Little Beauties

I finished the "little beauties" today. These are for a swap I joined in CCSwaps group. I signed up 3 times; boy, am I greedy!!! The rules stated that you make 10 little beauties per each sign up. This is a picture of 10 of them. The other 2 groupings of 10 each are basically the same. Some may be a slightly different color. I like the way they turned out. Too bad I didn't make any extra for myself!!!

ATC Holder

This is the front of the ATC holder. It is folded and tied on the right side. I stamped all the images with India Black ink and then added color with some Lyra watercolor crayons. The colors didn't 'pop' enough for me so I went over everything with Twinkling H2O's...then I was happy with the look.

Here's the ATC holder open. At first glance there are 2 slots for ATC's , but the holder opens again and there are 4 more slots for ATC's. The pockets were created with pieces of blue vellum.

My artsy friends, Maggi and Pea, had a play day on Monday (Jan 21). We worked with polymer clay; it was my first time. In October we will be attending an art retreat right in our back yard...Cedarburg, WI. We hope to take a class from Laurie Mika so we thought we'd better start practising!!!! I know, we're possessed!!!
These are my experiments. I used some white sculpey clay which I scored patterns into and then painted after it was baked. I also used some violet premo clay and rubbed in some pearl-ex before baking.
I was glad we did this; I think I'll need to play some more. I found some things that worked and some that didn't. I may buy a pasta machine to condition the clay as it was very tough to do it by hand!! I also discovered that I will need some different types of stamps like frames, shrines, and texture stamps. Oh, and I'm a little color challenged so I'll need to work on that too!!

The samples I made of the glue resist techniques are now documented in my Background Noise Journal!!! At this rate I'll be running out of pages in my journal and need to start another...oh well!!!

Ready for the next technique from Trish!!!!

This is another twist on the glue resist technique. Rather than spread glue across the entire piece of cardstock, glue was applied in random swirls and dips. Once again the glue was left to dry overnight and then the ink was applied.
Inks used on the piece to the left: Brilliance - pearlescent rust and pearlescent ivy

Inks used on this piece to the right: Brilliance - pearlescent crimson and pearlescent ivy

Inks used for this piece to the left: Brilliance - crimson copper and cosmic copper; Color Box - sapphire silk.

The latest Background Noise techniques are Glue Backgrounds. This is the glue resist technique. I cut up a credit card to create a texture tool first. After applying a large puddle of pva glue onto the cardstock, I spread it across the entire piece using the newly created texture tool. The pieces dried overnight and then..


This piece was created with chalk inks: olive pastel, burnt sienna, and chestnut roan.










For this piece to the left I used chalk inks: dark peony and blue iris.
















For this piece to the right I used Distress Inks: fired brick, pine needles, and vintage photo








For this piece to the left I used chalk inks: prussian blue, warm green, and dark brown.

Faux Chipboard....

This is the latest art quest challenge for the Next Generation group. My faux chipboard pieces are very small - they are the 4 small green colored leaves. I used a punch on the white fun foam to create them. To create the background on the page I used acrylic paint from my Ranger Dabbers....I'm very disappointed in them, and most times just dip a brush in the bottle to apply the paint.

I didn't follow Trish's instructions exactly because I painted the background and the foam leaves before gluing the foam pieces to the page. I stamped on the background pages and added the leaves that are stamped on mulberry paper. There were times when I didn't like what I was seeing, but now that it's done ... I do like it.

Last week I was busy making 4 books all similar to this one. Each had about 10 pages and included various pictures taken by my DH's daughters; there are 3 of them. One of the girls lives in southern Florida and in August the other 2 sisters who live here in SE Wisconsin along with their cousin, who they grew up with but now lives in Reno, NV, decided to all meet in Florida for an adventure. They took a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas and spent the rest of the time having a grand time in Florida. I made each of the kids a book of memories and the books are now on their way to them. They don't know I did this so it will be a complete surprise. They think I just wanted to have the pictures so that we could have a few framed for ourselves!!!

Here are 2 more of the fabric origami pieces I made. They both were made from the same piece of fabric; one side was a light grey while the other was a dark grey. I prefer the lighter color as the stamped images show much better. I am giving the lighter colored piece to a friend who recently had hip replacement surgery. I hope she likes it.

And here is the first entry in my Background Noise book...

This is the Shining Stones Technique. Pictures don't do it justice! It is a technique that uses dye ink and perfect pearls.

I received this beautiful journal from Margaret Rogers in the Twelve Days of Christmas gift swap (CCSwaps group). I found the perfect use for it.....I'm going to use it for the Background Noise exercises we are doing on the Next Generations Group!!!! So here we go .......

This is a fabric origami piece that I made. My friend Karen taught Adrienne, Maggi, Mary, and I how to make these. I've made several more of them in different sizes with different fabrics, but I didn't take a photograph of them and have given some of them away as gifts. I really enjoyed making these and plan to do many more. Wouldn't it be great to receive a bottle of wine in one of these???