The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Where does the time go???  I'm coming along slowly with my Halloween pennants for my swap... here are two that feature a Paper Whimsy image (the girl, along with a hat from Lisa's Altered Images), and stamps from Red Lead (the small ravens with Poe quotes) Oxford Impressions (large raven and ouija board), and Tim Holtz (Halloween ticket).

Lately I've pretty much had time to scrap only on the go, and even then, I haven't done much.  I mentioned in my last post that I was feeling mojo-less and wasn't even happy with my gluebook pages.  So I will share... the good, the bad, and the ugly.....

First up, the good.... those little cuties are my dad and his twin brother, and the sentiment is from a piece of vellum patterned paper that I've had in my stash for centuries....

Next up.... a Poe page that I am basically happy with.... it's just that I cannot for the life of me seem to complete the page next to it.  There are some scraps in the foreground that I'm trying to use... I think I just might have to actually stamp or go gather something "real" from my stash that will work.....

Okay, as promised, the ugly.... this is waaaay too busy.  It seemed a good idea as I was putting it together.  I closed it up, ran off to some school event or other... came back and opened it up again and really had to say "What was I thinking?!"  But that's what's so great about a gluebook - you can try things, experiment, and if it doesn't work out, it's no big deal.  All you've done is use up some scraps that weren't making it into anything else anyway!!  Totally forgiving, and really, a learning tool.... a record of what does and does not work.  (I'm trying really hard not to rip this out, LOL!!!)

Still hoping to find more time to visit all of your lovely blogs.  Unfortunately, today I have to go out and spend way to much money on a dishwasher... ours totally gave up the ghost (I had been making do with certain features not working, but now it's finally dead and not worth fixing).  I've been spending all of my time online trying to figure out which models are best, etc.  But I'm tired of doing dishes, so I'm buying today no matter what, LOL!  Have a happy Wednesday. 

Paint Chips and Fibers Swap

Just a quick little share today.... my mixed media group had a swap, and the criteria were to use paint chips and fibers in some way.  Bookmark tags were the first thing to pop into my mind (I'm always in the middle of a book, and so is my daughter!).  Here are a few.  I've used stamps from a variety of sources, including Rogue Redhead Designs, Tim Holtz, Red Lead, Oxford Impressions, Unity, Serendipity, and Darkroom Door (umm.... yes, I'm a bit addicted to stamps, LOL!).  If you have a question about where to find a specific image, feel free to email me.

Hope everyone has a happy Friday and a great weekend!

A Swap and a Share

Sheesh, as if it wasn't bad enough I've been AWOL for an entire week (!), but I try to finally post and blogger won't let me upload anything.  Grrrrrrr....... blogger is getting rather tiresome.  Anyway, I thought I'd post two of the four bookmarks I've made for the Gingersnap Creations Art Exchange.  The theme for the swap is travel, and we could make any type of bookmark we wanted.  I have two totally different approaches here.... the one on the left is my very favorite vacation spot - Santorini, Greece.  I stamped and heat embossed the image on Bristol paper, then watercolored it.  The Greek image is from Echoes des Voyages - they have lots of great travel destination stamps that are rather uncommon (Greece, Turkey, Norway, Russia, Peru, to name a few!) - great for scrapbooking. The bottom of the bookmark is pieced from some old patterned paper that showed a map of Greece.  The bookmark on the right is made on a piece of the collage I made in the Paint, Paper, Paste E-workshop I'm taking.  A Tim Holtz stamp, some vintage French text and some letters finished it off.

Next I wanted to share a fabulous project that I won in a drawing from Dawn (Crafty Dawn in blogland).  It's this gorgeous mini pocket book, which came in an equally beautiful decorated envelope:

A pic of the book opened up, so you can see the embellished pages and the pockets - I will have fun filling these with tags!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Dawn!!!! Gorgeous work!

We are deep into end-of-school-year and end-of sport-season activities this week, then we are taking a little vacation, so I will probably continue to be a very bad blogger. :(  I am hoping to get around to visit, but I may not have the time to leave the comments I usually do..... I do apologize, and will catch up with everyone in a few weeks!  Until then, Happy Crafting!

More from the Paint, Paper, Paste E-Class

As I wrote in a previous post, I'm taking Teresa McFayden's Paint, Paper, Paste E-Workshop, which just keeps getting better.  I've combined a few lessons here on a little 5x7-inch canvas.  I collaged the background as I did for the previous neutral collage, but this time I used blue tissue paper that had been stamped with Tim Holtz stamps, along with more vibrant paint colors and some oil pastels.  As with last time, I used vintage text and music sheets, and some stencils.  The butterflies, clock, and house were done using a fun technique that Teresa came up with using pastels and images from The Graphics Fairy.  The image of the girl is from Paper Whimsy, and the little butterfly chipboard is from GCD Studios (both have some oil pastel added on).  Have I mentioned, I'm having a ton of fun with this class? ;)

Happy Thursday, friends.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend planned... a long one for us US folks.  Let's all hope for the best, most unsettled and *safe* weather patterns for our entire country (too much devastation as of late).  Talk to ya tomorrow. :)

12 Tags of Christmas Day 12

Wooohooo, I'm done! A day late and a dollar short (okay, maybe I'm out a few dollars, LOL, but I didn't go out and buy anything.... just was hoarding it all in my stash!).  For this one, I had the December stamp and the grungeboard ornaments from an old seasonal pack.  So, I covered one ornament in some vintage text (from Little Women - a Christmas portion.... see the "Merry Christmas"... tee hee!) and put strips of red glitter on it.  The other ornament I completely glittered, then put in a medallion from My Mind's Eye - sort of reminds me of those old WWII ornaments with the indentations in the center.  A bit of tinsel, a few berry sprigs - this was fun and fairly stress free.  Of course, I didn't really do anything that Tim demonstrated, other than glittering the ornament and stamping the month.  Oh, and I used some crackle paint on the tops of the ornaments.  Ah well, I like it.

So.... are you done? Are you going to finish? Which tag did you enjoy most? The least?  I think I had the most fun with the first one (very time intensive, but back then we were just chomping at the bit, weren't we?).  I really liked how my Day 5 turned out because I didn't actually *expect* to like it, but I do, probably because I love that Santa image.  Ditto with Day 2.  I think my least favorite was Day 4 with the facets and the bling.... cool technique, but my overall tag left me a bit "blah."  And you know of my love/hate relationship with the Day 11 tree, LOL!

I'd love to hear about your overall impressions of the big Tim Tag Ride. Hope your holidays are going along happily. :)

12 Tags of Christmas Day 11

Needless to say, this one did not go well for me.  I of course didn't have any of the ingredients, so I tried creating a tree from a Martha Stewart pine branch punch.  I ran the little pieces through my Xyron, but you know all those sticky bits that stay on after you pull off the punched out shapes? Yep, well, they don't play nice with flocking.  I was hoping for this nice snowy effect, but instead it just looked like my cat had lain on it for days.  So I had to go over some areas with liquid applique, then tried flocking again..... aaackk!  Oh well, live and learn.

The upside: I found this cool page from a vintage French dictionary that contained images of St. Nicholas.  I made it black and white, because the original is quite brown, and my scanner thought it was orange!  I'm going to try to paste it in here so that it is full size if you click on it (about 5 x 7 inches).  Crossing my fingers.....

Have fun crafting and enjoying the season this weekend! Time for me to go cook dinner.... :)

12 Tags of Christmas Day 10

Oh what fun, it is to craft, a snowman tag to-daaaaay!  Loved this one.  Didn't have the snowman die, but I had the snowflake and snowman texture fades.  So, I embossed grungepaper twice with the snowman texture fade and cut it out along the embossing lines.  This snowman seems to be smaller than the die, but that's okay, I just stamped and embossed a little "let it snow" sentiment in the upper right corner.  As you can see, my plastic frosted a bit around the snowflakes when I embossed it - it's kinda busy, but I like it IRL.  I used some copper, uh, "thingies" that I found at a flea market this summer in place of the washers - I think they're rather festive.  The only thing I might change, is that I'm thinking maybe I should white-wash that little word charm so that it shows up better - it says "believe." Yep.  Gonna.

Have a fabulous Friday my friends.  Only two days left of tags.... I think I might go into withdrawal after that, LOL!  

12 Tags of Christmas Day 9

Okay, I meant to be good, I really did.  I had almost all of the ingredients.  I was just going to switch it to be more creamy whites than honeyed browns.  And then I was going to put a little angel in the center of the rosette, but found this cute little acetate bird by K and Company on the way to the angel.  Slippery slope!

The background is a page from a vintage hymnal, sprayed with Wheatfields Glimmer Mist (also sprayed the lace at the bottom, the rosette, and one of the ribbons - love that stuff!).  The rosette is paper from gcd studios, with a little antique crocheted rose at the center, and Prima bling.  Along with the tinsel, I also added some copper trim along the bottom and some blingy berries.  Once again, since I didn't want to obscure the title of the carol, I omitted the danglies at the top.

I am having So Much Fun!!!  Hopefully tonight I'll have some time to hop along to all of your beautiful blogs.  You inspire me just as much as - actually, more than - Tim, and I am waaay inspired by Tim.  So you know how much your artwork means to me.  Stay creative, my friends. :) 

12 Tags of Christmas Day 8

I'm caught up!!!  I just love this blogging community of ours.  I was truly stumped on this one.  Then I started blurfing and found many creative suggestions, including the method I eventually used.  Several people suggested using clipart as a model for a homemade stencil.  I could find a Santa and sleigh, I could find a reindeer, but nothing with the two together that really worked.  Finally, I used two separate images, played around in Paintshop and, using Tim's as a guide, came up with something pretty close.  I used a very specialized material for my mask - printer paper - which worked lots better than I expected, LOL!  You'll see I did get some white "shadow" around the antlers, but I'm okay with that.  The houses I free-handed on some corrugated paper from some lightbulb packaging.  I had the Dymo, a watch front, the spinners.  I added a little rusty jingle bell to the ribbon (hard to see, since I photographed this at night - I wanted to get it done!!!).  The corners are silver embossed using  a stamp from Elusive Images.

And for those of you who were wondering what on earth I was going on about with the tissue box.... it was this.  I thought I might use this silhouette image, since I love ice skating.  However, I realized the design would have been too intricate, and I would have lost the skating effect.  Cool little scene though, isn't it, LOL?!?

12 Tags of Christmas Day 7

Yippee, I'm caught up, not counting today of course, which we won't mention, since I have no idea what to do (although I'm thinking it might involve cutting up a tissue box, LOL!).

Anyway, I didn't have the woodgrain texture fade, so I used a piece of real wood cardstock by Creative Imaginations that I've been hoarding forever.  Did the canvas flower thing just like Tim's, although mine came out quite a bit larger, so I didn't really have room for a trinket.  I spelled out NOEL because that's what fit with my grunge letters.  I added a little frosted lace Stickles along the tops and crannies of the letters to get a frosty snow effect.  This tag is much more rustic than the rest, especially since I don't have quite as much bling going on.  It's earthy and peaceful.

Whew, that was a marathon.  I'm taking a break before tackling Day 8, which will be my own personal biggest challenge yet, since I have nothing, nada, zilch from his "recipe."

12 Tags of Christmas Day 6

Moving right along to Day 6.  I didn't have the tree texture fade, or the reindeer die.  I made several very, very bad attempts with other texture fades, then scrapped them all - I got the idea, so maybe someday.  This grungeboard reindeer was in a seasonal pack from several years ago, and I did manage to run him through the snowflake texture fade.  Did the dabber, the sanding, the distress inking (in red, for a little more color).  The background was stamped with trees from Artistic Outpost's Sleigh Ride set, along with some gold-embossed snowflakes from that same set as well as their Snowy Woods set.  Had the journaling tag, the tissue tape, and a similar greeting.  I'm glad this one is done!

12 Tags of Christmas - Catch Up!

 

Hello, friends!  I've got much to catch up on, after spending a wonderful, snow-filled weekend in Pennsylvania with family.  Here are my takes on Tim's Tags from Days 3, 4, and 5.

Day 3 - This is one of my favorites.  Tim created a red bird, but I had just done that in Day 1, so of course, I had to make this little guy a bluebird.  I followed Tim's instructions pretty closely on this one.  I used tissue tape from 7Gypsies because it had red and green ledger print on it.  I must admit this little flower was easier than I anticipated, although the Gypsy tape is stickier, so maybe that helped.  Anyone else have a hard time trying to get Tim's tape to stay stuck on the grunge?  My tree branch is stamped using Peeled Paint Distress Emboss for a little texture.

Day 4 - Definitely not my favorite.  Had to improvise the entire thing.  The facet technique was cool (I used a charm fragment), but I can't see myself doing it again.  I don't buy those expensive bling swirls unless they are seriously discounted, so I had to make my own, which was quite tedious.  The paper is some ancient Melissa Frances that I had been hoarding.

Day 5 - Well, I didn't have any UTEE, so I enameled the metal numbers with.... Enamel Accents.  Seemed like a no-brainer, LOL.  I actually didn't have much from the recipe for this tag either, but it was still lots of fun to make.  I am discovering during this little party that if you buy Distress Crackle Paint, you'd better use it up fast, or it will turn to dust!  Bummer!  The background for the numbers was cut out with Nestabilities Labels Four.  As you can see, I used one of Tim's Santa ATC collages for the main image.  The "Be Jolly" is ancient - might even be a $1 bin stamp.  Rather fun, this one.

I'm working on the next two already, so hopefully I'll get caught up soon.  I gotta say, though, that today's tag (Day 8) has me stumped so far..... I don't have anything even close for a mask, or even a similar stamped image to make a mask, don't have all that hardware... I'll have to seriously put my thinking cap on (or maybe borrow someone else's.... anyone???)

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas Day 2 and A Sneak Peek

My version of Day 2.  This tag went much more quickly, although as you can see, I didn't have many of the ingredients.  I had the Distress Inks and the Enamel, and a Tim Holtz Christmas sentiment.  All else is improvised....

I had a bird charm.... somewhere.... in my stash.  It is still hiding from me. I have to thank the creative and talented Louise at Kard Krazy for her fabulous improvised birdie idea.  I embossed a Stampin' Up! bird in copper embossing powder, rubbed DI over it, and cut it out.  I love the way it looks.... Louise is brilliant!  My foliage is some ancient PSX and Hero Arts, the swirl is Stampington, the music is I-don't-know-whose, and the blue dangly thing is 7Gypsies.  I really didn't have high hopes for myself on this one.... but now I rather like it.

I'd like to give a big shout out and many thanks to Sioux over at Artyjen - she's hosting a "Tim's Splinter Group" for everyone to link up their Tim Tag creations and share some inspiration and improvisation.  What a great idea! I think you'll want to take a look....

And now for the peek - I have a little "Gift Kit for Booklovers" tutorial over on the Rogue Redhead Designs blog, using Shar's "Relish Reading" plate.  I'd love for you to go over and have a look.  Here's the kit all packed up:

I will be AWOL for the next few days, and will sadly be missing at least four Tim Tags.  It's all good though - a big family gathering in honor of my uncle's 75th birthday, my cousin's 50th, and just plain old family time for the holidays.  Have a wonderful weekend, my friends! 

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas Day 1

I know what you're thinking.... "She's been gone from her blog for a week and gone totally bonkers! That doesn't look anything like Tim's tag!!" ROFL!!  It's all about "improvising" peeps!! So I present my first Tim Holtz Christmas Tag, Day 1!

Okay, I was a bit dismayed when I first saw Tim's tag... I didn't have the rickety house, I didn't have the fence.... what to do?  But if Tim can use his Halloween house for Christmas, then I can use the birdcage as my house. Right? Right???? LOL!

So, if you'd like to hear it, here's the lowdown on what I had, what I didn't have, and what I used in its place....

For the base of the tag, I was pretty much set - had the tag, the Distress Inks, the snowflake stamps.  Didn't have a Ranger mist, so just used Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Pearl.  So far so good.

Ah, the house.  Well, as you can see, I used a grungepaper birdcage.  I had the notebook texture fade, so ran it through that, then used regular old white acrylic paint since I didn't have the Dabber.  Sanded, distressed, misted.  So far, so good.  Now about those mica windows... didn't seem right to "glass in" a birdcage, so I used mica flakes on top of Liquid Applique to bring in the mica sparkle and also to add the snowy icicles that Tim created.

Obviously, didn't have the fence, either, but I still wanted to have something that was distress-crackled.  So, I crackled the bird.  (Kind of a long story there... didn't have any red crackle so used Picket Fence, then had to color birdie with Red Pepper Dabber - too orange - went over it with lots of other red inks till I got what I wanted.)  Since I was also lacking the dimension that was given by the fence, I had to improvise again.... by giving the little bird cage some tinsel garland, woven through the holes at the bottom.

Okay, next.... I actually had the mini holly garland (gasp!!), so could make the wreath.  Also gave the birdie a few leaves to chew on.  I did not have a Prima tree branch, so it was out to mother nature.... a little twig, holding up the bird cage, is what serves as my "tree."  Are ya with me?  Added some liquid applique and mica to that, too.

The ticket I had - wooo hooo! And I made an attempt at what I *thought* Tim might have done - used three different colors of embossing powder, which I tapped on using a plastic spoon.  Here's a close-up:

 We'll see what he has to say tomorrow.... Also had the mini paper clip (love those things!).

Finally, I had the seam binding, which I dyed just as Tim said.  But that star charm.... nope.  What I *did* have was some of Tim's foliage, and one of the pieces looks just like a sprig of holly.  The top of my tag was getting a bit busy, so I chose to hang the holly from the bottom of the cage.  I colored it with alcohol ink first ("Meadow"), but you can't really see it in the photo.  It could also look like a bit of mistletoe hanging from the bottom, if you have a glass of wine or two and squint, LOL!!!

So, there's my extremely improvised take on Day 1.  I know I won't be able to do them all (big family gathering this weekend, so I may go AWOL again for a bit), but this one was definitely fun.  I think not having the required elements actually made it a bit *more* fun, because there's more creativity to it.  Hopefully tomorrow's tag won't require so much "drying time" - if you're playing along, you know what I mean. :)


Ta for now!

Tag Tuesday Backgrounds

This week at Tag Tuesday, guest hostess Pam has challenged us to make a tag where the background is the star.  I've had this idea floating around in my head for a while - using Tim's snowman texture fade in a way that would convey how much I'm wishing for snow, ice skating, making snowmen.... you know, all the things that a northern girl transplanted to North Carolina yearns for when the weather turns colder.

I think of this tag as a snowman wishing to happen.  The background is Glimmer misted (can't remember all of the colors, but Dragonfly is my fave).  I sprayed them on my craft mat, smooshed them on the tag, then spritzed the tag with water for a more snowflakey effect.  Then I embossed the snowman and sanded him, so that he's sort of a shadow of a snowman, looking at that big snowflake and wishing to appear.  A little pigment ink white and some mica flakes give him somewhere to call home.

This was a fun and creative challenge, and many thanks to Pam for being such an inspirational hostess.  I've got a day filled with kids' sporting events, but I'm hoping to get in some time to visit all of the lovely blogs I've been missing these past few days.  a sweet end-of-the-weekend to everyone. :)

Christmas Cards - En Masse

Our ATC club had a Christmas card swap (actual greeting cards, not ATCs) tonight.  I went with two general themes - kids and Santa - and used lots of Christmas paper scraps that I've been hoarding from years past.  A few quick and easy and *mailable* cards, very fun to make.

Here are a few using Artistic Outpost's Sleigh Ride plate, along with some Tim Holtz texture fades, glitter, Tim stamps, and Hero arts snowflakes sprinkled in:
In purple...

And white...

And blue....

 And here are a couple of Tim Holtz Santas, with ticket stamps and dies:
In white....

And blue...

Have you started your Christmas cards yet? Do you make yours?  I was very surprised when I saw that one of my very, very favorite papercrafting artists and bloggers actually orders hers from an online shop that prints them up with the customers own photos.  *Manufactured* cards, from someone who makes quite possibly the most beautiful Christmas cards I've ever seen. *Gasp!*  So whaddya think?  Is your Christmas card list so long that you have to buy them?  Does it feel weird?  Do you give handmade cards to the chosen lucky few?  Or maybe you do a Christmas letter.  Or maybe, like me, your are a queen-of-the-last-minute and end up either doing them at 2:00 AM or just throwing in the towel.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  I'm hoping to get enough done for everybody on my list this year.  Maybe.  Hopefully.... ;) 

Gingersnap Creations Color Challenge GC76

It's time for another color challenge over at Gingersnap Creations, and today it's the colors of fall: Eggplant, Avocado & Pumpkin.  I just love this rich color combo, and the DT have some beautiful projects posted for inspiration. For my card, I started out with a base of clear-embossed leaf images (from Tim Holtz), colored over with Distress Inks in Dusty Concord, Spiced Marmalade, Crushed Olive, and Peeled Paint. Next I layered on some die cut leaves made with Tim's Tattered Leaves Alterations die.  The focal image is from Cornish Heritage Farms (miss them!), surrounded by a Tattered Angels frame that has been colored with Distress Inks. The sentiment for the little tag hanging off the seam binding is from Papertrey Ink.

I hope you'll have a chance to play along - you can link up your creations over at Gingersnap Creations.  And just a teensy reminder.... today is the last day to leave a comment for my blog candy (please leave a comment before midnight EDT). Click Here to go to the blog candy post. Thanks to everyone who has already commented - I'm finding some gorgeous blogs and hearing about some great products that are new to me! :)

Compendium of Curiosities Week 18

Finally got to play along over at Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge again, which for this week is to use Dabber Resist.  I made a tag using Tim's new snowflake stamps (looooove them!), and Distress inks in Chipped Sapphire, Faded Denim, and Broken China. The glitzy swirls were made using American Crafts glitter paper, and of course the medallion uses Tim's rosette die.  The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.  I also added a little Diamond Stickles here and there for extra frosty shimmer, along with some Platinum Stickles on the rosette.

A different angle, showing more shimmer:

Have a great rest-of-the weekend, friends.  And if you haven't already, you can enter my blog candy draw by clicking HERE and leaving a comment. ;)