Bon Voyage!

The day has finally arrived, we leave tonight for our 5 week trip to far-flung places. I have all good intentions of blogging a couple of times while I'm away so hopefully I'll manage to get around to actually doing it! What with cloud-walks through rainforest in Costa Rica, shop-til-you-drop at market stalls in Mexico, helicopter flights that land on Glaciers in Alaska.....who knows if I'll have the energy to pound my little fingers on the key-board! lol

I have pre-prepared some pages in a journal all ready for adventures to be written up, tickets to be stapled and stuck in, my twinkling H2O's & aqua-brush will be coming with me so I can decorate my written journallings (is that a word???). I couldn't possibly go without SOME sort of arty stuff to do and I hope to collect some goodies while I'm away......I DO have an extra 10kgs worth of space in my suitcase that I can add so all is good with the World! ~grin~

Be back in Perth around the 21st May but hopefully will blog before then......I couldn't possibly post without a picture so here's a pic of my girlfriend Joan (the one who's coming on the trip with us) and myself....taken a few years ago now and a little blurry....or was that a soft-filter effect???? lol

New Collections Products, Faux Leather & Textured Paper

Well, Julie van Oosten from Collections has done it again! She has produced a wonderful new range of products with birds, new 6" x 6" papers, , flowers, butterflies and lots of other new stuff - but my most favourite would have to be the new windows that are perfect for atc's as they are 2-1/2" x 3-1/2" and mini doors/windows too! Here's an atc that I made using the Limited Edition range of black windows. This was included in a $50 Collections products raffle pack that was recently run at work, Scraptivate. Congratulations to Suzanne McMeekin for winning this fantastic pack and I hope you like the atc!

Last night I taught the Faux Leather Technique class to the Tuesday group of atc girls. Such a great technique and wonderful for making use of the fantastic Golden paints, though Jo Sonja paints also made an admirable impression as well! I don't have a scan of the raffle atc as I only finished it half an hour before the class started but I did make one in the class, strangely enough not using the Faux Leather technique. It was just a muck-around paint job on a piece of white cardstock showing the girls how impressive the Golden Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold colour is. Natalie challenged me to make an atc while the class was going on so of course, you can't say no to the boss.....it needs a couple of brads still, but oh how wonderful this colour is! I only used one drop of the Nickel Azo Gold and a paint brush dipped in water and smooshed the paint around on the card, added a little more on my "transdermal applicator" to rub around the edges, dried it, added a little Micaceous Iron Oxide for shimmer and an image, some text paper, some thread around the image, a crackle stamp, some corrugated black card and one of my clear words on a piece of sharpie-coloured chipboard and it was done! Janick won this as a "second-prize" in the raffle that I got conned into doing!

Last Saturday's atc class that I taught was called Textured Paper. Take some cardstock, some scrapbook text scraps, book page scraps, tissue paper (printed and/or plain), some thick gesso, slap it all down, let dry and you have textured paper! This was the raffle atc.

In the last post I mentioned that I was doing something for a scrapbooking magazine. Here are a couple of ......I'm not going to say sneak peeks......"limited views" of the canvas. I won't be able to post the whole thing until after I come back from my holiday (8 sleeps to go!!!).

A big thanks to Jacky for including me in the "5 blogs I love to visit" award....I'm sure in some illustrious company with this one! Visit Jacky's blog to see who else she nominated. I'm not going to nominate for 2 reasons, I have done numerous blog nominations before and it's just too darn hard to narrow it down to 5! But I thankyou anyway Jacky for reading my blog. ;-)

Shrink Plastic atc class, soot class

The shrink plastic atc class that I taught a couple of months back was so popular I decided to do a "shrink plastic re-visited" class as there are other techniques that can be done with this product. Here's the raffle atc from the last Saturday atc class...

The shrink plastic portion of this atc is in the upper left hand corner. It's a piece of white shrink plastic that I cut out using deckle decorative scissors, then lightly scribbled some coloured sharpie marker on it, then blended the colouring with the Blending Solution that is used for Ranger alcohol inks. Before heating it with a heat gun, I inked up a postage-mark stamp with brown Stazon and left that aside for the moment. Then the shrink plastic piece was heated with a heat gun to shrink, when it has shrunk to it's fullest, while it is still hot, I stamped into it with the postage-mark stamp and pressed down. I waited for about 5 seconds for it to cool then lifted up the stamp and the shrink plastic piece comes off the stamp cleanly, leaving an impression in the shrink plastic piece so it is much more textural than a normal piece of stamped shrink plastic. I then mounted it onto a piece of torn dark brown shimmer paper and attached to the atc.

Another way of using shrink plastic is to do multiple stampings on a piece of shrink plastic of a reasonable size - say 6" x 5". Stamp like you would for a collage piece, the piece can be coloured first with sharpies or alcohol inks or you can sand first (if you're using white or almond), then stamp, then colour the images if you like. You can then cut sections out using decorative scissors (or normal scissors) or use a large punch so you get portions of different stamps on each piece, then shrink and use how you want!

I taught another soot class on Tuesday night last week and the girls all loved how they turned out using Glimmer Mists underneath the soot for added colour & shimmer. I have used alcohol inks before under the soot before, but the Glimmer Mists are so fabulous as there's a huge colour range - from blues, greens, reds, yellows as well as metallic silvers, bronzes and golds. I didn't take a picture of the raffle atc before I gave it away but the base colour in Glimmer Mist for the raffle one was called Patina....a beautiful blue shimmery colour. This one below is another sample I did for the class using the colour Wheatfields, a lovely olive green colour with a green pearly shimmer.

The instructions for doing the soot technique is here.

This weekend I have also worked on a canvas though I can't show any pictures yet as it's supposed to be going into a scrapbooking magazine (stop laughing.....I CAN do things that may appeal to scrapbookers too!!! lol) When it's published I'll be able to post the pics as well as which magazine it is - I don't remember if it is Scrapbook Creations, Scrapbooking Memories or something similar sounding???

Less than 3 weeks to the big trip, biggest decisions are how many pair of shoes to take and whether to take day cream & night cream, or just wing it with one to cut down on weight!!! lol

Crackle Technique, Canvas class & The Trip

Last weekend I had another one of my canvas classes. I taught different canvases, all basically using the same technique but the girls had a choice of several different styles. They were all surprised at how quickly it comes together, the class is 2-1/2 hours but after you've done a few of them you should be able to get that down to around 1 to 1-1/2 hours. The hardest thing is to make your decisions about images, colours, quotes, embellishments....isn't that always the way though!

Here are a few of the canvases that some of the girls made, yes, I remembered my camera this time! First up are Debra & Lorraine...

then Karen & Donna...

....then Jane M & Jane W...

....Sheryl & Marie....

lastly Nicky & Caryl...

There were another 6 girls in the class but I didn't manage to get photo's of them all, but at least you can see the different styles represented here.

After the canvas class was an atc class on crackle techniques. We used Ranger Crackle Paint for backgrounds, Ranger Crackle Accents on images and also a 2 step crackle using Helmar 2 step crackle which will create a cracked effect over an image. Below are some atc samples using the 3 different techniques, some of them you may have seen before in earlier posts.

The Ranger Crackle Paint works best for me on chipboard rather than paper-weight and what you would consider is a thick coat is actually a medium coat. Generally if people can't get this stuff to work, it's because they've laid it on too thin. Just slap it down, it is self-levelling and let it dry. Once it has started to crack you can use a hair-dryer to force dry the rest of it. The act class is 2 hours and these backgrounds were all dried and made into atc's in that time period. Here's the raffle atc for this class using the Ranger Crackle Paint. (Weathered Wood colour)

and another... (antique linen colour)

Crackle Accents is applied just like a dimensional medium (Glossy Accents, Dimensional Magic etc) over an image, let dry - this takes hours - and your image has a crackle finish to it. This stuff doesn't work on non-porous surfaces though, only paper/cardboard type substrates. This is a sample of Crackle Accents - the man is crackled.

The Helmar 2 step crackle is a little more complicated. Once you have painted Step 1 onto your image, not too thick a coat, just a normal sort of coat, you have to let it dry to the tacky stage. On the jar it recommends 10 to 20 minutes though it depends on your climate and how thick or thin you have applied it. You have to wait for all the creaminess to go away and your image to become clear before you can go onto the next step.

There are a couple of main points to remember with the second coat of the Helmar 2 step.

You must make sure that you totally cover all of your step 1 coat, if you leave any edges uncoated then these will stay tacky as the base coat dries to a tacky finish and stays tacky! I did Step 1 in the class to show the thickness and took it home. The next morning I applied the 2nd coat and it worked perfectly fine so the 10 to 20 minute rule is just to make sure that you don't try to apply step 2 too early!

Secondly, don't go back over where you've already painted with the 2nd coat. I start at the top of the image and using a soft brush, start to paint the 2nd coat on, going down the image and across. Very hard to explain, but I'll try. I start at the left top of the image and go across the image to the right side and then move down a bit and go across back to the left. Making sure that you've not left any bits uncoated. I use a sort of cross-hatch motion as well. This needs to be a trial and error thing but once you've done it a couple of times and it has cracked, then you'll know how much to use and the direction of your 2nd coat can affect which way the cracks appear.

After the second coat has dried (it needs a fair bit of time - can be force dried with a hairdryer to finish the cracking off - just don't overheat the paint), you can apply some acrylic paint in a contrasting colour and wipe it off immediately so you don't let it dry on the image. When you wipe it off you should have some of the acrylic colour seep into the cracks to highlight them. You may need to use a baby wipe very lightly to wipe off the extra colour from the image, just don't over wipe as you'll soften the crackle.

After all of this, if you find that you've got some tacky bits as you haven't done the edges too well, then I use a bit of Treasure Gold in a colour that's relevant (silver, copper, gold etc) and rub it onto the edges of the image lightly. This will cover the tackiness and solve the problem.

These are some samples of this Helmar 2 step crackle technique.

I don't do much personal info on my blog but you may have noticed my ticker counter on the right hand side counting down to a holiday! Only 4 weeks to go now before we go on 2 back-to-back cruises. Firstly a 15 day cruise to Columbia, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica, 3 stops in Mexico and finishing at San Francisco. Then later that same day after arriving in San Francisco, we leave on the same ship for a 15 day trip up to Alaska visiting Astoria, Seattle, Ketchikan, Juneau, Hubbard Glacier, Skagway, Sitka, Inside Passage, Vancouver, Victoria and then back to San Francisco!

Going on this wonderful trip of a lifetime is my hubby and myself, my Auntie and Uncle (who are only about 5 years older than us) and my Mum and Dad. Well, that was the plan anyway....we've had some bad news from Dad's doctor and he's unable to make the 13 hour plane flight from Sydney to San Francisco. Too tough on his heart and lungs, he has asbestosis from working in Wittenoom and has some heart disease as well. So he is staying home, BUT showing what a truly wonderful man he is, he's asked my best friend if she would like to go in his place!!!! All the trip is paid for her, including her air-fares, all she needs is some spending money.

So this all happened within the last few days and now she only has to wait 4 weeks to go on a fabulous once in a lifetime trip! Joan and I have been best friends since we were 12 and she has had her fair share of personal tragedies in her lifetime and has come through with such a wonderfully positive attitude. Dad is really, REALLY, happy to be giving her this gift and I for one am really thankful to have a great Dad.....Mum's pretty cool too!!! lol She's sharing her cabin with Joan and she is virtually like a second daughter to my parents. We'll be sad to not be sharing the memories with Dad, but if it gives him some more time with us, then yay to that!

Birdhouse, Cards & Scraptivate shop & 6 things

I hope you're all ready for lots of photo's in this post!

I thought I'd start off by showing you the wonderful store where I work and teach, Scraptivate here in Perth, Western Australia.

This is what greets you as you walk in the door, our display table, full of wonderful Collections samples, as well as some other bits & pieces.....mostly chipboard goodies that have been decorated to the hilt!

Here's the Collections products stand....as you can see, lots of lovely chipboard for altering...these are available online at Scraptivate and yes, we ship worldwide!!! If you've seen the lovely houses that Linda has had on her blog, they are part of the fabulous Collections range of products.....oooooh, don't I sound like an advertisement for Julie....she's a lovely girl (the designer of the Collections stuff and better still - a local!!!!).

Here's where we display all the upcoming classes.

Next is all the lovely German Scrap that we have for sale.

Anyone for a bit of patterned paper???

The tools and paint stand with a view into the classroom.

The ink/mists stand, rubber stamps are on the other side of this. This is not all of the shop, just a few of the stands, we have lots more!!!

We recently received some wooden birdhouses in the store for sale and we were asked if we wanted to take one home to decorate. I think there is about 6 of us who have them to alter and I've finished mine so thought I'd put the pics up.
The things that went into this are:

• texture paste
• gesso
• Pearl White metallic paint
• Dove Grey Stazon
• Patina Glimmer Mists
• Graphite Glimmer Mists
• stamping on tissue paper
• gauze
  shrink plastic (whoops, lost my bullet point on this one???)
• metallic paper
• antique pewter embossing powder
• mica
• brads
• mouse cage wire
• chipboard
• sharpies & treasure gold
• my clear words
• a fuse
• my own poem
• and finally, clay wings.

Shrink Plastic Stampotique stamp...

The eye is stamped on mica...



The fuse and more shrink plastic (heart)...

The clay wings on the top of the house with my clear words, texture paste is on every 2nd square on the roof...





Front & left side view...

Front and right side view...

The fuse...with the backward "E". Sometimes you do things that you don't mean to do, but they turn out okay....I've had this "E" issue before!!! lol



A final close-up of the front panel...

So that's it for the birdhouse, now onto some cards that I have coming up in the March issue of Australian Stamping & Papercraft. I've had some atc's published 3 times before in this mag but I was asked to take part in a stampers challenge using a Stampers Anonymous stamp of a maple leaf with text. I know that Debbi is also doing this challenge so I can't wait for the issue to come out as Deb always does outstanding work! These are my 3 cards.

Spotlight technique using twinkling h2o's to colour sections of the leaf.

For this one I've alcohol inked the background gloss card, then done the soot technique on top.

Last one is shrink plastic tiles. I coloured the shrink plastic tiles first with alcohol inks, then stamped, then shrunk them.



So I'm not a card maker (can you tell??? lol), but I wanted to do something that incorporated some of the things that I teach in my atc classes. Now I can say I'm "published", not that it is a huge deal to me but for teaching purposes, every bit helps. ~grin~

Apologies if I've worn out your eyes with all these pics, also sorry if you're dealing with dial-up speed - been there, done that....what a pain! I know for some people, they have no choice....better slow speed than NO speed!

Finally, Sam tagged me to tell 6 non-important/quirky things about myself. I've done this before but it was 7 and I think I spilt my guts a little too much in that one....so here's some banal info about me...
1. I'm not a fake flower lover!
2. I used to tap-dance, do modern jazz as well as acrobats, AND I have the trophies to prove it!
3. I have 1 tattoo, got it when I was 15.
4. I love sharpies!
5. I have all my internal organs, except my gall bladder.
6. I am old, older than you think! (You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely!)

I know I'm supposed to tag 6 people but I did this before so won't do it again....okay....now close your eyes.....sleeeeeeep.......sleeeeeeep.......sleeeeeeeep......

Webbing Spray, Crackle & Award

Firstly, let me thank the girls who nominated me for the "You Make My Day" Award, Jenny, Sarah and Linda. Check out the blogs of these extremely talented girls....a visual treat for sure!



The You Make My Day Award is for being an inspirational blog! The rules for the “You Make My Day” award are to re-present it to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blog land. Well, with all the blogs that I have been visiting this little award has popped up numerous times so I'd just be sending it back to the same people again so I'm going to cheat a little here and just say ....go visit my favourite blogs link down the side and take your pick!!! Blogging has bought all types of people together and though we may not all like, or be inspired by what other people do, it's good to know that there's someone out there that you can connect with. How boring and predictable if we all liked the same stuff anyway!


We had a little chat about this last night at my webbing spray atc class. One of the girls had seen Sweeney Todd and was not at all thrilled with the blood and gore aspect of it but one of the other girls said she and her girlfriend just about laughed all the way through! Takes all types in this World and I, for one, am EXTREMELY happy about this!!! lol I have yet to see this but I just know I'm just gonna love it.....are you surprised???


Onto some arty stuff.....as I said, last night's atc class was on webbing spray. We used a couple of different techniques of laying down the first lot of colour for the background before using the webbing spray. First was Tim's "smoosh" method.....distress ink pads "dtcs" (that's direct-to-craft-sheet) on the Ranger craft sheet, spritz with water, lay down cartridge paper, pat down, twist 45 degrees while on craft sheet, then lift....amazing coloured background. One of the girls, Nicola, used Spiced Marmalade and Fired Brick.....OMG!!! This looked like a fabulous sunset!!! My favourite colour combo for this technique is Peeled Paint & Weathered Wood but thought I'd step outside my comfort zone and try Vintage Photo and Broken China. Here's the 8" x 11" sheet with that colour, also with the black webbing spray added...

If you still have some of the ink and water left on the craft sheet you can do it a second time using another piece of paper and this will give a completely different effect. This is the result of the remaining ink/water "smoosh"....

The second type of background we did was with the Glimmer Mists , these are new spray colours with a wonderful shimmer that we've had at Scraptivate for a little while. The colours on this one are Latte and Patina. No webbing spray on this one yet...

This is the raffle atc for last night......just a little big of fighting over who was going to go home with Johnny! Do you like the little shrink plastic heart?


This next atc is for the Crackle Technique class that's just over a week away. We'll be using the Helmar 2 step crackle over images and the Distress Crackle Paint as well as the Crackle Accents.

GOSSIP: Who's the well-known "arty" girl who's going scrapbooky??? ~insert sing-song voice~......I'll never tell, I'll never tell..... No, I don't take bribes....you're secret is safe with me Ms "X"!!! hahahahahaha

Credit Card Technique ATC samples & Faux Metal

Thought it was time for a new banner. Thanks again Dawn for making these....you're a legend!

The people who came into the shop and saw the credit card technique pages from my last post couldn't believe how different they look in the flesh, so if you've put off trying this technique, don't wait any longer. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can turn out a fabulous background in such a short amount of time....very soon you'll have a great collection of background papers in all sorts of colours, this is the great thing, you'll come up with some unique colour combinations. My only advice is to remember to write the colours down for each page on the back of the paper as you do it, your brain might go into "excitement overload" and you may forget what colours you've used! lol

First atc sample using my favourite Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold & Dioxazine Purple.

"Classic Mona"...

"Beautiful"...

"Temple".... In my atc classes I ask the girls to try to tell a story with their atc, rather than simply putting images down that have no relationship to one another. It makes it a lot easier to find what you are looking for if you know what direction you are going with something. This of course applies to collage, canvases, altered books, in fact anything really. So this particular atc is a little more of a taste of my dark side....take note of the drippy blood up the top, and the little shrink plastic hearts...make of this one what you will. ;-) or should that be :-/

Here's the last one, the raffle atc for today's class. "Radiant"...

The faux metal part of today's class is using the foil tape (with adhesive on the back), mounted to chipboard, then distressed with either an awl (paper piercer) or Tim's cool wire brush thing, then rub paint into it and immediately wipe the paint off. Looks like little bits of distressed metal. These are on the corners of my "Temple" atc above.

I was going to show them how to make faux metal out of credit cards, but having another play with it this morning, I think I'm going to make that a class in itself...would rather them concentrate on their backgrounds and little metal-foil embellishments today.