Tiddly Inks Design Team Submission

Hello crafty friends,

I'm so excited to show you the card I made for the April 2015 Tiddly Inks Design Team call.

I hope I make the team, because I love working with digital images probably more that physical stamped images.  For me the ability to print a digital stamp in whatever size I want/need is a very good things to quote Martha Stewart.  

I own several Tiddly Inks digital and physical stamped images, but for this design team call I wanted something a little different.  I tend to buy girl images, but I wanted to work with a boy images, so I went shopping and fell in love with the Mad About You - Madhatter image.

Using Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, I printed my Madhatter in several different sizes varying from 3" to 5 1/4".  This is what I LOVE about digital images friends.  I wanted him to have a big presence on my card, so I went with the largest image.

At this point, well honestly I knew the direction of my card when I went shopping. I had this idea of Yankee Doodle Dandy, so I tweaked my digital image to fit my theme. I gave him stripped pants and a stripped hat.

I used Copic markers to color him Red, White and Blue. I'm not an expert in Copic coloring and I struggle with whites. For this image I didn't apply color to the white areas. They are just the raw card stock white.

As a finishing touch, I covered his hat and jacket with clear Wink of Stella (so glad my photo captured some of the shine) and gave him a flag to hold.

I added dimensional tape behind him and set him aside to work on my card base. I cut out the zig zag (chevron) red, white and blue pattern paper with the largest of the Dotted Elements Die from Avery Elle. The pattern paper is from the Liby Bee Design 6x6 Destination pad. The other pieces of pattern paper were from my scraps pile. The little flag, fireworks and Happy 4th of July are all stamps from the Stampendous Perfectly Clear - Patriotic Pair set.

Once my card base was ready, attached my patriotic Madhatter digital image and added a few silver sequins.  I absolutely LOVE how the Mad About You - Madhatter turned out and I hope you do to.   Here's a close up...

Thank you for stopping bye my blog. Wish me luck in the design team call.  Until next time, take care.

My 1st Art Journal Page... EVER!

Hello crafty friends,

As I posted on facebook, I broke the seal on my new art journal.  It was a very scary, but highly rewarding thing.   I started w/an idea of what I wanted my first ever art journal page to be about, but ended up far from my original idea... LOL

I feel like I found a new crafty love.  Unlike scrapbooking or card making, art journaling will allow me to just create.  I don't have to worry about printing photos, or finding appropriate pattern paper, working within a set theme, like birthday.

So drum row please... here's my 1st Art Journal page:

If you ask me how I could start with the idea of rain drops keep falling on my head and end up with this, I wouldn't be able to tell you.  All I know is that this page just came together as I was working on it.  And honestly, declaring my love for art journaling on the first page in my book is somewhat fitting, don't you think?

Now, let me tell you some stuff that I found while making this.   Gesso, it's basically paint or paint primer.  It even smells like paint.  Gel Medium, is basically glue.  

I don't think you can even see it, but I started the page by using Gel Medium to glue a large piece of music and text tissue paper.  Remember I started w/a song in mind.  My application of the tissue paper wasn't the greatest, so I had areas that didn't get glued and areas that wrinkled.  I continued on thinking the Gesso would cover up my mistakes, but it didn't.   The areas not glued down lifted and I ended up peeling them away.  But even w/missing sections I kind of liked the look.  

Once the Gesso dried (with help from my heat gun).  I added color to my page w/gelatos, but since I only had four colors to work with my pallet was limited.   I started by coloring the top third of the page Acqua Dolce (a teal blue) and middle third Squid Ink (a dark gray).   I stopped, because I wasn't happy w/the colors.  I should have flip the color order, so I added some Squid Ink to the Acqua Dolce and vice verse.  I ended up w/an ugly gray color and I was NOT happy, but strangely I was not stressing out.  I took a baby wipe and tried to tone down the ugliness of the gray and something wonderful happen... the baby wipe clean the area I was trying to tone down.   Live and learn... LOVE IT!  So I went to town on the whole page and petty much took off all the ugly gray.

It was at this point that I decided to embrace my love of red.  It is one of my favorite colors, so why shouldn't my first art page not have red (lots of it) in/on it.  So I put my Blood Orange down and blended it w/my finger.  That felt really good, but I'll tell you a certain amount of muscles are needed... can I conciser this exercising?  I covered the bottom w/a light covering of Acqua Dolce.   I let things dry a bit while I went looking for stamps.

I stamped the flowers and the word quotes w/Archive black ink and it took a long time for them to dry, even having used a heat gun to help it.  While looking for stamps I found a "this is love" stencil and decided it was perfect for my title w/the insertion of "a new".  I used Distress black ink and marker for the title.

Next I sprayed the centers of the flowers with Dylussions Fresh Lime Ink Spray and using a Tim Holtz stencil the top of the page w/Postbox Red.  I let this dry while I punched out a few hearts.  I "glued" them down w/Gel Medium and even thou they are looking a little flat to me, I'm calling my first art journal page DONE!

      
Thank you for stopping bye and letting me share with you how my page came about.  I'm so excited to start my next page and let some of  the ideas running though my mind out.  Until next time take care.