Bleach atc's, mica atc's, Technique book #1 revisited

Tomorrow I'm teaching Technique Book #1 for a second time and I thought I'd put the photo's in again seeing how I've discovered how to make sure they are "clickable". This ensures that if the girls don't get the book completed in the class they can put it together at home in front of the computer and they'll have pictures to show the order of the pages.

Front cover:

Sheer heaven:

Credit card technique:
Alcohol Inks:
Peeled Paper Technique:
Faux Leather Technique:
Contents Page:
Back Cover:

Last Saturday's atc class was a bleach technique. As I said in the last post, this was not to be the old way of stamping in bleach and then applying to the card stock, it was a different way of using bleach. I stamped in clear embossing ink on the card, then embossed with clear embossing powder and then painted in the stamped areas with bleach - neat bleach (not diluted), ordinary stuff from your laundry. It turned the black Bazzill card stock a beautiful brown colour which you could then add colour to (if you chose to) by using Twinkling H2O's or chalks. The H2O's were the best!!! Here is another sample from that class...."explore".

Tuesday night's class was mica....gotta love that stuff!!! I showed the girls the various types of mica that we have at Scraptivate - mica sheets in the packets, mica glitter (in about 20 colours!) and the natural pearl coloured mica flake. This one is called "contemplate" and uses a piece of mica sheet attached with 3 tiny screw brads. The image is a sheer heaven transfer on watercolour paper.

Another sheer heaven transfer with mica sheet over the faces - funny how it makes them seem more "clear"!


On a personal note, my oldest son has only 14 months left to serve of his 6 year term in the airforce - he lives in Newcastle which is on the other side of Australia so we don't get to see him more than once a year for a couple of weeks. He came home at short notice to attend the funeral of my Dad and it's been wonderful having Jarred and Elice (his girlfriend) home for a few weeks. He is an aircraft technician, basically he works on the Hornet's (F/A18's - the fast jets) and Newcastle is the base in Australia where they train the pilots so consequently, they have the only 2 seater jets in Australia! When he first signed up he put his name down for a flight and this finally happened just recently. A 45 minute flight in a fast jet is many a man's dream, he even got to fly the plane for a bit and loved every minute of the loops and dives they were doing, even pulling 7 G's! Wonder if the fishermen they buzzed on the beach enjoyed it as much?....lol. Cleverly, he took his camera so here's a couple of pics for posterity.

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!

.....and the winner is!!!!!!......and crackle atc's

I used a random number generator to pick a winner for my free art give-away in the previous post......

#4.....Tammy

hi new to your blog-what a beautiful trip to alaska you had!!i love both your pieces of work i am just learning tips and techniques and having a great time :)and would love to have my name dropped into your hat!!enjoy your daymany thanks tammy(tabby) tjo196@aol.com www.crookedheartart.blogspot.com

Congrats Tammy! If you send me an email with your snail mail addy, I'll get your canvas posted off to you. You have to pick first which one you want, the green one or the orange/gold one.

Then, just because I can.....the following person can have the other remaining canvas, sorry if it's not your first colour choice but remember, these things always look much better in real life than on the flat computer screen and I hope you will still like it! So the 2nd person's number drawn is.........

#43.....Sandy

well here I am comment number 43 .... maybe no one will want them WHAT women your work is gorgeous ... would love to be a winner of your piece of work. Sandy dangling by a thread skmarcoux@gmail.com

I'll be in contact with both of you to get your snail mail addy's and after Tammy has chosen first, I'll send the other one over to you Sandy.

Stay tuned, in a couple of days I'll have more atc's to post from my next atc class - "Embossing Resist" as well as some other ones using different techniques that I've finished.

Okay, so here's a couple of atc's already, just doesn't seem right to just type without putting in a picture...or two...... These were all half-made in the crackle class I taught recently, then I finished them off at a "girls-night-in" recently at Scraptivate. Can't have half-finished atc's floating around, can we!!! Do you like the little play on words with the bottom one? I stumbled across the word in the dictionary and thought it was very apt! I even had some little ants to add to it.

My Technique Book #1 class went really well yesterday at Scraptivate too! This was a marathon effort of teaching five different techniques in 4 hours and binding them into a book as well, including instructions! The girls were really pushed to get the book put together but I was happy enough for them to get the techniques done and will modify some of the mega painting effort in the Technique Book #2! So yes, there will be a #2...... The techniques included in the first book were Sheer Heaven Transfers, Credit Card Technique, Using Alcohol Inks, Peeled Paper and lastly, Faux Leather. I'll take my camera to work with me tomorrow so I can post the pics on my blog shortly. This way, you girls who didn't manage to get your book put together can do so in the comfort of your own home, in front of the computer! See how I look after you!!! lol