Make A Wish

Today is one of my fabulous One Powerful Hour team members birthdays! Happy Birthday Amy....

She is also the hostess this week and selected the theme of birthday.

Amazingly or maybe just because I am tired of doing such dark work I found time to make an ATC and enter this week.

The background is a lovely confetti paper that reminds me of jimmies on a doughnut. I dry brushed over it with a slightly pink tinted gesso that also had some shimmer mixed in. The image is from Altered Pages. Some of the stamps are from close to my heart and the others an unknown company. I used markers to color everything in...I hardly ever use markers...it made me feel like a kid again. And of course had to add some glitter to finish it off.

I hope Amy has a wonderful Birthday! Now I am heading back to the studio to continue with the dark art...

Skeleton Dwellings Slide Mailer Swap

It's another fabulous Alpha Stamp swap...this one is the Skeleton Dwelling slide mailer swap. We were required to use slide mailers and at least one Alpha Stamps collage sheets and or stamps. But come on, you can't just use one Alpha Stamp product, there are just way too many wonderful things!

Witches Brew:
Many of you know that one of my favorite themes to work with is tea/coffee , on the Something Witchy Collage Sheet from Alpha Stamps is a wonderful image of a group of Witches taking tea in an outside courtyard. I simply had to use this image.

The front is one of the simplest things I have ever done. the image is from Alpha Stamps Gothic Arches Collage Sheet which Leslie sized perfectly for the slide mailers. The cat is from the Something Witchy Collage Sheet and the bat charm I got from a Paula's Kit club. To spruce up the cover I tried to make it shimmery but there is some kind of coating on the Collage Sheet so the shimmer did not take evenly. The cat is 3D mounted and the bat i painted black with acrylic paint. To add some bling I attached some fun black fiber and some beads in coordinating tones.



The inside actually proved to be a bit more difficult than I thought. I loved the image so much that I really didn't want to do anything to it. It was however just slightly to small so I made a frame using Stampington & Co. Brick stamp. Instead of having a dark and spooky tea party I decided to give my witches a little bit of pizzas and added glitter to some of their hats and painted the tea cups with Twinkling H2O's. As a finishing touch I stamped the swirls, added diamond glaze to them and finally affixed various types of tea herbs all over the brick wall.


Nevermore:
Now what would Halloween be without Edgar Allan Poe's works? Well, boring that's what. So of course I had to use him as a theme. I took a transparency of Poe from the Edgar Allan Poe Collage Sheet and glued him to the back of a frame I made (using my new awesome stained glass skills) and affixed a skull that I turned black. The black raven on the tree is also from Alpha Stamps.

Around the outside of the slide mailer I affixed twigs and black feathers. They didn't exactly go on like I envisioned but they are on and staying on so I guess I should be thankful for that.








On the inside I stamped a tree from Tim Holtz's collection and then cut out the collage image from Poe's Words Collage Sheet. When I was done cutting it out I said to myself...wow this stuff is really spooky...in other words the images are fabulous.

On the opposite side, where the glass slides would go, I put a fold out of the poem "The Raven." To hold it in place I used a clear acrylic tag that I glued a signature of Poe's and the title of the poem. It turned when I tested it, I hope it does when it reaches it's final destination.



The poem is really long it took up three columns top to bottom of a sheet of paper...it is actually kinda fun to see the entire thing fall open.

Dissection:

This one I had a really hard time with. I guess I started without a clear plan. I used one of the wonderful graveyard scenes from the Cemetery Collage Sheet. To fill in around it I mixed some acrylic paint and then covered it with a crackle glaze. It looked really plain so I just kept adding, a glittered spider web, skull and crossbones and lastly the rub on bats.

I thought this black Dresden kinda resembled the rounded tombstones so I used it all around the edges adding the flowers as a kinda macab addition.

Inside I painted black, a high gloss, then stamped an atomically correct heart covering it with red pearl ex powder. On top of that I white embossed the skeleton and then affixed the skull...once again one of those really creep and wonderful Collage images that once I had it cut out gave me the willies.

In the slide mailer opening I placed a collage images that looks like an old painting of medical men dissecting someone. I thought a sheet covering the opening, since sheets normally hide patients from view, would be a good idea, in hind sight it looks more pirate than medical.

I am off to put these in the mail. I hope whoever ends up with them likes them and I can't wait to see what I get in return. If you haven't joined an Alpha stamp swap then shame on you...come over and join us they are a ton of fun.

Attention Grim Reaper

My latest Circle of Friends Journal entry. This journal is Andrea's and she asked the participants to use a stamp in their art.



I had a very hard time with this one. Luckily Andrea provided a wide variety of stamps to choose from (otherwise mine would have been a boring liberty bell stamps). With Halloween around the corner and that darker theme I have taken with most of the journal's this year I selected the spider stamp.



The color of the stamps did give me pause. I normally do not work with bright colors and I didn't want to use a black background paper. I settled on the orange decorative paper and then toned down the stamp, the thing was fuchsia! So I aged it with some brown inks. After that I drew out the spider web and covered it with the closest color glitter I could find.



The metal spider is from the most recent Halloween kit from Paual's Kit Club. I painted it with black acrylic paint. She is fabulously 3D and really creepy in my opinion.



At my husbands brilliant suggestion I decided to turn my piece into the front of an envelope (talk about postal). So I dragged out some magazines and cut out the letters. I wanted to make it look like one of those ransom letters you see in kid movies all the time. I aged the letters with the same ink I used on the stamp and then attached them.




The final touches included stamping a wave across the stamp to make it look like it has been processed by the spooky Postal Office and then to fill in some space along the left I stamped the skull and crossbones stamps from Alpha Stamps.



I had a lot of fun with this one and wish I had time to do a Christmas one...she has Christmas stamps too. But alas I must post it so the final member can add her piece before it heads home to Andrea!

Ringling Brothers...

It's another wonderful Circle of Friends journal! This is Nancy's journal and she asked us to create a circus themed page.

Most of the other entries were very bright so I decided to go with a more vintage feel. So I went hunting for the perfect vintage clown and I found one through an Etsy store, Digital Collage Sheets.

Before I even found the clown/hobo I knew that I wanted to create/build a big top out of fabric. Once I had the image I selected my fabrics and sewed them together. To add stability I affixed it to cardboard. The thin cream ribbon is concealing the sew lines.

I researched some early Circus' and of course The Ringling Brother's popped up. So I went with their name, stamping it on a 1/2 inch twill ribbon that I rubbed some brown ink on and frayed at the edges.

The super small image inside the frame is a portion of an original Ringling Brother's poster. I covered it with diamond glaze before affixing it to the tent with a silver brad that matches the frame.

My clown/hobo needed a little bit of sprucing up so I went with the tried and true standby, a flower. His doesn't squirt water but I did put a bunch of iridescent glass beads in the center to give it a water type effect.

Of course what would a circus be without elephants? I stamped the elephants on a dark greenish paper. I also used this paper behind the clown. And affixed them to the edge of the tent.

To fill up some of the open space I added a ticket stub and some metal embellishments.

You can really see how three dimensional this piece is here.

I hope Nancy likes my vintage take on her theme.

Alphabet Book

It's that time again over at Alpha Stamps...time for another Season themed ATC swap. We are now working on our Autumn themed ATC's.

When I think Autumn I think of cool days, turning leaves, football, going back to school, warm apple pie....the list goes on and on.

Leslie has some wonderful "Back to School" themed collage sheets and I dived right into working with them. After finishing the Inspirational Women books that I bound I have been itching to make some more books so that is the format I used for these ATC's. Each page is ATC size and when I finished them I bound them all.

For the cover I went with a crackled old look. Painting the base silver and then going over it with black. Silver embossed the stamp "The Alphabet", cut out the boy image then added the makeshift quills and the alphabet twill ribbon.

To bind the book together I used a black leather strap that I affixed on the front and back using brads.

On the opposite side of the front cover I went with a "This book Belongs to" theme...I vaguely remember having these in my school books as a child.

The ABC page is grey cardstock dabbed with sparkling H2O in a light pink. Then stamped the Penmanship stamp and built on top of that first adding tattered rose crackle paint. The letters have diamond glaze on them.

This page, DEF, was actually the page that gave birth to the whole book idea. I loved the images and this was the first page I did, a bit out of order but I figured if this one didn't work then I wouldn't want to do the others.

I used the same grey paper as on ABC but I stamped an Alphabet image and then stenciled some dots on that I drew around to give a doodled effect. After that I attached all the images adding crackle glaze to the large letters and 3Ding the lowercase letters. As finishing touch I affixed the seeing glass and aged the edges.

After the DEF page I realized that not every ATC was going to have a representation of each letter so I decided to focus on one letter as the main image theme but include the others. So on GHI I focused on the letter H.

It is very hard to see (may be impossible) but I stamped a bee on the background of this image and highlighted it with gold perfect pearls powder. Then I stamped the image direct to paper and on another paper. Coloring various bits of the other paper then cut them out and 3Ded them onto the page. As a finishing touch I affixed a flower.

JKL maybe one of my favorite pages. It is very simple. Stamped the letters on the decorative paper, cut out the collage image and layered ribbon, flowers and distressed Scrabble pieces.



MNO is the only other page beside DEF that has all the letters represented. This happened mainly because of the collage images available.

The background paper I used is actually fuzzy like a goose would be! And amazingly it almost perfectly matches Mother Goose's dress...that was purely a coincidence.

When you open N and O, N has an image of a nobleman and O has an image of a woman cooking.

PQR was hard I tried to make sure each letter was represented a little. For P I have the pie which has glass glitter on it. Q and R I kinda mixed together, Q being Queen and R being royalty.

STU is another one of my favorites. I mixed a could of different collage images on this page. The Giraffe is one image and the words came from a different image. Once again I added diamond glaze to the capital letter S.

VWX is my husbands favorite and I have to admit I really like it too but that is because I fuzzy heart Halloween. I decided not to use Halloween paper in the background because that would really just highlight the W more. The pumpkin ribbon is a really bright orange so I dirtied it a bit. And I finally got to use glitter. The witches hats are coated in black glitter.

This is my least favorite page. I tried to make the image spread across two pages but I think it is just to small and then I didn't like what I added to fill up the space.

The Y and Z letters are mounted on decorative paper that I covered with the crackle glaze.

Well...that's my second book. It has some issues closing because I used a ton of 3D elements but I think that makes it fun.

All stamps and collage images used are from Alpha Stamps and most of the paper and charms are also from Alpha Stamps.

There is still time to sign up for the Autumn themed ATC swap so come over and check it out! There are also 2 fabulous Halloween swaps taking sign ups right now.