Alpha Stamps, meet Daily Window Bags!

Daily Window Bags - Classic Tote

The challenge this month at The Altered Alice is anything goes, and we have been sponsored by Alpha Stamps, [Store | Blog], suppliers of amazing collage supplies, exclusive rubber stamps, and wonderful collage sheets in card stock, transparency and digital formats.

In the meantime, I was contacted by Daily Window Bags and asked to decorate two of their wonderful bags. These bags are really special, as each has a clear window in one side made for stamped inserts! I love my bags; they are so well made and have beautiful apple green linings with pockets. I chose the Eight Days a Week purse and the All Around Classic Tote (plenty big enough for scrapbooking supplies of course), and naturally I wanted to decorate them with a Wonderland theme!

I decorated the straps of the All Around Classic Tote with all kinds of Alpha Stamps goodies, glued with E6000 onto black felt strips which are affixed with velcro over the bag's stitched straps.

I had so much fun picking out items for the bag: there is a royal crown for the Queen of Hearts (red added to the brass with a Copic marker); the keyhole and key for tiny door into the garden; a brass filigree fan for the White Rabbit; clock buttons for the White Rabbit's and the Mad Hatter's pocket watches, a brass butter knife for the March Hare who tried to lubricate the watch with the best butter; small silver-plated teacup, teapot and spoon charms; miniature playing cards for the Queen of Hearts subjects; card suit buttons which fit perfectly into lots of sprocket gears and mini-gears to represent the Mad Hatter's clockworks; a chunky corked bottle with the "drink me" potion, a larger clock face and game spinner instead of hands because time is broken and  it's always tea time at the Mad Hatter's, a large wooden teapot and teacup (handles and rims colored with a Copic marker), and an ornate chipboard-reinforced label at the top that is stamped with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" from the Alice's Adventures stamp set and then stickled and coated with Glossy Accents. A wire pin holds another key onto the bag handle.

The inserts are a generous 5 3/8" x 7 1/2" size. I used recycled chipboard from packaging as a backing. The background is a page from last chapter of Alice where the King of Hearts is talking at the trial, which seemed perfect for my King of Hearts insert. Images from various collage sheets in their Alice in Wonderland section are in the background. The King of Hearts in the lower left corner is a stamp from the Alice's Adventures set, which has been stamped several times and layered for dimension. All has been sponged with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Daily Window Bags - Eight Days a Week purse

I love the Eight Days a Week purse; the buckled straps add a lot of style, and the pockets on both ends are so useful for cell phone and sunglasses! For this window insert, I went with a flamingo/croquet theme. I made the background by stamping the row of flamingos from the Alice's Adventures set then sponging. I love how it turned out, and it is one of my favorite stamps in the set, so different.

I colored in an image from the "Alice Herself" collage sheet. The label is stamped and embellished with tiny brass flamingo charms, as is the ribbon bow at the bottom. The Queen of Hearts in the lower left corner is from the Alice Characters collage sheet, and Alice has been stamped and colored from the Alice's Adventures stamp set.

I LOVE these bags and you will be seeing them again in the future as I make many more inserts for them! Because I glued all my embellishments on the tote bag to black felt strips which are attached with velcro, I can even remove the embellishments to display other themes. I would love to make some Christian-themed inserts based on favorite scriptures for example, or Christmas and other holiday inserts to celebrate the seasons!

Thanks so much to Alpha Stamps for sponsoring this month at The Altered Alice, and thanks so much to Daily Window Bags for introducing me to this fabulous product line!

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this project!

I CAN Slay the Jabberwocky!

I love the final battle in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie, where Alice is dodging the Jabberwocky and trying to gather her courage to slay this hideous monster. This does not follow the books, but I still love her six impossible things! I used the Jabberwocky and the champion Alice stamps. I LOVE these images and it is rare to find them in Alice stamp collections, but  Red Eowyn has them!

I created an art journal page using water soluble crayons, collaged text, Sharpies and matte multi-medium. I had planned a lovely yellow spread (for our best butter challenge) with stenciled background textures, but things when in a completely different direction when I began to work; The only bit of yellow is her hair! Sorry about that! I began by tearing up old book pages into little scraps and built the rocky crags by gluing them down with a layer of matte medium both underneath and on top. Then I sketched in the massive chessboard. The color is all added by scribbling it on with water soluble crayons and then, instead of painting with water, you paint with matte medium (see this post for a better example of this technique). This melts the color and lets you move it around but also seals the color so it won't be disturbed by subsequent layers of color.  I added the shading to the rocks, the trees and the sky in the same way.

You can see how Alice's armor glitters with clear Gelly Roll Stardust pen. This is where I ran into trouble when I tried to add all the text and details. I couldn't get anything to write on the matte medium coated surface except Sharpies, and they did not want to write for long. I kept having to scribble on a piece of plain paper to get it going again. So I have my bold printed Sharpie text instead of the fanciful doodles I had planned, and on the trees and rocks as well. You can see the difficulty when started with the small text around Alice and the Jabberwocky; I had to switch to the larger Sharpie to get the ink to stick for the list of impossible things.

The text around the characters is bits from the Jabberwocky poem as the Mad Hatter said it in the movie:

The Jabberwock with eyes of flame.The jaws that bite.The claws that catch.

Beware of the Jabberwock, my son,and the Frumious Bandersnatch. 

He took his Vorpal Sword in hand.The Vorpal blade went snicker-snackHe left it dead, and with its head,He went galumping back."

And the six impossible things that Alice says in the movie:

"Six impossible things. Count them, Alice.There's a potion that can make you shrink.And a cake that can make you grow.Animals can talk.Cats can disappear.There is a place called Wonderland.I can slay the Jabberwocky."

I hope you  enjoy this art journal page although it turned out completely different from my vision, and go visit the Altered Alice to see the Best Butter challenge winner and honorable mentions! Please leave a comment before you go, I love hearing from you.

Last Week for The Altered Alice "Tea Things" Challenge!

I couldn't resist making another project with this wonderful collage sheets from One Crabapple; this is a hybrid project that started off digital and soon moved into the paper and scissors realm! The challenge this month is to have a teapot or teacup on your creation, and you need to get your entry in by Friday, July 29, to have a chance to win 5 collage sheets of your choice!

All elements shown are from these collage sheets - can you find all the elements?

 

I made a digital collage using Photoshop, which was lots of fun as I could resize or flip things to suit my composition. One of the elements was the fabulous nonsense quote, so I used that large in the background and small in the upper right corner. I thought it would be fun for Alice and the Caterpillar to have tea! I also wanted to include the frame as a nod to "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There".  I lightened up my image a bit as it prints darker than you see it on the screen:

Then I printed out several copies on my *new* color LASER printer - you can color me happy, happy, happy! I have wanted a color laser for years!  I took an 8x10 inch stretched canvas, painted the edges black, and then used gel medium to paste one complete printout to the canvas.  Then I cut up all the elements - Alice with teacup, frame, mushrooms, hookah, teapot, caterpillar, and monogram - after first pasting the sheets to cardstock to make them more sturdy. 

Then I went into a pop-dot frenzy, using both eighth inch and sixteenth inch foam mounting tape to get different levels of dimension. The frame is popped up from the background and other elements are popped up higher. I think this angled photo shows some of the dimension. No where near the dizzying heights that Donna of Popsicle Toes achieves, but still a lot of dimension! ;-)

The completed piece, I am very happy with how this hybrid project turned out. My two One Crabapple projects are my first attempts at digital crafting, and I have discovered that unless the digital project moves into the paper realm I'm not happy - I need the satisfaction of cutting and gluing and making a fine mess!

For those of you thinking about a new color printer, consider a color laser/led printer. I purchased a Brother HL 4570CDW from Amazon and I am thrilled with it. Amazon offers a good discount on the Brother toner cartridges, and the printer is sold from Amazon so I got free shipping and the assurance of Amazon's customer service.  This printer is about $100+ more than the same model without the wireless feature, but I wanted to be able to print from my iPhone and the freedom to place the printer anywhere without needing to hook it up to my router.  Brother has a personal line of color laser/led printers and an office line - this is from the more robust office line which ships with fully charged toner cartridges instead of partially filled starter cartridges. I also love it that it is a duplex printer - I have been making my own double-sided patterned paper!

I did not use my color ink jet very often, so every time I needed to use it I had to clean the print heads to unclog the nozzles, wasting a lot of ink. My cost per page was astronomical as I was only getting partial use of the ink cartridges before they dried up.The toner will be much more cost effective as the toner cartidges won't dry up or clog.  I also discovered it was just as easy for me to print photos through an online service like Wal-Mart or Walgreens, so I don't need an inkjet for photo printing. The other problem with the ink jet was that it was not craft friendly - I couldn't get any glue or decoupage on the prints as it would mar the finish. That is not a problem with the color laser printouts! The toner printouts are more durable - I can use gel medium over them, spritz them with Perfect Pearls, decoupage them, all things that would mar the finish of inkjet printouts.

Winners will be posted next Sunday so be sure to check back on The Altered Alice.  To see the rest of this week's design team inspiration pieces, click HERE, there are some fantastic projects to see!

I'd love it if you'd leave a comment before you go!

Quick Collage Stamping

One night after dinner at my sister's house, she asked for a quick demo of this emboss/resist technique I kept telling her about. We moved into the craft room and I had fun raiding her stamp stash. Isn't it fun when you get to play with other people's toys? I picked out a background stamp, a focal image tag stamp, a birthday definition, a sun, and an accent image of letters and postcards. I set up near the heat gun, got out the clear detail embossing powder, located a versamarker pen and prismacolors and a few inkpads in my favorite colors. Now we were ready to roll!

Click to enlarge

This is a true one-layer card - this started off as a plain cream card front. There is no patterned paper or pre-colored images. When you stamp with the emboss/resist technique, you stamp the items in front first and move your way to the background. So the order here was:

1. Envelopes
2. Birthday dictionary definition
3. Tag image
4. Sun
5. Diamond background

I stamped the envelopes near the bottom of the card front and colored them in with Prismacolor pencils. Notice that I colored in some gray shadows where one envelope overlapped another; this adds a lot of dimension without adding any layers. Then I colored over the whole stamped image with a Versamarker pen, which writes with clear watermark/embossing ink. I sprinkled clear detail embossing powder over the whole colored image and heat embossed. Now this layer of stamping will not be affected by the stamping that will come after it, as the embossing will repel future applications of ink.

Click to enlarge

Points for perfection: This card shows several flaws that happened with the Versamarker step. I was trying to move too fast and should have taken a bit more care. See the bottom corner of the envelope just to the left of middle?  I missed coloring in one little corner with the Versamarker, so the brown sponging that came later was able to stain the unprotected corner.  On several of the other envelopes, my Versamarker coloring went just outside the lines, so the subsequent brown sponging left white gaps where the embossing resisted the ink.  To avoid these problems, color the Versamarker up to the lines but not on or over the lines. It is better to be inside the lines than out of them.

I stamped the birthday dictionary defintion at an angle, colored a rectangular area with a Versamarker to encompass the text and heat embossed with clear detail powder. Next I stamped the tag. Although it is actually stamped on top of the envelopes and birthday definition, the glossy embossing does not accept the ink and easily wiped clean.  I colored in the tag with Prismacolor pencils, covered the entire surface with a Versamarker and heat embossed with clear detail powder.

Then the sun was inked with bright copper, then a dark brown inkpad was dabbed onto the eyes, nose and mouth, then stamped and colored in with Prismacolor pencils.  I colored with a Versamarker on the sun face and yellow rays, but NOT over the copper radient lines. Then I heat embossed the sun with clear detail powder.

Click to enlarge

Last, the diamond background was stamped with ochre ink over the entire surface. The open areas of the pattern were sponged with turquoise blue. Dark brown was sponged all around the edges. Notice how you can see the diamonds through the sun's radient lines but not in the yellow rays.  A slightly damp paper towel was used to wipe all the embossed surfaces clean of ink.  Shadows were added with a gray Prismacolor pencil around some elements to give a more 3D look. Voila!
Once you get used to the steps, this is a really fast technique, without the hassle of making masks out of paper. About 30 minutes for this card, not counting the stash raiding time! ;-)

I am entering this in the Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge #89: Casino Royale. Although this man has a moustache, he reminds me of Bond lounging on the Mediterranean coast while he was happy with his love, before the betrayal. The European locale, the travel implied by the map, it all makes me think of the movie. The envelopes remind me of all the nationalities of the players in the poker game in the beginning. I know I am missing a silhouette, I just couldn't figure out how to work it in!

I hope you'll give the emboss/resist technique a try!  Please leave me a comment, I love to hear from you!

Stamps: Tin Can Mail (Inkadinkado) - tag and envelopes; Hero Arts - birthday definition; A Stamp in the Hand - sun; Stampin' Up! - Print Pattern (background).
Paper: Value Pack - 5 x 6.5 inch ivory card and envelope.
Ink: Marvy Matchables - black, copper, brown, turquoise and ochre; Tsukeniko - Versamarker; Prismacolor - colored pencils.
Miscellaneous: Ranger - clear detail embossing powder; heat gun; sponges.

CHAPTER 16: What's YOUR Muchness?

 

Edited to add: I am THRILLED to announce that this project won the Audrey for Cinema Saturday Challenge #82: Alice in Wonderland!

The Mad Hatter said to Alice: "You used to be much muchier before! Yes, you were much more Alice the last time we met. You've lost your muchness..."

Alice replied:"My MUCHNESS?"

The Mad Hatter pointed to her heart and repeated "Yes, your muchness..."

We have MUCH MUCHNESS to be excited about today! Our sponsor this week is the sweet Prairie Fairy Designs and we have a fabulous prize: the winner's choice of 5 digital images from Prairie Fairy Designs!

So, what's YOUR MUCHNESS? We want to know the HEART of your stamping style. Whether it's your favorite embellishment, "signature style", fave technique...we WANT TO SEE the MUCHNESS! Upload your card or creation to the Oh, Alice blog by Friday, June 11th at 8pm CST to enter to WIN the prize from Prairie Fairy! In the mean time, let us know on your blog posts or SCS description what YOUR muchness is...we can't wait to see!

MY MUCHNESS: You know how some people make those elegant, minimalist "Clean and Simple (CAS)" cards. Others are masters of "Vintage" or "Shabby Chic."I have decided that MY MUCHNESS, or my "signature stamping style" is "OVER THE TOP" but I try to do it really, really well! So let's hear it for the "OTT" stamping style!



You can click the photo above to make it bigger. I had a wood plaque in my stash that had the word "Dream" on it. The natural, unpainted wood surface was already sanded and coated with a soft clear gloss, all ready for altering!

I started by stamping various Alice stamps around the big word, coloring in each image with Prismacolor pencils.



I masked each image with cut-out post-it notes, and filled in the background with a harlequin diamond pattern stamped with red chalk ink. I thought the diamonds were very "suitable", get it? One of the card suits? The background looked too "flat" so once the ink was completely dry, I colored in the open diamonds with white Prismacolor pencil and then used a gray pencil to add a little shadow to the side of the red diamonds. This gave the background a lot of dimension!



Then I added some doodles with a super-fine tipped black Sharpie! I put "Alice" inside the "D" of Dream. I sketched in a row of card suit symbols under the word Dream, filling them in with red and black Sharpies, and then printed "Wonderland" beneath that. I scribbled "I'm late! I'm late!" near the white rabbit holding a watch in the upper right corner.



By this time the word "Dream" had diamonds all over it and was looking the worse for wear! With a silver paint pen, I added a "drop shadow" to the right side of each letter. Then I carefully filled in the letters with a Versamarker and heat embossed it with ultra-thick black embossing powder. I repeated this a couple more times until it was quite thick.



You can see the dimension of the embossing in the glare, and in the photo below. It really adds a lot! Then I added copper foil tape around the edges. The adhesive on copper foil tape is pressure sensitive, so I burnished it on firmly with a bone folder. You can click the photo below to make it bigger.



It still looked unfinished! I wanted it to be taller, not so horizontal. What to do, what to do? I was rummaging through drawers of stash and stabbed myself on a red push pin. Hmmmm. Yes, I was able to push in a row of pins across the bottom! Time for some tags! Gotta love the tags!



I started a bunch of manila shipping tags. I stamped the rabbit first and filled him in with Prismacolor pencils, then stamped the edge with the harlequin diamond stamp and filled it in with white and a gray drop shadow as before. I masked then stippled the background with several colors using Color Duster brushes. Then I made a tag that matches the one tucked into the Mad Hatter's hatband: "In this Style 10/6" which, for us ingnorant Yankees means ten schillings and sixpence, or half a guineau back in Alice's day! I started with the diamonds then mimicked the writing on Tenniel's original illustration. I liked the text so much I added "Down the Rabbit hole" to the first tag.

I stepped back and took a look. If I added anymore images like the rabbit, it was going to take away from the wood plaque. So text only - I thought of some short text snippets I could put on my other tags and the first one that came to mind was the Caterpillar asking Alice "Who are you?" and then of course the other size changing scenes with "Drink Me" and "Eat Me" finished it off.

I have temporarily added black and white ribbons to hang it, but I think I may look for some Tim Holtz type of chain or similar to hang it with in the future. A couple coats of clear and I was done for now.

One more view of the completed piece! Click the image to enlarge.



I hope you enjoyed my little journey through Wonderland and the sharing of a bit of the my creative process! I know it is not good manners to say it about your own work but I LOVE this thing!! So after all that good work, I thought I deserved a reward and bought these:

I have also entered this piece in the Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge #82. The challenge requirement is just to go wild and "create something out of the box" - something that goes outside of the traditional card. By happy coincidence their challenge this week is the new Alice in Wonderland movie!!!

You are also supposed to indicate which part of the movie inspired it, and I would have to say, aside from being inspired by the part where the Mad Hatter tells Alice about her missing muchness,  I was completely inspired by the WHOLE movie, LOL! It was AMAZING and I've already watched my new DVD three times! I am so happy that the DVD came out right after Alice left the local theater, but I miss the 3D effect on the big screen!

Last, I am sharing it on Gingersnaps Mad Hatter Day post!

Happy Day!  Please leave me a comment, I love hearing from you!

Stamps: Stamper's Anonymous - diamond pattern; Nature's Blessings - all other stamps.
Ink/Coloring: Stazon - Black; Colorbox - Lipstick Red Chalk; Sharpies - red and black; Assorted Marvy Matchable inks for distressing; Prismacolor pencils; Krylon Leafing Pen - Silver.
Media: Wooden Plaque; Manila Shipping Tags
Miscellaneous: Ultra-Thick Embossing Enamel - Black; Ribbon; Push Pins; Post-it notes for masking.

Mourning Collage for my Mother

After being a primary caregiver for Mom during her illness and death, I was pretty churned up. I found it tremendously helpful to work through some of that grief by making small private artworks to both honor her and to express some of what I was feeling. I took some of my favorite stamps,  a couple photos that seemed to work with my idea, and a copy of the program from her funeral service (which also contained the obituary I had just written) and got busy. This is what resulted - I can't tell you how much I treasure this piece. So special and so intimate that I am sharing with you after six years, because I wanted to share it with Laura Fredrickson of Scrapnextras who recently lost her own beloved mother.  Look:
(Click photo for larger view)


I took an inexpensive 8½ x 11 inch document frame from Wal-Mart. I selected this frame becuase it had a fillet that was about half an inch deep, so it had a built in shadowbox space. I have a wonderful good quality set of Italian Maimeri Venezia watercolors which I purchased from Marina Lenzano of Cherry Pie Art Stamps. I also purchased from her the wonderful metallic powders made to mix with them. All the coloring and shimmer you see was done this way. I watercolored the mat, torn pieces from the program, and some beautiful images that I stamped on heavyweight textured watercolor paper. I added emphasis here and there with a white gel pen.

Some of the details:

This scrap was torn from the cover of the funeral service program, which contained her obituary, a poem written in her honor, some appropriate Bible verses, as well as the order of service. I liked it that the title was "A Celebration of LIFE" - because Mom's life was certainly worthy of celebration!

This fabulous sentiment is the same one I use inside my favorite sympathy card: "Christ has made of death a narrow starlit strip between the companionships of yesterday and the reunions of tomorrow" from Wordsworth Stamps. God knows I hope for the reunions of tomorrow! When Mom died, I did not want to hear that it was God's will, or all for the best.  I wanted to hear that I would one day see her again!! I can assure you that that desire has made me a much better Christian, so I can be sure I'll wind up in the good place, as I'm sure she went to heaven.  The starry Milky Way background stamp and the full moon stamp are from Stampscapes.  I found this photo of Mom walking down a path in Ireland, looking back from further down the lane, and I thought it was perfect - she was further along in the journey towards heaven than we are. leading the way.  In Photoshop I colorized and masked everything except her to fit with my sorrowful blue color scheme, printed it on glossy photo paper and trimmed it out. The white handwriting down the right side says "Forever in our hearts."

I tore scraps from the obituary and watercolored them, than scribbled to emphasize certain elements with a white gel pen. Some of the elements included a thank you to the hospice nurses and health aids who enabled us to keep Mom at home until the very end. Support your local hospice workers, they are truly angels on earth. It takes STRONG special people to provide their patients with such loving personal care, knowing they will so soon be gone.

This AMAZING angel image is another stamp from the talented Marina Lenzano of Cherry Pie Art Stamps. I had the good luck to visit her home and see where she designs and presses her stamps. I have hundreds of Cherry Pie stamps - they are some of my very favorites! I watercolored it with the metallic powders mixed in with the paints. I tore the shape out, pulling the margin towards me to create a deep deckle and painted the deckled edge also.  Below that is another scrap from the program with a Bible verse from Matthew: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." This is one of my favorite verses when people have died after a painful illness. I can assure you that death was a blessed release for my mother, and indeed for all of us, by the time the end arrived.

Thoughts:

Some items I would change. I used the same image of her on the path twice. Since then, I have received a copy of her college portait, and I would like to replace the photo in the upper left corner to have the two faces, young and old, instead of the path photo.  This is the portrait I would like to include with her older portrait:

After all this talk of death, I thought I would leave you with a photo of my Mom with one of her granddaughters that really captures her spirit. She was so warm and charming, a wonderful hostess, and such a joy to be around. She was also into crafts and needlework and artwork. We all still miss her SO  MUCH.  But time lets you think of the good times instead of focusing so much on the hole their departure leaves in your heart.

Love you Mom!!!