Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 18

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Altered Playing Card Challenge. We are on week 18 and going full force. There have been some new members join the Facebook group this passed week and I really hope they join in and have a good time

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Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17

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I have had a pretty rough week, sometimes real life just gets out of control and so this week I really wanted to focus on beauty and some of my favorite quotes. It just so happens that these two quotes are both by Ralph Waldo Emerson

For starters - I received this wonderful box of samples from DecoArt

They carry a wide array of products, paints, varnishes, mediums, sprays, enamels, glow in the dark paints... it's endless.

At any rate, I wanted to break out everything and try it all out right away but for now I settled on trying out some paints

I used three colors for my first card

All of the colors I'm using today come from their mixed media line

I cannot tell you how vivid and beautiful these colors are. I used a violet, purple and white for this. I simply added a few splotches of my three colors to my craft mat, like in the photo above

Next, I took my altered playing card and spritzed it with a bit of water (the water helps the paint to spread and run a bit more)

I just dabbed my card into the paint and moved it around a tad and picked it directly up. I did not slide it through as in last weeks cards. 

I ended up with some splotchy parts, which I kinda liked how it turned out - I set this one aside to dry

I did the same thing with card #2 but this time used some other colors

This time I spritzed my paint and card with water and as I ran my card through the paint I twisted a bit more - Here is how this card came out

Since I didn't use white, I got more coverage on this one, again, I set the card aside to dry

I decided to go with flowers on both these cards and I used some from Stampotique

Sunflower Large, Carols Flower Large and Carols Flower Small - all by Artist Janet Klein

I stamped all the flowers onto white card stock and heat embossed them all

I then colored my Large and Small flowers with copic markers

Next I simply cut them out

I adhered both to my background with glue and I offset my large flower and trimmed the edges

of course I have to doodle a bit so I used a black marker and drew some stems for my flowers

For my second card, I did the same with stamping and heat embossing the Sunflower but instead of coloring the flower, I thought it looked perfect with no color against that bold background

I added my sentiments to both cards. I just stamped both sentiments onto white card stock with black ink and then cut them out. I edged both with black as well, I think this helps them to stand out. I always add my sentiments last

Here are the finished two cards for this week

Both background were done the same but both are very different. 

I really needed some beauty in my life this week

Can't wait to see what you all come up with!!

CHEERS!
p.s. - Is there something you would like to see in our challenges? A theme that you want to do? Make sure to let me know in the comments if you have some ideas.

Mixed Media Clock - An Artist Trading Block Project

Hello all and thanks for coming by the blog today.

I'm so excited to share this project with you.

Have you ever had a project in your head and have been wanting to put it in the "works" for awhile? Well that's exactly what this project is all about for me. I've had this in my head for some time and have finally made it.

I have put together a tutorial for this project so I hope you don't mind all the photos

For this project I had this clock that I bought at a thrift store many moons ago, it's purpose was just to hang it in my craft room and I had always planned to re-purpose it at some point. 

After I made the inspiration team for Artist Trading Blocks I got an awesome idea to use Eileen Hull's Artist Trading blocks and for this project I used the smallest of the sizes which measure about 1.5" x 1.5" 

I began by wrapping the clock hands with painters tape, I couldn't figure out how to remove the clock mechanism so I just wrapped the hands up to protect them

I then applied a layer of gesso over the clock face,

setting this aside to dry, after it was dry I applied a second layer

While the clock face was drying I began by cutting out my ATBs using Eileen's ATB Die and White Matboard

Since it takes two cuts to create one block I had to cut out 24 of these

 I laid all of these out on the floor over some freezer paper and applied some Goosebumps Clear Texture spray here and there, I didn't spray it I opened the bottled and dabbed it on

I let that thoroughly dry.... once dry I applied Adirondak Ink over the top with a distress tool, as you can see the Goosebumps acts as a resist for the Adirondak ink

I then used a Dylusions stencil and some color wash to spray a pattern onto each piece of the ATBs

I figured I could do 3 pieces at a time

Here is how they looked

Once that was done and they were dry I put them all together using my hot glue gun (watch your fingers, I burned mine a few times LOL)

After my blocks were all put together I used Tim's stamp set called Random Quotes and Adirondak ink to stamp words on each side of my ATBs

I then took Wendy Vecchi Archival ink in the color Potting Soil to edge the sides and corners of each block, I also added some black paint onto of that on each side. (I didn't take a photo of this sorry)

Back to my clock face... I didn't take a photo of this step but I used white Wendy Vecchi embossing paste and a Stencil Girl Seth Apter stencil to create some texture

I also used heavy gel medium to add some dry wall tape to the faces surface as well

Using several different colors of Tim Holtz distress paints, I used a paintbrush and applied the paint, I then took my finger and spread it out more to blend it (I ended up not using the green)

Once again I took that same Dylusions stencil and archival ink and inked here and there along the clock face. I also used that same Tim Holtz stamp to stamp the words and I used black marker and white gel pen and went over some places from the stenciled portion

Now it's really coming together

I had cut out some stems from Tim's Garden Greens die and some movers and shapers butterflies from distress paper and edged them with archival ink

I adhered some of these onto my clock face. They had to be flat in order for the clock hands to be able to go around the center of the clock so I glued them down flat

The sentiment came from that same Tim Holtz Random Quotes stamp set

I used black card stock and Tim's two die sets here to create my numbers for each block. I had to use the Artist set because two large numbers wouldn't fit for 10 and 12 on the clock so I cut out some smaller numbers.

I then glued each block onto my clock face using my glue gun

Oh, I had to cut my clock hands smaller too because they were way too long for the artist trading blocks, they wouldn't have turned if I didn't 

I used my trusty Tim Holtz scissors for that step and they worked like a charm, cut right through the hands, you can't even tell I had to cut them

Here is some photos of my finished clock and IT WORKS TOO!! 

I had so much fun making this clock, I'm so glad that I got it out of my head and into real life haha!

I am entering this clock into a few challenges too...

1. Eileen Hull's Art With Heart  where the theme is "Fall Back", what a perfect challenge for this clock!! I encourage you to go check out the challenge and take part, there is a wonderful prize package from Eileen and Sizzix too.

2. Eclectic Paperie - Their challenge this month is "Fall" and one lucky winner will win a 25.00 gift card to their store! 

3. Simon Says Stamp Wednesdays Challenge - Their challenge is to use a stamp for Stamptember!! and as always they are giving away a 50.00 voucher to one lucky winner

4. last but certainly not least, I'm entering this into the Inspiration Emporium challenge, their challenge is "Fall is In The Air" WOOT! I encourage you to go over and check out their challenge. You could win 50.00 to spend at Inspiration Emporium. How cool!

Last but not least make sure to come by The Artist On The Block website to see more inspiring projects from the wonderful design team!!

CHEERS!!