Microscope slide atc's & Newcastle

...and a wonderful time was had by all during our visit to Newcastle to catch up with "the boy" (okay...at 22 he's a man but he's still a boy to me. Mothers....can you relate? lol)

I had a glorious time at my mini workshop day with some fabulous girls that I've only spoken to on-line through one of the yahoo groups I belong to.....waves & smiles to you Julian, Louisa, Martina, Niki, Elise and the wonderful hostess - Christine. Sorry we missed you Ruth ;-(
I hope the techniques that you learnt will add to the extraordinary repertoire of fabulous things you can do with atc's. Oh and the view from Christine's house over Lake Macquarie was just spectacular!!!


Now onto some pics....my next atc class that I'm teaching at Scraptivate in a week's time is about incorporating microscope slides in atc's. They really look best if they are edged (the slides I'm talking about) in some way...either with the metal tape that is available in brass, silver or copper, or even with humble double-sided tape which is then embossed with embossing powder. A great look either way!

First one below is edged with the silver tape...take note of the extra bits of embossed tape that I've placed across a couple of places on the slide. Word to the wise - if you burnish the foil tape too hard, you'll crack the glass...but in the vein of "no such thing as a mistake", just cover the crack with skinny double-stick tape (available here), pour on some embossing powder and heat...voila! All fixed!
Drat....now I've just proven that yes, the teacher DOES make mistakes (more than you realise!!! lol).

Next up I have used the double-stick tape around the edge of the microscope slide and then coated it with verdigris embossing powder...lovely colour!

Lastly, this one is also edged with the silver tape but to make it blend a little better with the gorgeous "smoosh" technique background (Ranger distress pads in weathered wood & peeled paint) as well as Michelle Ward's ever-beautiful clear "Bird Sanctuary" stamps, I've coloured the silver tape with pitch black alcohol ink and coloured the square glass slide with some alcohol ink in oregano and a little pitch black. (I think I've broken some grammatical law with the length of that last sentence.....so shoot me!) The chicken wire fence image is stamped onto the glass slide while the other images are underneath, of course any stamping onto the glass slides must be done with Stazon.

Now what I need to work on are some chunky pages for our ABC (Altered Book Club) group, I'm a little behind in that....gothic and art deco must be completed before the next meeting in November!!! Promise girls!

...and yet another canvas

This will have to be my last canvas for a while....I now have 4 on display in the shop which I think is going to be enough for people to work out whether they want to do it as a class or not.

The skeleton leaves down the right hand side look more obvious in this scan than they do in real life, they're a little more subtle in the flesh.

When I first started making atc's a couple of years ago, I also made 4 canvases for my youngest brother as a birthday present, the other "You Go Girl" canvas that was in a previous post was also one of them. As you can see from these other 2 that I made for him, I am going more textural and intricate with my layering on canvases these days. These previous ones are much more like just big atc's - fairly flat without much dimension.....well....maybe my early atc's, not my later ones. (These are 4" x 6")

Now for a little tip or two...I'm sure most of you have at least 1 or 2 (or maybe 24!) of the Ranger Distress Pads. You can use these wonderfully versatile ink pads to colour up your white gloss card so you have a variety of gloss card to work on. The below atc has "Pine Needles" Distress Pad applied to white gloss card with a little sponge. Don't just blob the sponge up and down on the card, you have to rub it vigorously all over the card backwards & forwards completely covering in one motion so you don't have extra colour in certain spots.

If you know what Pine Needles looks like on normal matte card stock, this is a spectacular colour difference compared to the matte card stock. The stamping in the background is my favourite copper - Brilliance Cosmic Copper - best thing about the Brilliance pads is they will dry on vellum & on gloss card! Black Stazon is used to do the main image stamping (Lina Cavalieri from Stampington). Etal metal are the little corner pieces under the brads and the wording is copper card stock that I've cut into a thin strip and run it through my dymo hand punch with a little black ink rubbed over the top and some aqua coloured paint wiped on the edges.

I'm off to Newcastle tomorrow night so won't be posting for a week....I'll certainly miss my emails and the back & forth of the Internet chatter but it'll be good to catch up with some girls over East who I've only conversed with on-line, plus I get to teach a workshop! Woo-hoo!!!

Rinse Aid Resist on Canvas Paper...and Anthophobia!!!

If you're a fan of Claudine Hellmuth (as I am), then you'll know she does absolutely wonderful techniques which are outlined in both of her books and on both of her dvd's. When I first got into this collage/mixed media caper a couple of years ago, she was a huge inspiration to me to try out as many different techniques as I could glean from books, dvd's and the internet. One of my favourites is the Rinse Aid Resist technique which is going to be my atc class this Saturday. Below are two samples of the canvas paper using this particular technique.

This next one is not an atc, but is about 5-1/2" x 4-1/2" with a lovely man who makes eyeliner look absolutely fabulous on a male!!! The wonderful rinse-aid resist forms the background for this piece...

Now an atc with rinse-aid resist technique for the background....

For those of you who love the German Scrap that I use on a lot of my work, it is now available on-line through the store where I work, Scraptivate, click here to go straight to the on-line shop where you can purchase this fantastic paper embellishment. More will be uploaded as it comes into the store....yes, there is still more to come!!!

I'm off on a short trip next weekend (29th) to visit my son over East (Newcastle, NSW) so I expect posting on my blog will be a little haphazard for a bit. I have to be super-organised for my next atc class on the 6th of October as I arrive back on Friday the 5th and teach my next atc class the next day so I've been doing a little pre-preparation for that one. Here are a couple of samples to show you the technique I'll be doing.

I'm going to be teaching a workshop when I visit over East and hope to show the girls some of the things that they've been asking about on my blog.....hi girls ....see you soon!

ANTHOPHOBIA: An abnormal and persistent fear of flowers. Sufferers experience anxiety even though they realize they face no threat from flowers.

The new dare for our group on Aussie Dares is "Irrational Fears" (it'll be posted by Friday I think). I really have no irrational fears but I couldn't let a little technicality like THAT stop me.....so I think that my dislike of using flowers on my work, as all the girls at work and in my classes know, will qualify. Even though it's not a fear, more like an aversion. It's not that I don't like flowers, I actually do, hubby does a great job of giving them to me for all sorts of reasons, including no reason at all, which is the best reason! lol I just can't seem to use them on my work and I find that there is an overuse of flowers on all sorts of layouts....I suppose though it's like brads/eyelets....just another decorative element....just not for me! So here's the atc that I made called Anthophobia.

A canvas & a fold-out atc

Still in canvas mode....this one has been sent to my friend over on the East Coast of Australia, Barb. She's been warned not to check my blog until it arrives in the post so I can safely put it up here. Once again the wonderful texture paste was used as well as some Golden paints for their intense colours, some skeleton leaves for texture and a touch of mica and the beautiful Baroque German Scrap. The clear words on the pieces of mica read "a shimmering fragment embracing life". Deep huh! lol




Below is the fold-out atc that was for the raffle for Tuesday night's atc class. Quite devoid of colour but it worked out okay..... love the German Scrap Scroll embellishment on the left hand side! There is a word on the metal embellishment down the bottom, it says "tryst". First pic is the atc closed:

Second pic it is open:

We've had "dental issues" in our household this week. My 19yo son Cort had all 4 of his wisdom teeth pulled out last Saturday. I'm sure when I had mine done eons ago there wasn't all the rigmarole that was required for him: ice packs on the face - 20 mins on, 20 mins off, constantly, for 3 days! Saltwater mouth-rinses 8 times a day, 2 lots of antibiotics, 1 lot of anti-inflammatories, Savcol (antiseptic) mouth wash twice a day, syringing of the sockets 6 times a day!!! GAWD!!! But he's gone off to work happily this evening for the first time since he had the op and seems to be recovering.

The next atc class is Canvas Paper and I'm going to show the girls how to do a technique that I learnt from one of Claudine Hellmuth's wonderful books. The technique is Rinse Aid Resist, you use dishwashing rinse aid to create a resist on acrylic paint on canvas paper. Below are a couple of atc's that I've made in the past using this particular technique.

This next one, also using rinse-aid resist, is a 4" x 6" canvas I made for a gift for a family member. It seems kind of "bland" as it's one of the very first canvases I did, I think I would do more to it these days!

Retro canvas, crackle & Spotlight atc's

I made another canvas today in a retro style, a girl at work (Scraptivate) commented that she liked retro.....I do too - I've done quite a few retro atc's in the past as well as some retro canvases before. This one incorporated some new sequin waste that I had ordered which just arrived from the US, there was some with smaller holes than is available here as well as some with HUGE holes! Sequin waste works great with texture paste....this is what is up on the top left corner of this canvas. I also used the peeled paint technique as well. Poor girl ended up with a big blob of yellow ochre paint over her left eye, which is why she has this other eye over the top....all in the vein of "no such thing as a mistake"!

Also made today was a couple more Spotlight Technique atc's for the up-coming atc class next Saturday...one of these will become the raffle atc.

This one is made with an alcohol ink background on gloss card, the second stamped images are on plain white gloss card which have then been slightly coloured with Tombow markers. You can't really see this very well on the computer screen, the colouring is very subtle but can be seen better irl (in real life).

Next one is on plain copy paper, smoosh technique using Rangers Distress ink in Mustard Seed and Pine Needles. Second image is on plain white cardstock, colouring was done using the Ranger Cut 'n dry nibs on the Distress Ink Pads in various colours - Tattered Rose, Pine Needles, Broken China and Worn Lipstick. As well as the inimitable German Scrap coloured with Treasure Gold!

Coming up soon in my atc classes is a crackle class. There are several products out there that will do a crackle effect, not always exactly how you want them to though! This next atc I have used the Helmar 2 step crackle on the angel and after it was dry & cracked, I rubbed some Quinacridone Crimson (Golden) over the top to define the cracks...love crackle!!! Will be interesting to see how Tim Holtz's new crackle paint turns out. I believe this is a 1 step crackle with is always a bonus PLUS it's going to come in all the fabulous distress colours. Think I might put off the crackle class until this stuff arrives in our store!

Comments are always welcome, even if it's to say "you talk too much!" hahahaha

Peeled Paper & Spotlight Technique

Firstly, thank you to Nat B for nominating me for the Nice Matters Award...


One is supposed to nominate more people for this award but good ol' Nat has nominated the very people that I would....so I'm just going to say that all the people's blogs that I visit would easily qualify for this award....otherwise I wouldn't visit their blogs would I??? lol

Last night's atc class was the Peeled Paper technique (from the wonderful books of Claudine Hellmuth - one talented girl!!!). This first one is the raffle atc that Ana won....it took her a few seconds to understand the quote...I love these "sassy" quotes!

Next one is also a peeled paper background but this time done with plain copier paper...great texture! I also love "deep" quotes...lol There's a bit of mica attached to the top right hand corner, giving it a little darker appearance on the scanner and the image and words are outlined in a silver crayon...nice grungy effect.

The next upcoming atc class is a technique called "Spotlighting". Most stampers have heard of it and would recognise it when they saw it but the name is something that is not that well known. It basically means to stamp an image, stamp it again and cut out bits of the 2nd stamped image to colour and add over the top of the previous stamped image. Hence, Spotlighting! You can also do it the other way, add the colour to the main image and keep the Spotlighted bit in plain black and white....equally effective.

This next image is not an atc as this stamp is about 3" x 5", but it's perfect for spotlighting so I thought I'd do it up as a sample to show the girls (the stamp is called Paris Moments, just gorgeous!).

The next one has an alcohol ink background, stamped with the Leonardo da Vinci stamp, same image stamped onto a domino that has been coloured with the same colours of alcohol inks. Gold thread was wrapped around the card before being attached to the black mat board background, then some gold german scrap added down both sides (my gloss card was a little on the "slim" side so I needed to cover the edges for balance....no such thing as a mistake! lol). Please notice the pink colour.....see, I can do pink!

New Canvas

This is another canvas that I made, previous to the one in the post below. Basically following exactly the same technique....obviously in different colours though. I didn't really take much notice of which colours I used for this, something I will remedy in the future!

I must say that I learnt a lot about washes from Michael de Meng when I attended a workshop of his earlier this year. I had been using Golden paints previous to this as I had been a member of Claudine Hellmuth's yahoo group for quite some time and she loves her Golden's!!! I had the heavy body acrylics as well as the fluids, and mixed the Satin Glaze with them to get the wonderful washed-out look that I like..... but because of the very rich pigment of the Golden paints, they retain their strength of colour! It was Michael's suggestion of particular paint combinations though that really added a depth to my work that I liked.....thank you Michael ;-)

This weekend, more work on another couple of canvases, as I'm soon to teach a class in this technique at Scraptivate! Just need to wait for some product to arrive in store....speaking of product.....the white German Scrap has been really popular, both for scrapbookers as well as others that do more altered art/atc's etc. LOVE my German Scrap!!!

Busy weekend ahead... Friday night is our monthly catch-up with the ABC (Altered Book Club) girls, then my atc class on Saturday is on Transparent ATC's. All you need is acetate, alcohol inks, Collections Window Frames, Xyron 250, images & stamps...simple! I need to make the raffle atc so I'll post that on Saturday. Saturday night is a "girls-night-in" at Scraptivate, just a bunch of us who work and teach at the shop as well as a couple of other arty friends, playing 'til the cows come home! lol

Here's one of my previous transparent atc's...