Finished Inchie Frame

Decided my inchies will best be set off by having a dark brown frame. Colored the frame and decorative chipboard piece with dark brown StazOn ink, the coated with metallic brown mica powders, more on the frame than on the decorative piece.Stamped a flourish design on the pieces with dark brown Distress ink.Last, inked a flourish stamp with Amy's Leafing Adhesive and rubbed on dark metallic brown foil as an accent.
Here's the finished Inchie Frame with all the inchies in them.

Let's see if I can remember who did each inchie. Clockwise from upper left corner: Linda, Autumn, Rena, Tracey, Rhonda, Chris, Trizzy, Mel. me, Lyn, Vickie and me again.

Using new toys for the inchie frame

I've received all the inchies from the other participants in the Inchie Frame Swap. I need to make one center piece and 2 inchies to complete my personal frame. My color scheme is red, yellow, orange with metal accents.
For the center piece, I cut a thin piece of copper and stamped on a text stamp with a mixture of black and red StazOn inks. Next, ran the copper through the Cuttlebug with a floral embossing folder and colored the raised areas with red StazOn ink and heat set.
Decided to use two mini chipboard butterflies on one of the inchies. Used the yellow portion from a package of Rainbow Opals to coat one of the mini butterflies.

For the other mini butterfly, I coated with several layers of Mango Opals, heat setting after each layer. On the last layer impressed into texture stamp inked with red StazOn ink, let cool.

I cut 1" piece of red paper and stamped a text stamp on it. Used Foil Lattice to add texture to the piece.
Added the two mini butterflies to finish this inchie.

For the second inchie, I covered it with a piece of decorative paper I received from Autumn. Added a thin strip of red-orange colored paper towel. Stamped "faith" and "love" on the background paper with red StazOn ink. Finished by added a bronze colored metal flower with a matching brad.

Lunch with Friends

Drove down to Gilbert Arizona to meet up with our friends from around the world. From L to R: Loretta (Australia), Chris (Australia), Jessie (New Zealand), Zeb )Oregon), me, [ not seen Adrienne (Wales)], Linda (Arizona), Jackie (Arizona), Carol (Australia) and Lai Sie (Australia). Wonderful to meet up with everyone!!! As we drove back to my friend Tami's house, I stopped to take this picture just outside of Scotsdale. Very Arizonian! Back to the wet weather of Washington tomorrow.

Sedona

We took a day trip up to Sedona Arizona. Started off on the Carefree Hwy and entered red rock country to enjoy fabulous views and a fun jeep ride in the back country. Traveled up Oak Creek Canyon all the way to Route 66 in Flagstaff, before returning back to Phoenix.

Cave Creek

Old Cave Creek looks like what I imagined Arizona to look like. Here are a few of the things that appealed to me:

Shrine

At the beginning of the week, we each choose a wooden shrine to work on. I picked a large narrow arch shaped shrine. Painted the inside with an assortment of Lumiere paints in blues & purples. Painted on a light brown acrylic wash over the inside of the doors and the arch frame, then painted over with gold powders in gel medium and allowed to dry.
Painted the outside of the shrine with brown acrylic paint and stamped a crackle image (designed by Zeb) with black acrylic paint, covered with a wash of gel medium & q. gold acrylic paint. Then stamped the same crackle image with brown StazOn ink and added another layer of gel medium & q. gold acrylic paint.

Inside: stamped a moon image onto the blue surface. Stamped large flourish with dark gold Lumiere paint, then painted over surface with a mixture of gel medium and very small amount of gold Lumiere paint. Stamped a different flourish with a lighter gold Lumiere paint, and then painted with a mixture of gel medium and q. gold.

Did two more layers of stamping flourishes with bronze then gold Lumiere paint and after each stamping layer, painted over the surface with a mixture of gel medium and q. gold paint. Also stamped some small stars along the arch shape in the gold Lumiere paint. I like how the layers give the surface depth, yet still allow the wood grain to show.

On the outside, I stamped the crackle stamp with gold Brilliance ink and then covered with a layer of gel medium and q. gold, let dry. Rubbed a mixture of gel medium and gold Lumiere paint on and the excess off with a baby wipe and let dry.

Colored the hinges with black metallic rub-ons. Colored the edges of the doors and along the edges of the rest of the outside of the shrine with the black metallic rub-ons. Made decorative knobs with The Nut Opals in a Krafty lady mold (thanks Adrienne for teaching me to make molds and lending me this one). Colored the raised areas and outside edges with black metallic rub-ons, then over the top with bronze metallic rub-ons. (Even with all the lovely layers of paint, the wood grain can still be seen).

Along the inner edge of the doors, added gold flakes. Decorated the inside with items to remind me of what I've learned and the people I've been with at this retreat.

Some details: adhered the cut out Fantasy film stars (from Debbie's technique) to the roof. Attached two of the Enameled Copper pieces I made in Linda's class to the top of the roof. Jessie and Debbie showed us some more fun things to do with Opals. One was sprinkling Opals between two craft sheets and ironing (here Sunburnt and Abalone) this produces a thin sheet of melted Opals which can easily be lain on any surface, heat with heat tool and the Opals will remelt and attach. Love this extra texture and shine to my shrine.

Made a mini Squishy book from the left overs of Jeni's class (the wings were also made in her class) and added some of the papers made in Cory's class to the book (thanks Adrienne for suggesting I edge the papers in gold (used gold Krylon pen). I will stamp in some art related quotes when I get back home. The angel form was made with a Krafty Lady mold and Abalone Opals. Tied on some small Arizona charms Jeni gave us, and a shell charm that Jessie made.

Now I have a beautiful piece of art that is filled with some of the techniques I learned here and many fond memories of the people I have enjoyed being with and learning from.

More Fantasy Film Fun

One of the participants at our Art Retreat, Debbie Warren, made this beautiful charm and gave each of us one. And she also demonstrated how it was made out of Fantasy Film. Here's my play with this technique. Cut up lots of assorted fantasy film onto a larger sheet of fantasy film (I used a light sheet for my large piece).

Then cut the sheet up into narrow strips and then lay them over a sheet of red line tape, until you use up all the strips. I don't think I used enough bits of fantasy film to achieve the same effect as Debbie's.

After deciding my sheet was too light, I laid a darker sheet of fantasy film over the others and ironed on. The plastic backing of the red line tape got a bit distorted, but the tape was still sticky. I cut out some star shapes to use in my shrine.

Copper Enameling

Linda Hanson of After Midnight Art Stamps taught us how to make enameled copper bracelets. Here she is showing us her beautiful bracelet.
We cut out the 24 g. copper pieces, filed down the edges, punched out the holes we'd need, bent the copper to arch the pieces and roughed up the surface to remove the oil left from our fingers.

We spread some type of liquid over the copper and layered on different colors of the enamel powders.

Between each layer of enamel, we would heat the copper to melt the enamel.

I used lots of layers of translucent enamels on my pieces.

Decided to finish off the pieces with the Opalescent white.

Here are the pieces when I finished layering on the enamel.

Decided to connect my pieces with multiple jump rings, so I now have 3 extra rectangular pieces to use in other projects.

Also made these pieces with fewer layers of translucent enamels.

And also made the piece below with a combination of beating the copper, heating without enamels and then used just a few translucent enamel layers.

This was lots of fun.

Southern Arizona

We went on a tour of Patagonia and Tubac today. Saw lots of marvelous art shops, interesting architecture and had a marvelous time. Here in the slide show are some things that caught my eye.

Fabulous Papers with Cory

Had a fun class with Cory Celaya today, she taught us many paper techniques. One was turning tissue paper and wax paper into lovely translucent papers:
Another was not to throw away the newspaper under our work area, to add acrylic paints and go on from there. Here's a start to some of mine:

Then we had a lesson on canvas. Painted the canvas with acrylics:

Added a collage layer:

Then added dark lines and stamped with white acrylics, added more paint. On the left side I added a gold wash:

Liked how it turned out, but wanted to continue to experiment, so added some of the translucent paper I made, some to the left side and some on the right.

I'll have fun using this in other projects.

Squishy Book

Had a fabulous, messy, fun filled day making Squishy Books with Jeni Calkins. She is a wonderful teacher. Had us making the covers, inside pages, special translucent pages, special embellishments and binding it all together with loads of fabulous fibers. I can not do the class justice in this post. If you have the opportunity to take a class from Jeni, do so.
For some of the inside pages, on text weight and card stock, we stamped images with VersaMark ink, sprinkled on clear embossing powder and heat set.

On other papers we stamped on images in an assortment of colors:

To make the covers, paper towels were layered over freezer paper, then we tore baby wipes into strips and let them over lay each other in lovely piles:

A mixture of gloss medium, water, color wash and perfect pearls was made in a color of our choosing in a large spray bottle and we saturated the baby wipes, while adding in other torn papers, bits of fibers, coffee filters, dryer sheets, glitter, fantasy film, pretty much "whatever" while continuing to spray on the colorized gloss medium mixture. When we were satisfied with how it looked, it was set outside to dry:

While creating the cover above, we took the sheets that were previously embossed and stamped on, and pressed them into the saturated covers to add color to those papers, and pick up bits of the added torn papers, glitter, fibers, etc. We could also grab other interesting papers to add color to , that could be included in our books. Once these papers had picked up colors, they were set aside to dry in a stack with dry copy paper in between. All the while we were adding more colorized gloss medium mixture and the bits to the covers above.

For the special translucent sheets, thin tissue paper was laid on freezer paper, sprayed with our colorized gel medium mixture, then added just thin papers, glitter, fantasy film, etc. Another tissue paper was lain on top and again sprayed with the colorized gel medium mixture. We could add more glitter, fantasy film on top if desired. This was set aside to dry.

Once the cover dried, we ironed it between nonstick mats to soften it. For a really squishy Squishy Book, you would fold it in half then fold the edges into the center fold, so the inside and outside of the cover would be the same (all the lover layers of texture). I decided I liked the contrast of the front and back of the cover, so I cut up my cover in order to be able to make 3 squishy books.

We also ironed out the inside pages, using the copy sheets (that had been in between the papers while drying) to iron off the embossing powder of the sheets that had that done. All of these papers could have more color, stamping, and whatever added. They were ironed to help the different elements become embedded within the paper.

Once the translucent sheets dried, we also ironed them between nonstick mats to softening them.

Made embellishments for our books, using an ultralight polymer clay in molds. After baking, squirted rubbing alcohol over the forms, then dropped alcohol inks on them. Once dried, rubbed on Future Floor Wax with a q-tip and let dry (this could be done in layers as desired).Here are the ones I made:

Then we sorted through our inside papers, picking card stock, heavier weight papers to be the outside of the signatures, then the other papers in various sizes to be within the signatures. These were sewn into the cover with a pamphlet stitch and loads of gorgeous fibers were added to the spine. Here's the outside of my book:

Inside front cover and some of the pages showing:

Some of the inside pages:

Some more inside pages:

I will think up what else I want to add to the book, and how I want to use it once I return home. I'll also make up the two smaller squishy books with my left over covers later. Exhausted but thrilled with having so much fun and learning a fabulous way to use up lots of odds & ends.