Friday, March 30, 2012

Fun With Canvas

Hello again, Bloglanders! I wanted to share a canvas I made just for fun. Lately I've had a little bit of awesome-class-overload, because there are just so many cool online classes going on right now. Two that I have been really enjoying are May Flaum's Field Guide class (I'm pretty sure registration for this is closed, but I think she has more fun classes coming up this year at Big Picture Classes if you want to keep an eye out) and Tim Holtz's Creative Chemistry at Online Card Classes. I think the best lesson that I've learned from both of these classes is that it is okay to just sit down and play with your crafting supplies and see what happens! I had a small canvas lying around that I had applied some Crackle Paint to and then never finished, so yesterday I just decided to play with some paint and see what happened. Here is the result:


The original Crackle Paint that was on the canvas was Worn Lipstick, so I stuck with a pink color scheme. Yesterday in Tim's class he showed us how to make a wash with acrylic paint so I did that to color the rest of the background. Then I used Gold Paint Dabber and a Crafter's Workshop stencil to do the gold stars in the corners. The hearts were cut from Grungeboard that was covered in bits from Tim's Vintage Shabby paper stash using the Mini Hearts die. I edged them with Vintage Photo ink and then stamped on them using Coffee Archival ink before coating with Rock Candy Crackle Paint. The stamping on the canvas was done with Vintage Photo and Plum Archival. Here's some close-ups:


You can really see a lot of the crackling going on in this one. =)



I think that's it for today! Thanks for looking!

*~M~*







Thursday, March 29, 2012

12 Tags of 2012 - March Tag

Hello Blog Readers! I've been absent for a while but I have a couple projects to post today. The first is my take on the March tag for 12 Tags of 2012 that Tim is doing on his blog. I didn't get to do a February tag but the mosaic technique that Tim did for this month was so cool I had to give it a try. Here's a picture of my tag:


I had to make some adjustments since I didn't have all of the same supplies that Tim had. First off, I didn't have the woodgrain stamp, but I really wanted to use this background stamp from Hero Arts. Because it has so much solid area, I was worried that if I stamped it straight on with a dark ink that it would overwhelm the design a little bit. I thought about stamping in Versamark for a watermark effect, but I was worried that would be too plain, so to add a little interest I did a "kissing" technique using one of Tim's Reflections stamps and some Walnut Stain Distress Ink. (Tim has a cool video about using Reflections here) Here's a close-up so hopefully you can see the effect of the kissing technique, and maybe also some of the detail on my mosaic flowers.


I also don't have the butterfly die Tim used, so I substituted the Mini Tattered Florals die, but other than that everything else on the tag was done pretty much how Tim demonstrates on his blog. I love this mosaic technique and have several ideas for using it on the holiday dies. Can't wait to play with it some more!


Thanks for looking! =)

*~M~*



Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Spring Green Tag

Hello, gentle readers! Has spring arrived where you are yet? Today we had hail, snow, and sunshine all in the space of 30 minutes (and in that order). That pretty much qualifies as spring weather here in the Pacific Northwest. =) My brother and I like to call it Smarch weather. Anywho, in honor of the eventually-coming spring, I made a tag full of bright greens and yellows. This tag was originally going to be my entry for last week's Grungy Monday challenge, but I didn't finish it in time to enter it. (You should still check out the technique here, it's super fun.) I also wanted to enter my tag in the color challenge over at Inspiration Emporium, hence my color scheme.


So this tag was the first time I used my Crushed Olive Distress Ink, and I have to say I had NO IDEA it was so gorgeous! It was one of the last colors I bought, because I was thinking it was going to be kind of a grungy green color....but it's really more of a gorgeous yellow-green, and on my background here with my other green inks (Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint) it just seems to make everything glow. LOVE IT. To me the background looks like leaves with sunshine shining through them. I tried to keep that kind of naturey/fantasy feel going with the rest of the embellishments.


The background images were stamped with Pearl paint dabber (also love that color). I got the butterfly in my February Studio Calico kit. The package says it's from The Gilded Bee. I checked out their shop on Etsy, and I was in butterfly heaven! They have some amazing handmade stuff there. Definitely worth a look. As beautiful as he is on his own, I did distress my butterfly a little bit with some more Crushed Olive (once I got started with it I couldn't stop!) around the edges and then some Rock Candy Distress Stickles on his wings. The flower is made with tissue tape and the lace on the bottom was cut with the Vintage Lace die and then colored with the Pearl paint dabber. The trimmings on the top were colored with Crushed Olive (told you I couldn't stop!) and then I added a little Trinket pin accented with the paint and a couple pearls. 


I will also be entering this in the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge. This week it's Anything Goes!

Thanks for looking! I hope wherever you are, you are getting some nice spring weather, and none of this Smarch stuff! =P

*~M~*

Followers