Mother-Daughter Art Day

Hello friends!  I hope you are all enjoying your holidays.  We had a wonderful, peaceful Christmas with family, and are having a fun week.  Ever since I went to a weekend with Donna Downey at her studio near Charlotte, NC, I've been wanting to try my hand at a canvas, a la Donna's Inspiration Wednesday videos.  My daughter really wanted to join in the fun, so we bought ourselves some blank, pre-gessoed canvases, watched some videos, and played for the entire afternoon in my craft room.  I just love her style - vintage, shabby chic, but with bright colors to fit her personality and match her blue-with-big-colored-polka-dots walls in her bedroom.

Some details, Meghan's first....

As soon as Meghan spied my Golden's gold paint, she had to use it!  Here, she has accented some of the images on some stamped tissue paper that she tore and gelled onto the painted canvas.  She also used a splatter technique with the gold.  A bit of Tim's tissue tape and some K and Co. keys keep the vintage vibe going.

Meghan is becoming a fan of anything French, so the chipboard Eiffel tower, spritzed with golden glimmer mist, was a natural choice for her.  More stamped tissue in the background, and a little bit of a resist, sprayed "breathless LOVE" panel behind the star.

Aren't all tween girls dreamers?  This stamp from Unity was a natural choice for her. ;)

I adored *this technique* that Donna demonstrated in her video.  I tore pieces of vintage sheet music, text, and patterned papers to create my background.  A bit of tinted gesso, then lots of different paints, stains, splatters, and crayons over the top.

I had found a vintage book of poetry that was written on in the margins.... in pencil.  When I adhered this page to my canvas using gel medium, the pencil writing turned purple!  Oh happy day - love when that kind of stuff happens!  A little birdy over the top of the poem (To the Skylark), spritzed with glimmer mist and outlined in Neo Color crayon.

And speaking of Caran D'Arche NeoColor II crayons..... I. am. in. love.  Oh! Yes!  I had purchased a few at Donna's studio just to try them and see if they were worth the considerable expense.  I fell for them - hard - and just bought a bunch more individual colors from Dick Blick (they were having a free shipping special, and they always have great prices).  I decided to buy them individually, rather than in a set, because I know that I love the soft muted tones rather than the brights.  Better to spend a little more and get exactly what I want.  Anyway, back to the canvas..... I stamped the peony onto pale pink tissue paper and adhered it to the canvas with gel medium.  I used Golden paint to paint in the stems and spritz on some brown speckles.  Then I went to work with my as-of-then very limited NeoColor crayon palette (I think I had 6 at the time).  A bit of brightening of the flower, some shading all around - so easy, so simple, so worth it (to me, anyway, tee hee)!

I hope you get time to play during this busy season - especially if you can play with family and friends!  We are switching gears for the long holiday weekend - it's volleyball 24/7, with my daughter in her first big tournament of the season.  I'm hoping to be able to get some downtime on the ol' iPad to vist all of your lovely blogs.  Until then.... Happy New Year!

Gingersnap Creations Tribute to Teens

I love the Random Redhead challenges over at Gingersnap Creations - there's always something to stretch you, make you puzzle a bit, and they're just a whole lotta fun!  This month is certainly no exception, because GC115 is: a Tribute to Teens!  Aaaahhhh, the teen years.  Actually, my kids are currently in the Tween years, so I guess this is just a warm-up.  My 12-year-old daughter loves art, she loves to craft right along beside me, and she was just a teensie bit miffed when I said I was going to do my teen tribute piece for her 10-year-old brother.  Truth is, I really don't have much in the way of girlie teen stuff.  But I hoped I could come up with something boyishly fun.  So I started by asking my son what colors he liked.  "Orange.  And green.  And maybe blue.  And black."  Hmmmmm....  "How about for hockey teams, what colors then?"  "Purple and silver.  And green and gold," he says.  Double hmmmm.......  Okay, I can't use all of those, so I picked the ones I thought would be most "cool" and went with it!

My son is a goalie, and part-time defenseman.  (Did you know that NONE of the equipment for these two positions overlaps????  Sorry, had a hockey mom angst moment just then.)  So, a hockey canvas for him. This is a 6x6 canvas that I first covered with black gesso.  Then I layered on some clippings from a USA Hockey magazine using gel medium.  After that was dry, I thinned down some more black gesso and applied it all over to tone down the graphics a bit.  Next, I thinned down some orange acrylic paint and squished it along the side with a wide brush, allowing it to drip down the canvas.  (The lingo for ice hockey goalies is that they "melt down" the puck.... wanted to capture that melting feeling.)  More drying time.  I added some gaffer tape from 7 Gypsies, then used the same technique with some deep blue acrylic, this time letting it "melt" down from the top left-hand side.  More drying...... Next up, I used an old plastic cap dipped in Golden Interference Gold to make some iridescent gold circles - sorta icy, sorta pucky, and it checks off another of my son's preferred colors.

For the feature goalie image, I heat-embossed the goalie silhouette onto black paper, then added orange embossing powder.  (Goalie stamp is by My Heart Stamps For You.)  Before I heat set it, I stamped over it with Tim Holtz's reflections numbers stamp.  Yes, I know, the numbers are backwards this way.  Truth is, I tried it the proper way into the embossing ink and it didn't work with the thick Zing! embossing powder I was using, so I just went for the very subtle patterned effect. It sorta looks like numbers, but not really.  Then I heated the embossing powder.  I like it - a goalie's life is filled with numbers - save percentage, goals against average, shoot-out percentage, etc.... I liked the subtle reference to go along with the numbers on the tape.  I "melted" a tiny bit of blue paint down the goalie, and gel medium-ed it onto the canvas.  As a finishing touch, I painted the word "larceny" in a graffiti font.  (More background - the lingo for a really, really good save is "larceny" - as in, you have stolen the puck away from the shooter, stealing his score.)

I took the canvas downstairs to where my son was playing a video game.  He looked up at me, looked at the canvas, *smiled*, and said, "Cool."

Ahhhh, success. ;)

Vintage Paris Canvas

So I hopped out of my box again yesterday and created another canvas.  Actually, it's an "un-canvas" - an "artist's panel" that claims to be "better than canvas."  Whatever.... its un-canvas properties actually made it very easy to adhere paper to, so I went with it, LOL!

This project was inspired by two challenges...... at The Shabby Tea Room this week, there is this gorgeous photo and the word "reflections" to inspire us.  Oh, how I loooooove the look of this mantel arrangement.  I want it in my house this very second.  Inspiration abounds.....

And, a fairly new challenge at a blog called More Paper Than Shoes.  Why, oh why, didn't I think of that blog name first??? It describes my life in four easy words.  Anyway, this challenge gives a little list of rules - actually, items and techniques that must be incorporated into the challenge. So for this month, the theme/items/techniques are:

Vintage Paris

Metal

Acrylic Paint

Fabric

Crackle

Any surface

The design team over at MPTS is amazing - all of them.  But before I show you my close-ups and tell you all the yada yada, I have to show you the DT project that made my jaw drop... here is the pic - and if you love it, run, don't walk, over to DT member Megan Bean's blog to see the rest of this amazing little album of hers on THIS post. Oh, but DO come back, will you????

Okay, so for my little project, I started with Bon Voyage Paris paper from Gartner Studios.  Next came paint around the edges of the canvas, which was Distress Crackle in Antique Linen, distressed with Walnut Stain.  I added a few pieces of vintage text from an old French school primer after that.  The beautiful little lady is a stamp from The Fairest Flower plate from Oxford Impressions, stamped in Ancient Page ink and distressed with Antique Linen.  Surrounding her is a Tattered Angels frame with silver Vintage Art Glass Glitter.  Oh my, I love that stuff!  I splurged, I hoarded for a long time, but now that I've used it I can see the difference - the sparkle IRL is amazing, and I can't wait for the patina to gently tarnish.  This is the "reflections" part for the Shabby Tea Room challenge, too.

For the metal, I used some of T!m's flowers, which I bent a little with jewelry pliers to give them a little more depth.

For the fabric, I stamped images from The Fairest Flower, Paris Exposition (Artistic Outpost), and Stampin' Up! onto some muslin, frayed the edges, and adhered it to the not-so-pretty sides of my un-canvas.

One last little photo to show you how well I'm coming along with my hoarding problem.. this is a vintage crochet covered button, which I have only one of... and I put it on this un-canvas.  (Eeeeeee, I'm breaking into a cold sweat just typing it... okay, deep breaths.... fine.)  See?  Pretty good, eh? LOL!

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you're all having a happy week.  Tomorrow I'll have a little card for the next Gingersnap Creations challenge... see ya then. :)

Mini Canvas Swap

Yikes! A week since my last post.  Life happens, in a good way, though. :)  I had to make nine 4x4 canvases for our ATC/Mixed Media group this week, and it was definitely a creative adventure, since I'd never made a canvas before.  The theme was "Nature", so I dug out some seriously ancient vellum paper with butterflies on it, some genuinely old sheet music, and my new favorite Stampin' Up! stamp from the Elements of Style set.  (BTW, sorry for the horrible picture... it's been dark and stormy here for the last 2 days, and I had to take these pics with a flash - yuck!) 

First, I painted all of the canvases a gold-ish color, then set to work with my gel medium.  The first layer was the sheet music, then the flowers, which I stamped on white tissue paper and colored with colored pencils before applying them to the canvas.  Next came those devilish vellum butterflies, which really wanted to warp and wrinkle (duh... it's been a while since I've worked with vellum).  Luckily they are smoothing out on their own.  The last addition was Tim's fragments with Graphic 45 tag elements behind them.  I still need to wrap the sides in twine (since they are rather thick canvases, I think they need some textural interest around the sides).  Can't wait to see what the other gals have come up with!

One other little card project..... this incorporated last week's Compendium of Curiosities challenge, but I never posted it (yes, lame... I'll try to be better next time!).  It's a birthday card for my hubby, using a Crafty Individuals stamp, some glimmer mists, some embossing, some of Tim's new papers (lovin' the calendar paper, oh yes!), and the "43" numbers (also Tim's) covered in vintage text - that was the challenge part.

A coupla challenges you may want to check out..... Gingersnap Creations has posted a new color challenge - Yellow, Orange, and Red (celebrating the relentless summer sun, perhaps?).  Louise has the new Tag Tuesday challenge up, which is "Christmas Colors in July" - to use red and green, but NOT in a Christmas-themed way.  And finally, the lovely Linda Ledbetter has the Week 7 Compendium of Curiosities challenge up... and you won't believe the prize!!  I'm hoping to play along in all of these..... after having been such a bad, bad blogger, LOL!!  Happy Craftying, Peeps!