Roc Nicholas Design Team Post

Thanks so much for coming by the blog today. Today is my daughter's 23rd Birthday, Happy Birthday Brittney!!

This will be my second post for Roc Nicholas' design team. I can't say how thrilled I am to be on this wonderful team. Roc's stamps are sold at Stampotique.com 

For this month's post I wanted to create something different. I am making a set of coasters to display around the house and wanted to use one for this post.

The first thing I did was prep my background with gesso, these coasters are cardboard and they really soak up the gesso

I then used some of the DecoArt media paint to brush over the gesso. I didn't completely cover the background here

I stamped all my images onto white card stock and colored them with copic markers

I used a diamond stencil and some green paint to create the diamonds in my background and then went over some with a white gel pen

Here is my finished coaster

I have used Roc's Stamps

Squiggle Arms and Blessed Skellie

for the flowers I simply stamped the flower from Blessed Skellie and cut them out. I drew the stems for them.

This is a fun and quirky coaster. I can't wait until the entire set is done, they will be fun to display. 

Thanks for stopping by once again and have a great day!

The Roc Nicholas Design Team

I am thrilled and honored today because I have been asked to be a designer for the Roc Nicholas Design Team in 2015!! how cool is that? I am so excited to join the list of wonderful designers with this awesome team.

Here are the Blog Links to the rest of the team

cathy parmelee - pure one impressions - www.pureoneimpressions.blogspot.com

corrie herriman - madebychook - www.madebychook.blogspot.com

samantha read - the pink dog blog - www.crafty-sam.blogspot.com

karen hayselden (guest designer) - kassa - delight in the detail - www.kassadh.blogspot.com

You can find Roc's stamps on the Stampotique website HERE
There are so many fun and quirky stamps and they are so versatile and all Roc's stamps work so well together.

I wanted to show you how well these stamps work on any project and how they perform so well together, so I have made a few projects for the post today

The list of Roc's Stamps that I used on these projects will all be listed at the end of this post as well as with each project

For my first project I decided to do a postcard, this one was so fun to create and bling out with my white gel pen

I used the stamp Blessed Skellie for this project

For my background here I used tissue paper and stamped Blessed Skellie's head over and over again. I simply covered the rest of the stamp with sticky notes, inked it up and then removed the sticky notes and stamped

I then adhered the tissue to the background of my postcard, I then spritzed with different colors of spray ink and whalla!! you have a fabulous background to build upon

For my next project, I decided to make a keychain
I used the stamp Scooter Girl for this project (Scooter Girl is one of my favorite stamps)

All you do is stamp your image onto some Shrink plastic, color her with some of your favorite colored markers and then cut her out (I recommend using permanent markers for this)

 I colored the back of my girl and then shrunk her down, this is what she looked like previous to shrinking her. I made two holes, one in her bun and the other in her wheel, in order to hang a charm from her

I love how she turned out, she is going to be so cute on my keychain!

 For my next projects, I wanted to work in my journal so I did two different journal pages here
I did not do tutorials for each but I can explain what they entail
For my first page, I first stamped Roc's new release stamp Love Chandlier and then I created a background using Washi tapes leaving that blank space where I stamped my chandlier. I used the stamps Art Junkie and Scooter Girl on top of my washi tapes. I think this turned out to be a fun, bright and cheery page

For my next journal page I used some stencils, tags and rub on words here and there, I just drew the circles and triangles on the side
My focal point on this page is the fabulous Bird Lady Stamp 
Bird Lady is the perfect stamp for my GIRL POWER page!! haha!

For my last project, I made a fun jumbo tag, I created my background with various shades of archival inks and white and black paint, I also used a brick stencil (you can see the stencil is very subtle on the blue and lower red areas)

I used the following Roc Nicholas Stamps on this tag:
Blessed Skellie
Stacked Boxes
Bird Princess
Bunny 
Dog

I wanted to show how awesome these stamps work together and how you can use portions of the stamps.
 I stamped my Stacked Boxes, Bunny's tail and my Bird Princess's dress onto printed craft paper and cut them out. I only used the tail from Bunny. I stamped my girls head, the Dogs and also Blessed Skellies Flower onto white paper and colored those and cut them out. As you can see here, I have paper pieced my Bird Princess together, with her dress, bird, flowers and head all being different paper

This is the outcome of all these stamps! 

So I hope you have enjoyed all my projects today using the wonderful Roc Nicholas stamps and I hope you will stop by Stampotique Originals online store and check them out.
 Also come by Roc Nicholas blog and check out more inspiration and all the wonderful things she and the rest of the team do with these stamps, I can't wait to get started posting with the team in January, I'm so excited!

Again here is the list of stamps I have used:
Blessed Skellie
Stacked Boxes
Bird Princess
Bunny 
Bird Lady Stamp 
Scooter Girl
Art Junkie
Love Chandlier 
Dog

Thanks for stopping by the blog today and have a wonderful day!!

Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 8

Hello all and welcome back to week 8 of the Altered Playing Card Challenge, I really hope your all having fun!!

Here are the links to the previous weeks of the challenge

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7

and our Facebook page

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

This week it's all about hearts and love
For my first altered card I added color to my background using gelatos and a water brush
(I had previously made a heart by drawing into my gesso)

I simply colored on my color and used the water brush to blend them together. Gelato's are so smooth and creamy and a water brush is all you need to blend them, I sprayed my card with water and then blended using the brush
You can use anything here if you don't have gelatos, paint, sprays, whatever you'd like

Next I used a Donna Downey Stamp and some ink colors that matched my background and simply stamped here and there

I used my Faber-Castell black oil pastel around my heart to make it pop a little more (I like the oil pastels because i can use my finger to blend them out and make the color and edges a little softer)  I then also colored in my heart with a red gelato

I then took a Faber Castell black fine tip pen and wrote my sentiment, you can use whatever black pen you want to I just like these because they write on anything and it comes in a finer tip 

Lastly I edged with the archival ink and added the "love" word

Here is my first finished card - I love that the texture from the gesso is still visible even with the gelato colors and such

For my next card, I went with a really simple but effective background. I used some watercolor paints, I love watercolors but I don't really use them as much as I should
I started with three colors and just put them in these little cups and added some water

 With a paintbrush I brushed the paint across the top of my card, I then added a bit more water and let the paint "drip" down the card face
(again, I had drawn my heart previously)

I added a second color and did the same thing

I added one last color and again the same

Once my card face was dry I used a circle punch to make a black circle and used a Sizzix Bigz die to create my heart out of cardboard
I then used a green Sharpie marker to color my heart green
I also edged my heart with black marker

I wrote the word "LOVE" onto the heart and drew around the mini heart with my white gel pen
This is where I was thinking that I really just like the simplicity of this card and didn't want to do much else with it

I ended up drawing some stitches around the rim of my card and edged with the black archival ink and I thought it looked done!
Here is my second finished card

and the two together

Thanks for coming by once again, I always love to see what you all do during the week so keep the photos and links coming.

I am having surgery on my foot on Wednesday so I might not be able to do my post next week. I am really going to try and get my cards done and posted but If I miss next weeks post I will definitely get back to posting on November 3rd
Thanks for following along everyone!!
CHEERS

Color This Quote

Over at Artist In Blogland they have this challenge once a month called, "Color This Quote"

What they do is give you a quote and you interpret that into your crafting and then enter it into their challenge. I've had a great time joining in on these challenges and I always love their quotes.

For this month the Quote is:

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second -rate version of somebody else"

Judy Garland

I love this quote and always wanted to do a journal page with the challenge and I had this fun background in my journal. I had done this background quite awhile ago and then just left it. I just used rolodex cards, sprays and stamps to create it.

Today I went back to it and created this page for the challenge.

I added the yellow dots, stars, girls and quote to the page. Everything else was done previously. 

I used lots of Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions sprays and stencils, Distress Ink, Tim Holtz water mark stamp, Wendy Vecchi stamps and Dina Wakley Stencils. I also used my white gel pen to go around the stars and the girl.

I love how the page is nice and bright.

Thanks for stopping by the blog today. I hope you have a great weekend!!

Free Your Voice

I made this Gelli Print page the other day, basically wiping off everything onto this page.. stencils, paints and other items. I think for a "wipe off" page its so cool. I love all the colors too.

Well, I bought the book from Tracy Bautista called "Doodles Unleashed." I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to do some major doodling. It's so good and so many prompts for art journaling too. 

Anyway, this gelli print page that I made screamed "Doodle, Tracy Bautista style," to me! I did what she recommended in the book and looked at my print and imagined what I see. I see a face with flowers and doodles all around. What do you see?

I used Pitt Pens, watercolor paints, gel pens, white acrylic paint and water soluble crayons to create this page. I didn't really do a tutorial, its all laid out in Tracy's book. Basically, I just pictured what I wanted my page to look like and doodled until it was out of my head and onto the page. 

So my page went from this:

To This:

I really love how it turned out. If you look real closely at the unfinished page, there are birds at the bottom. I had used the birds as a stencil on my gelli plate and wiped them off onto the page. I just made them more bold here. 

This page makes me think of all those people who try to silence your voice and make you be quite when all you want to do is speak your mind. Well, I say, "Free Your Voice!"

The way I use my voice a lot of times is through my journaling, it helps me feel free.

Thanks for coming by again :)