Paying it forward

Pay it Forward
I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow, or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. So basically, if you comment and you’re on, I’ll send you something crafty that I’ll make!Once you sign up, copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog, and three other lucky people will be recipients of your handmade work. I will check my blog daily to see who the first three sign ups are, and if they've joined this Pay It Forward exchange, they will be the recipients from me.Make sure to leave your blog address with your message, so I can check your blog. I will also need your email address so I can contact you for details of where to send them.

Women Tip-in Page

A tip-in page is 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inched - one half an 8 1/2 x 11 size page. In the CC Swaps group to which I belong, there is a themed swap for these pages. This month's theme was women. I chose a vintage poster image for the front from etsy, and the back contains images from the internet, bmuse, and another etsy image from a vendor who's store is called piddix. She's wonderful to deal with and the collage sheets are digital so you can dowload them and print as many times as you like. The quality of the images is superb. I've used some stamps from Paperbag Studios and Stampington for the background. The letters on both the front and the back were made with my Letratag and colored with alcohol ink. I've had the letratag for a while, but don't usually use it because I don't like the white tapes. I had the alcohol inks out today, so I thought I'd give them a shot and they were perfect.

Also, a bit of information about acquiring images from the internet. In this case I really wanted a Rosie the Riveter type figure. I searched in google for copyright free images, so that I could be sure the one I got was OK to use. In so doing, I came across a site on the wiki, explaining what's copyright free and providing bunches of links to images in the public domain. Here's the site...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

More Wintery Mini ATC's

I made a set of these for a swap, but sadly they never made it to their destination. So, I made another set - this time with some wonderful images from Artchix studio front and center.

It's that time of year

And here are some of the Christmas cards I've been working on. Some use tags from a collage sheet I downloaded from etsy, those are the same images I used for my winter mini atc's. One is a beeswax collage using a challenge image from a group I belong to, Next Generation Stampers, and the final one is a great tree stamp I picked up and embossed. That one is my main card this year, and there are 11 little jewels on each tree although they don't show up so well in the scan.

Winter Mini-ATC's

I recently did a mini ATC swap with a theme of 'Winter'. Mini ATC's are sort of halfway between inchies and ATC's. I chose to use some fun wintry images on a snowflake background.

Stampers Anonymous ATC

This piece was for a swap using a Stampers Anonymous stamp. With so many great images to choose from, it took me a while to settle on one, so I decided to use something that rarely gets out of the drawer. For the background on this one, I 'enameled' my ATC cardstock with several layers of embossing powder. I was having trouble getting a good clear image after having done that, so I ended up stamping the image on acetate and then running it through the Xyron. The bottom is embellished with watch parts.

Children Tipin Page

This month's theme was children. I decided to go with some things I liked to do as a child, reading and playing games. I got great inspiration from the Tim Holtz background papers, found some wonderful images and took it from there.

Nature ATC's

These are for a nature themed swap, and I also combined them somewhat inadvertently with another challenge to use leaves. The background for these is fabric, which is new for me, but it was fun to work with.

With this page, I was able to combine two art challenges into one project. The first challenge was to pick a page at random from a dictionary and choose a word to be a subject for your page. I didn't have an old dictionary, but I did find this portion of a page (while rummaging around for something else of course). Some of the words were completely there (but I didn't fancy garbage or gasoline). Some of them were only partially there, but you could make them out. 'Galaxy' caught my eye. I started the page by making some watercolors from dye reinkers and painting the background. Then I sponged on some twinkling H2o's and used the sponge also for some versamark, which I sprinkled with embossing powder. With the vellum image (which unfortunately doesn't scan so well) and the collage images, I was almost done. That's when the serendipity happened and Trish posted the 'images of the month' for the Next Generation Stamping group. Voila, I had the two elements I needed. I sprayed the whole thing with some pearl-ex, but that's hard to see on the scan.

Circus Tip-in

As it sometimes has the annoying habit of doing, my life got in the way of my art recently. I'm just now getting around to posting the Circus tip-in page that I finished for a swap. I chose to use Pierrot on the front of my page. The image is from Paper-Artsy. The back contains images from some Alpha Stamps collage sheets, some tickets I bought for a 50/50 raffle at my daughter's band competition (I didn't win the raffle, but I did get something great for a page), and the Circus magazine ad was in an art magazine my daughter brought home for me to peruse just at the right time!

Mini ATC's in Fall Colors

Here are some mini ATC's I just finished for a swap. They are 1 1/2" x 2 1/2' rather than the usual 2 1/2" x 3 1/2". These were to be in fall colors. For the background, I stained vellum with red, gold, and copper metallic brush pens and water. The two on the end are portions of Just for Fun stamps, and the one in the middle is from Stampendous. It doesn't show too well in the scan, but I overstamped the whole thing with a crackle design in gold.

Stampington ATC

The CC Swaps group recently had a swap for ATC's using a Stampington and Company stamp. I chose to use this Venetian background after coloring the background DTP with distress inks. The lattice is a diecut that I've had around for a while from Griff's. After reading Trish's article on the dreaded Look at It Disease found here: http://trishbee.co.uk/techniqueszone/lookatitdisorder.html
I decided I better get using some of those things.

Susie

When I grow up

This is the third sketchbook prompt I've worked on. The theme for this one was 'When I Grow Up' I let my daughter help me with the background on this one so it would be more playful.

DaVinci Tip-in Back

For the back of my page, I decided to go a little more light hearted. The central Mona is a Lost Coast image, and the rest are things I found on the internet.

DaVinci Tip-in page

This is my first attempt at these. The page was to be 51/2 x 8 1/2 inches and had a theme of Leonardo Davinci. The page must be decorated front and back. I took a more serious approach for the front (The quote reads, When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.) The embellishment below the image is a piece of air dry clay that I stamped into and painted. It's the first time I've worked with it, and it's really easy and forgiving, plus no baking. I have a feeling it's going to become a staple, especially for things that need to be mailed.

Here's the front..

One of the challenges for a group I'm in is to create a sketchbook about ourselves. This page is my creation about 8 things I love. I painted the page with acrylic paints first and then stamped, wrote and collaged on top of that. This was my first time ever playing with acrylics and it took a little while to figure out what to use for writing on it. The best things seem to be micron pens and sharpies.

The other group I'm in, CC Swaps is currently running a swap for black and white ATC's so here's one that I came up with. I figure you can never go wrong with a crown.

Finished name page

How exciting it is to be nudged into new areas. This has been a real learning and growing experience for me, and I've loved every second of it. The best part was that once I got going, it was so much easier than I anticipated, and loads more fun. No stress when it's just for you (and anyone who happens upon your blog. I ended up making this page about some of the things that inspire me, and as it turns out, that's artwise and lifewise. I'll be traveling tomorrow, but I'm sure the ideas for '10 things I love' will be flying though my head as I do.

A start on my sketchbook

As part of the Art Venture Group, we're doing sketchbooks about ourselves having been given wonderful prompts to start with. The first page I'm working on is using the letters of our name. I decided to go a little different direction and make a sentence with mine. Here's the start of my page. I made the background scribbling with some watercolor pencils (can you tell what my favorite colors are?). I've never used watercolor paper before - I only used the pencils to color with. I colored my sentence with chalks. Now on to the rest of the fun stuff.

Finished Background

After cutting the sheets down to size, I decided to make a border with my new stamps. I used two of the smaller square patterns for this one. If you're interested in seeing more of the stamps and some stunning examples, check out www.impressmenow.com.

Here's one of the finished backgrounds.

Making Backgrounds

Before I can get my sketchbook going I wanted to finish some commitments I had for my other group, although my fingers are itching to go. Currently I'm working on a background papers. The heat is scorching here, so I knew I wanted to use some bright summer colors and some of my new Impress-Me stamps. These are great for textures and designs.

Here are some of my first attempts, using DTP on glossy with a resist, and then DTP with some stripes and designs. I kind of liked the glossy, which have rollagraph images in resist, but I was having a devil of a time keeping them fingerprint-free. The one in the top right corner is also DTP but on smooth white cardstock. It was ok, but the designs made it too busy. I'll probably save these and use them for something else (as we all know stampers never throw anything away, so I decided to go another route.



This time, I've still used DTP, with Adirondack and Distress inks, but just applied them randomly. Here's what they look like so far.