A sneak peek

I have spent a bit of time this weekend working on a couple of projects that are a little hush-hush at the moment.

I have to wait until they are ready for release from someone else before I can post the complete image, but I will give you a couple of close-ups of them....hope it piques your interest!

I loved doing them and can't wait for them to be let loose upon the World! lol These are only my interpretations of this "thing" (for want of a better word) so you can decorate it however you'd like to.

The previous 3 are done in one particular style....what?....can you tell??? The next 2 are another slightly different one that I made.

I also managed to make a couple of atc's this weekend, you know what it's like...you find a quote you just HAVE to use so you must make something to use it on!

I wish the sparkly stuff showed in this atc below, the background has been sprayed with Moon Shadow Mists in a couple of colours, then gold & black webbing spray added as well (at least you can see that!). The crystals down the bottom are Swarovski's, which by the way, have started to be cut with bevels around the bottom edge so they REALLY sparkle now!!!

This one below is going to be the raffle atc for my class this Saturday, Sheer Heaven Transfers. The girls are just going to love this technique....so cool (& easy - which is always a bonus!).

I'm meeting up with the girls from my Altered Book Club tomorrow night where we'll be swapping our Day of the Dead chunky pages. I've completed my pages, just haven't got around to scanning them yet, might leave that so I have something to post on Wednesday!

Thinking Blogger....thanks

While reading the lovely Julie H's blog tonight I saw my name mentioned....Julie has nominated my blog for a "Thinking Blogger Award". I had heard of this but admit to not knowing very much about it, so of course what do you do when you don't know about something?.....google it of course! This link takes you to the page where it all began and the reasons behind it.

The participation rules are simple:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

Okay.....first up the lovely Sulea - her art is amazing and her words are just as ethereal and beautiful as her painting. Her thoughts are not all sugar-coated and fluffy, just real and from the heart!

Keron (colour guru) is my next one. She is another "wordy" person....just like I am, do love that in ya Keron! lol Beautiful art as well.

Crozza is a girl who doesn't post often, but we do exchange emails with little snippets of our lives and goings-on, but when she does post it's her wonderful pieces that are so full of her glorious "finds". I swear this girl must have the best trash-meter-ometer ever!!! (Not a real word....means she seeks & finds the best bits & pieces for her work) ;-)

This is a blog where I have never posted but I have been following it since December when I linked to it through another blog. It contains no art, no, that's not true, beautiful photo's..... but it is the sheer strength of this woman that amazes & astounds me. What she, her family and mainly her son have gone through and the tenacity and openness of her writing is remarkable. Certainly puts life back into perspective. If you want to read from the beginning of what I'm talking about, go to archives down the bottom of her blog, click on December 2006 and go to December 19th - A Serious Crisis.

Bel's Nook is such an inspiration....I love Belinda's vibrant use of colour, something I never feel quite comfortable doing....combining all those wonderful colours, she does it to perfection!

It's such a shame that only 5 blogs can be nominated...in my favourites I have about 40 listed that I check regularly and love each and every one of them for very different reasons. Especially my close art-pals here in Perth (& Tom Price!). I will continue to lurk on some, post on others but definitely read them all frequently!

Beeswax atc's

The class I'm teaching tomorrow at Scraptivate is beeswax atc's. That classroom is going to smell oh so sweet with the natural beeswax aroma wafting around the room from several melt-pots going! Love doing beeswax....it's SO forgiving, don't like the placement of something?....just re-heat, take it off and place it somewhere else, not enough colour?......melt some crayon onto it and spread it around, too much wax build-up?......scrape it off and re-heat to smooth it out again...gorgeous stuff!

One of these atc's is for the raffle and the other is because you can never do just ONE beeswax atc when you start! lol

On another note, I went with my girlfriend Joan the other day for the usual ladies "poke & prod"...something we both really look forward to!!! NOT!!!! Anyway, in the car on the way there, we were discussing when we could end with this fun activity......I said maybe 48? Joan is 48 in a week's time and then it's my turn in a couple of months (yep, you'll ALWAYS be older than me Joan!!! hahahaha). Joan tells me that the age for women is actually 69........unless..........you take on a new sexual partner!!!!! I kid you not!!!! Like THAT'S going to happen!!!

So anyway, in we go for our separate appointments and both finish up at the same time and she comes out with this huge grin on her face saying "I don't need to have them anymore....not enough 'bits' exist down there for it to be necessary!". So I was right! It was 48 for her but still 69 for me...drat! Another friend who shall remain nameless (Michelle), asked if I wouldn't mind having her exam for her while I was in there as she's overdue....sure, I'll just take it out of my bag and plop it on the table for the doc to look at, then hand it back to her when she's done! Wouldn't THAT be bliss.......mmmmmm........one can dream.......get your check-up girls!

Wonderful gifts & play-day with the girls

How lucky we are to have wonderful friends who bestow gifts upon us....here are a few that I have received lately.

This is one from France, a polymer queen from SAJ's (a local stamp group)....I was going to say something about her being the "moldy queen" but figured that was taking it a bit too far....'sides, she might not give me any more RAK's!!! lol

This is an atc that is just so beautiful and textural irl (geek-speak....in real life). Just lovely France, thankyou ;-) Check out France's blog for a great little tutorial on post-it books!

What an absolute feast for the eyes this atc from Dawn is!!! The background is actual tin with a torso mold on top that has been painted in the most fabulous metallic colours and gorgeous gold metal wings and the brads look just like little rivets holding it all together...this whole atc just screams "metal". Love it, love it, love it!

The very talented Jane Pisan gave me this atc that is ingeniously suspended from some old jewellery so it's actually a miniature piece of wall art! I really love the imagery on this atc, Jane told me when she made it she thought "hmmm, looks like Kelsey"....what Jane???...."old & relicy (not a real word) with a slight green tinge about the gills"? lol

A truly beautiful piece which I am thrilled to own ;-)






On Friday I had a catch-up with girls from our Art Tarts Club. Every month we try to take turns teaching each other a new technique, or at least an old one that's been re-vamped! Friday was Michelle's turn, we used black tissue paper, dress-making tissue, jac paper, embossing powders and paint to make fabulous crinkly backgrounds. We also did some stamping into fun-foam then attached this to an atc, coated the whole shebang with gesso and then painted over the top....this is a la Bernie Berlin's wonderful Artist Trading Card Workshop book that I'm sure most of the people in the atc world know all about and own their own copy!!! If you're in Perth and you don't have a copy, the store where I work has it!

So here are a couple of atc's that I finished this weekend from the backgrounds that I made on Friday. The blue one on the left is crinkled tissue paper attached to jac paper on an atc background, then painted all over with Titan Buff, then dry-brushed with Payne's Gray...love that Payne's Gray colour! The 2nd one is dress-making tissue crinkled, attached to jac paper, painted with Golden's Quinacridone Burnt Orange and then dry-brushed in a few areas with Golden's Interference Oxide Green (blue shade).




Another couple.....first one on left is another gel medium transfer using the Jet Print Photo Paper, love this stuff! The one on the right is a technique I learnt from Jen Jones, another very talented girl from Perth, made using some of that thick acetate that's on office reports, comes up much better irl - trust me! lol

Gel Medium Transfer atc's

At my atc class this Tuesday night I'm teaching the girls gel medium transfers. This is probably the most difficult thing to do for atc's as it's usually a very hit & miss affair but the results, when they work, can be spectacular! The most consistent type of transfer for me is the Sheer Heaven/alcohol transfer, closely followed by a transparency transfer using gel medium.

A very kind girl from the US sent me some sheets of the Great White matte photo paper (now known as Jet Print) to have a go with as it's what is used for the most consistent type of gel medium transfers using paper. It has something to do with the clay coating formulation on the paper that makes the transfer so predictable. I must admit after trying one of these today, I'm convinced! It was extremely easy to rub off the white bloom and I didn't have to use any of my Dorland's wax medium to make the bloom invisible, which I usually have to do using normal copy paper. Here's the atc that I made using this fantastic paper.....thank you to Cathy Wegner for the paper ;-)

For the raffle atc for Tuesday night I made this one using the Matisse gel medium that's available in Australia, as it's what the girls will be using on the night. It's made using the Jonathan Talbot method of transfer where you coat the receiving surface, also coat the picture, let them both dry, then coat the receiving surface again and while still wet, stick the image face down, burnish well and let it all dry. When it's dry, wet the white surface that's showing of the image and start to rub off the backing paper, keep rubbing until you can see the image and the underneath showing through. This is the trickiest bit, you have to know how hard to rub and when to stop, too vigorous rubbing or rub for too long and you'll lose part of (or all!) of your image. The streaky bits on this atc are gold iridescent paint that's been dry-brushed on after it's completed and this one definitely needed the Dorland's wax medium as it still had a bloom and I didn't want to keep rubbing away in case I lost her face!....not a good look! lol

Disclaimer: I'm not a man-hater, I just like the quote...in fact those of you who know my hubby will KNOW this quote is so far from the truth.....he does GREAT housework! hehehe

Lastly, another transparency atc, once again if you hold it up to the light you can see straight through it as it's a stamped image (zetti) on one piece of transparency with another piece of transparency coloured with alcohol inks. I put silver tape around the edge and coloured this with alcohol inks too!

new atc's

Not much to say.....I made some new atc's. This one is for our ATC (Art Tarts Club) alphabet swap - we make 8 atc's each month and at the end of 4 months we have a collection of atc's, each representing a letter of the alphabet. My letter this month was "Q" and I did manage to think of something other than quicksand! lol Q for "quota"...








I made "Uncle Franco" this morning as the raffle atc for the girls in my atc class that's on today. We are doing "Industria" style a la Julie van Oosten, they'll be making a name tag atc each that goes on ball-chain and is worn around the neck as well as a normal atc and a little key-fob thing....hmmm....how many times can I say "atc" and use """""" in one post!!!!!







"Fragment" is currently winging it's way across the ocean to the States to someone. I used a piece of my credit card technique paper as background (Folk Art Antique Copper & Jo Sonja Celadon). On the picture is a layer of Jo Sonja 1 step crackle which, when dry, I used some Jo Sonja Burnt Sienna over it and quickly wiped it off so it only settled in the cracks. A little bit of copper German Scrap and some of that Chalk Paint that's not available any more. I do remember reading though that you can make it yourself using any acrylic paint and adding some tile grout as this is what gives it the chalky feel/finish. I particularly love this soft green colour, a very authentic patina colour! It's the green colour that you can see more on the right hand side than the left - what's on the left is the Celadon paint colour.

Edit: The liquid chalk I used on the above atc is by Plaid and is called Liquid Chalk. The following comes straight from the Plaid web-site:
Liquid Chalk has been discontinued and we no longer have any available stock left. However, we do offer a suggested “recipe” that you might try.
Mix 1 part FolkArt Glazing Medium to 1 part FolkArt acrylic paint (any color), add just a touch of fine tile grout [that would be the ‘chalk’]. This can be thinned with water or more glazing medium if you are looking for more a wash. Apply with a stiff utility brush; wipe down with a clean damp sponge.

Changes, Soldering & Texture Paste

Time marches on, things change, it's inevitable and also un-stoppable. My husband's uncle, who had a huge impact on Grant's earlier life, died last week so it has been a sobering and reflective time for him. Then on the other end of the scale, our oldest son's girlfriend has moved from Perth to Newcastle to go and live with Jarred as they can't bear to be apart from either other. Jarred has another 3 years in the air-force before he is finished and Ellice is wanting to start Uni to do a teaching degree, which she can do over there. Our other son, Cort is only 4 weeks away from completing a Financial Administration traineeship so he'll be moving on to another job as well......times are a-changing! Not for me though! Same ol'...same ol'....just the way I like it for the moment ;-)

This is a pic of Jarred when he was home last at Christmas time - just how I like to picture him ;-)



....must take more photo's of Cort!!!

Didn't get much of a chance to play on the weekend as it was a major housework day on Sunday but I did get my soldering gun out and had a go with it, all by myself this time!!!! It took me just as much time to get the blasted little jump ring attached as it did to solder the rest of the whole thing......stupid jump rings! This first one I liked the lumpy bumpy effect of the soldering and thought for the 2nd one I'd do it smooth.....think I was right the first time, I'm a lumpy kinda gal so will be going with that look in future!

Yep.....definitely like the lumpy look much more than this smooth effect. Love both of these pictures!

At the last Tuesday night atc class I taught we did texture paste which the girls did really well with. When I did the Saturday class on texture paste a while ago we didn't have in the store the wonderful metallic Folkart paints, so we were using the normal Jo Sonja paints, which are fine, but I'm used to using my Lumiere's for Texture paste as their shimmer and shine works perfectly with the texture. So luckily the Tuesday night girls had a play with these metallic paints as e stock them now and they were suitably impressed by how they looked. This is my atc that I made up on the night as a sample.

Looking forward to a weekend away in a couple of weeks time down at Margaret River with my hubby and then in 8 weeks time........STAMP CAMP!!!! Woo-hoo!!!!! Can hardly wait.....last year we played until the wee hours of the mornings and were surprised one morning when we came in and the girls who'd stayed up until nearly dawn, had passed the time by applying alcohol inks to their EMPTY shooter glasses!!! They looked fantastic and I promised myself to take more pictures of these ordinary little things this year...though they didn't look ordinary....extra-ordinary! ! ! lol .....as were the headaches....hahahaha