More Beeswax atc's

Saturday's Beeswax classes went really well. I was particularly pleased when two of the girls who had done beeswax with me before, and didn't really like it, changed their mind on Saturday and decided it was a fun technique and they COULD actually do it! Thanks for sticking it out Maureen & Karen, see....I told you it was easy!!! lol Though I think the iron has a lot to do with it, much easier than using it in a melt pot.

"Damaged"... (pretty cool looking steam-punk fish I thought! The steel cage stamp is from Lost Coast Designs and is stamped onto tissue paper and added at the end, along with the Damaged by Seawater stamp which is by Julie van Oosten. Not currently available though she is going to do some more stamps soon!)

"In fashion"... This one is a poke at myself as I am just SO not in fashion. Just liked the juxtaposition between the dressmaking tissue, Asian book paper, vintage image and my favourite cuttlebug diecut scroll.

"Dream"...no stamping on this one, but it does have a piece of cream cotton lace up the top embedded deeply with wax, over the top of dressmaking tissue again and a few microbeads in gold added as well. Isn't it great the colours that you can by using a little crayon with the wax! How boring if they were all the same colour.

"Life"...I scanned this one before I'd remembered to put some silver metallic wax over the embedded chipboard frame so please imagine that it's there, certainly makes it stand out more and blends better with the colouring too. The metallic waxes, like rub'n'buff, treasure gold and JW's dazzle waxes, all work wonderfully on the beeswax.

Jen Crossley's classes went really well last weekend at Scraptivate! Jen has since posted on her blog with some great photo's so if you want to check them out, please go here. I have some pics on my camera but haven't downloaded them yet, when I check them out and see what they're like, they might end up here. But if they don't it just means they were not great. ;-)

I'd like to thank Carol for this Fab Blog award. I have found that more bloggers aren't accepting awards any more, so I have contemplated long and hard about posting these any more. I'll just do it and if they don't want to accept, then that's fine too. I'm just letting them (and you!) know who I think is pretty darn special.

So accept this award I'm supposed to list five "obsessions" and mention five other blogs. Am I an "obsessive" person??? Possibly!

#1 Art Techniques - I'm definitely a technique whore (and I mean that in a nice, wholesome way...lol)

#2 Crime & Investigation channel on Foxtel - gotta have my true crime fix every day, throw in an autopsy or two and I'm in heaven!

#3 Chocolate - ditto.

#4 Teaching - I get such satisfaction and pleasure from watching my student's obsessions developing as they learn new things in my classes. What good's an obsession if you can't pass it on I say!

#5 Friends & Family - Having lost 2 extremely important people to me within a few short months late in 2008, I am more aware than ever of the importance of just picking up the phone to say hi, or emailing and catching up for a "just because" lunch. Try it, you might like it!

So please visit the following blogs:

Svetlana My Time Out of the World

Davinia Deez News

The Creative Junkie

Julie Is There a Shadow

Debbi Baker

Wonderful Christmas Presents & more atc's

I was lucky enough to receive one of the absolutely wonderful Artgirl pendants from the "uber-talented" Jenny Crossley (hey Crozza!!!).....isn't it just fantastic!









I also received through the post another of Sulea's creations.....thankyou Sulea.....true to form - another masterpiece! Here it is....





Lucky me.....I got stamps for Christmas!!!!! Two of the beautiful clear plates from Michelle Ward (greenpepperpress). I've mentioned her stamps before, just love 'em. Just so I wouldn't get too comfortable thinking about doing canvases only for the time being, I thought I'd better do some atc's. So I used some of the background paper that I made at my last atc class (Tim's very technical "smoosh" technique) using two of my favourite colours in the distress range - peeled paint and weathered wood - I created these ones with my new stamps.


Here are another couple of atc's that I made after reading a very inspirational new book by Bernie Berlin called Artist Trading Card Workshop (I bought mine through Amazon.com).


The one with the spooky eyes & great red Artchix wing is insulation tape background, stamped with a gate image, then embossed with a stylus to define the image....rubbed over the whole thing with black paint then wiped off straight away leaving the paint residue in the depressions. Looks really good in real life...much shinier than you see here.

The second one is a magazine image, dry-brushed with gesso, out-lined with fine point sharpie pen, coloured with Twinkling H2O's. Took a bit of time this one...probably not something I'd do often but I like to try things at least once....well, most things anyway! lol

Both these techniques are in Bernie's book along with about a million others (so I'm prone to exaggerating!), absolutely love this book - buy it - save the animals! To understand this statement, here's Bernie's blog link, http://aplacetobark.blogspot.com/ - it'll explain all. Here's the link to the book on Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/yj7mmt).



Okay, an update on my next class at Scraptivate on the 6th of January '07. We're doing watercolour crayon & watercolour tube paint techniques. I've had a play with a new Mona stamp using one of these techniques...kinda wanted to see how it'd look in different colour combinations...what do you think? My favourite is #2 - the red and blue one with the wire across her face.



Had enough sitting at the computer.....books to read.....tea to cook......it's "wine-time"!!!