• Blog - Crafts - Creativity

    Building a card stash

    May 25, 2020 - By 

    As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been sending more cards. This, in turn, depletes my stash. Over the past week, I’ve been having fun creating some new designs using some scraps as well as previously created card bases.

    I have an index card box full of precut layering pieces for cards. This comes in handy for quick card making. I also have a wooden cigar box filled with mini collages for cards or journal pages. Doing some of the mindless prep work ahead of time leaves more time for the creative process and doesn’t interrupt the flow of ideas.

    I am also starting to pre-make some sentiment pieces. I grabbed my tag and mason jar punches to start. The mason jar is so darn cute. The punch itself is a bit finicky. It jams almost every single time. UGH!!!!

    I am willing to put up with it though because…look how cute this is!!!! After I stamped the pale seafoam green I realized that it was beginning to look like an old-fashioned blue mason. I used a cosmetic sponge to shade in two colors of blue dye-based ink. Then rubbed the top of the jar on a gray pigment ink pad to act as the zinc lid.

    I used foam tape to lift it off the page so I could add some sticker flowers to the jar. So fun!

    I can 100% guarantee that you’ll be seeing more cards and postcards. They are really quite addictive to create.

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Art for art’s sake

    July 3, 2018 - By 

    Early Sunday morning I sat down to create. Getting my fingers full of paint and glue rejuvenates me. I used what was at hand.

     Scrapbook paper, magazine cuttings, ribbon and washi tape just to name a few.

    After creating this page I notice that the current theme for July on Art Journal Journey is Art for Art’s Sake hosted by Chris of Pearshapedcrafting. Don’t you just love it when things fall into place. It doesn’t always happen that so when it does…woohoo!

    Art Journal Journey

     

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Inspired by Summer

    June 28, 2018 - By 
    As I sat down to create in the midst of a summer that I hadn’t planned, my mind wandered to the beautiful things. The things that make me appreciate summer. Beautiful colors. Flowers. Birds singing. Breeze blowing through open windows.
    All this had me in the mood for an explosion of color. I used my fingers to loosely apply paint in a tribute to a gorgeous sunrise or sunset. The colors were a little too bold. Too in your face so using a baby wipe I blended and softened the page until it made me happy.
    I pressed uninked rubber stamps into the paint to create some interest on the background as the stamps pulled even more of the still wet paint away with them as you can see above with the grid pattern.
    After heat setting the page I used a harlequin stamp with white ink to lightly stamp randomly around the background using white embossing powder over top to provide a little more kick to the white.
    Digging through my stash I found some rub-ons that fit my theme perfectly. The black really pops against the background.
    A canning jar full of flowers screams summer beauty to me, Casual, simple, perfect.
    I really wanted it to appear that these flowers were indeed inside a glass jar. This gave me a bit of a challenge.
    I stamped the jar twice. One was clear embossed for later use. The first was adhered directly to the page. I then stamped my bouquet of flowers onto tissue paper using black Staz-on ink. I adhered the tissue with matte medium and placed on the page, partially “inside” the jar.
    Next I cut out windows in the clear embossed jar. I cut a piece of vellum to fit and gave that a bit of shimmer with clear embossing as well. I carefully stacked and glued the pieces of the jar over the original stamped piece. Much to my great pleasure, the stems of the flowers shone through the “glass” as I had hoped.  I used a Tim Holtz word sticker to sum up my thoughts.
    The jar seemed to be missing something so I thought about the basket of goodies I carried home from a friends house like Little Red Riding Hood.
    The perfect embellishment was right there.
    I’m linking up today with Art Journal Journey for Inspired by… the theme chosen by this months host Gil from gibbyfrogettcraftations.
    Art Journal Journey