Personalised Birthday

One of the fun things about being a crafter is being able to personalise cards and other projects for gifts. A friend asked me to make a special art card for a male relative. He is apparently a 'man about town', quite chic and arty. We discussed the card and decided on a layout scraplifted from an atc I had made.

The resulting card is :

The male image actually came out really well. I sprayed the background with Dylusions sprays on a good quality, flat water color paper. I also sprayed one of the Dylusions stencils, Bert, with similar colors. I then lifted the inked Bert stencil and laid it wet side down on top of the sprayed background. I pressed it and then lifted the stencil from right to left. Some of the ink ink lifted and pooled on the left side, giving dimension and interest to my male image. I know, wonderful eh ! lol Took ages to dry by the way and I didn't use a heat tool incase the ink ran.

The letters are die cut from a pti alphabet set, the 50 is from a Tim Holtz die. The rest is doodled, hand written words etc.

The recipient was over the moon, he loved it. R E S U L T ....... lol

Thanks for stopping by :)

Smash booking begins .... Cultivating Optimism

I recently heard a presentation about happiness by Dr Mark Holder : the components and characteristics of what makes us happy. It was all based on psychological study, some really interesting experiments and hypothesis. Some of the elements that were discussed hit home to me, in particular that happiness is positively correlated to optimism : more self esteem, health, happiness and morale. Makes sense - right !

One of the options to boost optimism was to write about your ideal self and set obtainable goals. I think this should be extended to positive bits of our day-to-day lives and what makes us happy, what are we proud of, our thoughts, finds, meaningful quotes etc etc. I can sometimes lose sight of these in the mundane reality of day. I think I will also record some of the stuff that gets me down. In a little while I will get a clearer picture of my days and get back in touch with myself.

So here goes, my smash book .....

I bought reasonably priced Moleskine Cahiers. The paper is thin, just sketch paper, so I need to learn not to over embellish or stamp. It isn't meant to be a work of art, of wonder and ooohs and ahhhhhs. But a place for me to have fun, record some stuff and be myself.

February 2014 cards

Two lovely cards in Feb 2014, to master some crafting tools : the stamp a ma jig, which is quite the vital tool for accurate stamping; and aqua painter. Circle frames were cute with thinlit dies. Tip - DO NOT overlap dies in your big shot or other die cutting machine. You will definitely bend and possibly break the dies, but you could damage your machine too.

The first card was inspired by Chinese New Year coupled with an appropriate sounding proverb "May happiness be your destination", red and gold. I love the brushed gold washi tape and the cardstock. The popped up lanterns were stamped onto white cardstock, covered in washi tape and then punched out with a 3/4" circle punch.

The second card was a little more arty. The background was painted with an aquapainter onto water color paper with subtle colors of pigment ink. Its not a drastic coloring, but it adds ambience and depth. The dream catcher was made from a doily stamp and a frame made from circle thinlits and lightly sponged. The feathers are from the fine Feathers stamp set - I have been ogling that for ages. Finally its mine :) The feathers were lightly painted over with the aqua painter or blender pen to make them look a little more real. How cool are those candy dots for the beads. Yay. I have to thank Vicky Papaioannou for the inspiration. She did a journal page a little while ago in a similar style.

Thanks for stopping by, please leave a comment :)

SDC135 - Acetate - Icarus grounded

Corrie's challenge this week on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog was to use acetate.

Straight away I knew that I would stamp an image onto acetate and make a really cool background, which morphed into a spread in my art journal. You know how these things go ... lol

Everything in my art journal is deep and meaningful and often tells a story, its my form of sanity, or art therapy. I put things in my journal that mean a lot to me, memories, sayings, thoughts etc. The depictions may seem random, but they are grounded in meaning for me.

For this journal page my plan was to go back to ancient Greek mythology and for 'Angel boy' to become Icarus. If you recall Icarus had wings held together with wax. Regardless of warnings not to fly too close to the sun, he went anyway. Ultimately the wax melted and he fell into the sea and drowned. Literary interpretation of this myth have pointed to the consequences of personal over-ambition. I class myself as a realist, I am honest and true to myself, whilst I have dreams and ambitions, they do not exceed my ability - most of the time :)

This is the page in my Dylusions large journal : It makes me soooo happy.

The page was painted with various shades of orange acrylic paint. Its hard to capture the glow of the background sun behind Icarus, but I hope you can see here how it glows. The black frame I made is actually layered and raised with dimensionals. The wording is "Icarus grounded" and I hand wrote that and drew the stars. By that I mean he has his feet firmly placed in reality. He is not exceeding any limits, neither does he have any delusions of grandeur.

Below is a close up of the sun before everything was adhered together. To create the texture I used the mini tie die stencil by Crafters workshop and gesso. Lindys Stamp Gang Starburst sprays and Inca gold are responsible for this shimmer and glow - isn't it just wonderful - sigh ...... 

Once the acetate was on it became even shinier, these reflective properties make the sun appear even brighter. It is positively glowing.

Just to prove it is a transparency, I took a pic of the stazon stamped 'Angel Boy' image, then I colored the back with a black copic marker.

I just read on the Stampotique Designers Challenge blog that my creation was chosen as one of the top three for this acetate challenge. I am so happy about that, I put my heart and soul into this page, its very personal and nice to be appreciated, especially amongst so much other amazing talent. http://stampotiquedesignerschallenge.blogspot.ca/2014/02/sdc136-monochromatic.html

Thanks for stopping by, hope you like my page :)

SDC133 - Heart in your Art

Its pretty easy to include hearts in your Stampotique art, so many wonderfully stamped heart images. I love the idea of a little critter left hanging from the heart bunting :) A really good title for this would have been 'tugging the heart strings' LOL.

Thanks for stopping by ...

SDC132 - Winged Things

I had some atc fun today with this challenge set by Arwen, entitled Winged Things.

Being a lover of fussy cutting ... (weird I know, but I can happily do it for hours), I did a little fussy cutting and surgery on a Stampotique stamped image, and I have to say I love the versatility of it. I can make those little guys do just about anything ! Tree topper is 'wing-less' and wearing Prom Queens feet ! lol

Here is my creation, a little acrylic paint, a stamp, copics, clear gelly roll pen, black soot distress ink and a fine line marker... and tadahhhhh ... my creation for this challenge :)

Thanks for stopping by :)