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.