Friends and Happiness

You know, Friendship really makes me happy. I was talking to a friend today and was just enjoying our conversation so much. Talking about crafting makes me happy too. (haha) I must say that I'm so blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life.

This page was inspired by that thought, I don't think that I am quite done with it yet, it's going to be one of those "work in progress" pages. I haven't glued the little girls down yet, I'm still wondering if I want them on the right or left side of the spread. I cut the girls arm on the left and re-atatched it so they would be holding hands. At any rate, this is mostly how this page is going to be. I love it!! It makes me Happy, happy, happy (in the words of Phil, Duck Dynasty!) love that show!!!

I'm entering this page into the Stampotique Designers Challenge for SDC85 - this week. The theme is "Happy" they want us to share whatever makes you happy. 

Hmmm......

You know how you get so excited about trying something that you've seen on the internet?? Well I do that ALL the freaky deaky time and sometimes it just doesn't work out so well. haha!
Today, the wonderful and oh, so talented Tammy Tutterow put out an awesome wood grain technique on her blog Here , I just had to give it a shot, It's so cool. She used the Ranger stamping paper and I think this was my downfall because I don't have any. Yikes!
I used some thicker cardstock with a sort of glossy texture to it. 
I got out my stuff and went to it just like in her video. It was all going ok until I had to wet the cardstock the third time and let it all run together and then stamp .... lol... it sort of turned into a yucky mess. I believe I can use it though and keep going with it.... So I decided to stamp the woodgrain stamp onto all of it with black Archival ink. I'm determined to save it!! Alas, it's pitiful. LOL...

So from there, I decided that I was going to go in a different direction and decided to take a piece of white cardstock and run it through the Sizzix inside the embossing folder.

I went over the texture with Gathered Twigs distress ink and really made it pop. I then took it and sprayed some lovely goosebumps over it to add even more texture. I'm loving the way it came out.

but wait..... lookie there!!! I'm kinda liking this piece of card stock on top of the other piece that didn't come out so well... So, I went with it! Why not??

I needed to join in a few challenges with this card so I decided to add the Words "Wish Big" for Ink On My Fingers, Hel's Challenge.

I'm also entering this one into the Our Creative Corner Challenge this week, which is "Woody With A Button". 

YAY!!! My first challenge over there, I hope I do it right hehe!

Here is my finished card with embellies and Words. Hope you liked my mistake and fixing!! I actually am loving how it came out and I'm so glad I used the "mistake" ...

Sprucing Up A Cover & I WON!!

I am so excited about this post for a few reasons. .....
One -  The wonderful Mrs. Linda Ledbetter over at Studio L3 was so generous with her last give-a-way. She was giving away a wonderful embroidered apron and she even offered to take it to CHA and have Tim and Mario sign it.!!  I was the lucky winner of this apron and I got it in the mail yesterday. To my surprise it also came with a bunch of goodies, Linda is so generous!! Way generous!! She even made me a beautiful butterfly card.  Here is a pic of my goodies:

Thank you SO MUCH Linda!! It was all so unexpected and wonderful. Your amazing!! 

Another reason I'm excited about this post is that I bought a Dyan Reaveley journal and I'm SO loving it. Well the cover of these journals are blank so that you can really do you own creation on the front so I decided I was going to re-do mine and do something with my cover. I also entered this into the new challenge over at Frilly and Funky which is Spruce it Up. I hope this cover qualifies as a Spruce It Up project, I feel like I did my best to spruce it up. haha!! (how many times can I say that?)

Here is my cover....

To start this multi layered cover I painted my entire cover with Claudine Hellmuth's blank canvas white paint. I love that it's thick and creamy. Once dry I stamped some word background stamps in various colors onto the white. 

So to prep the next layer I used Tim Holtz masking sheets to cut out the designs and flower and the umbrella man and adhered those items to the white here and there. Like the diamonds in the upper right corner. Once those were in place (the mask sheets are great because they are sticky so I knew they wouldn't move) I placed three different colors of Claudine Hellmuth's paints onto my craft sheet and rolled my brayer through one at a time and went across the cover here and there. 

I really tried to blend them equally and make it all random. Once that was done I used Archival stamp pads and misc Tim and Wendy Vecchi  stamps to randomly stamp here and there. I love how you can still see the words in the background behind some of the paint. 

Once that was all dry I took off the masks that I had created and WHALLA! The white is still there through the paint. I then used the reverse part of the umbrella man mask (the outline portion) and stuck it down where my umbrella man was at. I then used some random stamps to fill him in so he wasn't completely white anymore.  I also used a black marker and went around the white designs and umbrella man so they would stand out more. I added a few dots and lines as well. 

I had to add some Dyan Reaveley stuff as well so i stamped the circles on a seperate sheet of paper and colored them and glued those on top here and there. I added some white paint circles as well. I might add a word or two later but I am just loving how it turned out. :)

Thanks for hanging with me today.

Oh, almost forgot, here are the cool masks once I took them off! How cool do they look all painted up and stuff?? I might have to use them permanently on a page sometime.

On the right is the reverse umbrella man I used to stamp inside his outline. 

Valentine Tag With Tim's Distress Paint

So I won a prize on Tim Holtz' blog last week and I got my prize the other day. I was super duper excited. Here is a picture of all the goodies I got...

These are some of the new items that came out from Ranger at CHA this month and I was so excited that Tim sent me so many goodies. I had to bust out these distress paints and use them right away because I have seen some videos on them and they look so cool. Tim sent me Fired Brick and Vintage Photo so these are the colors I'm working with today. (two of my favorite colors in the distress line)

So anyway, I also wanted to partake in a challenge (of course) so I am looking to do something for Simon Says Challenge Blog - Their theme this week is "Paper Piecing" and they are giving away a 50.00 gift voucher to their store, yay!!

....But really I just wanted to play..

First thing I did for this tag was to create a background, I used my two paint colors and put a little on my craft sheet and spritzed with some water. After that I ran my tag through the wet paint. 

The paint is so fluid and smooth, it reacts with water and so I spritzed it a little more and it really flows together, almost marble like.. really cool. Once that was the way I wanted it I went ahead and dried it with my heat tool. This paint (unlike regular acrylic paint) doesn't bubble when you dry it, which I love because I'm always in a hurry.

This is what my tag looked like once dry...

Beautiful!! The paint also won't run once dry either, so if I wanted to add more colors or something else on top, the paint is already set so it won't change my paint.

Once my background was done I wanted to try the paint with some clear embossing powder. So for the paper piecing part of this I stamped Tim's blueprint heart onto a piece of card stock with the paint. Before the paint dried I sprinkled it with Ranger's distress clear embossing powder and dried. It works!! I love how the heart came out.

Once that was done I cut out my heart and used distress inks in various colors to color my heart. Then I stamped the same heart stamp onto the bottom of my tag with black Archival Ink.

So then, I wanted to make some of my own red glitter for the little bottle I was going to use on my tag. I had seen a video where Tim made his own with alcohol ink and Distress Stickles clear rock candy dry glitter and so I tried my hand at this. What do you know, it works haha!! That Tim, he's so clever.

I added my colored Glitter to my little bottle and then adhered the word "heart" to the outside. You will see this later, I didn't take a pic, sorry. 

I then used some of Tim's music note paper, tore and inked up the edges and adhered those to my tag with the mini staple tool. 

Since I'm all about using what I have right now I used a piece of fabric softener to place behind my mini bottle just to make it pop a little more. I also used my handy dandy label tool to make some words for the front of my tag.

 Here is a pic of how they look.

I added my words and the Blue Print heart with dimensionals so they would pop a little.

To finish it all off I added a few flowers that I had laying around, inked them up with Distress Ink and TADA!! My Finished tag. Really fun to make and so cool playing around with those wonderful paints. I am SO getting more of that paint. Love it!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, time for me to pop off this computer and cook some dinner. :)

Seriously Fab!!

Over at Simon Says Challenge Blog this week they want you to use Washi Tape. I must say Washi Tape has been all the craze lately. I see it everywhere and so much of it, so many different colors and patterns and everyone says it's so fab! Well, I literally have two roles of the stuff. I just never use it, maybe I should use it more but I just don't know what to do with it or how to incorporate it into my work, how weird, because it's all so wonderful!
So anyway, I REALLY wanted to partake in this challenge because it was out of my comfort zone. Since the only washi tape I have it bright green and red circles and the other one is words, I figured I'd use this background that I made out of left over paint from my craft mat. The page was just a mix of red, yellow and blue or turquoise colors. So I put some of that red and green circle washi tape over the page here and there and then made some embossed Wendi Vecchi flowers from craft colored card stock (if you look closely you can see the pattern in the flowers backgrounds) and then added some Stampotique characters. (love those) I drew the stems on the flowers and pumpkins and added the word washi tape across the top.  I also painted the bottom rolling ground.
I must say, I think it's a fab page. I kinda like it. 

Now I must go over to Simon's Challenge blog and see what everyone else did with their washi tape challenge because I need some ideas!!

Fear Nothing

I've been working in my art journal again.. surprise, surprise..
Anyway, I wanted to partake in a few challenges and I really wanted to finish a two page spread that I started awhile back and just didn't finish it. Sometimes you just have to let it set a little bit and then come back to it later. I started this page here:

and I wanted to finish the other side of the page. I started with

Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week, which is "What are you know for". I had to think on that one because, really, there could be a number of things I could be known for.. haha! So in the list of things I thought of, (funny is the best!!) I came up with Butterflies. One of my favorite things in the world are butterflies and I use them quite a bit in the things I create. If you know me, you know I love them, I love what they stand for and I love the way something so beautiful starts out as an ugly caterpillar. I even have a nice tattoo of a butterfly on my wrist.  So I started with that thought and just went with it.

My next challenge was Stampotique Designers Challenge # SDC83 - thier challenge is New Year's Resolution. Mine is to try not to fear or over think things when creating and to just GO with My GUT. The last challenge was from Artists In Blogland - Fall Fearless and Fly, which is black and neon or bold colors. I love this page for it's bold colors too. 

I had already finished the color on the background so I started

this page with Tim's blueprint butterfly stamp and I really wanted the butterfly to be a black silhouette so I did the inside black. The I spritzed it with perfect pearls to give some shine.

Once that was done I decided to stamp the butterfly three more times and cut them out and color them with distress stains and distress markers. Once they were colored I used glossy accents to go over the wings but not entirely. I used a back and forth motion while applying so that the glossy accents looked textured a little. You can kind of see that in this 2nd picture here.

Set that aside to dry and then I did the other two.

While those were drying I cut out some black letters with Tim's  Upon A Tim decorative strip die. 

I like the way it came out but I wasn't sure if I liked the black butterfly at the bottom but I wanted it to be different than the other three. So I stamped the same butterfly onto a piece of packing plastic and colored it with some metallic markers. 

I added it on top of the black and positioned it off center so you can still see the black underneath. I really like the way it turned out. The wings on all the butterflies set up as well so it looks like they are flying over the page.

This is the finished two page spread. I hope you like it. :)

Dream It

This was a fun page that I put together at a friends house the other day. I have this plastic folder thingy that is overflowing with loads of paper and other misc items that I keep. If I think it looks cool, then I keep it, no matter what it is. A tag off clothing, a ticket, a stub, part of a paper menu, you get the idea right? I thought that it was time to get this stuff out and create a layered page with it. I really wanted to glue all this fun stuff down but I wasn't sure what to do with it once it was glued down. So I just kind of went with it and messed around. The first thing I did was used distress stain in the color Tea Dye, all over the white page to give it a color. Then I went ahead and found some of my favorite papers and tags and glued them down. Once that was done, I went over parts of the page with gesso just to give it a bit of a cohesive look. and tone down some of the brighter colors of papers. I also tried several different stencils in various paint and distress inks. I wasn't sure I liked the way it looked at this point so I added more stenciling in distress stain color, Rusty Hinge. This really started to bring the page together. I also stamped the face in Adirondak black ink. I really wanted him on my page so i knew I'd stamp him somewhere.
Once that was done it was time to clean up and go home for the day so I decided to stop there. I knew it wasn't done.
Once I got home I decided that the page needed some sort of words so I got out some corrugated black card stock that I had and I used Tim's Sizzix Die to cut out the words. So now it's really starting to come together but I just felt that it needed something more (my friend agreed) What do you think?......

This is what the page looked like at this point.

So since I felt it wasn't finished I decided to add a black stencil border to bring it all together so I used Claudine Helmuth's black gesso to stencil the edges. I also re-added the word Voyage and Dream in the opposite corners. What do you think??

I love it!!!

Time To Dream

I'm really looking for more time, seriously!! Anyway, my project for today was to make a card for a swap that I'm currently in on the All Things Tim yahoo group. I like the idea of swapping one card with someone else in the group, it's simple, it's only one card and it's sure to be fun!! The theme this month is "Gears Of Time"
I also wanted to partake in a few challenges as well, you know me, I love my challenges. 
Over at Simon Says Stamp and Show the challenge this week is "Lace Love" and over at Ink On my Fingers , Hels has challenged us to "Dream". So I wanted to incorporate these challenges to my "Gears of Time" theme. Here is an explanation of what I did. 
First thing I did was cut out a size 5x7 card out of manilla card stock. I have this really cool lace doily that I got from a friend of mine for misc use and I really wanted to use it in this project. I used Perfect medium and used the doily as a template. I embossed that with some shimmer brown embossing powder. I love the effect that the doily gave me on my card front.

After that was done I then added three colors with Tim's distress inks, Tumbled Glass, Shabby Shutters and Gathered Twigs. The embossed image resisted and showed through so well. I love it!!

Once that was done I grabbed a stamp from one of Tim's stamp sets and used some brown Memento ink to stamp randomly onto the page. (I don't have brown in this color in the Archival inks :( .....I also added a few droplets of water over the top.

I then set that aside to dry. I cut some gears out of Grunge paper and used metallic stains to color them. Then I sanded them a little and went over them with the Gathered Twigs Distress Ink.

I have this really cool stuff that I got from that same friend who gave me the doily. (she has the coolest stuff laying around) and I decided I wanted this on my card so I painted it with a gold and rusty-ish green with acrylic paint. Then I did a quick spritz of Perfect Pearls to finish it off. 

Last but not least, i added some words and gears and finishing touches and whalla!! It's done! I really love how the doily gave the background some depth, it really came out cool and I feel it goes perfectly with the gears.

About The Journey

I'm really on a roll with my Dylusions art journal and I'm having such fun with it that I had to do another page. I really wanted to try a technique that a friend of mine told me about. It's a crayon resist technique and although I really have no idea how to do it, I just tried it anyway haha! 
First thing I did was used brown and white crayons and embossing folders. I laid the embossing folders behind the page and colored over it with crayon, adding the pattern to my page in crayon. I used about 4 different folders and just did this randomly. Once that was done, I used three different shades of distress stain and colored my entire page with those. Then I dried the whole page. The crayon just resists the stains so I didn't even wipe my page. Once that was all dry I used darker orange, white and brown acrylic paint and randomly painted my page with a roller tool. Then I added random stamps in various coordinating colors. I put some of the darker orange paint onto my craft sheet and used Tim's splatter stamp to randomly stamp onto the page with the paint and I really like how that turned out. I also did the same thing with purple and another one of Tim's border stamps. After the background was done I wasn't sure what I wanted on my page next so I walked away and left it lol.
When I came back this envelope that I had painted awhile back was just sitting there on another one of my tables and I figured it would look really cool in the middle of my page but it needed something so I stamped the kids onto it and then cut out the phrase with Tim's letters and added the white words as well. Last but not least I have this awesome skyline die cut and I used it to make a template and with distress ink in Walnut stain I made the skyline along the bottom of the page. 
I just really love this page, I love the way it came out and I really like the colors. 
I am entering this one in Unruly Paper Arts Challenge for this month. The theme is Fleur-De-Lis because I added some of them into my background, they are faint but they are there if you look closely. I really love the Fleur-De-Lis, it's such a beautiful symbol.

I hope you enjoyed this one, I'm sorry I didn't take photos of my project along the way but when your on a roll sometimes you just can't stop LOL.