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.

Transparency atc's

I was having a play around with some transparency, colouring it with alcohol inks and running it through my 250 zyron to attach it to some atc's, which incidentally is the BEST way to attach transparencies to atc's....no muss, no fuss, no glue showing - brilliant! Anyway, I happened to have on my table some of those windows from Julie v Oosten (which we have at the shop) and I did a little "sandwich" experiment with some pics and a couple of bits of transparency and a couple of the windows to hold it all together. Of course the windows come in a 9 hole piece A4 size and need to be cut down but it gives you 4 complete sandwiches and 1 spare to just go on top of an atc.

Anyway, long story short, I was really happy with how they turned out. Here's some samples of them.....you have to imagine that you can hold them up and they are completely transparent...except where you see a picture, though the skull one is totally transparent as it's a stamped image.

I also finished a few atc's that I had started a while ago..... a foil tape one....

...this is a Sheer Heaven transfer...
...and lastly, a watercolour tube paint "fresco" technique atc...think this one might need to go to a certain "man" who KNOWS how to say aaahhhhhsemmmmblaaaagggggge!!! lol

For something completely different this afternoon, I went to the movies to see "Wild Hogs" with my hubby. We don't go out very often so when we do we don't mind splurging....went Gold Class. There's nothing like a theatre with less than 30 people in it, big plush electric recliner rockers with a table for your food and drinks which are bought to you at a pre-specified time (we had chicken skewers, wedges with chilli sauce & sour cream & wine!) and no-one under 18 allowed!!!!! The movie was good, funny from beginning 'til end. You'd need to be over 40 to recognise a "certain someone" towards the end...not telling, it'll give it away and I'm not a spoil-sport ;-)

New Year, new art!

How do you start a new year off? By playing with all your art stuff, that's how!!! The colour in this first red/green one looks crappy.... it looks much better in the flesh - it even has sugar embedded in it!

During 2006 a local group I belong to (ABC - Altered Book Club) created a colour chunky book. It took us all year to do it but it was definitely worth the wait.... there are 9 of us in the group and we each wanted art from all the other members so every month we made 10 chunky pages in that month's particular colour. We used the usual format of ROYGBIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) plus Black and White which was 9 colours in total. As it's such a BIG book, 81 pages in total, I've decided to split mine into 3 books - 3 colours per book. So today I've scanned the completed cover pages (they may or may not be completed....I think I'll put more stuff on them but as it'll get very textural with extra stuff stuck on, it's easier to scan them while they are relatively flat right now! Three techniques, all very different.

I also did a couple more Mona's using watercolour tube paints which give a very different look to the crayons from the previous post.

and........ I got a fantastic new large stamp (8" high!!!) of Lina Cavalieri's beautiful face. You may recognise this face, well, maybe not as it's only bits of it here on the atc's, but it was the one on my earlier canvas that I did for a Christmas present - the blue canvas. Anyway, it's Lina Cavalieri, a famous opera singer who was immortalised forever by Piero Fornasetti, a Milan painter, sculptor & interior decorator. He died in 1988 but he has left an indelible mark with this beautiful face that is used extensively on plates, chairs, cuff links, cushions.....just check out ebay for "Fornasetti" to see the huge array of items. I've just won on ebay a fantastic stamp of Lina's face cracked into 9 pieces.....can't wait for THAT to arrive!

These two atc's are going to be part of a triptych - when I find a suitable 3rd quote to go with these two that is...