One of a Kind Dimensional Door Swap

Carol S is  hosting a swap on Art-Venturers for a One of a Kind Dimensional Door Swap. The rules are:

1.  it must have a door/gate/arch that can open,
2.  reveal something behind the door,
3. and be so thick that it can not fit in a regular envelope with normal postage

As usual, I jumped in with both feet an joined the swap!! For my first attempt at getting the depth on the ATC I did the base with my picture, then I added the top using a piece of foamcore. Now this might have worked for the thickness, but I had trouble trying to figure out how to attach a door or window and also how to conceal the ragged edges of the the foamcore.

Back to the drawing board; I retained the base picture that I was originally going to use, which is from Ceremony-Share, but instead of leaving it "as-is", I added some colour to it with Stabilo Chalk pencils. Printed and cut out an image from ArtbyJean, and mounted it with double-sided foam tape. I added a wee circle "thingy" and a part from old jewellery at the top.

 I started thinking about what to do to make this thick, so I took some popsicle sticks and cut them to size to fit on the edge of the base ATC and attached them with some Sookwang tape.

For the top of the ATC I took a piece that I had coloured with some Perfect Pearls and some other mediums, and measured out the door and cut it on the top and middle. I embossed some columns on the sides and some small stamped images at the top and bottom.

I added tiny screw brads along with some faux metal pieces for the edges on the door. To hide the back of the brads I added an embossed piece of cardstock to the back of the door. For the door closure I chose to use string clasps, but instead of string I used some stretchy metallic thread and adhered a couple of flat beads.

House shaped ATC

On DCI we are doing a swap for a House shaped ATC with or without a chimney, and the artists choice of themes.

I recently saw a video by Maria Loomis for a vintage tag technique and decided to use it for my background. I actually started by colouring my ATC with Vivid inks then embossed it in my Cuttlebug. I added both Tattered Angels sprays and Smooch Spritz to it. I added Vintage Photo and Soot Distress Inks to the edges.

I took a piece of transparency and stamped the HIT stamp with Stazon ink and adhered it to the background with Glossy Accents. I glued the image of the little girl  onto some cardstock to give it body, then attached it to the background. Printed off the clock face and added a little sticker to the centre then attached it to the top of the ATC. I found some gorgeous ribbon at my local stamp store and attached a portion to the side and then coloured part of it with Smooch green Apple Ink.

To accentuate the roses at the bottom of the little girl I added some red micro beads.

To complete the ATC I coloured some cardstock with Vivid inks spritzed it with Smooch Spritz and stamped a saying. I then cut this in to pieces and attached to the ATC.

This is the one I kept for myself and the colour palette is a wee bit lighter than the ones I mailed to all the participants.

A card for a special friend

A dear friend of mine who has been widowed for a number of  years is getting married this month, and I decided to make a wedding card for her and her groom.

I first stamped the couple (Inkadinkado)  and coloured it with Lyra colour pencils. I made a mask and covered the stamped image with it, the did the background.

The background was done with Fluid Chalk inks, then I stamped Mica Magic Yellow Gold with a heart stamp in various areas.

I just bought a gorgeous flourish stamp by Hero Arts, and decided to use it on the card. I left the mask in place on the cardstock and stamped the flourish with Pigment Goldrush ink and embossed it with Ancient Gold Embossing powder. After heat setting, I removed the mask.

I played around with various ideas to put at the top left corner to finish the card. I tried various stamps using my stamp positioner to see how they would look, but did not like any of them. I finally decided on using die cut letters, (cut out 3 times and glued togehter to make them thicker) to spell out LOVE. Again, I fiddled with various mediums on them, and finally settled on embossing them with the same Ancient Gold embossing powder.

I edged the card front with a marker and adhered the panel to a card base in a mustard yellow colour.

Accordian Artist Trading Cards

As usual I jumped in with both feet and joined a swap for an accordion atc. Was not sure if I was on the right track but I sat down and made it.

The theme was architecture, so I used stamps of buildings, houses and other related items as well as free images I had saved on my computer. So her is what I ended up with after playing around for a few days. First pic is the cover.

The back cover just contains my name and email addy as well as the group name, with a little stamped piece on the edge to cover the accordian binding.

Calendar Pages-Prototype #2

I was back in my craft room last night and still not sure about the first prototype that I made, so I started playing around with an another idea, part of it being inspired by Cathie Allan's article in the October issue of Scrap and Stamp Arts.

I decided to make a page that would reflect a little bit about Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day in the US) and did the stamp smoosh technique again using blue tones at the top for the sky and red, creamy brown and yellow at the bottom.

I printed the poem In Flanders Fields written by John McRae, a Canadian Doctor who served in WW1, and placed it on a piece of red card stock.  I stamped the birds (Tim Holtz) on the "sky" portion to represent the larks mentioned in the poem.

I have a lovely Poppy stamp (Embossing Arts) and thought I would use it. I started with a piece of white cardstock and used the "smack down" technique from Cathie's article using a large and small tulip stamp by Magenta Style and gold pigment ink and Mica Magic burnt orange.

I placed the cardstock in the Cathie Allan Postion-it and stamped the poppy head in Blackbird fluid chalk. I coloured it in with some of the burnt orange ink and the tip of a smooch ink applicator. I highlighted with gold lame smooch ink, did the centre with mollasses smooch ink, then added siren smooch ink over the entire piece. With the cardstock still in the positioner I stamped the image again with the blackbird fluid chalk ink.  I did three of these and cut them out.

I took a piece of white cardstock and cut it to look like a cross and added a little red punch flower to it, and placed it on top of the poppies. This again has all the images taped on it as I am still debating about what to do for this swap.

Any comments or critique appreciated. Let me know which one you like best if you were the recipient of this calendar page since I am still torn as to which way to go with the pages. 

Calendar Pages-Prototype #1

I joined a calendar swap and started working on my prototype for the month of November.

Where I live we quite often have snow in November, so I was thinking of a cold or snowy picture when I started creating this page.


I started by taking some 80Lb cream cardstock and Clearsnap fluid chalks inks and did a background using alabaster, ice blue and lavender using the Stamp Smoosh technique I learned from the wonderful Cathie Allan. You load a solid stamp with ink and smoosh it around on the card stock until all the ink is gone and keep repeating this until you are happy with it.
 
Using Tsukineko Versafine Imperial Purple ink,  I stamped the church stamp and added the large tree at the left, both from Stampscapes Since we have a lot of Birch trees here I decided to add a few using a stamp (Stampendous) stamping the first image, masking it off and then adding more to make a grove of trees.
 
It looked a bit naked so I took a stamp with a road, hills and trees (A stamp in the Hand), masked off part of it and stamped it below the church. 
 

I also decided to add a moon using a negative image of a punched circle. I started by colouring it with a grey coloured pencil, added some Twinkling H2O buttercup. then Pearl-ex express white pearl and iridescent violet. This stuck out like a sore thumb so I took the fluid chalk alabaster and dabbed it over the moon with a stylus and white applicator, which toned it down.  

 

Since this is a prototype the calendar grid is only taped on till I decide whether or not I am completely happy with what I created.  

Witches Hour Torso Tags

I just joined a new group Art for the Creative Mind and have already signed up for a couple of swaps. One of the swaps is where we make two torso shaped tags with the theme Witches Hour i.e. Halloween.

The first one I coloured with Clearsnap fluid chalk inks but it was not intense enough, so I spritzed the top and bottom with Glimmer Mists and went over the centre with some Mica Magic Burnt Orange ink. I stamped the Stampscapes Crooked Limb stamp with the Smokey Gray Versafine ink pad, then I added the images and saying from Vintage Paint Works which were one of the free downloads on their site.

To complete the tag, I added some little confetti stars at the top and some maple leaf punchies at the centre and bottom.

For the second tag, I started by punching out a circle and placing the negative part on the tag, and colored it with some yellow pigment ink then some silver over a portion of it, then added some iridescent violet mica watercolour paint over the same area.

I masked the circle with the punched out piece and using the tonal applicator stamp (Stampscapes), I added colour, starting with Clearsnap's Vivid yellow along the centre up to the top, then Marvy Matchables inks in Salvia Blue, Blue, Pale Violet and Green.

I stamped a Stampscapes fir tree, crooked limb stamp and a cloud stamp with Clearsnap's Coal Black Ancient Page. The Owl image is from Vintage Paint Works. The remaining images are from Dover Publications; (You can sign up and receive free samples each week from them by following the link).

Although I don't normally make any Halloween art, I did enjoy making these two tags.