CRAFT FOAM WITH FOIL

This technique has chewed up a huge amount of time trying to get it to the point where it's easy enough for the girls to do in class.... and leave some of their hair intact!!!

The very first time I did this technique, easy peasy, worked very well and no messing about.  Now when I want to teach it as a class..... well, that's a different story.  Finally got the recipe of 1mm craft foam and using the packing stuff that comes with some stuff through the mail, and it worked well enough to consider it for a class.  I did work out though that the more solid the shape, the better things went.  Anyway, I went a bit overboard on my Zombies because, how could you not, love the Zombies.  💜💀

"Biggest fear"...

"Cawed"...

"Brains"...

"Shittake"...

(This one doesn't have the foil on the black mushrooms,

it's just the black craft foam with adhesive on the back, with

a little antique copper paint rubbed on to it)

 "Uninvited"...

"Saltwater"...

"A poem"...

Bleach & Twinkling H2O's

I've been waiting for the fantastic Twinkling H2O's to come back into stock at Scraptivate and they finally arrived! So the technique for this fortnight's ATC Technique Book is Bleach & Twinkling H2O's. The old method for using bleach was to use a fairly simple design of a stamp, dip it into some bleach on a plate then stamp onto card stock, causing a bleached image of the stamp to appear.

I prefer to do it my way.....clear emboss a stamped image on card stock (usually black but some other colours do work), then taking an aqua pen (water pen) filled with bleach, colour in the sections of the stamped image that you want to lighten. Dry with a heat gun then using the Twinkling H2O's, colour in the lightened areas. It gives you much more control where the bleach goes and allows you to colour in only the areas that you want. Of course you can colour over even dark coloured card stock with the H2O's, so I've done this on the background in a few of the samples.

"Fluttering Bird"... (Tim Holtz bird & flower stamps)

"Hover"... (Same stamps as above - I've coloured in the background on this one as well with the H2O's)

"Zombie"... (Stampotique stamp - Gooseneck)

"Renewal"... (Stampa Rosa stamp)

"Journey"... (Green Papper Press stamp plate)

"Transformation"... (Stampotique stamp - Glimmering Hope)

Finally, another fun foam atc from the last class.

"Heart"...

Fun Foam!

The second technique for book #3 is Fun Foam. Some of the girls thought it was the same technique as the magic stamp from before....no....this is different! Here are some samples...


***Warning*** FLOWER ALERT!!! (lol)
"Life's journey"... (the "life's journey" is stamped into the fun foam)

"Home"... (mica pieces used where the glass panels would be on the door and "home" is the fun foam)

"Organically Grown"... (the whole atc is fun foam! I wondered if this would work and yep, sure does! The wording - organically grown - is stamped onto shrink plastic.)

"View discretion advised"... (The hand is fun foam and once again I stamped the wording onto shrink plastic. This particular wording comes from the wonderful 7 Gypsies huge word stamps. Love that sheet!)

More to come later...

Final pic for today is one of the atc's from the last class - Moulds & air-dry clay. I used melted utee for this cross mould, the advantage is it was dry within minutes and it takes paint really well!

"Sacred Soul"... (the background is the text/gauze/paint wash background that I used on the cover.)

Mega ATC Post!!!

I've been going a little ballistic with the atc's in my studio over the last week or so. Some of these are also being sent to some friends (& new friends) as "surprises", they'll just have to see what they get! When I teach my atc classes I also end up with half finished atc's from doing the demo of the particular technique for that class. So feeling particularly inspired to create of late, here are a slew of atc's....I wonder if there is a particular word for a grouping of atc's....maybe an "attack of atc's"??? My favourite would be "a murder of crows", wonder why I like that one??? lol

These first 3 are the Faux Tin Type technique with the wonderful borders made with the cuttlebug embossing folders. Love using this with the foil tape, looks fabulous in real life and unfortunately because of the reflective nature of this tape, you can't really get the full effect of how this really looks like a Tin Type picture unless you see it with your own eyes. One cool technique!!!

"Solitude"...

"Madam Lash"...

"Repose"...

This one below is from the Peeled Paper Technique background class. Another cool product I used on this particular atc (that you also can't see!) is the Ranger Antiquities Frosted Crystal embossing powder. I used it to completely cover the image , it makes the image appear like it is behind frosted glass, also with a similar knubbly (???) feel to it. Nice stuff! I just used an clear embossing pen to colour the image and then dumped the embossing powder over the top.

"Reflection"...

This is another of the Webbing Spray Resist atc's from the last Saturday class. I also used the NEW METALLIC BROWN GERMAN SCRAP that we sell at Scraptivate..... this stuff is a beautiful colour and I've lightly rubbed Patina Rub'n'buff over the top to co-ordinate with the beautiful blue of the background colour. (I also used the metallic brown German scrap on the atc above too but rubbed a little renaissance gold rub'n'buff on that one!) Gotta love that shrink plastic too - the quote is on shrink plastic.

"Inside"...

Resin Fresco technique, "Prettiest"... (more shrink plastic - the quote again)

Last Tuesday night was Watercolour Crayons & Watercolour Tube Paints atc class. Here are some samples of that class. The first one "Soul Seeker" was the raffle atc which was won by Charmaine. Charmaine commented that she never used to do dark-style art before she came to my classes.....hehehehe, another convert!!! lol What??? More shrink plastic??? The heart!!!

"Create"...

"Weird odd art"... (no shrink plastic on this one below, just fun foam)

Last couple coming up...this next one is one of the atc's that's gone postal today, hope she likes it and I hope she doesn't think I'M weird!

"Voyeur"...

Finally, a foil tape background atc for a special friend. I used Jo Sonja black texture paste in the tube to go around the edge of the image and then a little silver rub'n'buff on it to highlight the texture, I was happy with the effect and will definitely be doing that again. Of course I've used black texture paste plenty of times in the past but never to just go around an image - I like it! Also, fun foam heartagram (HIM) with silver rub'n'buff.

"Love hex"...

The End!

Some art, an award....and my Dad

I managed to get another 4" x 4" canvas done with some inchies on them - actually, they are 1-1/4" square as the inchies were a little small - nice to have a little more room to work on too! This time the colours are black/silver/white. I particularly love doing these in fairly monochromatic tones, think my next one might be frosty blue, silver and off-white....but maybe red, black and white.....oh the choices!!!! Onto some pics...

...some close-ups...

Thankyou to Debbi Baker, Elizabeth Golden and Sarah Schwerin for bestowing this award on me. Gratitude flowing your way girls, it's nice to know I get SOME things right!!! lol

I'm not going to nominate people for this award, but I am going to recommend you visit the various blogs I have listed in my favourite blogs list down on the right. They all have something wonderful to offer, whether it's great inspiration, an insight into their observations of this arty world or fantastic techniques and awesome pictures.

These are a couple of atc's I've done for the previous 2 atc classes I've taught at Scraptivate.

Firstly, Fun Foam - and a little clay face added for good measure!

"Soul" was won by Karen in the watercolour techniques class, an easy watercolour (crayons) method and a more difficult watercolour (tube paints) method was taught in this class. Very difficult to describe so I'm not even going to try, suffice to say it takes a little practice to get this technique so YOU like what you've done! I'm sure the girls think I lie when I say I like their work, but it's easy for them to be overly-critical, I try to explain you are here to learn the technique, THEN go home and practice it....don't try to produce perfect atc's on a first-go!

I'd like to thank all the wonderful girls who've left me comments and emailed me privately about my Dad offering their kind words and support at this time of uncertainty. It's been 7 days since his operation and he is still in critical condition in the Intensive Care Unit at RPH. He is still on life support and tomorrow they will be performing a tracheostomy so they can remove the breathing tube down his throat and attach it to the front instead. It breaks my heart to see him struggle with this tube and he coughs constantly trying to dislodge the foreign object that is causing his gag reflex to kick in.

The nurses are wonderful, constantly monitoring, adjusting his medication and talking him through everything they do to him. He just wants to be left alone to recuperate....that's my theory anyway. We are just playing the waiting game, it's oh so hard to do but we hope each day is going to be better than the last and if wishing could make him better, he'll be well on the way to recovery soon. A nurse told me today that good things happen slowly in the ICU and baby steps is the way to go for him.

A blog that I visit often is Seth's, The Altered Page. He's just recently done a third round of The Pulse, a wonderfully inspiring line-up of all sorts of artists. I was blown away when Seth emailed and asked if I would like to take part. Check it out, there's bound to be some people you haven't heard of but will be glad to know! The link above takes you to the particular page with the list of artists, this link takes you to his latest postings.

Arte y Pico Award, Emboss Resist atc's & Technique Book #1

I was given this award from an artist from the US, Elizabeth (love her blog header!), so in the spirit of pay it forward, my 5 recipients of this award are below. I knew this was going to be another one of those "this is going to be difficult" moments as so many blogs I read are inspirational and just downright beautiful, how do you narrow it down to just 5! I'm going to step out of my normal little world and choose blogs that I don't get to see very much, either because they don't post very often or I haven't got them on my rss feed and all of a sudden I "remember" them and check them out.....then am in awe of what I find. So here's the rules.....

1. Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of language.

2. Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.

3. Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4. The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5. Please post these rules!

My five picks are:

1. Sandra Evertson - just pure whimsy and beautiful photography - think I would've loved the clothing in the era that Sandra loves too!

2. Julian Buttenshaw - this girl has what I call "uber-talent"!!! I love her grungy (in a good way) style and her colour choices are right up my alley.

3. Hermine Koster - Hermine produces lovely artwork and her blog is always a joy to visit. The imagery she uses and the way she puts things together, combining stamping, imagery and paint is wonderful!

4. Dot Christian - Dot has such a way with fabric and colour and quirkiness. A visit to her blog is a visual feast for the eyes......and the heart!

5. Debbi Baker - this is another girl who has been bitten seriously by the fabric bug! Her wonderful use of colours and the way she combines imagery/stamping/fabric/stitching is just beautiful.

Onto some pics.....I am teaching the Emboss Resist technique in my atc class on Saturday at Scraptivate and coincidentally, when I checked out Tim's blog I found that he had listed this technique as his July technique but he's called it Faux Bleaching. Whatever you want to call it, it's one cool technique as it's another good use for all those distress pads we just had to have EVERY colour of. Okay, so I have 21 colours, the last 3 I just can't get my head around so don't think I need them (but never say never, right!).

Here's my take on Emboss Resist as a background and also as a focal point. There's actually 2 different techniques here, Home and Streets of Paris are both the same as Tim's way, Certified is white embossed on gloss paper, then distress pads rubbed over the whole thing and wiped off the white embossing as the embossing resists taking up the ink colours.

Home...

Certified...

Streets of Paris...

This last atc was one of my samples that I made for the Fun Foam class, just had to finish it off so it's making an appearance now...

Okay.....girls in my Technique Book Class #1, have you got your book pages all in pieces in front of you? Here's the pictures of the book put together so you can see what order they go in.

Front cover...Sheer Heaven Transfer...

Credit Card Background...

Alcohol Inks...

Peeled Paper Background...

Faux Leather Technique...

Contents page...

Copyright page...

Back cover...

So now I start work on Technique Book #2....stay tuned!