Mixed Media first try

Hi Crafters,

I've been seeing a lot on the internet lately about mixed media and art journaling, it really got me hooked. When I went to the art supplies store to get some more tape runner refill the other day - I've really used a lot of that lately, with all the inlay technique cards - and I found a pad of Canson mixed media paper I simply couldn't resist.I also found some matt gel medium, and got that too.

I am not thinking of it, as an art journal, that would probably just intimidate me, but I really would like to try out new things with it.

For my first "page" I chose a rather simple flower design to go with spring, which was in the air today:

I gessoed the page and used Gelatos for the background. Then I free-handed the coulds and flower from lightweight printer paper, stamped the clouds with a background stamp and glued them to the page. The flower I coloured with orange color mist and a brown tombow marker and glued it down too. The dragonfly is stamped, sponged with distress inks, fuzzy cut and also glued on.

Stem and leaves are free-handed directly on the page with tombow markers and the rest of the shrubbery is stamped.

For the letters, I sponged some thin watercolor paper with yellow distress ink, and sponged on some leaves through a stencil, for some texture. Then I cut the letters with my big shot and a Tim Holtz die.

To add shadows I tried replacing big brush markers with tombow, and it worked well enough. I really can't afford to buy yet another sort of markers...

So, there it is, my first "non art journal page".
And I learnt a few things already, like don't use distress inks in mixed media, for anything that's supposed to stay crisp. Sponging is ok, because if it smears a bit more with the gel medium - who cares...


Have a nice day
Ela

Angry Birds bookmarks

Hello Crafters,

today I finally finished all the angry birds bookmarks for my daughter's birthday, well all but 4, I  need to buy more ribbon today.But even with the 4 missing, they look pretty impressive in the picture.



 

In general I am not much for laminating, I don't think, that enclosing things in plastic makes them look any better, but these are bookmarks to (hopefully) be used by kids... They will probably need any bit of protection they can get...

I do hope the kids will like them, and that they might encourage them to read a bit more.


Have a nice week-end
Ela

Feather with chalk pastels

Hey crafters,

I just wanted to post a very quick one, but now I spent hours blog hopping through the internet. And I wanted to be off to bed early. Well, I failed, so what.

Here's my news:
You may or may not remember, how I wrote about the local art supplies store a while ago, and how I always prowl the aisle with the chalks and pencils and all the "dry" drawing materials.

Today,  I was given a lovely set of 25! chalk pastels, that were so cheap, that they are not wasted, not even on me. They were 1,99 €, that's less than 3 Dollars. (For the Germans: Lidl, but they might already be sold out, so be quick if you want to try and get them)

Monday is my office day, when I come home late and so do the girls, but we dug right in anyway. Who needs food, we wanted to draw...

As I don't have the slightest clue on how to use chalk pastels correctly, I'll have to watch a lot of Lindsay's video tutorials, before I give it a real try. Therefore I chose an easy design and drew another feather:

 

I know, it's no piece of art, but for a second try I am pretty happy.  My first try was on black cardstock, but I definitely prefer my second try.

My kids did what kids do, they followed my example and also drew a feather. And I am pretty impressed how well they did:

That's it for today, I'm off to bed, it's much later than I had intended.


Good night
Ela

C&S 3 Day 7: Watercolored feathers

Hello everyone,

I dared myself to try a water colored feather like Jennifer showed us on day 7 of C&S 3.

Jennifer's feathers are so much more realistic and beautiful, but I think it'll be ok. I think I'll try that again soon.


Love
Ela

C&S 3 Day 7: Copic coloring on vellum

Hi again,

I created another card today, this time using Kristina's idea of coloring on vellum.

I die cut the flowers and word from woodgrain cardstock, and was careful to get the stamp right. That's a little tricky with the texture. The vellum I colored in red, orange and yellow, but I am not at all happy with my results this time. I got several splotches of color on my woodgrain cardstock and managed to tear the vellum twice.


Now I'm glad it's done, but I don't think I'll ever send it. That's why I haven't created an envelop yet. I really should have bought more envelops at the trade show.  They are really much nicer than any I've ever seen in a shop.


Love
Ela

C&S Day 10: Dry embossing with diffusor

Hello Crafters,

I've seen this embossing folder from Darice a while ago and knew I needed it. It somehow reminded me of Friedensreich Hundertwasser and his silver spiral. So, from the start I had the idea of coloring it somehow.


Laurie's diffusors on day 10 of clean and simple 3 made my idea perfect. I created my own diffusors and embossed the folder on a watercolor card, with a blank strip for the sentiment.

Then I watercolored some of the circles randomly and stamped the sentiment in black. Close up you can see, that the watercoloring isn't perfect at all, I wanted the white lines to stay white, but the watercolor bled into them a lot. But hey, watercolor is meant to look like that...

As the watercolor paper is always a little different in color as my white cardstock, I chose a black card base which worked nicely to tie in the black sentiment. Of course I couldn't emboss or watercolor the envelop, so I created an embossed black lining. Unfortunately I didn't have thin black paper, so I had to use cardstock, which makes the envelop pretty heavy. A card for hand delivering. But I hand deliver most birthday cards anyway.

While I was doing this, my daughter Rebecca created an angry bird decoration, for her birthday party in June and asked me to upload it as well, so here it is.

You can't see it in the picture, but it's rather large about 30 cm (round about 12 inch) in diameter. I love, how they are so creative.And she loved that she was allowed to use my tombow markers...


Have a lovely day
Ela

C&S3 Day 1: Another chalkboard card - this time really layered

Hello crafters,

I liked the chalkboard look of the card I made earlier tonight, so I had another shot at layered chalkboard.


This time I (really) layered a snowflake and stamped and embossed the sentiment. I also adhered a red glittery heart and created a matching envelop with the positive from the chalkboard panel.

Have a nice Sunday
Ela

What a day

Hi Crafters,

what a day it was today. It seems everything went wrong.

We were invited to a 5th birthday today and were asked to bring a salad. My timing was perfect, salad done, kids home from grandma in time, reluctant to get dressed and washed and combed, but there was still time...

Then I went to the bathroom and found that one of my daughters had emptied her pockets on the floor, sand and stones and all. So I told her to clean up the mess before we go. She removed the wooden bath mat to clean up and said: "Mum, it's wet under there"... Guess what... the cat. And no water bowl...

So I cleaned up the worst mess, mopped the floor and before I was done my other daughter came in:
"Mum, the cat is bleeding". (She had surgery a few weeks ago and the crusts are falling off now).

So I finished cleaning, went to check the cat and because for once she was relaxed and staying put, I removed a few more of the stitches. Usually the vet would do that, but she allowed me to do it myself, because my cat is hysterical, when she has to go see the vet. That is a job for 2 grown-ups, but I had no one to help me this week, so I did my best alone, while the kids were holding the lamp and feeding the cat to distract her.
Luckily the bleeding was only very shallow, because she ripped of a piece of crust.

Well, that done we were running pretty late already, so I quickly finished what else there was to do, while my daughters were veeery sloooowly putting on their shoes. And when I went to fetch the salad, the bowl just slipped out of my hands and I spilled half the salad all over myself, my kitchen and into the half open drawer below.

So I cleaned up some more (much more), cut another handful of tomatoes to refill the bowl a little, got changed and off we went, before anything else could happen! We arrived 45 minutes late, flushed and bad tempered. By now I can laugh about it again. I wish someone had filmed it. No, actually I don't, if think about it.

But, at least Kevin liked our gifts, the coffee got me back on my feet some and everyone had a good laugh at me.

We returned home late and the first thing I had to do was to repair the dish washer, because it had an error code on the display.

But after that I granted myself a little playtime, instead of going straight to bed, like I had intended.

I had the idea right at the beginning of C&S 3, to create some layering with chalkboard, so I had a try at it.

 

As you (hopefully) can see, I totally failed again in creating a one layer card. I die cut the Hello from fun foam and stamped it with white ink on black card stock. Then I wanted to inlay the white hello die cut, but I had not mounted the foam stamp perfectly, so the h was pulled to the left a bit. Therefore I had to pull the white die cut too, which made it impossible to use inlay. Therefore I just adhered it to the black panel. I inked the edges in white, to give it a chalkboard look and added faux stitching and a few brads for a bit of colour. 

For the envelop I stamped the sentiment again, in grey and black, slightly offset to create the same kind of shadow.

Hope you all had a better day
Ela

C&S 3 Days 5 and 7 Graffiti and simple Copic coloring

Hi Crafters,

I received a new German sentiment stampset today, this one. I liked it when I first saw it, but I love it in real life. It inspired me to try Shari's Graffiti stamping straight away...

I also tried out Kristina's simple coloring, with the Hello die. I kept the sentiments in gray and black, as the hello is in color...

I am astonished, how well the coloring turned out, it didn't look like it during the process. Admittedly I am having trouble with my alcohol markers, I don't feel like I am able to use them. Partly that may be, because I still don't have a memento inkpad, and all my inks bleed with alcohol. But I also have much trouble blending, even though I bought blending sets from spectrum noir. This card definately gives me back some hope that I can still learn it, with some practice. I know my friend will give me a memento inkpad soon (it' ordered already), so I postponed practicing until I have it.


Love
Ela

C&S 3 Day 3: Masking off failed

Hi Crafters,

I really need to pick up some speed with my C&S 3 homework...

So I just created a quick card in between work and picking up the kids from school. Need to rush now.

As you'll notice it's not one layer. That's because my mask shifted and when I tried to fit it back on, I got it crooked. But I wanted to use the panel anyway, so I cut out the banner shape and oval and made it a 2 layer card. However, when I had it all done, I decided I didn't like the panel after all and created it again. By that time, I had already stamped the sentiment and scored the frame, so I kept my 2 layer concept.


Love
Ela