Off to the Wilds of NJ

I am getting ready to leave for NJ tomorrow to attend Ranger U. I am so excited to have been accepted into such a competitive program! I'm going to take lots of pictures and lots of notes. Hopefully, I'll come back with more ideas than I know what to do with.
In the meantime Here are two photographs of some design team work I did for Retro Cafe Art Gallery.

Elsie in New York

I got a couple of these really cute lady buttons from Coffee Break Designs--via Retro Cafe Art Gallery but could not for the life of me figure out what to do with them. And then was flipping through an old book and found a story titled "Elsie in New York" and I had an idea. So I made this card for my friend Sarah, who is leaving for New York in a few weeks.
Then, still feeling inspired, I pulled out my sewing machine and made this:

I am totally digging these buttons!

Faux Fantastic

I taught at the Heirloom festival this weekend--and had an absolute blast! I bought some great new supplies and got to hang out with some amazing other artists.
And then, I came home and promptly got sick. Sore throat, fever, achy, ugh. But I am feeling better today. I spent some time in my studio today creating some samples for a class I'll be teaching at a retreat in April called Faux Fantastic with Perfect Pearls. The samples I got done today were a faux mosaic and a faux beach glass pendant. Here they are:



I am hoping to have the full information for the glass soon--and once I do I'll post it here. In the meantime, I'm going back to my studio to play with my new stuff!

Pearl-Ex Tutorial

I have had a bunch of people asking me about using pearl-ex powders over the last couple of weeks. Heaven only knows why--I guess I must have some sort of "Ask me about Pearl-Ex Powders" sign on my back. In any event, I thought I'd just post a quick tutorial about using them. For this project I did an ATC and used them with my alcohol inks because I think the textures work together beautifully. So, here is a picture of everything I used to create this ATC minus the stamp and the playing card. I used: Pearl-ex powder in blue, red, yellow, and currant alcohol inks, dauber, soft-haired paint-brush and a watermark stamp pad.

The first step is to load the dauber with ink placing the three colors so that they are touching. This creates a nice agate look to the inks when they mix. Here is a picture of my dauber loaded and ready to go.

Then just dab, using an up and down or "pouncing" motion. If you drag it, the inks will smear and then not blend well.

You can re-layer more ink on top of what you've got if you're not happy with the way it looks. Once you're happy with the way it looks, let it dry completely. If there is even a little of the ink left on the card it'll interfere with the watermark ink. I normally let it set about 15 minutes or so.
Once it's dry, load-up your stamp with watermark ink and stamp away. If you're going to do more than one image it's a good idea to work in batches--ink one, apply pearls and then move one. The watermark ink won't stay wet long enough otherwise.

Take your soft bristled brush and pick-up a small amount of the pearls with it. A little bit of this stuff goes a really long way. (And you want to be sure your surface is covered with scrap paper and you're wearing your old art clothes because this stuff does have a tendency to get on everything. I learned this one the hard way when I had one ill-timed sneeze.) Take it and gently brush across where you stamped. This is why you need a soft brush, the stiffer bristles will wipe away the ink and leave drag marks through your image. You can see the swirls starting to come through here.
I then went on and repeated the process for the top of the playing card. Here is a picture of what it looks like when it's all dry.
Then all that's left is to decorate! I used mine for the upcoming ATC swap through the IndianaAlteredArt group, the theme of which is "Hot."

Hope this was helpful and as always, if you have any questions please feel free to email me.

A guaranteed pick-me-up

I've discovered a new guaranteed pick-me-up: seeing small children make music. I went today to hear one of my students preform at a school function. There were 20 kids in all and I have to say my favorite (other than my student) was a young girl who sang "Free to be you and me" and was about 3 tones off of the pitch the entire time. It was glorious. There is something magical about children, before they know that maybe they are making a fool of themselves. If a young girl in pigtails singing way off key doesn't make you smile then I don't know what will.

Here are a couple of ATCs that I made. The first one I did using a collage image from my friend Kris. The background is Twinkling H2Os.

These next two I did as part of a swap. They are a sort of modified serendipity square. You color a blank piece of card stock with three different colors of stamp ink. Then you stamp using one of the colors with a text stamp and a swirl or background stamp as well. Then trim down, and stamp with a larger stamp. Trim down and then mount onto a coordinating piece of card stock.

More ATCS and our meet-up

Here is the last of my chocolate ATCs for the meeting we had last Saturday. We had lots of fun. Hopefully tomorrow I will have the time to post the cards that I got.
I was also participating in a ATC swap using a peeled paint technique. The way it works is you layer acrylic, stamp when it's dry and then coat the image with Vaseline. You add another layer of paint, let it dry and then rub to remove the paint and Vaseline. I liked the technique, although I'm not certain I would use it with stamps again. I think it might make a nice background though.

I promise I will be better about posting this week!!! No more laying on the sofa watching lifetime and thinking about all the things I should be doing....

Some peeled paint ATCs

I made these two little ATCs using a peeled paint UTEE resist technique from Bernie Berlin's book "Artist Trading Card Workshop." I painted a layer of acrylic let it dry, stamped and embossed the UTEE, and then coated it with a contrasting color. When it was dry I took my craft iron and a piece of scrap paper and ironed the surface. The heat heats up the UTEE and lifts the paint off creating a peeling resist.
Both of the stamped images were done onto transparency sheets. The pink faerie didn't show up as well on the scan--I think because I used a metallic ink and my scanner doesn't pick up metallic very well. For the purple image I layered it onto a vintage piece of french text that had been painted with twinkling h2os. For the little girl, I layered her onto brown cardstock that had been stamped with text.
The girl is a stamp from lost-cost designs. The winged woman is from paper-artsy.