French Kissed Friday

This is my final French Kissed Friday project, and I've made an accordion book with piano hinges. I've also used embossed metal and alcohol inks on the background panels of the book. For all the details about how I made the book and some close-up photos of the individual pages, check out the post on Trishia's blog HERE. I want to especially thank Trishia for the invitation to be her first Artist-in-Residence - so much fun to work with her postcard images! I hope as you've read my posts, you've clicked the link to her blog and even browsed through her French Kissed Zibbet store - I know you'll find postcards you'll like - I always do :-) Keep checking her blog on Fridays for more projects to inspire you as she will continue her Artist-in-Residence program in February with someone else you'll love - my friend, the ever-so-talented Lynne Moncrieff!!

Compendium of Curiosities #29

I can't believe we're up to technique #29 at Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge! This time it's weathered wood grunge. A fun technique to try which I actually tried several times to get the color I wanted. Paint sure does clog up your sandpaper! Can't say any more.....not allowed to reveal any book details.... My grunge board piece is added to a tag with a wrinkle-free distress background, tissue tape, random paper scraps, a pondering little boy from Lisa's Altered Art, and stamps from Fontworks.

"Smitten" class by Nancy Maxwell James

Sometimes when you need a little inspiration, an online class is great fun. If you're not familiar with Nancy Maxwell James of Sugar Lump Studios you should check out her blog HERE. She's conducting an online class until Valentine's Day with great projects to inspire your creativity. I'm sharing my tag from the class. I loved that I had a page from an old hymnal of Love Lifted Me to combine with the butterflies and the sentiment I created - I love it when all the parts of a collage just click. Image: Paper Whimsy.

Feel free to follow the link above to Nancy's blog for more information about her class. Nancy lives in Michigan close to the college that my school, Ohio State, rivals. But since collage football season is over, and Ohio State beat Michigan, Nancy and I can be friends again :-) Love you, Nancy!

French Kissed Friday

Bonjour it's French Kissed Friday time! This week my project is this shadowbox featuring layered parts of three different postcards. Check out all the details on Trishia's blog post HERE.

Compendium of Curiosities #28

This week for Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge the technique is Colorful Layered Fragments. I used the large square fragment from the package and a heart collage stamp from Stampington & Co. and created this romantic Valentine collage in kind of a shabby chic style. I suppose when you think of Tim Holtz techniques, you don't think of soft looking feminine results, but I think that's what is truly great about his techniques - you can take what you've learned and go in a different direction. This is most definitely a "me" project, don't you think?

Gingersnap Creations Random Redhead Challenge

This week at Gingersnap Creations it's the Random Redhead Challenge and it involves using a teabag template you can see on the blog. I had the idea to use an Alice in Wonderland theme featuring the Mad Hatter's tea party. After cutting out the template, I used a wrinkle free distress technique with antique linen and tea dye distress inks to make the background look tea stained. On the outside I stamped the tea pot and "Wonderland" from the Wonderland set from Oxford Impressions and added the Hatter from the "Classic Alice" set. In the assembled version, it's all held together by tucking the flap into a little half circle notch.

This is what the inside looks like - I added more stamped images from "Classic Alice" and attached them to the background and the front fold for a bit of a pop-up effect. All images were colored with watercolor pencils. What can you make with the teabag template? Add your project to the challenge blog post at Gingersnap Creations HERE by Feb. 13th. Have fun with the template!

Tag Tuesday - a bit of fabric

This is my fabric tag for this week's Tag Tuesday Challenge. My entire tag is made of 2 pieces of muslin with thin batting sandwiched between, and I have 2 other bits of fabric sewn on the top and bottom, too. My main image for the tag is a combination of 2 stamps from Unity Stamps. The postcard is from an Iron Orchid set and the flower silhouette is from a Donna Downey set.

Compendium of Curiosities #27

Distress Misting Masks is the featured technique this week at Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge. My piece is comprised of paper covered squares of foam core board and was inspired by our mid-week snowstorm. We received over a foot of snow on Wednesday and the storm fit the criteria for a blizzard - something about snow with winds of a certain speed lasting for at least 3 hrs. I LOVE snowstorms and this was a good one - it does make me wish I was in school to have a snowday, but alas, once you grow up, you still have to go to work (it was for just half of the day!)
Here's a close-up of the bottom piece showing the distress misting. I used a snowflake stencil for the mask from the Crafter's Workshop. Colors used are tumbled glass and stormy sky. I have to add that our snow most definitely was not moderato, but I didn't have a readily available scrap of music paper with tempo markings of vivace!

French Kissed Friday

It's another French Kissed Friday and I have a project to share! This is a gel medium image transfer onto a page of a chipboard book with a decorative edge made by Bo Bunny. Last week I had a wintery theme and this week I thought I'd add some flowers. Everybody needs some beautiful flowers in the middle of January, don't you think? I hope you'll follow the link HERE to Trishia's blog where I share more details of my project.

Gingersnap Creations: Spicy Supply Challenge

Last week at Gingersnap Creations the challenge focus was on hot beverages, so continuing that theme, this week it's a supply-based challenge, and why not use coffee filters! I thought it would be a fun experiment to create a background paper and these are 3 ATC's I created using my paper. I thought I'd share my technique for doing this because in playing around, I discovered something really fun.......

If you stamp onto a coffee filter with Versamark ink and clear emboss your images like these swirls from Stampers Anonymous, you create TRANSPARENT patterns.

I next sprayed the coffee filter with Glimmer Mist.

Crumpled it up, and dried it with my heat gun.

And these are the three papers I created! What was so much fun was how they looked adhered to an ATC card covered with book text to make full use of the transparent patterns.

Here's a picture of the ATC backgrounds before I decorated them. I'd love to know what you would make using coffee filters in your project. Make sure to post your piece on the Gingersnap Creations blog post HERE by Feb.6th. I was so intrigued to see what I could do with coffee filters and I hope you're inspired too!
Image credits: Digital Collage Sheets and Lisa's Altered Art; Stamp credits: Donna Downey with Unity Stamps, Stampers Anonymous and Hero Arts.

Compendium of Curiosities #26

For this week's Compendium of Curiosities challenge the technique is "Rusted Grunge" and you can see it on the hinges of my little faux notebook. Since the hinges were reminiscent of fleur de lis, I thought I'd use these Paris themed 7Gypsies bookboard covers I've been saving. Does the faux notebook have you intrigued? Just pull on the little ribbon piece and it opens...

Inside you see Mrs. Brown-Potter touring the Eiffel Tower! (Both images are from French Kissed, bien sûr) You can also see another rusted grunge element on the chipboard scroll. I found that I could cut out a center window on the top cover and by using a gaffer tape piece as the front hinge, once the grungeboard hinges were attached to the top and bottom covers it would open quite nicely. I also cut a piece of corrugated cardboard the same size as the remaining window frame to sandwich between the covers to give me depth to work with inside - wouldn't want to smoosh Mrs. B-P when the window closed ;-)

French Kissed Artist-in-Residence

I'm thrilled to be the January Artist-in-Residence for my friend Trishia's blog French Kissed. You may have seen me credit her images in many of my projects - they are the most wonderful vintage French postcards! Each Friday in January I have a project to share that will be detailed on her blog, and this week it's this winter-themed scalloped clear acrylic hanging. For all the information about how I made it, check out the post on the French Kissed blog HERE. Trishia has free images available on her blog for 1 week every Monday, and sells her scans of postcards through her shop on Zibbet. Definitely check that out - if you love vintage images like I do, you'll LOVE her store.

Gingersnap Creations Chestnut Theme Challenge

It's Wednesday and that means it's time for another Gingersnap Creations Challenge. This week it's a chestnut theme challenge of "hot beverage". With all the snow and cold temperatures everyone could use a cup of hot chocolate, tea, or coffee these days! I've created a tea house for the challenge using a collage of Oxford Impressions stamps mostly from "Afternoon Tea", but also a small teapot from "Wonderland". My watercolour paper base and lace are sprayed with rose tea glimmer mist (isn't that a scrumptious name for a color?), and I've added embossed copper accents. You have plenty of time to make a piece and join in - the challenge is open until Jan. 30th - so grab a cup of your favorite hot beverage and be inspired!