Stamp Carving!

Decided I would try my hand at stamp carving this week, as part of my Printmaking experience. I transferred a photo I had taken in the summer to a sheet of soft carving rubber and carved away! This is what I got.

This is the photo. . .

carved into this. . .

and stamped onto my postcards for September for my Color Postcards Group.
The colors this month are Ultramarine and Sepia - or loosely translated into brown and dark blue, a rather somber color group!

after a few stampings the tail started to break off - must remember that for future carving. I wonder if it can be glued together? I will try!

I'm not sure that the rest of the postcards will use the same stamp. I need to find a way to brighten up these colors! Maybe I'll carve another one. . .

Sundays are nice. . .

because I have arranged my life so that I do absolutely nothing (but what I want to!). So I played in my art room this afternoon, finished my (now late) Gothic Arch and my Yalpha Mingle for Byhand.







I have just joined a new Yahoo Group called HomeArtRetreat where we essentially set time for art retreats for ourselves. Interesting!

Now I'm off to make a birthday card for a favourite friend!

Finally! A day to breathe!

Weekends are so much more appreciated when you have to work all week! I was able to scan all my new cards and Aqua postcards this morning, so now i can share them with you. My friend Therese came to visit in August and she was a great help in getting me back into card making. I used to make cards all the time, but I've been doing so many other things recently, it's like I have forgotten how! Therese brought her Cuttlebug and embossing Folders for me to play with - I've never done these before, it was fun! I had recently read online that a pasta machine, set at #2, could be used with the Embossing Folders, so of course, we had to try it. Worked like a charm! So I now have a bunch od cards using the embossed backgrounds that we made.

For this one I rubbed ink on the embossing folder

This one uses an ATC I made in July

You can't see the background in this one, but it's there!

This was my first one

This one I rubbed Distress ink on the raised portions after I ran it through

Another one using an ATC, great use for those ATCs that are hanging around!

And now for my Color Postcard group - I am very late with these, I should have done them at the beginning of August! The theme is Aqua, and I had to get them done quickly, so everyone is getting the same card this time. The seahorse stamp is the only stamp I have ever designed myself, and got made into rubber. It is sold at my local stamp store, Marchant's.

This postcard is for my DD, i used one of my blue Moo cards for this one. I like the bling, and hopefully she will too, though she isn't a real bling kind of gal! I also used the raised dots on this one, although you can't really see them, on the edges of the Indian patterns.


I have also made an Asian Love Book for Altered Pages, and it is sold as a kit. You can see it here.
That's all for now, hopefully I will get some time in my art room this weekend!

Busy Busy!!

I have been very busy - too busy - getting my classroom ready for TODAY! So hopefully I will now have time for art! I did make a Yalpha Mingle (Byhand) 4X4 using the letter "T". not one of my best efforts as it was late. . . bad girl!! Hopefully next month's will be nice and early! I also joined the Gothic Arches group, so I'm sure there will be more postings of Gothic Arches in the future! Check out my new kit at Altered Pages, called "Asian Love". I really liked how this turned out!

Anyway, here is my Yalpha, and tomorrow I can add my Aqua Postcards for my Color Postcards Group.




TTFN!

Here are some Blue Moos. . .

I apologize for not posting lately, last week the Blogger Bot froze my blog until some real people could determine whether or not I'm spam. Apparently I'm not, so here goes!

Last week's Byhand Challenge was to make Blue Moos, so even though I'm a week late, here they are:

. . . And School Moos

and here are some Schoolday Moos for Make a Moo or Two:

Thursday

Sorry it's been a few days, I've been under the weather, but I think I'm better now! This is the last day of my challenge to myself, which was to do art, SOMETHING! - everyday in July. I accomplished this challenge, even if all I did was spend some time with my journal on some days. Here is what I have been working on the last 2 days:


I was inspired to make some inchies, and put them on a Thank You card. They were all cut from the same background paper. For some reason, I had a really hard time finding embellishments! Strange! We'll see what I do for today, my last challenge day!

TTFN

Some Journal Pages

The big machines are back -just when it was getting nice and quiet around here! At least I have a nice art room to go to to get away from it all! I've been working on my new journal page, among other things, so here are the last two pages, the red one is complete, but I switched to silver pen instead of white, not realizing it was going to virtually disappear!




This is my current page -the middle triangle is actually a page that I folded, and I'm writing on the other side of the flap it formed. I'm debating whether I will write on the white part at the right - I kind of like the look of the mist, which didn't show up well in the scan. I must be feeling pretty powerful right now, with losing weight, and I just got a personal trainer at my gym!

TTFN

It's been a busy several days! It's been difficult to get to my art room much less my blog, but here's what I've been doing: A couple more ATCs




A thank you card for a man:



And one last postcard in pink, red and orange:



It's been very wet here, lots of rain and thunderstorms. I hope all of you are happy and dry!

TTFN

Monday

Quick post, DD's visit was wonderful, we had a great time, but even so I was able to work in my art room. DH's birthday was on Saturday, and I made him a card. Here it is:

Very "Tim Holtz" style! DH loves to curl, hence the curler at the bottom of the tag.

I worked in my journal yesterday and today, so that's Sunday and Monday covered! See you tomorrow!

Friday ATCs

I have been in my art room the past two days, but had to wait until today to post otherwise I wouldn't have had much to show! I was inspired by this background technique by Wanda Hentges and thought I would try it, although I didn't do it exactly the way she said to. Hers look much better! The technique involved using gesso as a resist, which didn't turn out too badly, but I couldn't get the spray right, too much water, not enough gesso, must try again! Also I brayered over the page before I cut it up into ATC pieces. Here's what I came up with, some of these may not be quite finished (I often go back and look again, and the right thing pops into my head).




The last two are my favs, although the angel one needs something. . .I think a few of the others do too, maybe some sort of embellishments. Some of them have my raised dots on them, but it's hard to see.

My DD is coming to visit this weekend, so I probably won't post again until Monday. See you then!

Wednesday

Today's post will be a short one, but that doesn't mean I haven't been in my art room! It was such a mess from all the things I've been doing, I had to clean it up again today, or I wouldn't have any room to play. I've been finishing off the postcards, and yes, I did add to the two I said I would. I wonder if they are the same ones you chose for me to do more to? I also made one more for my DD, but until she gets it, its a secret! So, here are the two I added to, it's subtle, but was just what they needed. You'll have to scroll down a few posts for the "before":

TTFN!

Monday -Postcards + a challenge

I combined my Postcard color challenge with "Mixed Media Monday" challenge, which was "let's have tea", and came up with Postcards # 6 and 7. I did use all three colors (red, orange & pink) in each one.



The teacups are from PSX (I think) and the "steam" curly is from Paper Artsy. The words are unknown. TTFN!

Saturday and Sunday

I have been working on my new color postcards, and finally found a window of opportunity to get to the computer while dh was doing his laundry (isn't that nice!!) He has been playing a Sherlock Holmes game on the computer for the last 2 days, it's been hard to get to it!

Anyway , here are the first 5 postcards, although I have a feeling 2 of them aren't quite done yet. Remember, the colors were red, orange and pink. The orange kind of looks like yellow in these scans, but it's orange. The 3 little stamps are from a Tim Holtz cube, the collage image is from Altered Pages, the diamond stamps are from Quietfire, the swirlys are from Paper Artsy.






That's it for today, I'll do some more tomorrow, and hopefully be able to sneak onto the computer at some point in a lull in the game!

My Busy Day

We have had a lot of excitement here lately, because the street in front of our house is being torn up to replace water lines. Lots of noise, banging, holes in the grass, but thankfully we don't live across the street. . .

The hole in our lawn . .

Enough distractions. I stayed away all morning, and worked on my classroom stuff all afternoon. It's creative too, really!




OK, so the evening was in my Art Room. The new colors for this month for my Color postcard Group is . . .Red/Orange/Pink. I KNOW! What a combination! I will do my best. Thought black would look good in there too. So I did get a start on these. Tomorrow and over the next few days i can scan these when the paint has all dried.

The orange looks yellow in this photo

These will look better when I am able to scan them - you'll see!

Update on the AB - yesterday I used Matte Gel Medium on the edges to hold it together -don't do it! It did hold things together, but it's very heavy and plastic-y, and when I pulled some of it off it took the paint with it. I know Beth Cote said what to use, I'll just have to look it up! Luckily the page is not ruined however, just not as nice as i want it to be. I think I might put a border around the whole thing, either black or deep purple. I'll keep you posted!

Thursday-almost didn't make it!

I almost didn't make into my art room today. I worked all morning on my classroom sewing, making little cloths and a pouch for objects, then out to lunch with Mom, then to the gym, home, dinner, bath, thinking of excuses not to go into the Art Room - can't think of what to do - maybe missing one day won't hurt - I'm sure you know all the excuses!! But I did go, and I started by filling up the hole in my AB with lavender. One of my children at school gave me some lavender bath salts she had made. Bath salts with bits of real lavender. I tried some in my bath, then stopped sprinkling when I realized I couldn't use little bits that could jam up the jets in the tub!! So what I did instead was pick out a bunch of those bits and put them in my fragrance niche. Smells very nice!



Then I needed to glue all those pages together. I decided to try Matte Gel Medium and painted it all around the edges, then clamped it together to dry. I will report tomorrow to tell you if it worked.



The last thing I did was some Thank You cards. I had told myself I needed to make a bunch of these to keep handy next year. I always need Thank You cards! I really liked the Moo card I made yesterday, so I adapted it to a Thank You card, and made 3 of them.



That's it! At least I DID make into the art room! Now I'm off to watch So You Think YouCan Dance!

Wednesday ATC's (and some Moos)

Well, I spent this afternoon making ATC's from all the backgrounds I made yesterday. I was completely uninspired, so I did the gold edges first. I had been flipping through an ATC book last night, so I tried to remember some of the ideas, and then everything just flowed! So here they are:

"Going Crazy"

"Ooh La La"

"Paris"

"Golden Tile"

"Secrets"

"Scheherazade"

All images (Secrets, Scheherazade, Going Crazy and Ooh La La) are from Altered Pages.

The next thing to make was the new Moo Challenge at Make a Moo or Two
The theme was Black and White, and I did make 2!

See you tomorrow!