Christmas Canvases

Yesterday was a very full-on day for me. I taught my last atc class before Christmas, which was webbing spray, we also had a mini Christmas party during the class and the girls bought some very yummy treats to share! Who would've thought strawberries & marshmallows on a toothpick could taste so good!!!


Next up was the staff Christmas party at Natalie's house (the owner of the store) for Scraptivate, the most awesome shop where I work and teach here in Perth. We frequently get told by customers that we have the best and most unusual goodies in our store, a different range to all the other scrapbooking/papercraft stores in Perth AND we have the most helpful and friendly staff and teachers! Well, yep, I'd have to agree, we ROCK!!! So it was a delightful gathering of the staff/teachers and we had a Kris Kringle gift exchange. I received a fantastic mask from my pal Viv as well as some wonderful book pages with some "different" images and text that I'll definitely use on my canvases!

EDIT: This is the link here to the mask that Viv made for me...she did a great job photographing it and putting it on her blog so you can see how cool it is!!!


This is the canvas I made for Megan, who was my swap partner. From memory it's around 10" x 7" so it's a bit larger than the other 5 x 7's that I've done before. Still has the texture paste done first, then the Gothic book page added, then painted - Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and a wash of Dioxazine Purple plus some Quinacridone Crimson for some added colour. Add an image, some German scrap, some stamping (Gothic large script from Michelle Ward's Printed Matter rubber plate), then finally some gold embossing on the small Gothic script from the same rubber plate as well as on the word "sanctuary".

After the staff Christmas party we headed off at 8pm to Elice's 21st party at a restaurant, Elice is my son Jarred's girlfriend. He and Elice are over here in Perth for a month as Jarred is in the air-force and lives on the other side of the country, he's based at Williamtown near Newcastle, New South Wales. Actually, on Wednesday nights on SBS at 8pm there is a new series called Top Gun Pilots (I think?) and there is a lot of filming done at Williamtown so don't know if I'll actually get to see Jarred in it but he did tell me they filmed them doing the stuff that aircraft technicians do - yep, he's what they call a "black-hander"....wonder why??? lol It's a 6 part series and last Wednesday (12th Dec) was the first episode. Check it out if you're interested...we obviously are!

This brings us to today....Sunday....I have another Christmas engagement in the form of a lunch at a restaurant with the girls from the atc/abc clubs (art tarts club and altered book club). We are also doing a Kris Kringle exchange and I'm going to risk putting this next canvas up here as I'm hoping my recipient won't read my blog before she goes to the lunch today! It's a smaller canvas, 4" x 4" and I used the wonderful Tim's Shimmer - well this is what I call it anyway. It's the potion that he posted recently on his blog during his 12 tags of Christmas instructions. The recipe is: one dropper full of distress re-inker (I used brushed corduroy), 1 portion of Perfect Pearls - the end of a pop-stick is used for measuring this (I used Gold P/P), 3/4's fill one of the Ranger Mini Mister bottles with water after first adding the re-inker & P/P...then shake and spray.....delightful......Tim's Shimmer.....definitely will be doing this in a class! This canvas also makes use of the inchies and has texture paste that the inchies sit into.

Long-winded post today, if you've got this far and actually read what I've written, gold star for perseverence! If you've skimmed and just checked out the pics, well that's fine too! ;-)

Where in the World & webbing spray

I thought I'd take this opportunity to join an easy Crusade on Michelle Ward's Street Team this month.....entitled Where in the World? As vast as this big old planet is, the internet has certainly drawn like-minded souls together and for a visual art form, it couldn't be more perfect, well, maybe except for when they do that hologram 3-d thing eventually!!!

So I'm an Aussie, born in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. Perth is the most isolated capital city in the World, which I think personally is a good thing! We have mild winters, no snow over on this side of Australia as we have no mountains, just hills. But our summers can get pretty hot - several days in a row of 40+ Centigrade is common each summer, but at least it is a dry heat - not much humidity though that is changing as the years go by....thank you global warming!!! NOT!!! Christmas is our hot time of the year so pictures of snowmen & people all rugged up makes us break out into a sweat, sorry...perspire, forgot for a moment that ladies perspire, they don't sweat...yeah, right!

I've always lived in Perth but spent one year living in Wittenoom with my family when I was 7. Yes, THE Wittenoom, town of the great asbestos debacle. The 2 room school I went to had asbestos strewn around the playground and we were always picking up chunks of asbestos rocks and peeling back the fibres, it was also throughout our gardens..... shameful huh! I have also spent some months hitch-hiking (which you wouldn't do now) around up North of Western Australia when I was a teenager too - you know, that period when you are around 18/19 and you are trying to "find" yourself??? Don't think I did, but I had a good time!

I'm a Perth-ite through-and-through, love this city on the Swan River with it's magnificent beaches (that I used to go to when younger - can't stand the sand now.....what a "girl", lol), the proximity to the fabulous wine country down south and the overall relaxed mode of the people here. Think the population of Perth is just over 1 million now, considering we have around 21 million in the whole of Australia, we are isolated.....and loving it! If you want more info on Perth and a couple of cool pics, click here or here.

Now onto the final webbing spray atc for this coming Saturday's class, actually MAYBE the final one as I may yet do more???

Just goes to show you that you don't have to use lots of webbing spray to get a good look! This is a little bit of black onto a pre-prepared background using glued down old torn papers (that you can't see) and texture paste that has been cut into and smooshed around with an old credit card, dried, then painted with the FolkArt Metallic Paint in Pearl White.

I'm also doing a few bits & pieces for Xmas for various girls, so hopefully I'll get them scanned or photographed before giving them away.....back to the studio!

Webbing Spray & a couple more colourwash atc's

I ordered a new stamp and absolutely LOVE how it turned out on this colourwash background! It's from Stampotique and is called "glimmering hope" (type the name in the search box on their website to find it)....cool name for a creepy cool stamp, or, as I prefer spooky cute! It's on a background of matte white card stock with some lettuce & butterscotch colours of the Ranger Colourwashes. Main thing to remember about these is WEAR GLOVES!!! Unless you don't mind multi-hued hands for several days that is.



I was really impressed with how fantastic the white embossing powder just jumps out from the background. The words Strange Reality have been stamped on white shrink plastic and shrunk (obviously!). You have to stamp her out on a larger piece of card to see her full beauty as she's a little large for an atc, she's 5" high.









Similar colouring in the next one, I'm not generally a green person unless it's an olive/khaki sort of colour but the combo of lettuce & butterscotch is just too gorgeous to ignore. The green I don't really like is more a lawn-coloured green. Maybe I like my lawn to be dying off in parts - hence the butterscotch! lol Once again, the wording (Life's Journey) has been stamped on white shrink plastic that has been coloured with those magic coloured sharpies then blended with blending solution.



The next atc class on Saturday is using webbing sprays. We have white, black, gold and silver in store and they are really easy to use. I do my spraying into a large spray box - actually a large shoe box with an attached lid, it's also where I do my colourwash sprays as well....keeps it all nice and contained and not all over your table.

Here are a couple that I've made for Saturday, one more is being finished today and I'll put that one up when I post next.

Next one is a little hard to see the white webbing spray on the dark gray background as the image in the frame is a transparency and I've mounted it onto foam tape so it has a fair amount of depth, which the scanner struggles with!

Off to work.......

More Colourwash,Resin Fresco & Beading too!

I spent today playing in my studio after waking at 4am and then laying there for a couple of hours going through some ideas in my head. Actually, the dog woke me.....old age being what it is she can't hold her "water" all night....something I don't have a problem with fortunately!

So this is the raffle atc for Saturday's atc class which is the Colourwash Technique.

I have another couple that I'm working on for Saturday and will post them later in the week. The bird, branch and hand holding the egg is from Michelle Ward's range of stamps, though they are from one of her clear sheets which, from memory, is sold through Stampington. The background chicken wire is a Lost Coast atc background stamp.



Next up is the raffle atc for next Tuesday night's atc class, Resin Fresco Technique using UTEE (ultra-thick embossing enamel for the uninitiated), gesso and paint. Love the lumpy bumpy texture that this creates! The brown colour down the sides is actually bronze paint (Golden's), don't you hate how the computer just flattens anything that is shiny or metallic!!! I've used Helmar 2 part crackle on the image in the centre.

This is another sample for that same class.....love this turquoise colour! Yep, used Michelle's large gothic script stamp for the background here, it's from her Printed Matter plate at Green Pepper Press. A girl can NEVER have enough gothic script stamps in my opinion or enough German Scrap available at Scraptivate (I used the white Baroque German Scrap and painted it with Aquarmarine FolkArt Metallic Paint).

This is an atc I sent over to Ruth, a girl on a yahoo group I belong to as a RAK....which I hardly ever do any more as my atc's these days are either made as samples or raffles. It's the tissue paper background from the last Saturday atc class. More German Scrap and some gorgeous Ranger Antiquities embossing powder in Rust.





Now for a throw-back to a previous hobby.....beading! I used to love spending hours doing beading, it's so therapeutic...you don't realise how long you spend absorbed in the little tiny beads, co-ordinating colours and creating whatever shapes you like. This is a beaded brooch that I made using the most glorious golds and browns. I'm a fan of free-style beading, no such thing as a mistake as you just go where you want with it. It's more more forgiving than some of the more structured styles, though I have done that as well and do enjoy it, free-style is still my favourite!

Colourwash Background Technique & help!!!

First off, I have a favour to ask, if any of you know the company that makes the stamp on this first atc, please let me know. Even better, if you have one and you want to sell it, let me know that too! I have a girl in my atc class who is desperate to own it....she'll probably sell you (or at least loan) her first-born she is that enamoured by it! It's a wood mounted one, it's called "Girl with a purse" but it doesn't have a company on the wood so I couldn't tell her where I got it from!

The background on it is the next technique that's coming up in about 9 days time - Colourwash Background Technique. Not saying too much more about it at the moment as you know my girls....they like to practice BEFORE the class and that is simply not allowed! lol I have stamped the image onto gloss and coloured it with Twinkling H2O's before cutting out and attaching to the background. Yeah....I know.....kinda bright for me but as I've said before, I'm a Gemini so I'm allowed to be changeable!

Next one is the same technique....

Now for another Tissue Paper background one from last Saturday's atc class, love the colours in this one!

Last one...this is the raffle atc from Tuesday's class - Canvas Paper Rinse Aid Resist.

Comments are always welcome, even from my friends who I see!!!! hint...hint...hint....lol

more Tissue Paper Background

Here is another of the Tissue Paper Background atc's for today's atc class, black tissue paper again with silver embossing powder. It has more embossing powder on it as I pushed the black tissue paper down too flat, not really incorrect, just more embossing powder on it than I wanted so the next one I did I pressed the tissue paper down more softly. That picture is in the previous post below. Thanks must go to the awesome Michelle Ward for sending me the HIM stamp in a previous package I received from her! I stamped it with white Stazon onto transparency and cut a section out of the tissue paper and stuck the transparency behind so you could see the plain black background of the black mat board my atc's are always mounted on. The heart is stamped onto white shrink plastic, then shrunk and attached, Ruby Treasure Jewels are rubbed around the edge to give the crimson (blood!) colour.

I decided instead of doing more tissue paper atc's, I should be finishing off my 27 atc's for a technique book swap that's due next week. There are 27 of us are taking part in this, so we'll all end up with a fantastic book of atc's, each showcasing a wonderful technique with instructions listed at the back of the book.

I had taken part in another technique book through Stampgropers (a local Western Australian stamp group) and absolutely loved it! This particular technique book lives at Scraptivate where I work and every customer who looks at it just falls in love with it......AND wants to know when I'm teaching the class so they can make their own! Well, if you have a spare couple of MONTHS!!! lol

Anyway....back to the 27 technique atc's.....I did finish them off, they just needed a word on them. I coloured a piece of chipboard with a brown sharpie and then punched the letters with a metal alphabet punch into the chipboard. Then rubbed Classic Gold Treasure Gold lightly over the top followed by Silver Treasure Gold to give it a metallic look. My technique is Gel Medium Transfer, using Golden Soft Gel (matte) onto book pages.

Tissue Paper Background Technique

Tissue paper background has been around for a while....it has various permutations but these are the ones I'll be showing the girls on Saturday at the next atc class. We'll be using black tissue paper, dress-making tissue paper and plain ol' white tissue paper. Three different ways of attaching it too.... Xyron 250, glue-stick and jac paper. The idea behind having a great background is to show it off...so don't cover it all up too much, you still want to see what all the effort was for!

First up, "Certified", this is dress-making tissue with the oh so fabulous colour, Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold (Golden Paints of course).




Next up is "Ray". This is black tissue paper with Gold embossing powder. The sun up the top is a piece of mat board that has had 4 layers of Gold embossing powder melted onto it, one layer after the other, before adding the final layer, ink up a stamp with embossing ink and quickly before the final layer of embossing cools, stamp into it to get a great embossed image!






Okay, this next one had me stumped for a while, I used a combination of a yellow and a yellow/green paint onto plain white tissue and realised this is just SO not my colour combo!!! So I had to add some interference green and some Jenkins Green to darken it slightly before I was happy with it. I've used the scratches stamp from Stampers Anonymous (a Tim Holtz one....great stamp!) and embossed this with Patina Gold embossing powder...a gorgeous combination of black and gold embossing powders mixed together for a great antique look. Go ahead! Try mixing your own embossing powders to get some fantastic combinations like this one! I used this same embossing powder on the remaining exposed double sided tape above the words that I attached to a piece of chipboard. Does that make sense?



I do have another one finished and another one almost finished, so I will endeavour to post pics tomorrow.

Oh, almost forgot! In the last post I made a cryptic note about what I used to colour some of the shrink plastic, it looked like this ********! Give up? None of the girls in the atc class guessed what I used....though they should have, I use these ALL the time! SHARPIES!!! Scribble some sharpies on to the shrink plastic, coloured ones of course, you don't have to completely cover it as too much will make it too dark. Then take some blending solution (Ranger - from the alcohol ink line) on your felt pad and blend it like you would alcohol inks.....FABULOUS colour!!! Stamp, then shrink and if you want, coat with Dimensional Magic, Papier Glass or Diamond Glaze - all are a similar type of dimensional coating.

More shrink plastic atc's & Tim's crackle paint!

Below are more of my shrink plastic atc's....

First up is the raffle one for the girls tomorrow at the atc class - canvas paper background (rinse-aid resist), plus one of Julie van Oosten's new houses (available here) - this I've coated with Ranger Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink then the Rust Antiquities embossing powder....gorgeous rusty colour and quite matte too...not shiny at all! The shrink plastic is white, coloured with alcohol inks (less is definitely more!) and then stamped with Timber Brown Stazon.

The reason I said earlier about going easy on the alcohol inks on shrink plastic is shown below! This atc is another ERROR ALERT!!! ERROR ALERT!!! If you use too much alcohol ink then the piece of shrink plastic is really, really, REALLY, dark when it shrinks down. I loved the colours in this piece with the words on it though, so I decided to cut a little window in the back of the mat board. So if you are looking at the atc in the palm of your hand you can see it fine, it just looks quite muted. But when you hold it up to the light...oh my!!!! Stained glass effects galore!!! I used the ruff'n'ready (pre-sanded) shrink plastic for this top piece with the word stamp and alcohol inked the back of it, then stamped in Timber Brown Stazon on the front. The bottom picture is another ink-jet printed image on shrink plastic. Yep, did a whole page of images!

Okay, we just got the new Ranger Crackle Paint in at Scraptivate and I decided to try out the Antique Linen on some chipboard. Can you say G O R G E O U S or what!!! I'm definitely going to be trying out the other colours, so simple to use, slap it on, walk away and come back amazed! I used Walnut Stain Distress Ink to further enhance the cracks. This piece also has an ink-jet printed shrink plastic picture (surprised???). We also have just got in store the Ranger Stickles, these have been around for a while and I've had Diamond (which I love) but I bought the Platinum and smeared it over the shrunk picture before doing a coat of Dimensional Magic. Turned out quite nicely. I'm happy with it anyway. A little more "glitzy" than I usually do but I AM a Gemini so I'm allowed to be change-able.

So the door bell rings at 8am this morning, a parcel is waiting. OH MY GOD!!!! The fabulous Belinda Schneider sent me some awesome stuff!!! A magazine with the very delectable Ville Valo (lead singer of HIM) on the cover - article inside. A whole book of that wonderful Germanic Script that I sooooo love (now I can stop photocopying the 6 pages I have!!! lol). Also, ta-da!!!!! I now OWN one of Belinda's amazing Gothic Icicle Dolls with the very cool bat stitched to her back.....I coveted these as soon as I saw them here.....might sleep with it tonight! Also included was a gift wrapping sheet with more script and Gothic-type pictures. Talk about spoilt!

Thank you Belinda....you're a......DOLL! ~groan~

Arty Shrink Plastic???

Can Shrink Plastic (Shrinky Dinks) be arty? Or is it merely an old-fashioned stamping product that has had it's day? Nay I Say!!!!! Shrink Plastic CAN be arty and I intend to prove this to the girls in my atc class next Saturday when we tackle the still "oooooohhhhh and aaaaaaaahhhhh" inspiring humble plastic. Yep, grown women are still just as amazed as kids, when they watch their stamped piece shrivel and shrink and curl up on itself, only to flatten out miraculously and reveal a fantastic little rendition of the larger former item.

A little experiment I tried was running some white shrink plastic through my printer (Epson with Durabrite inks). It printed out okay...if a little blurry in spots because I didn't bother to sand the shrink plastic first (like you should if you are applying colour). Just thought I'd "wing it"! You need to be really careful not to touch the colour as it doesn't dry until it's heated so cut out carefully!!! Go on...ask me how I know!!! lol One thing though, you really need to have a PALE image because as you know, the colour really intensifies as it shrinks down. Enough blabber.....on with the samples...

This one, "Relique", is one of the inkjet printer ones. It's Michelangelo's pointing hands that are the printed image and the little bits of embossing powder in the top right & left hand corner cover a smudgy finger-print from touching the print while still wet. Aren't you glad I ALWAYS tell you my mistakes! ;-)

The next atc is a stamped image that has been coloured with.....********.....no, not a typo....I can't tell you because it's a surprise for the Saturday atc girls. All will be revealed after Saturday's class. I'm doing this because I KNOW they read my blog and I can't give all my surprises away before the class. Some of them have been known to practice before the class! hahahaha The background is canvas paper that has been coloured with twinkling H2O's, very subtle colouring, and stamped with Stazon Timber Brown and a script stamp. Plus the ubiquitous German Scrap available from here. This one is "Francia".

Next up is another stamped image. It's the absolutely fabulous famous face of Lina Cavalieri, she's used on many, many stamps because quite frankly, she is just gorgeous! The two images were stamped on almond coloured shrink plastic that I sanded first, then I added colour with the glimmer chalks, (also available at Scraptivate) then stamped two sections of the stamp in black Stazon. The size of the shrink plastic before it was shrunk was the same size as an atc - 2-1/2" x 3-1/2", so this gives you some idea of how much shrinkage there really is! ERROR ALERT!!! ERROR ALERT!!! The "E" is backwards because I made a mistake...but kinda liked the look of it anyway so I did it again on the "HATE". No mistake is a mistake if you do it twice....right??? This one is called "Love/Hate"...sort of like all kinds of relationships...no?

I still have another couple of shrink plastic atc's but they will have to wait until my next post, I need to photograph them and one is at work. Will take my camera tomorrow to work and put them up soon.

Timbo & Miss Prawn shake their groove thang!!!

Check out the gender confusion for my good pal Miss Prawn and you all know who the other dude is!!!

How Dare You Fibre Challenge & raffle atc

Hmmmm...."fibre" was the challenge for our group on the How Dare You blog this month. You may not be aware but I'm about all fibred-out, after years of sewing costumes for dance schools and ice & roller skaters, my sewing machine doesn't see much action at all these days! So I'm sort of cheating a bit and using a past piece to satisfy the parameters of this particular challenge.



I also spent 6 years making cloth dolls, not Raggedy Ann types, more soft sculptural pieces than play pieces and took part in many wonderful workshops with both talented Aussie teachers as well as overseas teachers. Annie Hesse being one of them (US)! So below are a couple of pictures of my most "fibre-licious" piece of work in my whole 6 years of doll making. It stands 3 feet tall, took around 3 days to make, has 10 balls of wool in the skirt, the beaded face took 8 hours alone to do (it's 3 inches across). Annie Hesse was also the pattern designer for the other 3ft tall Ancestor dolls that were in a previous post here. Apologies for the shocking pics, these were done on a dodgy camera before I got my new digital.

EDIT: Whoops, just realised I'm in Group 2 on Aussie Dares (How Dare You Blog) so didn't need to post to this fibre challenge....oh well....3 cheers for a dufus moment!!! lol

Here's the raffle atc for today's Microscope Slide atc class at Scraptivate that I'm doing. Though I may change my mind and either do another one, or, give one of the other previous ones away as I sort of like this one. ;--) Good ol' German Scrap embosses just beautifully, this fabulous colour is Judikins Rustiques Weathered Iron.

chunky pages - Gothic & Forensics

Woo-hoo!!! I finally have something to add to Michelle Ward's Crusade....it WOULD be Crusade Number 13 too.....how....appropriate!!! lol
Here's the link to the awesome Michelle's Crusade blog (and you just KNOW how much I love her stamps by how often I use them!) HCIT!!! (Michelle-speak - how cool is that!)

It's Saturday afternoon and I've completed my set of Gothic chunky pages for our Altered Book Club.....finally! Now just need to get started on Art Deco, then next up we have Gods/Goddesses and then Chairs. Yep, chairs! Definitely going to have to keep my eye out for something strange to do with chairs....how boring to just have a picture of a dining chair or a lounge chair. So here is Gothic (front),

I've been listening to HIM's new cd, Venus Doom, there's a track on it called "Something Diabolical", hence the name of this chunky page...thought it kinda suited the image. Excellent cd by the way! I stamped the word onto shrink plastic and added it with jump rings for a more 3-d effect. I also used my new white webbing spray that we just got in at the shop, I already had black and gold and love it! It's a little hard to see the webbing spray in the scan as I'd sprayed the black cardstock first with Starburst Stain in Long John Silver (I LOVE those names!) and then the white webbing spray, certainly better irl (as usual).

Here's the back, quite plain but it just ties it in with the theme so it's not too boring when you flip the page to check out the next person's awesome piece of art!

I hadn't posted the images of the Forensics chunky swap from last month either so here's the front of that one...don't you just love the "dead man" stencil!!!

The back. The "Evidence" word is one of the 7 gypsies fabric gaffer tape that has all sorts of cool words on them, this roll particularly suited this theme. The image of Lucky Luciano is from here, a cool mobster generator.

Back to the studio...

Microscope slide atc's & Newcastle

...and a wonderful time was had by all during our visit to Newcastle to catch up with "the boy" (okay...at 22 he's a man but he's still a boy to me. Mothers....can you relate? lol)

I had a glorious time at my mini workshop day with some fabulous girls that I've only spoken to on-line through one of the yahoo groups I belong to.....waves & smiles to you Julian, Louisa, Martina, Niki, Elise and the wonderful hostess - Christine. Sorry we missed you Ruth ;-(
I hope the techniques that you learnt will add to the extraordinary repertoire of fabulous things you can do with atc's. Oh and the view from Christine's house over Lake Macquarie was just spectacular!!!


Now onto some pics....my next atc class that I'm teaching at Scraptivate in a week's time is about incorporating microscope slides in atc's. They really look best if they are edged (the slides I'm talking about) in some way...either with the metal tape that is available in brass, silver or copper, or even with humble double-sided tape which is then embossed with embossing powder. A great look either way!

First one below is edged with the silver tape...take note of the extra bits of embossed tape that I've placed across a couple of places on the slide. Word to the wise - if you burnish the foil tape too hard, you'll crack the glass...but in the vein of "no such thing as a mistake", just cover the crack with skinny double-stick tape (available here), pour on some embossing powder and heat...voila! All fixed!
Drat....now I've just proven that yes, the teacher DOES make mistakes (more than you realise!!! lol).

Next up I have used the double-stick tape around the edge of the microscope slide and then coated it with verdigris embossing powder...lovely colour!

Lastly, this one is also edged with the silver tape but to make it blend a little better with the gorgeous "smoosh" technique background (Ranger distress pads in weathered wood & peeled paint) as well as Michelle Ward's ever-beautiful clear "Bird Sanctuary" stamps, I've coloured the silver tape with pitch black alcohol ink and coloured the square glass slide with some alcohol ink in oregano and a little pitch black. (I think I've broken some grammatical law with the length of that last sentence.....so shoot me!) The chicken wire fence image is stamped onto the glass slide while the other images are underneath, of course any stamping onto the glass slides must be done with Stazon.

Now what I need to work on are some chunky pages for our ABC (Altered Book Club) group, I'm a little behind in that....gothic and art deco must be completed before the next meeting in November!!! Promise girls!

...and yet another canvas

This will have to be my last canvas for a while....I now have 4 on display in the shop which I think is going to be enough for people to work out whether they want to do it as a class or not.

The skeleton leaves down the right hand side look more obvious in this scan than they do in real life, they're a little more subtle in the flesh.

When I first started making atc's a couple of years ago, I also made 4 canvases for my youngest brother as a birthday present, the other "You Go Girl" canvas that was in a previous post was also one of them. As you can see from these other 2 that I made for him, I am going more textural and intricate with my layering on canvases these days. These previous ones are much more like just big atc's - fairly flat without much dimension.....well....maybe my early atc's, not my later ones. (These are 4" x 6")

Now for a little tip or two...I'm sure most of you have at least 1 or 2 (or maybe 24!) of the Ranger Distress Pads. You can use these wonderfully versatile ink pads to colour up your white gloss card so you have a variety of gloss card to work on. The below atc has "Pine Needles" Distress Pad applied to white gloss card with a little sponge. Don't just blob the sponge up and down on the card, you have to rub it vigorously all over the card backwards & forwards completely covering in one motion so you don't have extra colour in certain spots.

If you know what Pine Needles looks like on normal matte card stock, this is a spectacular colour difference compared to the matte card stock. The stamping in the background is my favourite copper - Brilliance Cosmic Copper - best thing about the Brilliance pads is they will dry on vellum & on gloss card! Black Stazon is used to do the main image stamping (Lina Cavalieri from Stampington). Etal metal are the little corner pieces under the brads and the wording is copper card stock that I've cut into a thin strip and run it through my dymo hand punch with a little black ink rubbed over the top and some aqua coloured paint wiped on the edges.

I'm off to Newcastle tomorrow night so won't be posting for a week....I'll certainly miss my emails and the back & forth of the Internet chatter but it'll be good to catch up with some girls over East who I've only conversed with on-line, plus I get to teach a workshop! Woo-hoo!!!

Rinse Aid Resist on Canvas Paper...and Anthophobia!!!

If you're a fan of Claudine Hellmuth (as I am), then you'll know she does absolutely wonderful techniques which are outlined in both of her books and on both of her dvd's. When I first got into this collage/mixed media caper a couple of years ago, she was a huge inspiration to me to try out as many different techniques as I could glean from books, dvd's and the internet. One of my favourites is the Rinse Aid Resist technique which is going to be my atc class this Saturday. Below are two samples of the canvas paper using this particular technique.

This next one is not an atc, but is about 5-1/2" x 4-1/2" with a lovely man who makes eyeliner look absolutely fabulous on a male!!! The wonderful rinse-aid resist forms the background for this piece...

Now an atc with rinse-aid resist technique for the background....

For those of you who love the German Scrap that I use on a lot of my work, it is now available on-line through the store where I work, Scraptivate, click here to go straight to the on-line shop where you can purchase this fantastic paper embellishment. More will be uploaded as it comes into the store....yes, there is still more to come!!!

I'm off on a short trip next weekend (29th) to visit my son over East (Newcastle, NSW) so I expect posting on my blog will be a little haphazard for a bit. I have to be super-organised for my next atc class on the 6th of October as I arrive back on Friday the 5th and teach my next atc class the next day so I've been doing a little pre-preparation for that one. Here are a couple of samples to show you the technique I'll be doing.

I'm going to be teaching a workshop when I visit over East and hope to show the girls some of the things that they've been asking about on my blog.....hi girls ....see you soon!

ANTHOPHOBIA: An abnormal and persistent fear of flowers. Sufferers experience anxiety even though they realize they face no threat from flowers.

The new dare for our group on Aussie Dares is "Irrational Fears" (it'll be posted by Friday I think). I really have no irrational fears but I couldn't let a little technicality like THAT stop me.....so I think that my dislike of using flowers on my work, as all the girls at work and in my classes know, will qualify. Even though it's not a fear, more like an aversion. It's not that I don't like flowers, I actually do, hubby does a great job of giving them to me for all sorts of reasons, including no reason at all, which is the best reason! lol I just can't seem to use them on my work and I find that there is an overuse of flowers on all sorts of layouts....I suppose though it's like brads/eyelets....just another decorative element....just not for me! So here's the atc that I made called Anthophobia.