Water, Water, Everyhwere

Hi!  A little surprise here... We have changed up the challenges a bit and Frilly and Funkie and now you get to see the whole team's art all at once.   The talented Cec is hosting the new challenge which is called Water, Water, Everywhere.  She describes the challenge as:


"Often when people go on vacation there is water involved – fishing, cruising, checking out the aquarium, enjoying water sports or playing in the sand at the beach. For this challenge I want you to create a vintage or shabby chic project that reminds you of one or more of these past times"

I thought about the water in the summer time and I was drawn to the ocean and wanted to see if I could create a vision of the ocean using alcohol inks.

 I had so much fun with this!  I wish I had a huge canvas of Yupo paper and could create this for my family room!

I started with some lovely translucent Yupo paper as my base.

I started with laying down the indvidual colors in each section with drops of the color and the blending solution on the felt.

I smeared the colors across the sections.  I then went back in with a tiny bit of ink to blend between the sky colors. 

In the blue and brown areas I added a few drips of darker colors on the felt and dabbed them on randomly to get the pops of dark color.

To add the waves I put blending solution along the edge of a piece of felt and picked it up and used it to smear some wavy lines in my water. 

I finished off with some blending solution drops to add bubbles along the top of the water line.  I also splatted some white paint over the water as frothy bubbles.

I then stamped the sentiment on the top of the tag and mounted it on white cardstock. 

I found the cutest brass charms to add as an accent but painted them white to coordinate.  I wanted to add more to my tag but didn't want to cover up my scene I had created. :) 

Please check out the design team's fabulous inspiration and play along with us!   The winner will earn the chance of a Guest Designer spot at Frilly and Funkie, and everyone who enters and follows the rules will go into the draw for the chance to win a $25 spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. And there are Top 3 Badges for three further outstanding entries, chosen by the Design Team!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz 

Products: 

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Slate

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Stream

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Sunset Orange

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Sunshine Yellow

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Pitch Black

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Raspberry

Ranger Alcohol Ink - Blending Solution

Alcohol Ink Mini Applicator Tool

Mini Applicator Felts

Dina Wakely White Paint

Rayon Seam Binding

Seaside Charm Set - Antique Bronze

Stampers Anonymous - Stuff to Stay 

Ranger Archival Ink - Jet Black 

Yupo Paper - Translucent - 8x10 

Tags & Techniques

Howdy!  A blessed Sunday to you.  I have to say the beginning of the month when Tim posts his new tag for the month is always something I look forward to.  His techniques always inspire me to create.  Tim's September tag used the alcohol inks and yupo paper for one of the techniques. 

I am happiest when I am stamping.  I love mixing the stamped images together and creating a blend of stamps together into a cohesive design.

This month's tag and technique used a resist technique which game me lots of fun ways to play with my stamps and stencils.

I started with a patina background on the tag.

 I admit I ended up not using this tag in my finished project as I wanted to get close to the colors on my stamped background.  I will save this one for another project. I love how the patina looks and could have created many of these backgrounds in different colors.

Next I tried about 3 failed attempts with the alcohol ink backgrounds. I was trying to mix colors and they were beautiful but not cohesive to give a strong imprint and I also tried a few stamps that weren't solid enough in the image to translate well on the resist.

I finally settled on an alcohol ink background with a mix of slate, eggplant, and mushroom.

 Next I used an ultra-violet archival ink to stamp the butterfly and script onto the background. I stamped the butterfly first and cleaned it off following Tim's instructions and then I did the script.

I then tried on several scraps to use the blending ink with the stencil to get the numbers/words. The blending alcohol will bleed and I didn't like how I was applying it so I decided to sponge on the same archival ink through the stencil and was very happy with the crispness of the letters.

Another tip:  The Yupo paper is so wonderful that I was able to flip over one of my failures and use the reverse side for my card.  I also had another failure with the resist which I was able to just ink over again with alcohol inks and start again.  Like a magic eraser!  

I was having so much fun stamping with the resist that I decided to create another stamped collage.

 On the bottom  you can see some smearing this was because I didn't carefully remove the excess ink.  Tim talks about it in  his tutorial.  Just thought I would mention it because I did try very carefully but I am a very messy stamper and missed some ink. :)

Have a lovely Sunday!

Suzz

Products:  Memory Box - Dreams (Text), Stampers Anonymous - Butterfly, Stampers Anonymous - Branch, Inkadinkadoo - Birds, Wendy Vecchi - Stencil,  Tim Holtz Layering Stencil, Hero Arts - French Script, Ranger Archival Inks - Ultra-Violet, Alcohol Inks - Eggplant, Slate, Mushroom, Blending Solution, Ranger - Paints - Wilted Violet, Lavender, Gold, Picked Raspberries, Silver

Darkness

Good Morning!  I wanted to share an art journal that I recently decorated the cover on and started a new fun project with.

The art journal is from Basically Bare 6" x 9" Artful Journal collection.  

I was lucky enough to be able to pick out this journal from my many choices at the Basically Bare Shop.    The journal has these beautiful pages inside that take the colors and ink beautifully.

To create my cover I started with a few other ideas that went bad in a big way.  I ended up creating my cover with a page from inside the journal and then attaching it over my mistakes on the cover.  The cover is a lovely chipboard which gives you the chance to try lots of fun techniques.

For my cover I started with this color combination if you can believe it. :)

I smeared them in varying amounts on my craft mat and spritzed them with water and then laid my paper on the inky mess.  I heat set it and repeated that process about 10 times.

Next I stenciled mini stars all over the cover using Wendy Vecchi Gold Embossing Paste.  I let those dry.

While they were drying I took the Basically Bare Celestial Shapes Acetate stars and added color using Alcohol Inks - Caramel, Rust, Alcohol Blending solution.  While the ink was still wet on my applicator I dabbed a bunch of clear sequins to coordinate.

I then died my twine by dragging the Tsukineko Delicata Gold Glitz ink over the twine. (I heat set this as well)

I stamped Darkroom Door Eclectic Script over the background and the stars using the same gold ink.

I have been wanting to use this beautiful sentiment from Impression Obsession and I placed that in the center using black ink.

Putting the colors down on the paper had me thinking of other color combos and started me down the path of putting together different combinations.

I ended up making quite a selection of color chips.  I will share those at a later time.

I am entering my art journal in the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #18 - Texture.   I love the texture I introduced with the embossed stars and the random swirls of the twine.

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

Spooky Butterflies?

I have to admit I was going down a Halloween path with Tim's September 2015 tag. He made a beautiful butterfly tag. I thought wouldn't it be fun to create a Halloween inspired version of Tim's tag.

My thought process was use Halloween colors inspired by Tim's mixing of alcohol inks in the background.  I would then find three different sized spider stamps (Wrong assumption) and stamp them in acetate on the background instead of the butterflies used by Tim.

 What really happened is no spider stamps in the right size materialized... Hmm.. Pretty sure I have several but nothing in the right size to put on the tag.  So instead I went back to the butterflies and though they look the best on the tag so hence a Halloween tag with butterflies?


 I actually ended up with five different backgrounds and finished four tags of which I only will share three. :O 

 I love how the translucent paste on this was enhanced with bronze glitter.  I then used the bronze glitter around the edges on the background tag.  I also embossed the clock hands with a bronze/penny copper embossing powder.

My last tag I stamped the background with the same Halloween stamp.  After that I found my web stencil and used the translucent embossing paste with the web stencil. 

After the paste dried you couldn't see the web.  I used my fingers to add a touch of black stazon ink over the web to highlight the web on the background. It is difficult to photograph the effect but it was pretty cool although a bit dark overall. :)  I then had to add the cool idea-ology spiders on their own spider thread. 

The other two were a failed skeleton layering and a fun background with no images on it!  

Products: Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Spiderweb, Adventure, Idea-Ology - Halloween Charms, Ephemera, Stampers Anonymous - Halloween, Stampers Anonymous Butterflies, StazOn - Jet Black, Ranger Archival Ink - Black, Idea-Ology Halloween - Rub On, Memory Box - Stars Stencil, Wendy Vecchi - Black Embossing Paste, Dreamweaver Translucent Embossing Paste, Wendy Vecchi Clearly For Art - Acetate

Happy Sunday to you!

Suzz

Tim's Tag September 2014

Tim's Tag September 2014 is my inspiration today.  He has some fun techniques he is sharing which had me playing around with my alcohol inks.

Here was my first tag which used tim's technique but I came back over with the stencil and a purple alcohol ink over the front.

The image was stamped first and then the rub-ons were applied.  I punched out a series of butterflies.

My second used a stencils with the stripes: 

 I liked the effect of the wood grain and ended up creating a more masculine tag although I had the butterflies ready to go so they ended up on my tag. :)

Have a lovely day!

Suzz

Easter ATC Arches

The challenge at  Simon Says Stamp and Show this week is water. You can use water as part of the technique to create your project or use water based images in your project. You decide how water plays in your project.   I used the inspiration to create a new technique and series of Easter ATC arches.

My new technique is tie dye alcohol ink.  I started with an extra cookie sheet.  This would work in any container that you are willing to stain.  I used this cookie sheet because I had bought it for the purpose of decorating it.  I poured a layer of water on the bottom.

I then dripped the alcohol inks into the water.  I put a layer of pink in the water and swished it around. I then dripped in yellow and red.  Then I laid the paper onto the surface of the water and pulled it up.

I switched out the regular cardstock to glossy cardstock to see what the effect was as well as swirling the water around more.

I then cleared the water by soaking it up int paper towels and started a fresh batch with different colors.

I die cut arches and backgrounds from a few of the different papers:

I stamped over the surface using a StaZon ink:

I added highlights with white gel pen.  I added a cute little chick on the front colored with watercolor pencils.

I used a different die for the next arch:

On the next two I switched up the papers to use the purple, yellow and green colors:

The shimmery arches are coated with Versamark and a Stampendous Crystal Embossing Powder. 

Products: Poppy Stamps - Gothic Window Die, Stampendous Feather Bonnet Baby, Stampendous Floral Bonnet Baby, Stampers Anonymous - Spring Sprung, Memory Box - Nature Sings, Stampendous Crystal Embossing Powder, Pearls, Flowers, Stampendous Micro Glitter, Tim Holtz - Seasonal Chit Chat, Hero Arts - Cherry Blossom,  Hero Arts Papillion, Hero Arts - Fluerettes,  Ranger Alcohol Inks - Watermelon, Yellow Sunshine, Raspberry, Purple, Lettuce, Stazon Fuschia, Ranger Archival Ink - Black, Signo White Gel Pen, Memento - Dandelion Ink


Simon Says Stamp is offering up a $50.00 gift voucher to one randomly selected  lucky participant who joins us in the challenge this week.

Thanks for stopping by!


Suzz