May Quote of the Month

This month's quote is : "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment" Buddha



As usual, I started off with one thing then switched after being unhappy with the original concept where I took 2 pictures, one of an old town and one of a futuristic city and transferred them to paper. Just did not come together as I thought because I could not think of an image to incorporate into the theme.

While doing the brocade booklet, I had for some reason, stamped a Buddha stamp on an extra chipboard cover, and then realized it had nothing do with what I had created. So, I decided that I would use it for the Q.O.T. M. for May.

I took an old CD and coloured it with alcohol and Pinata` inks, then stamped a cherry blossom with Pearl Mica magic and heat set it. I attached the stamped Buddha piece and added one of my homemade dragonfly embellishments to cover the hole in the chipboard.

I printed off the quote and mounted it on some black card stock. Added this to the bottom of the image using some double-sided foam tape on the bottom portion so that it was evenly set on the CD. The final touch was to add the two Chinese coins.

On the back of the CD I added a round piece of card stock from Magenta. I then added a little easel to the back using some scraps of card stock.

June It-Girl

Margaret is the It-Girl for June and here theme is Cemetery Angels. I decided to do canvas for her. I covered the canvas with Gesso then added a napkin to the middle. I colored the whole thing with blue and purple acrylic paint.

When it dried I added embossing paste and acrylic gold Mica flakes then stamped some impressions in the canvas when it was partially dry. I then went over it with USA artquest Mica watercolor paints.

The colour palette came from this gorgeous picture that I found on flickr (Onkel Wart) which I know is not an angel but it just spoke to me, so I hope Onkel will not mind that I used it for my canvas. I printed the picture off three times and then glued it to 100 lb cardstock and cut them out and used double-sided foam tape to give it dimension. Attached this to the middle of the canvas with 3-M 465 transfer tape.

Above the image I put pearl embossing powder on and embossed it then stamped "eternity" with pewter pigment ink. Below the image I stamped the saying on a piece of acetate using Stazon black and adhered it with glossy accents. Finally I rubbed some Goldfinger copper around the image and some gold on the top.

I hope Margaret will like this piece even though it is really not an angel, but it is from a cemetery.

Kreativ Blogger Award

My friend Trizzy Crouch sent this award to me and I want to thank her. Trizzy makes beautiful art and I am lucky to own some of her creations and she has been become a treasured online friend through several groups to which we both belong. I feel honoured to have her choose me for this award.

The Rules: List 7 things that you LOVE and link to the person who has tagged you. Choose 7 more bloggers to give the Kreativ Blogger Award to, then leave a comment on those 7 blogs to let the recipients know you chose them.

So here are the seven things that I love:

1. My family and extended family- what would I do without them? Always there for me and loving me with all my quirks!!
2. My husband, who at times drives me crazy, but spoils me and supports me in all my ventures. He's a Keeper!
3. My son, who has taught me to never give up and to always fight for what I believe in no matter how difficult the battle.
4. My friends whom I have so many good times with laughing, crying and sharing.
5. My art, which has helped me through so many hard times in my life and has been a blessing, and I must thank Cathie Allan of Western Education for starting me on this incredible journey many years ago. She is my hero!!
6. My reading: the books are my relaxation and pique my imagination and often take me to far away places and times unknown to me.
7. The ocean- likely my love of this is from my native country, Scotland; the mountains, where I spent part of my childhood in Alberta.

I award the following the Kreativ Blogger award:

1. Mel Goodman from Australia and a friend in a couple of my groups. Mel has become a great online friend and is so generous and giving. I have been fortunate to receive some wonderful art from her through my groups.


2. Autumn Labbe-Renault, USA who experiments with all kinds of mediums and I have swapped with on many occasions. She has added some lovely art to her blog in the last couple of weeks.


3. Fiona Davis from the UK whose blog I visit often and she is a lovely lady who creates gorgeous art and again I have swapped with her several times.


4. Chrissy Bornfleth from the USA who is a moddy on one of my groups and has always been so helpful and supportive. She also does beautiful art. I have several pieces of her art adorning my craft room.


5. Sanna Burgess from the USA, who does fantastic quirky painted images. I am the proud owner of one of her pieces of art.


6. Viola from Germany whose blog I came across while surfing the web and return to her blog over and over again to look at her breathtaking art.


7. Chris Bennett from Australia who is another online friend who has been so supportive. I so enjoy receiving art from her with all the vibrant colours and images she uses.

There are so many more blogs I could have chosen, and it was hard to choose only seven. I feel so blessed to have "met" most of these ladies and been able to share in their talent.

Brocade

Over on CC Swaps Adrienne is running a Mystery swap. She broke down and gave us the instructions early, and the Mystery is Brocade using polymer clay. You can get the directions here

As instructed I conditioned and rolled out the black clay, then added 4 coats of metallic paint to each piece. I chose to use Lumiere paints for the base coat, copper, gold and silver.

I used some embossing mats to imprint the clay after dusting them with my anti-static pad.
I added some cheap acrylics over this, and rolled it out again. I cut them into shapes and baked as directed.

For this first batch, I think I was too heavy handed with the acrylics and was not really happy with them.

The second batch, I followed the same procedure, but used large background stamps to imprint the clay. I used Winsor Newton Finity acrylics and Luna Lites after imprinting. I think the better quality paints and a lighter hand definitely made a difference in the final outcome I rolled out another piece of clay, imprinted it with a text stamp, added some Pearlex and baked it then adhered the tree piece to it. After making this I saw an idea on a blog and thought I would make a little book since I have some small chipboard book cover pieces.

I took the embossed chipboard and coloured it with yellow gold and burnt orange Mica Magic. I adhered the Brocade piece to this. I took some index cards and cut them to size and rounded them with a corner rounder punch and punched a hole in the corner. The back is also coloured with Mica magic and a saying stamped in Versafine onyx black. These are pics of the book closed and open.

Embellishment Swap

I recently joined a new group and we are having a "bellie" (embellishment) swap which is being hosted by my friend Carol We had to make 8 ATC's using our embellishment and an extra embellishments for each player.


I made some little dragonflies as my embellishment using 130 LB cardstock scraps. I started by punching out three then glued them together using Pioneer glue.

I used an embossing pen on the centre and added some glitter embossing powder and embossed it. I did the same with each side of the wings, using a different colour of embossing powder. These pictures are done with pearl embossing powder as an example.

This is the finished ATC which was done using Mica Magic and Fluid Chalk inks. The image was coloured with Tombo pens. The vellum "saying" is attached with Sookwang tape. For the dragonfly I used Judkins Forest and Fuschia Twinkle embossing powders.

May It-Girl

This month Maggi is the "It-Girl" and her theme was anything related to literature, movies and songs.


I had several ideas for this theme, but finally decided to use some of my work sheet papers from stamping/mixed media projects as it was covered with mica inks and different paints and Krylon pen marks.


I started by covering a piece of 130 Lb cardstock with the paper. I added some gold and copper embossing powder around the edges and stamped a musical note stamp into it while hot.


I placed a music sheet Cuttlebug embossed piece done on gold cardstock in the centre, and added a homemade film frame to it. The main image is an old movie poster from Dover Art. I covered this with a piece of transparency film to protect the image. I then added some confetti musical notes to the frame.



I decided to add some words to the piece and I had some ugly chipboard letters that I bought at the dollar store. Since I seem to be in a "glitter and glitz" faze, I decided to cover them with glitter. The glitter I use is Glitter Ritz, made right here in Canada, and it is fabulous stuff. When you touch it it feels like velvet!!


The picture is not the completed piece, since I later thought I would make this into a photo album. I cut up some photo protector pages (the ones with individual slots for the pictures) and added a piece of copper cardstock to the covers, and put it together with my Bind-it-all machine.