Virtual Summer CHA

Another one of my interests is anything Fantasy/Sci-Fi.  Spent this weekend attending virtual Comic Con by following attendees on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and through various news articles posted.  Found out about the latest on the upcoming Hobbit movie!  I have done art inspired by the Hobbit/LotR before and will have to post a pic.  Just now found out I will be able to have a virtual CHA as well this week, by following Tim Holtz's blog (have to track him down on Twitter as well), as well as other great stamping artists including the wonderful ScrapTime blog.  They always have great video of CHA and going to their site to see if they will be attending again this year.  They can also be found through iTunes for downloading for free. 

Dictionary page ATCs

Some of those reading may never have heard of Artist Trading Cards.  The size of traditional sports trading cards (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches), they are made in any medium the artist prefers.  Here is a Wikipedia link about ATCs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist_trading_cards and here is a link to a site in Switzerland about the history of ATCs as well http://www.artist-trading-cards.ch/.  Rules for ATCs are only regarding the size and the fact that the cards are freely traded with other artists and are never sold.  I have belonged to two online groups for swapping ATCs via mail for many years and have been fortunate to swap with many very talented people all over the United States and all over the world.  Sometimes a swap can have a theme proposed by the host or hostess and how your art fits that theme is up to you.  The above cards are ones I made for a swap where the theme is to use a page from a book as your background.  I used pages from a very old dictionary that was falling apart.  Normally, I would cringe at destroying any kind of book.  This book was pretty much disintegrating anyway.  I salvaged the pages in the best shape and have them in my stash of interesting-things-to-do-something-with-someday.  For these particular pages, today was the day!  Below are two close up pics of two of my favorites.  Very soon, they will be making their way through the mail to the swap hostess and from there off to other trading card artists who could live anywhere.  I can't wait to see the ones from the other participants.

Watercolor Tag

This is yet another Creative Chemistry 101 Technique.  Although the class is over since last week, I am still catching up in dribs and drabs on tags I was not able to do.  I still have one done to post (Mardi Gras) and one more to do.  When I am done, though, there will still be 4 - count em' 4 - techniques I was not able to try as I did not have those supplies or a substitute!  It was certainly jam packed with ideas and techniques!

The main image on the above tag is done using Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Re-Inkers in a watercolor technique.  I am not at all a fan of coloring by hand, but this technique allows for filling in large areas quickly.  I picked a very simple (but lovely) image from a stamp company in Guam called Vivid Jungle Designs.  They have some gorgeous beach/Guam culture theme stamps.  You can find them at http://www.facebook.com/VividJungleDesigns.Guam.  These are great quality stamps.  I made my most recent purchase from them several years ago, but all the ones I got were unmounted and already on nice, thick cushion and trimmed closely. 

The tag the image is mounted on is done with Ranger Distress Stains.  It is easy to see how well the Distress Re-Inkers work in coordination with the Distress Stains

Distress Stain techniques from Creative Chemistry 101

Was able to do these tags today using techniques from Creative Chemistry 101 class.  First tag is marbling technique using Ranger's Tim Holtz Distress Stains.  The image is a stamp from www.faeriesong.com/artstamps.  I stamped in in black ink over the marbled tag.  I stamped it again on a sheet of white sticker paper, cut out the outer circle with words and then placed that over what was orginally stamped to isolate the image from the rest of the tag.

Second tag is again using Ranger's Tim Holtz Distress Stains.  Background stamp is a word stamp with sayings about friendship from Inkadinkado (www.eksuccessbrands.com/inkadinkado/) and overstamped in black are three stamps from Studio G (www.hamptonart.com/).

Here are more technique tags I have done trying to finish up all the techniques in the Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry 101 Class at onlinecardclasses.com.  Believe it or not there are still some techniques I was not able to do.  Some of them use Distress Markers which I don't have (they are fairly new item) and even some Rock Candy Distress Stickles I don't have (but will be getting from local scrapbook store soon I hope). 

The first tag above uses Distress Embossing powder.  I only had the color of embossing powder- Vintage Photo- which is a brown, but did stamp the image from Stubby Stampers (www.stubbystampers.com) in several different inks and noticed the tone of the embossing powder changes depending on what ink is underneath it. 

The second tag is Rusted Enamel Technique and uses inks and clear embossing powder.  Very cool to see in person as it really does not look like it can just be paper.

Third tag is a technique using embossing powder and them removing the embossing powder later.  I did not intially see the value in that since I was thinking why not just emboss and leave it that way?  The nifty thing is, though, once you remove embossing, the card is smooth to the touch again rather than bumpy from embossing powder.  The floral stamp on here again is from Stubby Stampers, and the swirl stamp is from a clear stamp set from a company called Autumn Leaves.

I do have one more tag I did, a Mardi Gras theme, but need some feathers as a final touch.  So, I will be posting that one as soon as I can find my purple, green, and gold feathers that I have stashed around here somewhere. 

Thanks for viewing and please leave comment if you like.

Creative Chemistry ended this past Monday with a wonderful wrap-up showing some examples of great cards.  I actually still have some techniques to try out, having gone ahead and ordered more colors of different types of inks I did not have on hand.  Waiting anxiously for those to arrive and will be posting more of my works soon.

Distress Crackle Paint - Creative Chemistry Day 8

To me, any day is a good day to make a Halloween theme item!  Both the cat and bird are Grungeboard cutouts from Tim Holtz's idea-ology line (cat from the Seasonal pack and raven from the Nature pack)  The technique here was using the Ranger Distress Crackle paints.  I had that piece of quartz sitting on my desk and it struck me that the pattern of the quartz crystals as they form was very like the effect the Ranger Distress Crackle gives.