Halloween

I made a cool kid's book for a project at work.  Hope they like it and that lots of kids sign up to take the class.  I may actually get to teach this one!

The book is made of narrow pieces of corrugated cardboard with pieces pulled off.  That paint around the edge is glow in the dark paint that I frosted on with a palette knife.

I am now in love with net.

Gotta love bubble wrap and Tim Holtz textures.

The Familiar

Okay.  I finally got the layout done.  It is up at the store right by the Apothecary Emporium papers (by Echo Park).  I absolutely freakin' love these papers.  Hope you enjoy my work.

Here is the entire one-page layout.  I call it The Familiar.  It's a great pic of Pluto giving me the stink eye while I was using the macro setting on my camera.

Lots of layers.

I added a clock rub-on under the A.  I love rub-ons!

Tim Holtz has a piece of my heart.  

The mottled appearance is caused by spraying bleach water onto Bazzill paper.  Lots of texture is added with stamps, etc.  I tore the paper while it was wet and of course, roughed up and edged everything.  When don't I?

Almost...

Okay.  Give me another couple of days and I promise to post the page I am creating for the store.

I'm Back

I'm back to creating again!  It's been a while.  I have created a mixed media banner that will be taught as a class at the store on September 10th.  I promise to post more pics as the creating continues.

The W from the Iowa banner.  So fun!

This is the whole thing even though it is hard to see.

Of course, this is Tim Holz inspired with his calendar stamp and an altered clip.

The football is made from cardboard painted and sanded.

4 x 4 Canvases

Being brilliant, I decided that I would make a gift for my students for the last day of school.  There are 12 of them, 6 boys and 6 girls.  I knew that I wanted to make girls and boys for them, but I didn't want to make full sized canvases. I found packs of 9-4x4" canvases at JoAnn's.

  I decided to use paint for the background as it would be easy and less time consuming. Since I was on a deadline and was already a couple of weeks behind, this would be the safest approach.  I always gesso a canvas when I am only using paint; even if it is already factory prepared.  Gesso is cool!  I knew that I had to be rather formulaic about the process or I would never get finished on time.  All the girls were done in pink and the boys in blue.  I dry brushed the main layer of paint making sure to leave some white canvas showing.  Stamps, rub-ons, more paint, etc and I was ready to do the people.  The only thing was that I hadn't really considered the fact that these were really small canvases so I would need to make really small patterns for the bodies, clothes, etc.  This entire project required the use of my super sharp embroidery sized scissors.  There were lots and lots of re dos on the patterns, I can tell you.  It was exhausting!!!

I finally got 12 heads cut (out of big lined Kindergarten writing paper, cool huh?) and then grabbed my 6 x 6 paper pads to figure out the clothes.  Thank goodness I had plenty of those pads to choose from.  I wound up using some odds and ends for the girls, but lots of Echo Park "Be Mine" papers.  I love that these are the same designs as the 12 x 12, just smaller prints.  For the boys, I used odds and ends of 6 x 6 papers.
After cutting out all of the pieces and getting them on, I realized that I might not have much in the way of small rub-ons.  Or, egads, boy themed rub-ons!  Eeek.  What to do, what to do?  Luckily, I wound up having plenty of the appropriated sized rub-ons.  I just happened to have purchased a bunch at my favorite scrapbook store's (Scrapaganza) garage sale and lo and behold, there were some Halloween rub-ons in the pack filled with spiders and bats.  Perfect!!!  I also happened to have some from KaiserCraft that looked like splotches, etc.  Saved!  Sometimes it's good to be a hoarder.  A few stick on jewels for the girls and some Tim Holtz gears and spinners for the boys and voila!  Project complete!

I love her hair!

Okay.  So I admit it!  I am still a little anal about my stamps and was super reluctant to use my texture stamps in paint.  After using an ink that wouldn't stay when I added the Mod Podge, I sucked it up and used paint.  What a cool texture it left.  I will admit to scrubbing the stamp a little after I rinsed it.  Just a little.  I am getting better at 'letting it go'.

Everyone at school knew right away who this was.  It was the hair.

I love my Unity stamps.

My first boy!!  You should have seen all of my doodles on my table covering as I tried to figure out how to do boy hair.  I had never done it before.  I also have to say that I about panicked when I realized I would have to paint on arms.  Sheesh. Why did I decide to do this again?

The kitty stamp in the corner is kind of an inside Preschool joke.  The kids all love to hear stories about my cats Skittles and Pluto and they call them the "Skittles Stories".  I put a kitty on all of the boys.

All scrapbookers know that a mistake is an opportunity.  I didn't use the correct pronoun when I printed these out, so I just wrote it in.  It works.

I couldn't believe that I had this spider on his thread.

I thought I had gotten something green on this guy's face.  I tried to rub it off, then I remembered it was part of the face paper.  Yeah, I'm getting old.

Finished mom's gift!

 Here is the final product.  It's a gift for my mom.  The last pic is the inspiration for her look.

Can you say saddle shoes and bobby socks??

Mom had super short curly hair.  It was so hard to get right.  Not quite there I don't think.

All dressed up and ready to go to STL.

This was taken for my dad.  I think that she sent it to him while he was in the service.  I am sure that it was taken in Forest Park.

More canvases, part 3

Okay.  Here are a couple of teasers for you. 

This is the face of the original girl that I made for mom.  I love her white bird rub-on and her bouffant 50's 60's retro do.

Okay.  This looks really weird, but it is a landscape type view of the girl's dress.  Very dimensional involving lots of mod podge and yummy, messy hands!

The face of my latest girl.  She is a kickin' redhead!!

More canvases, part 2

Okay.  The theme for this canvas is vintage memorabilia that is personal to you.  I made a girl for my mom's bday (so I thought) and then I had this lesson and this will be hers.  The canvas is copies of things that I have of my mom's.  I then kind of 'whitewashed' the whole thing with Tattered Angels, wet brushed that, then kind of washed it off.  It still left a brownish tint which is what I wanted.  I dry brushed the edges and randomly through the finished background.  I will finish this one this weekend.

This is nearly the whole canvas.  I love my new typewriter stamp!!!  

The 'passport' is another roller stamp  The blue chicken wire looking thing is actually blue paint on the bottom of a spring basket that I cut up.  I got it at the dollar store and it so looks like chicken wire.  The background is a recipe in my grandmother's handwriting.  Thought that mom would like that.

This background is my great grandfather's conductor's pass that I found.  It's from 1922.

Okay, this is funny.  The blue background is a copy of my mom's college 3-ring binder cover.  I can't believe I have that.  She wrote Carl Edward Day all over it (dad's name).  I think he was all she was thinking about.  He was at Ft. Leonard Wood at the time.

Note the Fort Leonard Wood stationary.  Here you can see the remnants of the mist I used.

The top document is a copy of the letter dad sent to mom.  I have all of his love letters to her from when he was in the service.  She gave them to me for some reason.  Okay now I am not going to read them because I tried at it grossed me out.  Yuck.  Some things aren't meant to be shared.

More canvases (is that a word?)

Okay.  I am posting a few pics of a couple of my newer canvases.  This first one I made for Lauren.

This is the finished product that I sent up to Alaska since Lauren was going to be there for her bday!  She is an OC beach girl so that was the inspiration for the girl.  Can you see the sand castle, shells, starfish and dolphins??

Now how did that get in here???  Oh well.  Total concentration on that lady bug.

We learned how to do backgrounds in this lesson.  The teacher did grass and sky, but I did it differently due to Lauren.  Note the headband.  I think that was my favorite part.  And the pillow ticking stamp is one of my favs!

I am having a love affair with rub ons!  Especially white ones like the zig zag stitching on the dress!  The white paint is both positive and negative effects using punchinella which is the backing from sequins.  I know, weird.

Well, I figured Lauren wears a lot of shorts!  The bumpy stuff is called glass beads and like gesso and modeling paste, you can add color to it.

I love her little top.  Happy Birthday, Lenny!