Tissue Paper Background & another card

The tissue paper background that I've been teaching in my current atc classes is proving really popular! The ease of use, non-messiness involved and the fact that it looks so darned great is impressing the girls so much that they are all chattering away about how they're going to use this technique to make cards, more atc's and even scrapbook pages! Here are some more samples.

"Nocturnal" (a favourite one of mine!) Yes Megan...that's Dimensional Magic on the lips! Private joke, when Megan first started in my atc classes her glue of choice was DM! I was horrified, all that shiny gluey stuff that could potentially ooze out and scream "look at me!!!!". One of the things I tell my students is that because atc's are so small, you have to pay particular attention to detail - like colouring the edge of your chipboard pieces AND having no glue showing! lol

"Perfection"...

"Dream"...

Here's a card I made using some of Julie van Oosten's new Collections range - the transparency is new, as are the hearts and wings. I painted the heart with Ranger Picket Fence (white) crackle paint, then a soft metallic pink over the top. I covered one set of wings with paper and dry-brushed white metallic paint over it and the bottom set of wings have just been painted with the white metallic paint. I stitched the transparency to the pink card using a platinum coloured metallic thread - this sure beats having to hide any glue that you may have used and negates the use of brads or eyelets to attach the transparency. A bit of white gauze, some white scallop German Scrap on the inside right of the card and it's a quick, easy and pretty (did I say that???) card.

The very lovely Di O'Cobhthaigh (weirder than my name!!! - pronounced O'Coffee!) presented me with the Renee Award, which I thank her for (you can read about this award on Di's page). I've not been passing awards on of late as quite a few people have gone all "no-awardy", which is their perogative of course. Do yourself a favour though, visit Di's page as she's new to atc's but is doing an outstanding job with them!

On a personal note for my family that read this blog who live overseas, my son Jarred and his girlfriend Elice are home with us for a 2 week holiday. We don't get to see them very often, usually only once a year as Jarred is stationed at Williamtown, an air-force base in Newcastle over East. But by December of this year he will have done his 6 years and will be trying to get a posting back here to Pearce Air Base in Perth. His chances are pretty slim of getting the posting as there is only 1 position available and 20 people have applied for it. Regardless, he'll be back in Perth though as he wants to be home with his family and Elice is also a West Aussie and is missing her relatives as well. It'll be wonderful to have us all together again as we are a pretty tight-knit bunch. I have a birthday coming up in a few weeks and of the 70 people who are coming, 44 are family!

Tissue Paper Background, Cards, Dichroic & other stuff...

My next set of atc classes is on Tissue Paper Background. I teach a few different ways of attaching the tissue paper to the card stock....xyron, jac paper, gesso, gel medium and I also use both black or white tissue paper, as well as dress pattern. The white tissue can be painted over with washes of paint - of course Golden paints work really well as they are so pigment intense and one drop on a brush with some water will give you plenty of coverage on an atc. When I use the black tissue I don't paint it, hmmmm....having said that I just had a brainwave about using interference colours dry-brushed over the black tissue, must try that! I generally use embossing powders on the black tissue as it stands out nicely against the black background.

I've not had a great deal of time to do lots of samples so here's one to start with...Wednesday I'll get more done and include them in the next post. If you have a look at my class list to the right you may notice I've updated it to include more classes. I'm all planned out right through 'til October this year, super-organised in some areas, super-slack in others! hahahaha


"Di-vin-ity"...





With Mother's Day just gone and a cousin's 21st party also on the same day I had reason to make few cards recently. As I've said before, I'm not a card-maker and I say this to myself so I don't have any expectations about how they will turn out....how slack is that! lol These 3 cards were all done using basically the same technique - cuttlebug a piece of chipboard, paint with metallic paints, some embossing on it, then some Treasure Gold or Dazzle Wax wiped on, a few other bits & pieces layered on top and that's it! Simple but effective....for a non-card-maker!


Two Mother's Day cards... (absolutely shocking picture, sorry 'bout that)

Casey's 21st Card...

There's another Mother's Day card I made earlier using Julie's Collections bits & pieces but that's at work and I'll have to remember to take my camera with me to get a shot of it. It's all pale pink and pretty, not really my style but I CAN do pale pink, just don't get along that well with bright, hot pink!

I bought a dichroic pendant recently and loved it so much I bought one for my cousin's 21st as well! Here's a picture of mine.....absolutely beautiful colour in real life....and here's where I bought it from.

On another note....(excuse the pun!), I'm not into reality tv programs but I have made an enormous exception for the last few episodes of American Idol....purely for the chance to catch Adam Lambert on the show! Oh dear.....has this boy affected quite a few grown women or what!!! So Jen, this next atc is for you....no, I mean this IS for you....come to the shop and collect it.....you Adam Whore you!!! This is meant in a non-judgemental, friendly way.....lol....I'm one too!!!

Lastly, here's the last of the Sheer Heaven atc's I made, this was the raffle one.

"Traverse"...

Lastly, lastly...my friend Barb T recently bestowed on me a Kreativ Blogger Award and I thank her very much for that. I've had this one before, (it's the bright pink & green one in the list on the right) so I won't pass it on again but I'd urge you to check out Barb's blog. She may be all isolated in Wagga Wagga, but it certainly doesn't show in her work!

Brushless Watercolour Technique & a Card

Last Thursday night was my niece's 18th birthday so as a non-cardmaker, I decided to make her a card. My being a non-cardmaker is not like me being a non-scrapbooker...I've made 1 scrapbook page and will not do another one - too large a format for me! But as a non-cardmaker, I've made quite a few but still don't like to call myself a cardmaker - it's just a mental thing.....if you deny something often enough you can actually start to believe it! lol Not that there's anything wrong with cardmaking!!! Heaven forbid, atc's make great card fronts and if you make them so they can come off the front and attach to the fridge as a magnet - double bonus! So once again I've used a couple of the girls from the Stampotique range, the one on the front is called Prom Queen and the one inside is Girl with a Lunchbox. Just ignore the handwriting inside, s'pose I should've scanned it BEFORE I wrote in it. Duh!

On the front I used the Textured Branches embossing plate from the Cuttlebug range on some silver foil tape adhered to a chipboard frame, then rubbed with black acrylic paint and wiped it off leaving only a small amount in the crevices. Down the bottom I stamped with the metal letter punch stamps "Hayley is 18". Being an 18 year old girl I knew she'd get the "so what" attitude it exudes! lol

Inside...

I forgot to include this atc that I made for the alcohol Ink & Transparency (acetate) class that I taught last week. I love this stamp so much, it's another of Lina Cavalieri immortalised by Fornasetti. If anyone has a spare one of this stamp they'd be willing to sell, please contact me on my email addy above right - I have a friend who would probably sell her first-born for it...if she HAD a first-born that is!

My next atc class is called Brushless Watercolour and I've made these atc's using either Lyra watercolour crayons and Ranger Distress Inks. The Lyra's are like the Golden paints of the watercolour crayon world. Beautiful rich pigments, wonderful array of colours and so soft and easy to use. I know I've shown these atc's before as this was to be the class I was to teach before my Joan died on December 1st last year - consequently the class was cancelled and put on the back-burner.

It's strange, it feels like years since Joan's death, not the short 2 months, 3-1/2 weeks it has been. The word "passing" is too soft a word for me yet, "death" is much more hard, blunt and factual and this is what it is. In time it will soften, mellow and fade to a gentle ochre colour, right now it's still hard, in-your-face RED! I wonder how many other people think of emotions/thoughts/words as colours? I do it a lot, it's a subconscious thing, before I know it I'm thinking "what you're saying is making me feel a cool blue"! Okay, I admit it, I'm feeling a little "wordy" today.....no apologies though, your eyes can skim and I can still type what I want. Back to the atc's....

A diptych..."Dragonfly 1 & 2"... ("Odonata" stamp from Stampers Anonymous")

"Reseda Odorata"... (stamps from the wonderful "Nature's Moment's" set by Tim Holtz!!!)

"Polite"... (stamp from A Stamp In The Hand called "Girl with a Purse" - discontinued though)

"Heal"... (Judikins stamp - not sure of the name, it's a stone angel statue)

and my personal favourite, "Beyond the City Gates"... (stamps from Michelle Ward's Green Pepper Press plate called "Rough Draft")


Only 2 short weeks to go until Creative Soul Retreat in Melbourne!!! Woo-bloody-hoo!!! Bring on the learning/fun/frivolity/bonding/shopping/gawking!

Multitude of Mixed Media & Skagway!

This post has, as the title suggests, a multitude of mixed media.....

First up is my book challenge page for the Creative Soul Retreat. The theme this month was "A few of my favourite things". Of course, I couldn't get out of my head the Gary Larson cartoon where (from memory) there is a couple of detectives in a guys house, he's dead on the floor, on shelving in the room there is "bright copper kettles, warm woollen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string" and one detective is saying to the other... "These must be a few of his favourite things!"...... So what I did was to think about some of my favourite things (techniques) and I came up with this page.

Each square has a couple of my favourite things on it.

(top row, left to right)...

Old Germanic text and Micaceous Iron Oxide (a Golden paint - gorgeous!),

Gothic transparency image over foil tape,

Textured fabric with metallic thread wrapping,

(middle row, left to right)...

Canvas Paper with Rinse Aid Resist background & Metal wings,

Texture Paste and Silver Rub'n'buff,

Shrink Plastic with HIM stamp, Swarovski crystals and German Scrap,

(bottom row, left to right)...

Black Corrugated cardboard with black onyx mica glitter & embossed cuttlebug shape,

Foil tape and my tracing wheel to make the little track marks,

Webbing spray in both white and black and metal cogs.

Hmmmm.....the book page above looks suspiciously like the new inchie canvas class that I'm teaching in December at Scraptivate! Even though they may look similar, they are obviously different (to the trained art-eye!!!). lol The girls in this 4" x 4" inchie canvas class have a choice of doing either a Crimson/Black/Silver one, or a Blue/Cream/Burnt Umber canvas. Here's the blue one...

...and the crimson/black/silver...

While I was on an arty roll over the last couple of days, I also made a card for the Inkurable Stampers Challenge. This time the we had to use both a bottle cap as well as some beads in our project AND it was a Christmas theme. Well, you just KNOW that I have loads of Christmas themed stamps with reindeer, Christmas trees, Kris Kringle and the like.....NOT!

This was a bit of a challenge for me, but heck, that's what challenges are supposed to be dummy! (me dummy, not you dummy). Last month I was lucky enough to win a gift voucher from Barb at the Stamping Queen and I promptly chose one of the fabulous Stampotique stamps - Prom Queen. I already have Glimmering Hope and Girl with a Lunchbox so now I have a sister to join the other 2! Here she is in all her glory......warning....please don't take offence at the quote on the inside....it's something I have NO control over. I blame my Dad and my brother for my warped sense of humour. Definitely not my fault!

(see how keen I was to get this photographed? the glue under the crystal is not dry!!!)

I had intended to include some of my remaining mega-trip photo's but there just seems to be too much other stuff here...what the heck, it is my blog after all and if I choose to bore you with some pics, so be it! Skagway here we come.....

We had the 2nd big highlight of our trip in Skagway, a journey on the White Pass Scenic Railway, if you go to Skagway this is a wonderful train trip. It's also the only time I've ever actually been snowed on....and they DO look like individual little lacy things when the snowflakes land on you!!!! On the flats, not much snow....

a "bit" more snow....

Here we are at the end of the rail journey, ready to start the bus trip back. Beautiful scenery, yes, it was cold! From left to right, Mum, me, Ev, Pete and Joan, Grant was the photographer.

There was a fabulous building in Skagway that's being constantly repaired with driftwood, the way it was originally done. Wonderful! Do the 3 little pigs come to mind????

...and just in case you forgot how we got around on our mega-trip....

Beeswax atc's, Canvas & Card

Tonight's atc class is a favourite of most people who try this technique...beeswax! You can use either a Ranger Melt Pot, just a heat gun or my favourite - the Clover Mini Iron with the little triangular shaped head. I use beeswax that is unbleached, it comes straight from the honey supplier so it smells so wonderful when heated and is a beautiful honey colour. I also use wax crayons to add a little colour to my beeswax work too!

Here are 2 samples for tonight's class , the first one is the raffle atc.

"Dream"...

The next one started out as a transfer of a girl over some script paper, then I applied the beeswax and crayons over that as well as one of the Collections frames. It's a little more work when you are applying something a little thicker to a beeswax work, like the chipboard frame below. You just have to apply enough beeswax to form up around the edges to hold it in place and also some beeswax over the top too. If you apply too much it is easy to scrape back and smooth over again either with the heat gun or with the Clover Mini Iron.

"Silent and withdrawn"...

A while ago I was asked by Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft magazine (an Aussie publication) to take part in their stampers challenge. The stamps were from Rachel Grieg's Darkroom Door Series and it was the Doors set that I was sent for the challenge. Here is a card that I made and also a 4" x 4" canvas. These stamps are beautiful on gloss card as they are photo stamps so they come up really well on the smooth surface. I also used black onyx mica glitter on this card too, unfortunately it just doesn't show up how much it sparkles!

This is the 4 x 4 canvas, note how the bolt looks so realistic and 3d! The darker image mid-left is the same door stamp from above but it has been stamped on shrink plastic and shrunk.

These should be appearing in the next issue.

Assorted work - canvas, card, atc's & how to track your blogs!

At the end of this month (August) I'm going to be teaching an inchie class using a 4" x 4" canvas as a base. As inchies are notoriously small I've decided to cheat a bit and make mine 1-1/4" in size so I can fit 9 of them onto the 4 x 4 canvas. We have an absolutely wonderful example of a MEGA-INCHIE canvas in at the store (Scraptivate) that just shows how fabulous a whole lot of little inchies can look when all grouped together. It was put together by Audrey after both she and I had participated in an inchie exchange with another online group. I have yet to do anything with mine as I'm a little over-awed at how Audrey's has turned out, a hard act to follow! I'll take my camera to work to get some pics and post them soon....promise!!!


In the meantime, here's some shots of my smaller canvas. If you're in Perth and want to learn how to make one of these using all sorts of techniques, give us a call at the shop (9444 6626) to book in!

The whole thing with all 9 of the inchies...

These next 2 are raffle atc's for a couple of previous classes that I forgot to post earlier. First is "Regal" for the Textured Backgrounds class - Svetlana "won" this one.....hahaha....sorry, private joke. ;-)

"Serene" was won by Mel at the Faux Tin Type class last week, yay Mel....she pulled her own raffle ticket out! No, not rigged at all, just a lucky pick! That's our story and we're sticking to it, right Mel??? I've used the Ranger Crackle Paint in Tattered Rose on the background of this one.

I've been lucky enough to be the recipient of several on-line awards recently, so I'm going to list them all here together. It's very, VERY hard to narrow down single blogs for awards so I nominate everyone who's listed in my favourite blog lists to the right. I learn something from virtually every blog that I visit and I think that it's important to remember to share, share, share what we learn. Kind of a "pay it forward" type thing with our collected art knowledge travelling the globe and infecting (in a good way!) other unsuspecting blog surfers who stumble across our sites with the love of art in all it's glorious forms! Man, what a long sentence!

So a HUGE thankyou to the following talented people for bestowing these awards...

Thankyou Audrey and Jenny (Crozza) for the Brilliante Weblog Award...

Thankyou Nancy for the Kind Heart Award...

and Sam for the BFF Gold Card Award...

On another note, I've had several conversations with friends about the unfortunately demise of Blogarithm, a neat little program that helped you keep track of all your favourite blogs and sent you a daily email when they updated. Alas, it is no more. Darn it when they try to fix something that isn't broken and then it's REALLY broken for good!!!

So now I use bloglines. You simply input your favourite blogs, then you can keep track of who's updating easily on one page. The easiest way I've found to do this is by adding your bloglines page (after subscribing, so it links to YOUR bloglines page) to your links (in favourites), then when it opens up it has a list of your blogs you've subscribed to and if they are in BOLD, then that blog has been updated. Click on the blog and it'll open up on the right hand side of the screen and if you want to leave a comment, simply open the blog by clicking on it from this right hand side. I've also added a "sub with bloglines" link to my links bar so if I happen to come across a blog I really like, within a couple of clicks I've added it to my bloglines list. Easy! It's actually easier to DO than to WRITE. Confused? Questions? Ask me and I'll try to be a little clearer.

Onto more pictures...my cousin Corey and his wife Kellie are expecting their first child. I attended Kellie's baby shower last weekend and I made a card for her. As you know, I'm not really a card maker at all, I tend to just try to think of them as BIG atc's. I used a picture of an unborn child and printed it on transparency, xyroned (that must be a word!) it, also printed the quote on transparency and gave that the same xyron treatment and attached them both to some nice pale green paper. I also used a couple of cuttlebug chipboard corner embellishments which I painted using the new in at our store Twinkling H2O's Radiant Rains in a dauber. The colour was Olive Gold (I think? it's the only olive green one), beautiful olive with a sheen of gold shimmer just like the fabulous Twinkling H2O watercolours but much easier....dab, dab, dab. Here's the front and then the inside with the quote.

The West Wing is about to start....bye....