Inchies Again!

I'm still in love with inchies! Maybe that's because there are so many techniques that can be used on them. Here's an example, these paint technique inchies that were recently swapped. In the top row, I've used paint like a fabric to cover 1" chipboard squares. The second row has metallic-painted backgrounds. In the third row, the two on the left have torn masking tape under the paint, and the right two have hearts made of texture medium. These all use various metallic paints, and they shine much better in real life! :)

Colorful Inchies

I love making (and receiving) inchies! I like "small stuff", and that includes creating small art projects. Until I found out about inchies, though, I never knew that art could be so tiny (and yet so fun to make)!

I have been participating in some inchies swaps lately. The photo is a set I made for an "intuitive watercolor" inchie swap. Colors were dripped randomly on watercolor paper. When dry, the "crazy quilt" designs were drawn on with a fine-point black pen. The watercolor paper was then cut into squares (slightly smaller than 1") and mounted on 1" black card stock squares. Last, the words and buttons were glued on.

Watercolor Experiment

Today I came across the "Inspire Me Thursday" challenge, which was watercolors, so I did this experimental project. (I don't know if these Thursday challenges have to be created on Thursdays, but I did it anyway!)

I used heavy watercolor paper (I think it was 140 lb.). First, I drew the design with a clear Sakura Glaze pen, which was kind of hard to do, since I could see what I was drawing with the clear ink! After the design was dry, I colored the paper with watercolor pencils and went over the whole thing with a wet brush. While still damp, I drew around the designs with a brown w/c pencil, to make them stand out more, went over with a wet brush again. What I wanted to know was would the Glaze pen work as a resist, and the answer was yes! Glaze pens come in a variety of colors, and they dry clear and shiny, almost like embossing. Well, I challenged myself, I found out something, and it was fun! Thanks, IMT!

Painted Pages Revisited

After receiving a comment on my recent post about painting journal page backgrounds (Thanks, Jeanne!), I thought I'd show some more pictures of painted pages. The post and comment can be read here.

The magenta/blue background shown here was painted by dabbing a generous amount of acrylic paint on the background first, then scraping it across with a credit card. The yellow orange background was painted by dabbing some of the paint on and scraping, then adding more paint and repeating. The page shown on the earlier post was when I running out of paints from the little pots, so I had to keep dabbing the paint on the page, scraping it, then more dabbing and scraping, trying to fill the page while using up the little bits of paint. In other words, there are lots of different ways to do this simple background technique. Every background page will look unique. This means that if you find a look that you really like and want to repeat it, you might want to write down how you did it!

Messy, But Fun!

Yesterday I painted a bunch of background pages in my art journal. The page here is the last one, when I was trying to use up the colors from a little set of paint pots!

Here is a non-tutorial for how I paint my art journal backgrounds: 1) Cover work surface and place scrap paper under page to be painted (I'm very messy!); 2) Dab or squirt acrylic paints on the page (do this randomly or in a pattern); 3) Scrape paint across page with old credit card or gift card (you can also use a chunk of heavy cardboard); 4) Rub excess paint off card onto scrap paper or another surface to be painted; 5) Repeat scraping, if necessary. TIPs: If there was enough paint to cover the whole page, more paint can be added and scraped at any time. You can also dab a little paint, scrape it, dab a little more, etc., untill you get the look you want. I tend to use lots of paint, so my work area gets super-messy, LOL!

While I was being creatively messy, I thought I'd also paint some cardstock pieces with the excess paint from the background pages. I'm going to use the painted cardstock pieces for inchies. I also alcohol-inked some cardstock for future inchie projects, and laminated some tissue to an altered book. I like to do a load of messy steps all at once!

Needle Felting

Have you tried needle felting yet? The silly-looking bear and the heart on the right are both needle felted.

Described simply, needle felting is stabbing through fibers repeatedly with a barbed needle. Doing this causes the fibers to hook together to create a fabric of sorts.

Wool roving or felt pieces can be needle felted on knitted garments, felt, fleece or other fabrics. Fashion items like hats, purses, sweaters and scarves can be decorated with needle felting. Clever artists needle felt imaginative dimensional pieces such as dolls, toys, ornaments and jewelry.
To find out more, check out these links: The Silver Penny and Craftlog have how-to's, Clover has some great needle felting tools, National Nonwovens has luscious colors of wool felts and Wool Wisps (roving) for needle felting, C & T Publishing has needle felting books.