Alcohol Inks Card

It was my anniversary last weekend and I made this card using alcohol inks for my dh.
The process is really quite simple: using a non-stick craft sheet drop several colors of inks and a little bit of blending solution then push a piece of shinny card-stock onto it and lift off. Repeat until the page is covered. When I was done, I embossed the stamp (which is from Paperbag Studios) and then I dropped some blending solution on the card. That's what caused the white-ish spots. I also dropped a good amount of blending solution inside the heart to lighten it up. The swirl is chipboard that I inked with metallic green ink, heat set, stamped with stazon, heat set again, and then embossed several times with UTEE.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow with more work.

altered tin

I made this little tin the other day and just hadn't gotten around to taking a picture of it. I wanted something that I could throw in my purse to keep Advil/antihistamines in. I bought an altoids tin--it's for the "minis." I liked it because it slides open, and takes a little bit of pressure, so i figured it would be less likely to come open in my purse and dump out. I tried sanding it first...but the shape just wasn't conducive, so I spray painted it silver instead. Once it was dry, I alcohol inked it. I drilled a hole in the end for the charm (made from shrink plastic and pearl-ex), and glued a photo of one of my ATCs that I like. I punched out stars and colored them it with some gel pens and used some rub-ons for the swirls. Once it was dry, I spray-sealed it and viola--all done.

Back

Hi all:
I am back from an extended break. We had family in from out of town and then some technology issues, due to the floods, and then I was in Vegas!
But I'm back with lots of work. I've been making up some samples for Make-n-Takes for a stamping/mixed media retreat that's happening down in Nashville at the end of this month. I did a tag, a card and an ATC. Here they are:




I hope now that things have settled down and I'm in the swing for my summer teaching scheduler I can get back to posting regularly. I hope you are all doing well!

Trees and a Window

As promised here is some new art. The first is a card I made using alcohol inks and a stamp by paperbag studios. I used the ink blending tool to ink the edges of the image in coordinating inks. One of the things that I love about Ranger products is that the colors all coordinated. It makes matching up colors a snap. I'll try to post a how-to for this background as soon as I can.
Here is another little something I made as part of my design team work for Retro Cafe Art Gallery. I used a stamp from Stamper's Antonymous for the image and then added a little bit of paper glaze to give it the glass-like look. I used chalk-inks to color the window--I just heat set them.

Men ATCs

I know, I've been gone a long time.
Sigh.
I've been having some health issues and in between being poked and prodded by various doctors and battling my insurance company (who seem to feel that being human is a pre-existing condition)I just haven't had much energy to do much posting.
But I did manage to get my ATCs done for the swap on Saturday. The theme this month is Men; mostly because we did women last month.
Here are my cards:

I used this really wonderful technique and the Ranger ink blender tool to make the backgrounds. (For which I will post a tutorial some time this week, scouts honor.) The orange and blue background stamps are both by Paperbag Studios, the green is by Inkadinkado, and the purple is by Rhonna Ferrar. I used some alcohol inks on the buttons to get that lovely aged look.
All in all, I'm happy with the way they turned out.

Metaphorical eyes and stomach

It's finally happened: I've turned into my mother. It was a harrowing revelation to be sure--because no matter how much you love your parents, you don't actually want to BE your parents. It snuck up on me so quietly, I didn't even hear it coming.
You see, my mother is the queen of the big, impossible to get done, to-do list. She is a firm believer that you can get all kinds of things done in a day. When I was in high school she decided to lay new floor in the back entryway and promised me that the whole thing from start to finish should not take more than an hour. (As I recall she had about 8 other projects on her to do list for that day...) well two days and one Spackle tool that was adhered to my butt latter, it was finally done. And she was aggravated because the other stuff on her list wasn't done. Her metaphorical eyes were bigger than her stomach....
And as I sat down at my art table this Friday with a list of art things as long as my arm that I planned on getting done this weekend--only to hit a snag on one of the projects that was only supposed to take "an hour at the most" I realized that my metaphorical art eyes were way bigger than my stomach.
Sigh.
I really need to learn to take my art one project at a time....
Anyway, I did manage to get my over-sized playing card book done. It's for the alcohol inks class I'm going to be teaching. I used pictures from my vegas trip. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Take a look:



Now I get to move onto the next thing. I'm going to tell myself that I'll get it done when it's done and that's ok.
:)

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!
The last couple of days I've been working on this little spiral bound book. I actually made the whole thing from scratch and bound it myself. The baby image is from my friend Kris' collage sheets. The background is alcohol inks with a star stamp on top. The inside I used a bunch of my left over paper, printed and plain. I think it turned out really cute. Here is a shot of the inside and outside.

I went into half price books today and picked up these 2 stellar books--both were under two dollars. They made me laugh so hard...they will definitely make it into my art work. I'm thinking about turning the second into my next art journal. It seems oddly appropriate!