Raven ATC

This ATC is for a swap on one of my groups with the theme Ravens.  I used some paper with the swirl resist and the LE Tim Holtz Distress Ink pads and the bird was punched out of cardboard (which I got from a class I took this past month from Karen Bearse, thanks Karen!!) and I painted the raven black and used distress stain picket fence on a stamp for the patterns on the raven. It came out pretty funky and cool.

Working on a Few Swaps

I have been steadily trying to catch up on some of my swaps that I have joined. I still have quite a few to work on too. lol.. Needless to say, I've been a little behind lately. Anyway, I did finish another charm swap on one of my groups, the theme was Christmas, so we each had to make two sets of 8 Christmas Charms. These are the two different charms that I made.

Ok so this first charm was made from a real  piece from a pinecone and looks much better in person lol... It came out pretty cool I think, I covered it with some gloss and punched a hole, used the wire and added a leaf bead and small wire bead up top.

These charms were fun to so, I made them out of felt and I had found these really cool metal circles with Christmas sayings on them at a craft store for 75% off. I thought they made a cool addition to these charms.

What' I'm working on now.... besides cleaning my craft room

Well, I have been slowly trying to clean up my craft room, but I really don't think I'm getting anywhere. I'm usually a pretty tidy person but lately my craft room has gotten kind of messy and the fascinating thing is... It's not really bothering me!!! haha! 
Ok, so I was talking to my friend Deanna today about this box I have been working on. I've been trying to do a little bit of work on it every time I'm in my room so it's coming along slowly, I'm not sure if I'm happy with it so any advice/feedback is truly appreciated. I got this bright idea to make my own box for my Tim Holtz Distress Inks and the pads and dabbers. I had this shoe box that was just the perfect size for what I wanted so I covered it with cardboard paper and grunged it up. I used mostly Tim products but threw some other things in there too. It's not done yet, I want to add a knob of some sort on the front and I need to glue the lid to the side so it opens and shuts. Feedback PAHLEEASE!! :-p Thanks all!!

This is the top of the lid

This is the front of the box where I need to add a knob

This is the inside, I made a divider and shelf inside for the ink pads and covered them with Tim paper.

This is the inside with my dabbers in, I know the box won't hold all the distress inks once I have more but it was a fun project anyway.

Funkiness!!

Ok everyone, I have been in some sort of funk lately, It seems like I just can't finish anything that I'm working on. I need a muse!! I did manage to finish these two ATCs for a swap with some friends. :) I figured that I better post something before you all "delete" me haha!

Been Having Fun with Black Gesso!!

So I bought some of the new Claudine Hellmuth's black gesso a couple of weeks ago and I haven't gotten it out to try it. I thought today would be a great day to mess around with it and see what happens. I was working in my art journal and did a two page spread with black gesso. I painted the entire pages with the gesso first. Here is the result....

This page was done with a template and yellow and orange  gelatos, I kind of just rubbed the gelatos over the template with my finger and spread it out a little. I used a stamp I got from my friend over at http://absolutelyeverything.ecrater.com/  (they are the greatest)The colors in the picture don't do it justice, it's very vivid.

This is what the two pages looked like together. For the 2nd page I used acrylic paints and stamps and my fingers. This is just a background so the pages aren't quite done yet.

More of those Fabric Page Tags

This is another set of those fabric/Paris tags that I did for my Yahoo groups fabric journals.  This have been mailed to my partners.

Cows!! Mooo!!

We are having an ATC themed swap this month in one of my trade groups and the theme is cows! I really had a hard time with this because I have absolutely no cow themed stamps or dies or anything. So.. I cheated and borrowed a stamp from a friend (thanks June!!). What I did was used sticky back canvas by Claudine Hellmuth and some embossing powders to create a cool leathery type background. I actually cut out my own template from packing plastic and a exacto knife. It actually came out better than I thought haha! Take a look.