Wake Up, Blog!

It's been quite a while since my last post! Oh well, I never intended this blog to be a diary of my life, anyway - I just wanted to share my art, even if it's with only a few people.

Here's the art part: Since it's windy here today, I thought I'd post a picture of my "Bad Hair Day" tip-in page. Everyone has a bad hair day when it's windy, right? I know I do, because the wind blows my hair up, and it doesn't go back down, ha, ha!

How I made the page: Background stencilled with bottled inks, added a few postage stamps, magazine cut-out face and hand, "sweater" from purchased textured paper, all types of wild, wooly and stringy yarns for hair, crow cut from craft foam sheet. Appropriate "found" words cut from books were added, such as: "See it?", "natural", "unusual effects", and "eye-catching".

Inchie Wall Hanging

I've been collecting so many inchies from swaps and trades, and I've been wanting to display them in some way. I finally decided on a large fabric wall hanging. It's made of some sort of loopy upholstery fabric, so that inchies with velcro on their backs will stick to it. This also allows me to add/remove/rearrange the inchies whenever I'd like.

Stencilled Peaches

In the past, I've stenciled paper, fabric, wood, leather, etc., so it's seems only natural that I would progress to stenciling fruit! That's right, fruit! Actually, I didn't stencil the peaches on purpose. With a limited number of peaches on the tree this year, it was disheartening to watch the squirrels and birds consume most of them before they were barely ripe. That's when I decided to cover the few remaining peaches with pieces of net. When I removed the nets, I found that the sun had reddened the peaches, except where the nets were blocking the sun! Wa-la, stenciled peaches! BTW, they taste good, too! ;)

Colorful Stenciled ATCS

Since I made some mini stencils for one of GPP's crusades, I've been waiting for an opportunity to use them on ATCs. TMTA's colorful theme this week was the perfect excuse! The shapes were stenciled all over the card stock, using acrylic paints. Some everyday items, like nylon mesh and foam placemats were also impressed on the card stock. Then words and embellishments (brads jewels, clips, mini feathers) were added to these fun fantasy cards.

ATC Received

It's been a l-o-n-g time since my last post! Seeing that this is basically an art blog, I didn't think I had much to post. Then again, I could've posted all the serendipity backgrounds I made . . . . or the inchies I've received . . . . or a few "art junk" items that I found . . . .maybe I'll post all of that stuff soon!

Today I received an ATC from Lia. The picture shown is Lia's charming ATC - the lady seems to elegant to deadhead her own roses, doesn't she? In return, Lia ia getting my "Bird & Boy" ATC, which I posted previously for a TMTA challenge.

Lia is otherwise known as "art junk girl", and she had a great blog here. Lia's blog was one of the first that I started following regularly. Her "artjunk" blog, along with a few others, became an inspiration to start my own art blog. Lia also inspired me to try inchies, which I now love! Thanks, Lia! :)

Stencils, Part 3

GPP Street Team, Crusade No. 19 (third time): Wanting to make some stenciled backgrounds for inchies and/or ATCs, I decided that I needed some very small stencils, not found in any store. Of course, I made my own! The very tiniest ones were made with shaped punches, the rest I cut out of plastic with my heat tool. Acrylic paints were used on all the backgrounds. The pink one uses the stencils and their masks. The center one is done over a mixed text background. The one with all the different designs (the long piece on the far left in the photo) was the most fun to make, I just went crazy with all the colors!

More Stencils

GPP Street Team, crusade # 19: I don't have a stencil cutter, so did some experimenting with my multi-purpose heat tool. The tip that the package designates as stencil cutter seems to melt my plastic sheets too quickly with too wide a path. A little testing taught me that the "universal tip" cut a finer path, so that I could cut more detailed stencils this time. (A few were cut with scissors, too.)

Not enough time to try all the stencils I cut, but here are pictures of some stencils and samples using them. On the orange flower sample, I cut flower centers out of the masks. If I don't want the masks to have centers, they can be covered with tape temporarily. On the purple flower sample, both stencils and masks were used, to make positive and negative images. Both samples were stenciled with acrylic paints and outlined with fine-point pens. Now I've got lots of new stencils, in the sizes and shapes that I want! :)

Stencil Cutting

GPP Street Team Crusade #18, Cut your own stencil: A long, long time ago, when I first started experimenting with all kinds of arts and crafts, I cut my own stencils. I haven't been cutting many stencils lately, so I think it's time to get back into it! I usually cut stencils with a scissors or razor knife. I have heat tools with stencil-cutting tips, which I tried for the first time - they worked just fine! I made multiple-layer stencils for my angel drawing, even one for "background" or "shadow" stencil. Here you can see the "used" stencils with paint still on them, and the angel stencilled with acrylics in my art journal.
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A bit of shameless self-promotion here: Check out my handmade items; Retro Fashion Pins and shell angels, seen in these photos.

Trying To Cut It Out

All month, I've been making foam stamps for the GPP Street Team crusade, so I thought I'd finally try rubber stamp carving. I love making inchies, so I decided to try carving a couple on-inch stamps to use on those. The rubber carving material I bought crumbles very easily, so it was difficult to carve those tiny stamps, especially without the right tools. I used a wood-carving gouge, which wasn't delicate enough for those one-inch stamps. I managed to make three mini stamps: two flowers (back-to-back) and a face. Unfortunately, part of the nose broke off my face stamp when I inked it, so I trashed that one.

As you can see from the sample of my double-sided flower stamp, parts of those stamps have broken off the edges. I drew in the flower centers and leaves. Next time, I'm going to try carving a larger stamp! ;)

Texture Effects, Purple

This time, I created two ATCs, for the themes at TMTA (texture effects) and Wednesday Stamper (purple). The texture effect is Bernie Berlin's painted paper towel technique. The paper towel was painted with metallic acrylics, torn in pieces, and glued to the card stock. Glitter glue was added to the stamped flowers. I'm not sure I like the one with all the glitter; I think I went overboard with all the different glitters! ;)