really liked how my tag looked with the Stampers Anonymous stamp and kept embellishment simple by adding an image from Altered Pages, a silk ribbon that had just the right green, and a pink paper flower to pull out the pink in her dress.

Gingersnap Creations Random Redhead Challenge

The Random Redhead Challenge this month at Gingersnap Creations is arches. I enjoy making arched shaped pieces, but thought that instead of collaging onto an arch shape, I'd cut an arch into a piece. I really liked the effect with using corrugated cardboard because you could peel away bits of it to give a great texture to use - I could place her feet on the "steps" created by the ridges. Why not join in and make a piece for the arches challenge - it's open until Nov. 15. Stamps used: background arch - Stampington & Co., scroll - Stampabilities. Image: Artful Illusions.

Paper Whimsy ATC

Just thought I'd share an ATC made for a swap. In my background I used a leaf stamp inked with several different distress ink colors, then created the crown of leaves by punching out leaves from those stamped leaves. Leaf stamp is from Artistic Outpost, and image is from Paper Whimsy.

Compendium of Curiosities #17

Fragment charms are part of the challenge this week for Compendium of Curiosities. I've seen them used in jewelery, as Christmas balls last year for the Tin Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas, so why not balloons? This past week was my nephew's birthday so I think I was in a birthday frame of mind.

Gingersnap Creations Copper Project

When I received my honorary red-head status, aka became a part of the Gingersnap Creations Design Team, we were asked to create a coppery project that was a reflection of ourselves. Mine combined lots of my favorite things in a tag book. I created a background paper with an embossing powder resist stamped flourish from Stampers Anonymous and sprayed over it with burnt red and copper Glimmer Mists and then brushed copper kettle Glimmer Glam over top of the whole piece. The Glam is fun to use as a top coat - it adds a sheer color, but also a glossiness. I also used a piece of copper flashing embossed with my Cuttlebug and combined the flashing and strips of the paper onto tags stamped with a script stamp from Paperbag Studios using copper ink. To embellish the tags I added two favorite photo stamps from Oxford Impressions and cut apart a quote stamp from OI also. The little bit of trim off the ends of the tags is also sprayed with copper Glimmer Mist so it coordinated. I also used a bit of ribbon yarn on the binding ring that is named Copper Penny - seemed very appropriate to me!

Gingersnap Creations - Versamark Challenge

This is my card for the Spicy Supply Challenge at Gingersnap Creations using Versamark. I used it in 2 ways. First, I stamped leaves and then used various colors of chalks over the stamped images to add color. This is fun and very forgiving - if you chalk over the edges of your stamped image, you can erase the chalk. The second use of Versamark is in the black paper where I stamped a flourish in Versamark and brushed Perfect Pearls over it - this gives it a cool, shimmery effect. Inspired to pull out your Versamark and create a project for this challenge? You've got plenty of time; it doesn't close until Nov.7. Stamp credits: leaves - Artistic Outpost, flourish - Hero Arts, text - Purple Onion Designs

Art Creations Friday Challenge

Art Creations Friday this week had a beautiful background painted by Wil to use. After printing it out I cut circles and made flowers from it. Some I fringed before layering with the varying sized circles, and I also used fringed half circles to make the smaller dimensional blossoms. My phrase stamp is from Donna Downey.

Creative Spirit Challenge

I found out about Cindy's Creative Spirit Challenge from my friend Lynne's blog Adorn and thought it was interesting that you could choose any theme for your creation. I had not posted this collage yet, and since I was inspired by a blog to enter it, I thought I would share some other blog links that contributed to the inspiration for this collage. The image of the finches is from Mary at Green Paper (HERE). Check out her blog for great inspiration using vintage images, a monthly challenge, and her online classes about collage - so full of inspiring ideas! Also, this piece was inspired by Marie at Lost Bird Studio (HERE), another friend who has such a beautiful shabby chic vintage style. I have always loved things she's done using vintage bird images and wanted to incorporate one into a collage. And if you're unfamiliar with Lynne's work, a visit to her blog Adorn (HERE) is well worth it for wonderful inspiration. There's still time to enter this challenge - it's open until the 15th, and there's a great prize so check Cindy's blog (HERE).

Green Paper October Challenge

Mary Green had a terrific trio of images in a collage sheet on her blog Green Paper for a collage challenge and this is my gluebook page that I created using the two girls and snippets of the other two images on top of a vintage photo from Paris with music and french text scraps. I liked cutting the two girls apart and making them look like they were holding hands - maybe the older sister dragged the younger to all the famous sites. You can see the collage sheet of images on the October Challenge post at Mary's blog HERE.

Just a fun collage

This came about because several things were laying on my desk and were an interesting mix - the postcard which was a digital purchase from French Kissed, the vintage text paper of ads, and the reddish velvet leaf. After grabbing some other bits to play with, I had a fun time just trying to find a placement I liked - it was a great way to spend an evening! I placed the whole collage onto some corrugated cardboard and dry brushed it with gesso - I like how that softens and blends things.

Compendium of Curiosities #16

For the Compendium of Curiosities Challenge, the featured technique is Wrinkle-Free Distress, one of my favorite go to techniques. I made a series of 5 ATC's with color variations of the technique (did I mention that I LIKED this technique?), collaged them with various vintage images and punched hearts from Glimmer Glam painted paper. Then for fun, I adhered them to a long strip of watercolor paper folded into an accordion, leaving just enough to have a cover to wrap around. The whole accordion book is held together with a ribbon tie. Below on the left is the folded book, and the right picture shows it with just the cover open.

Tag Tuesday - calendar

The theme at Tag Tuesday is "calendar". I had this tag with a Halloween colored wrinkle free distress background on my table - one of my favorite background techniques - so I went with a Halloween theme and added a collage of stamped images and some German text scraps. I created the calendar from 3 different Oxford Impressions stamp sets - the calendar itself is from Winter Snow (I just didn't ink the December part!), the October stamp is from Haunted, and the scroll piece is from Steampunk Elements. It also gave me an excuse to use my fun black cat stamp from Cherry Pie Art Stamps.