Thursday, October 30, 2008

Baby it's cold outside!

Omgosh, when did WINTER get here? It's 27 outside right now! Actually, it IS supposed to warm up to 50 today and the trees are finally looking gorgeous here on the fringes of Amish country. Shoudl be a great night for Trick or Treating.

Girls have Japanese this morning at co op (they are really loving this, at first Trin was NOT happy about having to take it though), I NEED to do laundry when I get home, then prep for my co op classes tomorrow (I teach a creative writing/book of me class along with a history class), then the aforementioned T or T'ing so not much time to work on things today.

But, since I want to think of warm, I'll share a one of my fave cards with you that uses our Coffee Shop set....I made this for a friend who is a Starbucks junkie.



Mmmmm....coffee sounds good right now, might have to leave a few minutes early to grab a pumpkin spice cappacino (my fave thing about fall!)

Have a great day all!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My First Acrylic Album

Are you sick of hearing what a HUGE fan of Tim Holtz I am yet? The other company I absolutely LOVE is Close to My Heart. So, when I set down to figure out what to do with the pics and memorabilia from my Tim class, it seemed only natural to combine the two and work on this awesome album. This is the first time I have played with an acrylic album and I ABSOLUTELY heart it huge!

The book is 14.95 from CTMH. The paper and ribbons are from the Silhouette collection (level 2 kit is 12.95 and ribbons are 9.95 for 6 different patterns). Rub Ons are part of a collection of 3 6x12 sheets. You get 1 each of white, brown and black for 9.95. (Plus shipping and handling on all)

Without further ado:

Cover
(The Grunge Girl is hand written, I stole a tip from Tresa Black's blog and printed it off using the the Deja Vu font from the CTMH font disk. Then, I used a permapaque marker by Sakura and copied over it since the book is clear! How cool is that?!)

The White Rub on is CTMH as is the paper (I love the Silhouette collection), Bazzill black flower with a CTMH Just Bloom with liquid glass covered in microbeads over that)

Open to second page:

Okay, this is SO my new favourite alkie ink combo! On the acrylic IRL it looks like a mica piece! It is slate, silver, ginger and caramel mixed together. Heat set carefully (remember you are blowing hot air on plastic...it can melt) and then the pic is from the post card Stamplistic sent out announcing Tim coming (thanks for this Khrystie!)

Third page:

Just wouldn't be a grunge class book without a page made of grunge would it? Just a sheet of striped grunge I trimmed to size, then I painted it with black acrylic paint. Sanded it and then rubbed over it with a silver metallic cat's eye ink (yeah, don't do that....I wasn't willing to be patient and wait for my silver dauber. My ink is in pieces now. Then I wiped it all down so that the ink was subtle.

Page 4-5

The back of the grunge page, painted black and sprayed with copper glimmer mist. The blurb is copied from Tim's blog about the class. And then Tim (didn't catch him at the best second obviously) showing off the distress stickles. Cannot wait to get my hands on these! Another CTMH rubon as well.

Page 6 and overview of the next several pages

I also cut up the sheet he gave us with the how tos on the different ways to distress. This is one, along with a leftover strip from the previous grunge page. Once I get the rest of the stuff I ordered I'll do the technique on the strip.

Tag page:

My all time favourite Nietszche quote and it works in nicely.

Page 8:

My ink stained fingers after class

Page 9:

So, you could see the adhesive along with writing from the printer on the photo. This is what I came up with to disguise it. Just freehanded in some doodling with the permapaque marker again.

Page 10

Another technique and piece of grunge to be finished.

Page 11-12

Tim and assistant during class and my finished project

Page 13-14

Another technique and a piece of grunge waiting to be inked and distressed and the photo of the adage tag book Tim signed for me and the bag we got.

Back cover:

Which is not too darn exciting, but I just found some great felt ribbon in my stash and I will be adding a couple stamps.

But, my camera battery just died on me. I also need to add ribbon to the binder rings....how the heck did I forget that?!

Questions answered and something new!

Sharon asked me about the 'crackle' paper on the spiderweb mask layout.....I'd love to claim it is something complex, but it is actually just tone on tone stamping. Topiary CTMH CS with topiary ink. I used a stamp that is a crackled background stamp. It's put ou by inkadinkadoo, I bought it at a yardsale for a .25.

Now, for Chris....here are the rest of the pages of the grungebook sweetie!

All pages were cut from grunge sheets with an accucut (I believe was the system) die

Harlequin with dusty concord ink and silver dabber. Used sandpaper and the scratcher tool on it.


Dots grunge with Dusty concord and faded jeans



Swirls grunge. Peeled paint and aqua dabbers. White pen with my doodling


Stripes grunge. Aqua dabber and dusty concord distress.



Have a few things I am working on today, hopefully will get them up before days end!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Altered Acrylic Block

Wasn't sure if I wanted to share this or not as I am not completely happy with it. He's the prototype for some Christmas gifts for this year (so if you are on my nice list, back away from your browser....quickly! Nope, that wasn't quick enough, never mind...NONE for you!).

The block was a cheap one I picked up so the girls would quit icking up my good blocks. But, I had it sitting beside the bird. And I thought....hmmmmm......

So, a project was born.

Rounded up my supplies:
1 6 inch acrylic block, CTMH White Daisy Craft Ink, CTMH snowflake stamp, alkie inks (stream, silver and slate), CTMH rubons, CTMH Vintage Christmas stamp, random button, Darice metal bird, Black Staz On ink,microfiber cloth, liquid glass, craft mat, heat gun

(Tip: Clean the heck out of the block before playing with a microfiber cloth)


Stamped my block with white ink (heat gun to set adn dry it quickly)


Layered on my alkie inks (again heat set):


On the clean side, layer rub ons, additional stamping and other embellies. Stand to display. (my bird and button are not glued down - I'd use the liquid glass for this- as I have some crackle paint on order and I'm going to redo the bird)

Stamp says "thinking warmly of you on this cold winter night"


Think I am happy with it now, distressed the bird a bit more and inked him up with staz on. The keyhole is grunge.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Been Playing......

Okay, obviously, if you didn't gather by the photo to the right I am a HUGE fan of Tim Holtz products. I also LUUUURVE masks. So, when I saw Tim had a line of masks out I screamed and grabbed a few (I would have got them all, but Sarah at www.thescrapqueen.com had the rest coming in, so will get them from her this week when I get the crackle paint, dabbers and other stuff I ordered from her)

This is what I did with the haunted set:


Pretty happy with how it turned out.....now to find an appropriate photo for the page! Livy is going to be a Barbie princess and Trin is a glam witch (think lots of bling and feathers). NOT very frightening. Guess I could always take a shot of Stan and throw it on there. A "This IS my costume" sort of page. (Actually, he was designing some sort of ninja halo something or other costume, but I put a stop to it.....a girl can only enable so much!

Okay, wow! So, that really doesn't show up too well, does it?!

Okay, step by step so you can see the masks:

1. Laid down masks (see instructions on back) and I went over it with black ink on a sponge. Moved them a couple times to cover the whole page.



2. Then I sponged over that with a topiary coloured ink (working with my CTMH inks here.....could have done this all in reverse and just sponged the entire paper with the topiary first and then done the masks, but I was playing as I went)


3. Finally, I grabbed a few H'ween themed stamps (a mix of CTMH and Studio G) and random stamped my paper.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Time for something new!

Hey all! So, WOW! What a HUGE week for me! Last weekend I took a class at Stamplistic in Amherst with none other than Tim Holtz! I'm NOT a class girl generally, but meeting Tim was an absolute dream come true. The class was wonderful and it kept me occupied the entire time (3 hours plas) That's a major accomplishment for this 'shiny bauble syndrome' girl!

I took the Generation Grunge class. Here is the cover of my finished project:


My other big happening? We got DSL!!! Okay, yeah, that's so last year for some of you, BUT I live in the middle of nowhere and it just became available! Just logging on with my dial up was a pain, but now.....well, I'm so excited! I can finally work on some projects (including a blog) that I have been unable to due to the time constraints with the dial up.

So, be looking for more posts and hopefully, tons of inspiration!