ArtiphyTheHeart

How Hard Can You Pull?. . .

Yesterday's theme for Wednesday Stamper is one of my favorites, "Gothic Arch".  Belinda Schneider created these first last year and has generously shared her template with all of us for our Sunday challenges, Gothic Arch Sunday.  But any opportunity to make an arch is a pleasure for me.  I love the format.  I didn't quite have the stamina for a triptych like Sija's beautiful arches on the WS homepage, but did manage to come up with a diptych. 

The substrate is corrugated cardboard covered with fabric- -muslin that I dyed last year by boiling it in beet juice and vinegar for about a gagillion hours.  I over-stamped it with Hero Arts "textures and patterns" rubber stamps and Staz-On black ink.  Sides are covered in window screen wire mesh, and I used mesh as the middle hinge, attached with black brads. The designs at the top are rub-ons from BasicGrey, as are the stick-on numbers at the bottom. I dirtied-up a piece of string with more black Staz-On and strung it across the arches for the tugging rope and finished it off with some scattered black seed beads glued randomly around the bottom.  The text and pics are from a vintage school book that I found at an antique store years ago.

On another note, please stop back later.  As promised, I'm going to post Anton Hect's of "Blinking Ballet" fame (see post from Dec. 4, 2007) latest work, the One Note Band.  It's worth seeing, and I'll have it up on my blog by the weekend.  Anton has supplied me with some interesting background information which I'll post with the video. 

See you later!

The Joy of Christmas. . .Children

"Christmas Joy and Children" is today's Gothic Arches theme, and how perfect.  Nothing at all compares to the joy that children bring, and at Christmas time, this joy seems to radiate and intensify.

The glittery children in my arch were actually done for something else altogether.  As it turned out, they didn't work at all for that piece and I was really not pleased with all the layers of glitter, so I scrapped it. 

A long time ago I learned to re-define the word "scrap".  It no longer has anything to do with the dust bin.  In fact, "scrap" gets filed by type and category, or more often, just thrown into a semi-organized heap.  This way I can draw from it for new pieces, and I so often find that one piece's scrap is just what it takes to complete another collage. 

This particular scrap was originally a much larger piece of clip art from Dover, but when I resurrected it for this piece I cut out the part that I felt might work and glued it to a piece of background paper from Bohemia.  Then up went the tree and it's ornaments and an edge of gold was added to the border with the same gold used to write the "joy".  I ended with a few rub-ons that fit-in so well with the background that my son referred to them as the "Where's Waldo"s (the one at the top is kind of obvious).

All-in-all, this was a fun theme to illustrate.  And in keeping with today's theme, may you all have a Happy Christmas, overflowing with all that brings you joy!

Sparkling Wings

Rummaging through supplies and finding old stamps is a lot like running into an old friends that you haven't seen in ages.  I don't tend to do many pieces with wings, so it took me a while to realize that I had a couple of long lost stamps - - ones that I really, really like - - both angels, and both with wings.  It was a tough pick, but PSX's "Raggedy Angel" won out.  She's stamped with color box black pigment ink, colored with markers, embossed with Stampendous fine line black and Stampendous gold powders, mounted on black card stock which is mounted on paper from K&Company's "Saffron" collection.  I threw in a few extra daisies on top of it all.  To make her wings sparkle, I used "coral reef" transparent glitter from The Art Institute's collection of gourmet glitters.

I scanned her.  Perhaps if I had photographed her, the wings would have appeared to sparkle more.  Any ideas on how to do a better job of making the sparkle come out in the picture will be greatly appreciated!

Gothic Arches - - Winter

This week's Gothic Arches Sunday theme is "Winter".  Here's my offering.