Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Playdate!

My friend Therese from Art- Just Do It! was visiting this weekend, and we invited our friend Marg over for lunch and an afternoon of playing. We had a great time!

We had gone to the Dollar Store and found a bamboo placemat made of black bamboo tiles, so we cut it up and are using the tiles for making necklaces. This one is Therese's.

Marg'smine
. . .and mine. I needed "E" beads? But didn't have any so used these bigger beads. Have some now!
 We used Modge Podge to stick the images on.

Then we went on to playing with embossing folders. Marg had a neat technique that we hadn't tried yet. . .

Double embossing

First, we need paper that had a white core. She put it through the Big Shot with the Swiss Dots embossing folder, and then lightly sanded the paper so the dots turned white. The she put it through again, but with the folder sitting on top to DE-emboss it. Now we have a flat piece of paper with white dots. Cool all by itself. But then she ran the same paper through the Big Shot again with the Holly embossing folder, and lightly sanded that. The holly popped right out! We tried it with a few more designs, some worked, some didn't. The Swiss Dots seems to be the best background for the image embossing folders. Lovely and fun!

Then. . .



while at Michael's I bought these cute little chipboard books of a tryptich, or maybe a shrine - there were 5 pages to this book, for $1.50! Of course I bought them all (sorry Kingston) and will have great fun with them. So we took the book apart and each had one to work with. I folded my edges in, and Marg and Therese cut their edges off. We decided to cover them with torn pieces of some napkins we had bought on our trip to the Dollar Store, and we used Modge Podge.
the background is finished. I found some little golden bits and sprinkled them on - would the Modge Podge hold them?

Yes it did! Nice and strong so far! Now I can throw some more on there! I will keep you updated on the progress of this shrine!

And that was the end of our fun afternoon!

So the next day. . .

Therese brought her zutter with her - Yay! I have wanted to bind my Altered Book Club 10th Anniversary Book for a long time - about 200 pages that kept threatening to fall all over the floor every time I looked at it! So we divided it in half and bound each half, so now I have two books, AND it still fits in it's lovely cover that Corrine made!

Voila!!

Therese and I both had been thinking about the technique that Marg showed us yesterday, and started to think outside the box -what if. . .

we didn't have any white core paper?



So we embossed on green paper (not white core) and instead of sanding, we inked the raised parts with Distress ink, de-bossed it, and did the second emboss, then inked that with black. Cool! tried again with white paper, black below, and brown on top - looks rusty! Again - cool!


Well, what about if we. . .

painted white paper with acrylic (cheap) paint, and on the first embossing sanded it off, and on the second embossing rubbed with black ink (Staz-On or Memento-Black Distress wasn't black enough)-Cool!

Then. . .

What if we painted a coloured piece of paper? I chose a lime green (yuk-why do I even own this colour?) and tried again! Very cool! Easier to see on the green one. Also thought - we don't have to use black ink, do we? So we chose red Staz-On. Hard to see the diamond background that one, but it's there.

Well, Therese had to go, so our playtime ended, but wasn't that fun!!!


Can't wait until next year!!

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

GPP Street Team Challenge

Therese is visiting again! We decided to do an internet challenge and post it. We chose GPP Street Team Challenge #42 - here it is!

 My strips were from an experimental embossoning on metallic paper from yesterday. We embossed a gear pattern over a chrome pattern, but it was too busy. So I used it here, ripped it up, and used concord grape Distress Ink on it. Looked for industrial type pics from a magazine and viola! Will be used as a journal page in a few days.

More on my and Therese's adventure's later!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Mid-July

Boy this summer is going by fast - and I haven't even really had a holiday yet, despite school being over since the end of June! I have to help at the Summer camp next week again (cooking week). My DD came to visit this weekend to celebrate her dad's birthday! I love when she comes to visit!


At our favourite place for lunch - Pan Chancho!





Birthday dinner in Gananoque- CJ's escargot, spinach & goat cheese in filo appetizer!


and my low-carb dinner-Rack of lamb with ratatoullie



Happy Birthday!


My favourite flowers were on the table!



Ron's Birthday Card




I also made some "Dots" ATCs for my Art For the creative Mind group. 
We were to use heat embossing as well as dots.




The background was made with Punchinello and embossed. The bottom image is from alteredpages.com.



Here is my swap card made for my Stampscapes Group. It was a transportation swap.

Tim Holtz car and words

Well, that's it for now. Today is my last day with CJ, so I plan to enjoy it! Hope you enjoy your day too!


Friday, July 09, 2010

I Taught a Class!

I taught an art class this week - my first ever! It was a mixed media collage class. . .











And here are some of the students at work:





They were all 3 and 4 year olds! I thought they did an awesome job!

This was for a summer camp week at my school, the week was called "Little Artists" and these were their "Masterpieces" that they spent 4 days making!

Have fun making art!!

Monday, July 05, 2010

Long Time

Sorry I have been neglecting my blog for such a long time! I've been very busy with work, the end of the school year, and now teaching one week of Summer Camp-hopefully it will all end soon and I can have my break! But regardless, I have been making art!

This was for a bird card swap for my Art For the Creative Mind Yahoo Group. It now lives in Liverpool! I used a Club Scrap stamp that had the 3 birds on it, watercoloured the image and cut it into 3 pieces.



This is the arch I made for the 7th anniversary of the ABC Altered Book club. I will be getting about 13 more, and then I will make a book! I had fun making this, even though it took a few tries to get it right!



This is my lovely Steampunk Mona Lisa, again for a swap on AFTCM Yahoo group. She now lives in Philly! The swap was just art dolls, but steampunk was in my head because they were also doing a steampunk necklace swap that I didn't do, so I did a doll instead!



This is my page for Altered Books Canada Yahoo Group (ABCanada).
We had a Nature ATC Swap and we make an altered book page from the ATC we received. This is my page! My ATC came from Jane in Saskatchwan. The bees on the ATC are raised, so I mirrored that with my bee on the sunflower. The girl came from Dover.


And last but not least, some journal pages. Still a bit sporadic, I'm hoping for daily in the summer. Playing around with style again! Wanting to use more of my stamps that were getting very lonely.








That's it for now! Hopefully I will update before the month is over!
Thanks for looking and I always love your comments!