Charm

I am participating in a monthly charm swap on CCSwaps. I of course jumped in with both feet again, having no idea what to make.

I have never made jewelry nor have I done any amount of beading, so it was a challenge to come up with an idea. I scrounged through my stash and decided to use a Clearsnap style stone as the base. I covered the stone in alcohol ink,  applied an image from moonlightjourney.com then covered it with varnish. I then cut out a small butterfly image and attached a piece of wire with seed beads to simulate the antenna. I attached this to the bottom of the style stone, then covered it with Rangers glossy accents to make it more dimensional.

I then added a bead which is from a bunch that I bought in Scotland several years ago, and have found it hard to part with it because they are quite unique. But why save them???

Unfortunately the image is a bit blurry, as I used my Mac to upload it and am not as familiar with the program as I am with the one on my Hubby's PC.

March It-Girl

The ArtVenture It-Girl for March is Karen and her theme is Shrines. This is something that I have never done before and I really struggled with the theme. I made several attempts but was not happy with them, so back to the drawing board.

I was looking for something in my spare room and came across some small picture frames and thought they might work for the shrine. I settled on one that had a deeper "box" for the picture and a nice leafy motif.

The frame was a dull gold tone and I decided to jazz it up a bit. I started by painting it with gold Lumiere paint, then dry brushed silver, turquoise, blue an pink around it. The bottom was done with bronze.

The centre (background) is a matchbox into which I placed a piece of cardboard covered with plumbers a tape which I embossed with my Cuttlebug and dabbed with Alcohol inks.

The image is a postage stamp honouring Star Trek figures, but it looked a bit like an old Monk to me so thought it fit the theme. I adhered it to a Style Stone and edged with Krylon pen. I attached it with some E6000.

The charm at the top was silver, but seemed to stick out like a sore thumb, so I coloured it with some Adirondack Markers before attaching it. I added the gems and the flower embellishment to complete it.  I also glued the stand onto the back again so that it can sit on her desk or another piece of furniture, if she chooses. I hope Karen will be as pleased with the piece as I am.

Embossing Mania

I participated in another swap on CC Swaps where we had to use some form of embossing. I decided to use a technique I learned in a class I took from Cathie Allan at Western Educational Activities. Cathie is a regular contributor to Scrap & Stamp Arts and always is an inspiration to me. She tells you not to get too hung up on making the class project perfect, but to learn the technique in class then go home and play with different mediums and ideas and have fun.

I started with some Monoprinted background paper that I had made using Pinata` Inks and a Krylon Gold leafing pen. I cut the panel to size and stamped a background stamp by Judikins with a clear embossing pad and embossed with clear embossing powder. I edged the panel with gold Krylon leafing pen and layered it on black cardstock

I then took a small piece of the Monoprinted paper, cut a piece of paper towel and laid it over the stamp from Coronado Island. I cut around the area of the stamp image and laid it on top of the small piece of monoprinted paper and dabbed Stazon ink remover on top, smooshed it with my finger and left it for a few minutes. This removes some of the ink from the paper and leaves a faint background.

I stamped the image from Coronado Island on the paper using Colorbox Volcanic Black Pigment ink and embossed it with black embossing powder. I edged the piece with the Gold Krylon leafing pen and layered it on black cardstock and adhered it to the main panel.

I took a stylestone and inked it with Pinata` Ink and let it dry. I stamped the word stamp from PSX with the Volcanic black and embossed it with black embossing powder and edged it with the gold Krylon leafing pen. I adhered it to the panel with E6000.

The piece is now on it's way to Sheryl.