First Decos

What fun, I received the first two deco books to add my creations to on the same day - yesterday. These are both from the Next-Generation Stampers Group. The rules are to create art to add to the books and send them out to another participant until they full, then they return to their owners. We have 2 weeks (but 1 week is preferred) to create and send them on their way. I'm so glad I have a large supply of home made backgrounds to choose from, so I'm not doing it all from scratch.I used one of my glue resist backgrounds for the main page. I love how it gives the appearance of a night sky. The only disadvantage is, I couldn't write my name on it. Hence my name in an odd place on the page.
The second deco book came with the theme "Who Am I?" and saying we were free to do our own interpretation. I got this fun stamp set of the checklist with a variety of words to insert from Close to My Heart for use in scrapbooking. I thought it was a fun way to express who I am. The pink background was made with brayered distress ink backgrounds I did in Feb. I used Antique linen distress ink and Moonlit White Brilliance ink to add in the flourishes similar to

making the sign in pages for my personal deco book. [Added note]I stamped Coffee Bean Brilliance ink on wings over some luminous paste paper I had made and cut them out.

These will be going in the mail to some other participants tomorrow. I'm hope the owners of these books will enjoy what they see, when they finally return home.

Reuse, Recyle & Give Away

Today, I was creating Little Beauties: Birds for ccswaps. In honor of the recent Earth Day, I decided to recycle junk mail and previous made backgrounds for these beauties. Here are some of the materials I started with. I stamped the notes over the yellow bird before I took this photo. Plus the mail brought more stuff for me to recycle. I found the sample greeting cards had a very slick surface and the best inks I had to use on them were Brilliance Inks and Archival Inks.

Below you will see two photos of my creations. If you want to win one of the little booklets I made (photo at end of this post), play the Search My Blog game. Write your answers in a comment to this post. Whoever is first with the most correct answers by April 30th (this Weds) I will ask for your address and will mail you one of the booklets. In case of a tie, I will send out two. (Sorry but, I can only give away up to two, as I'm using one in a deco swap.)

Search My Blog Game

The answers to all these questions are dates to when the information was posted, you are looking for the posts that are highlighted in orange, The numbered questions correspond to the numbered little beauties above. [Update of 5/1/08: Game is over, highlighted areas are now links to the previous posts.]

1. I used my large slide mount punch from Punch Bunch to make this slide, originally for the Instant Art Swap.

2. I cut out the green medallion from Foil Flashing Fun.

3. This background was made with the Faux Silk Technique. [Here's a post with cards made with this technique.]

4. The background in the far back was made with the Glue Resist Background.

5. I used a die cut with my Cuttlebug, to cut out the image to look like a postage stamp. I used this die cut to make Faux Postage ATCs in Mica Play & Image Challenge. [and here]

6. This was very easy, I just added word stamps & a metal heart brad to part of a recycled Christmas Card. When did I use recycled Christmas cards for a Christmas Carol Book?

7. I made this background on Winter Colors using mica ink and color sprays.

8. Stamped over recycled card and added brads. When did I post my first Slide Show?

9. The background was made with Textured Gesso (post is called playing with backgrounds). [I didn't realize I also had this post labeled Textured Gesso, so it's a different technique & background than used in this beauty.]

10. The penguins (and the toucan in #9) were made using the Packing Tape Transfer technique.

11. Stamping over a commercial card. I used a similar word plate for my New Year Resolutions Swap. That time, I changed the color of the word plate with alcohol inks. This time, I left the plate as it came.

12. Again, stamping over commercial card. I recently used the same stamp in the Printed Page ATC 2 post.

Bonus Question: When did I post how I made the booklets from Messy Papers for the give away below?

Note: in #4 & #10, I used the paper where I picked up the extra ink of the craft sheet (in the Art Ventures Deco Book post on 4/24). I stamped musical notes in black over that paper.

So if you'd like one of these booklets and have lots of time to explore my blog, have fun and good luck!!! Update of 5/1/08: Winners are Rena with 12 correct answers, and Denise with 8 correct answers. (I gave credit for ambiguous way of some of the questions) They will each receive one of these books. I will also send something, not sure what yet, to Priscilla for playing, she answered the bonus question correctly. Everyone who played will receive something from me. Thanks for playing!!!

Printed Page ATCs 1

I've signed up at ccswaps to do an ATC swap on the theme printed pages. The directions are: Use some sort of printed page in your ATCs. Use some newspaper, magazine pages, book pages, background pages incorporating printed text, forms, whatever else takes your fancy. You could use this as a background, layers on your ATC, a main focal point or you could stamp onto it.

For my first ATC, I used some cruise line itineraries for my background. I sprayed walnut ink over the page and used a stamp to lift off some of the ink.

I randomly stamped a numbers stamp over the page.

I used the same ink to stamp a saying onto a ribbon.

I trimmed the background and edged it with the same ink and layered it on a metalic sheet of card stock. Then layered a vintage image on white paper to look like an old photo and used a white pen to add the word go. I added a keyhole embellishment to finish the ATC.

Printed Page ATCs 2

For the second ATC, I used dictionary pages. First I inked up the page with distress ink.

Then I sponged acrylic paint on a musical score stamp and stamped it on the dictionary page (make sure to wash acrylic paint off your stamps immediately). Let the paint dry.

To add a little depth and shimmer, I lightly sprayed on Shimmering Mist. (click on the photo for an enlarged image to see the shimmer)

I wrinkled the paper and attached it to card stock that had been run through the Xyron. And cut it down to ATC size.

Added some text with black ink and inked the edges of the ATC in black.

For the slide mount, I used my large punch bunch on some backgrounds I made earlier also using dictionay pages. I inked these edges with black ink. Added a vintage photo (leftover from a project where I mistyped a quote over the photo). And finished the design with a "made with love" heart charm.

This was a fun project, I can't wait to see what others come up with using printed pages.

Art Ventures Deco Book

I have signed up for an ART round robin deco book with my Art-Ventureres group. It was decided to send the pages without covers & binding to help keep down the cost of postage. It was up to each person to decide what size (relatively small) and shape to make the pages for their book. I thought water color paper would be a fun medium to have the members use as pages for my book and cut the paper into 3" x 4.5" pages. Although we aren't sending bound books, I had fun decorating two pages to be the inside covers of my book. I'm including them in the post, and asking those who participate to sign either the front or back inside cover.

I was going for a resist technique using Versamark ink, but it didn't work on the watercolor paper as it does on coated paper. I started with randomly inking the paper with light colored distress ink.

Next, I inked a flourish stamp with Versamark ink, stamped on the paper and heat set it. Then I added a darker layer of distress ink and watered it to cover the paper. Instead of the images appearing as a resist, they showed up as a darker color than the second ink color. I could work with that. : )

Side note: I like using a craft sheet when working with wet inks, I clean up the extra drops with a plain sheet of card stock to be used in another project someday. No waste!

I stamped some different flourishes with the lighter shade of distress ink, and used this same color to edge my papers.

To finish the page, I added a darker shade of distress inked stamps to the corners and long edges of the papers.

These will be good pages to sign and will make my book special.

Salvaging Backgrounds

When I was making backgrounds for the background swap back in February, I had a few experiments I wasn't happy with. I set these sheets aside for possibly sometime........

I'm not sure how I made these. I know for the one of the left, I experimented with mixing different types of color sprays. I did many layers, tried watering it down, more layers and decided it was too much work, and too difficult to replicate 10 times for the swap. I've signed up for a Summer ATC Swap, and these intense orange colors reminded me of the heat of summer. All it needed was black edging, black words, a vintage image, and a paper sunflower with a sun charm in its center. When I made the other background, I just didn't like it. Because I never know what I might use and that my tastes change, I kept it. I had used gold metalic spray in it, and decided the yellow & gold could work for the summer theme. It needed something more as a background. I ran it through the Cuttlebug with an embossing folder and highlighted the raised areas with distress ink.

I cut two of the swirls to use as corner holders, added a vintage image edged with gold, stamped a butterfly and the word play to which I added diamond glaze to make them pop. And edged the ATC with gold.

I'm glad I kept these backgrounds!

Foil Flashing Fun

While I was away from home, I had the inspiration to make a "metal quilt" project. I have signed up for a couple of deco book swaps and thought this would make a good page. I took foil flashing tape (you find it at the hardware store) and ran pieces of it in my cuttlebug embossing folders. I used alcohol inks to color the foil.
I cut the foil into various size pieces, removed the paper backing and attached them to a piece of card stock. I used an old sewing marking tool to make stitch lines.
I used a permanent marker to highlight the words and the "stitch" markings, and glued a metal floral charm to the center. I liked how this turned out.
For the back I used the luminous paste paper I made for a background swap in Feb, an image I received in a swap and some pink rub-ons. To continue the foil flashing theme, I ran some more pieces througn the cuttlebug embossing folder, colored with alcohol inks and then punched out the leaf shapes with a cuttlebug die.

Tagging on blogs

I've been tagged by Annie this is how it goes:1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.2. Post THE RULES on your blog.3. Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.4.Tag 7 people and link to them.5.Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.Here are my 7 random facts about me:
1: I cry very easily, anything remotely sentimental. I'll cry at the same place in a book, movie, song, picture everytime. I cry when I'm happy, sad, frustrated, angry......
2: I prefer milk chocolate over dark chocolate (hint, hint).
3: I'm hooked on watching Dancing with the Stars, maybe it's because I'm a klutz and have no rhythm.
4. I enjoying doing crossword puzzles, but the ones they do in England make no sense to me. I must not have the right sense of humor.
5. I've been fighting the curse of perfectionism for many years, and find altered arts very freeing and relaxing.
6. I like to "read" the newspaper and am sad that they are cutting back because so many people now get their news from tv and the web (I also catch up on the web, but really like holding the paper).
7. Instead of tagging anyone, I'm going to let anyone who wants to play to tag themselves. ; )

Packing Tape Transfer

I was asked If I wanted to contribute a page for a deco book for Trish's BD, and I wanted to take part, because Trish is so inspirational and I've learned lots from her challanges and examples and encouragements. Even though I'm away from home and most of my supplies, I decided I could come up with something. I had stopped by a scrapbook store earlier and picked up a flourishes stamp set and some paper for another project when I returned home next month. Not having any images with me, or the ability to print images off the internet, I looked for images in magazines to use with the Packing Tape Transfer technique. My DIL had a couple of old magazines, I found some likely images and cut them out and covered them with packing tape. If I was at home, I'd have run my bone folder over the tape, to get out bubbles and get good adhesion, not having one here, I found my fingernail worked just as well.

I soaked the tape covered images in warm water for about 5 minutes, then rubbed off the paper on the back side, and cut out the images I decided to use.
Once I had a design in mind, we stopped at the local JoAnn's where I got a fine point permanent marker (can't have too many of these) and found a clear sticker on Laughter to add to the page. I wrote in one of my favorite quotes from Emily Dickinson on the back page.

I didn't realize this photo was so blurry until after I sent this off across the pond to be added to Trish's deco.
Packing tape transfer is a great way to add images to projects, I like how you can see the paper/other images through through the images.