Peeled Paper Background atc's

I have just three samples so far for the Peeled Paper Background Technique, more to come after Friday. This is a technique that comes from the talented Claudine Hellmuth. I have all three of her books as well as her video's and even though her style may be different than mine (or should I say, MY style is different than hers!), I can still absorb her wonderful techniques and apply them to my own work. I think this is something that some people tend to forget, even though you may not like a particular "thing", be it a card, an atc or even a scrapbook page, there may be some technique included in it that could be adapted to your own particular style. You just need to learn to look beyond what you actually see, to see possibilities that you never realised were there. Enough talk....

"Temptation"... (Hero Arts Bamboo stamp embossed with Copper Dreams embossing powder. This is one of my own recipes, 4 parts Copper embossing powder mixed with 1 part copper glitter. Adds a little sparkle in real life! If you want more embossing powder recipes, check out the post here).

"Illusion"... (Wrought iron stamp found here)
"Work backwards"... (Circular stamp from Non Sequitur, Burning Hearts Plate #56)

More to come over the weekend. ;-)

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.

A canvas & a fold-out atc

Still in canvas mode....this one has been sent to my friend over on the East Coast of Australia, Barb. She's been warned not to check my blog until it arrives in the post so I can safely put it up here. Once again the wonderful texture paste was used as well as some Golden paints for their intense colours, some skeleton leaves for texture and a touch of mica and the beautiful Baroque German Scrap. The clear words on the pieces of mica read "a shimmering fragment embracing life". Deep huh! lol




Below is the fold-out atc that was for the raffle for Tuesday night's atc class. Quite devoid of colour but it worked out okay..... love the German Scrap Scroll embellishment on the left hand side! There is a word on the metal embellishment down the bottom, it says "tryst". First pic is the atc closed:

Second pic it is open:

We've had "dental issues" in our household this week. My 19yo son Cort had all 4 of his wisdom teeth pulled out last Saturday. I'm sure when I had mine done eons ago there wasn't all the rigmarole that was required for him: ice packs on the face - 20 mins on, 20 mins off, constantly, for 3 days! Saltwater mouth-rinses 8 times a day, 2 lots of antibiotics, 1 lot of anti-inflammatories, Savcol (antiseptic) mouth wash twice a day, syringing of the sockets 6 times a day!!! GAWD!!! But he's gone off to work happily this evening for the first time since he had the op and seems to be recovering.

The next atc class is Canvas Paper and I'm going to show the girls how to do a technique that I learnt from one of Claudine Hellmuth's wonderful books. The technique is Rinse Aid Resist, you use dishwashing rinse aid to create a resist on acrylic paint on canvas paper. Below are a couple of atc's that I've made in the past using this particular technique.

This next one, also using rinse-aid resist, is a 4" x 6" canvas I made for a gift for a family member. It seems kind of "bland" as it's one of the very first canvases I did, I think I would do more to it these days!

Peeled Paper & Spotlight Technique

Firstly, thank you to Nat B for nominating me for the Nice Matters Award...


One is supposed to nominate more people for this award but good ol' Nat has nominated the very people that I would....so I'm just going to say that all the people's blogs that I visit would easily qualify for this award....otherwise I wouldn't visit their blogs would I??? lol

Last night's atc class was the Peeled Paper technique (from the wonderful books of Claudine Hellmuth - one talented girl!!!). This first one is the raffle atc that Ana won....it took her a few seconds to understand the quote...I love these "sassy" quotes!

Next one is also a peeled paper background but this time done with plain copier paper...great texture! I also love "deep" quotes...lol There's a bit of mica attached to the top right hand corner, giving it a little darker appearance on the scanner and the image and words are outlined in a silver crayon...nice grungy effect.

The next upcoming atc class is a technique called "Spotlighting". Most stampers have heard of it and would recognise it when they saw it but the name is something that is not that well known. It basically means to stamp an image, stamp it again and cut out bits of the 2nd stamped image to colour and add over the top of the previous stamped image. Hence, Spotlighting! You can also do it the other way, add the colour to the main image and keep the Spotlighted bit in plain black and white....equally effective.

This next image is not an atc as this stamp is about 3" x 5", but it's perfect for spotlighting so I thought I'd do it up as a sample to show the girls (the stamp is called Paris Moments, just gorgeous!).

The next one has an alcohol ink background, stamped with the Leonardo da Vinci stamp, same image stamped onto a domino that has been coloured with the same colours of alcohol inks. Gold thread was wrapped around the card before being attached to the black mat board background, then some gold german scrap added down both sides (my gloss card was a little on the "slim" side so I needed to cover the edges for balance....no such thing as a mistake! lol). Please notice the pink colour.....see, I can do pink!

New Canvas

This is another canvas that I made, previous to the one in the post below. Basically following exactly the same technique....obviously in different colours though. I didn't really take much notice of which colours I used for this, something I will remedy in the future!

I must say that I learnt a lot about washes from Michael de Meng when I attended a workshop of his earlier this year. I had been using Golden paints previous to this as I had been a member of Claudine Hellmuth's yahoo group for quite some time and she loves her Golden's!!! I had the heavy body acrylics as well as the fluids, and mixed the Satin Glaze with them to get the wonderful washed-out look that I like..... but because of the very rich pigment of the Golden paints, they retain their strength of colour! It was Michael's suggestion of particular paint combinations though that really added a depth to my work that I liked.....thank you Michael ;-)

This weekend, more work on another couple of canvases, as I'm soon to teach a class in this technique at Scraptivate! Just need to wait for some product to arrive in store....speaking of product.....the white German Scrap has been really popular, both for scrapbookers as well as others that do more altered art/atc's etc. LOVE my German Scrap!!!

Busy weekend ahead... Friday night is our monthly catch-up with the ABC (Altered Book Club) girls, then my atc class on Saturday is on Transparent ATC's. All you need is acetate, alcohol inks, Collections Window Frames, Xyron 250, images & stamps...simple! I need to make the raffle atc so I'll post that on Saturday. Saturday night is a "girls-night-in" at Scraptivate, just a bunch of us who work and teach at the shop as well as a couple of other arty friends, playing 'til the cows come home! lol

Here's one of my previous transparent atc's...

....and the winner is.......plus peeled paint atc's

I used a random number picker from google to find the winner of the canvas below......

..............and the winner is...............

Juanita Lanaux!!!!! Congratulations Juanita!!!!!!

Now you just need to email me via the email address on my blog and send me your snail mail address so I can post your canvas to you!

I've really enjoyed reading all the wonderful comments from you girls and have decided to give away some other little goodies to 5 other people as well......you won't know what you are getting until they arrive. So here they are:

Sarah Drayton

Arlene (@earthlink.net)

Michelle from Lexington, Kentucky

Lorna (Bad Baby)

Sandi (sugarbushfarm)

So girls, please send me your snail mail addy's and I'll get your goodies off to you in the post ;-)

The class last weekend that I taught at Scraptivate was peeled paint technique....(a Claudine Hellmuth technique). Firstly the images are added to a background (I used some book pages for a couple of them), then an image is added over this, then the whole lot is coated with gel medium. I like Golden Soft gel in matte. Then you add some streaks of Vaseline (petroleum jelly) to the atc in areas that you want to show. The layer of gel medium protects the paper from soaking up the Vaseline. After the Vaseline step, I painted on some acrylic paint. You need the paint to be kind of runny, a fluid paint works fine for this step. If you have a hard body paint (in tubes) then you can add a little water to thin it down a bit. The main reason for this is you don't want to drag the Vaseline all over the card.

After painting on the acrylic paint, let it dry or if you can't wait that long, do what I do....use a heat gun - but not too close as you don't want to "cook" the paint and cause bubbles! When the paint is dry, use a paper towel to wipe over the whole card, this will remove the paint from where the Vaseline was placed revealing the imagery and background underneath. I then wipe the whole thing over with a baby wipe to get rid of any excess Vaseline so you can continue to either stamp (using Stazon) or add more embellishments...ie German Scrap works great! Here are three samples.

Peeled Paper Technique & gift

This is the raffle atc that I've made for tomorrow's class on the peeled paper technique (learnt from the very talented Claudine Hellmuth).

The next two are a couple of just plain backgrounds using the same technique, the first using a page from a dictionary and the 2nd one is using plain copy paper. I wanted to take undecorated atc backgrounds to show the girls as once you start adding pics or stamps, you don't see as much of the background.

Quick description of this technique. Using gel medium, apply a layer to a piece of cardstock (atc size) then adhere a piece of book page, dictionary page, plain paper or any other thin type paper to the gel medium. Let dry for only about 30 seconds and then place a piece masking tape on the paper, say in a diagonal direction from one corner to the other. Burnish the masking tape, then pull up and you'll remove some of the top layer of paper. Repeat this a couple more times in different areas - of course depending on the size of what you're working on as to how many pieces of tape you do. This works on canvas as well as smaller atc sized cardstock (& lots of sizes in between).

If you are using book pages, you'll find as some of the top layer peels away it reveals some of the text back to front, as it's the other side that you'll be revealing. Then you can do a wash of paint, nothing too dark at this stage as you don't want to totally obscure your print. Because the paper is in different layers, sometimes even showing the underneath cardstock, it will absorb the paint in varying degrees which will result in a varied background. You can then add more glazes if you want, or different colours even, just remember to dry between the layers with a heat gun (carefully!) or a hair dryer (not so carefully). I make sure any other layers I add to this, ie pictures, I use gel medium to make sure they adhere well.

I received a wonderful gift through the post from a girl I've met a couple of times now through stamp camp, a very thoughtful and generous person who has a delightful blog. Thank you so very much Julie for the beautiful door hanger that arrived very carefully wrapped in fabric that has tape measures printed all over it! Will definitely be using THAT wrapping paper!!! lol

Also in the post came a parcel from Michelle Ward that contained some rubber plates that I'd ordered for some friends, none of these for me at the moment, I'm still waiting for her new ones to come out!!! But Michelle sent me some absolutely awesome plastic zip-lock bags....oooooo.....how exciting.......zip-lock bags I hear you say......but these aren't any ol' normal clear plastic zip-lock bags.......nooooooooo.....take a look here! She sent me some small ones & some large ones....these are just too cool to use....think I'll just "look" at them! Thanks Michelle, you're a gem!