ArtiphyTheHeart

On The Fifth Day Of Christmas...Ornaments!

For T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas, Inspire Me Thursday, One Powerful Hour and Wednesday Stamper...

 

Making It Work...

There were so many elements to this tag, and since I make it a practice never to shop in the middle of a project and instead use the things I have on hand, tons of substitutions were needed to make this work.  You might want to take a look at T!m's tag and then come back to mine so you can note the differences, but I'll describe what I did differently in detail below. 

The Ornaments...

I had much more fun than expected making the ornaments, and that says a lot, because I knew they'd be a blast!  Santa was first, and I made sure that he was all decked out in the traditional red and green. This particular Santa required a larger fragment than the one T!m used, so the ornaments took up more space on my tag, than his did, but I think I like that!  All images used for the ornaments are stamps, and all but the three trees which are from PSX, are from the Stamper's Anonymous mini holidays collection.  The charms made from the fragments alone would make great tiny gifts, as would the tag itself!

The Background...  

About the only things I really wish I'd had on hand were the white Mambly rub-ons that T!m used for the sentiment on his tag, and the gorgeous flourish stamp that he uses so often.  But all-in-all, I'm happy with this tag, and now I know what to do with the set of idea-ology fragments that had been sitting in my stash unused for such a long, long time!

Using What I Have On Hand...

Except for the inks, most of my tag employs substitutions for the products that T!m used, simply because his exact items were not in my stash.  But I did follow his design and techniques almost to the letter.  Whenever possible, I use a Ranger product as a substitute because they're made to coordinate so well, but as you can see, I've used lots of other things, too.  Here's the list of my improvisations:

• I inked the Hero Arts manuscript background stamp in walnut stain distress ink and used it in place of the script stamp that T!m used.
• As I said, I'd love to have T!m's flourish stamp, but since I don't, I used some rub-ons from a K&Company set.  
• I used the pine bough from Stampers Anonymous mini holiday set as a substitution for the stamp that T!m used, but I followed his technique.  I didn't have the exact colors, so I used embossing powders that were already in my drawer.  For the green, I sprinkled on a combination of Ranger's evergreen, and peeled paint Distress powder, and sprinkled a line of tea dye Distress powder for the bark.
• "Joy" was handwritten with a water-based Sharpie paint pen.  I sprinkled it with DecoArt's glamour dust before it was dry and voila!  It stuck, and it glimmers!
• The sizes of fragments I used for the ornaments differed from T!m's because of the images I selected, but the product was the same.  Santa was colored with watercolors and red marker, an off-brand of green glitter glue (I hated it!), and red Stickles (Must have Stickles!).  

Everything else was done using the same products and techniques that T!m used.  I can't help repeating how valuable it is to follow someone else's steps using the same supplies they use when learning something new.  You can always make adaptations later, and as necessary, but initially, learning from the master's hand using the master's tools is the best!

Now I'm Off To...

Get to the store and back before the next storm arrives

Cook for my family

Put some music on!

And share a "crafty" video with you before I go....

!Caution!...

Do not watch this if you are offended by strong language!

"GangstaCraft" is funny!  But if you're offended by, as Bridget (aka Scissas) puts it "potty mouth language", then skip it!  Personally, I think it's a hilarious parody!  But if you're offended by language then please just pass it by.  And if the little ones are around, please skip it until you're sure they're out of ear-shot!  Now that you've been duly warned, if you choose to watch, Enjoy!

I must say that it was a little eye opening that I actually have experiece with EVERY item mentioned!  

Have a great day, Everyone!

Surprise! Another Tag...

...For T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas, Inchy By Inch, Soartful, Inspiration Avenue, and One Powerful Hour...

 

So Much Fun...

OK, this was by far, the most fun I've ever had making a tag!  And not only did I have to use my imagination and improvise quite a bit since I never shop while making a project and always use what I have on hand to complete it, but I even got one of the steps entirely backwards, and it still turned out so well that I have fallen in love with it!

Charming...

And isn't that little charm just the most adorable thing you've ever seen?  It reminds me of a festive house, warm and cozy and all decked out for the season!  Definitely makes you nostalgic to be home for the holidays!  If you look very close and very carefully (click to enlarge the photo of the tag above), you might be able to make out the word "wish" which is just a whisper of script over the top of the Christmas tree inside the charm.  Certainly appropriate, because after all, what's Christmas without wishes?  

And This Is "Note"worthy...

Now take a close-up look at the back of the charm.  Nothing is left unfinished.  Inside is a snippet of a song, because what's Christmas without gloriously sung carols?  But truth be told, I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas music.  So much of it is beautiful and heavenly, and so much of it is boring, repetitive, gratuitous and common -- overplayed and over-rated, which is why we make our own mixes at home and play just what we like throughout the season!  

Using What I Have On Hand...

As always, I'll direct you to T!m's blog so that you can see what he did and how he did it.  As for me, since I never shop during a project and always use what's in my stash, here's a list of my improvisations:

• Thank goodness I had that set of stamps from Stamper's Annonymous, otherwise I don't know how I could have even come close to the way this tag turned out.  But I don't have many any re-inkers, and I don't have a sheet of cut-n-dry felt, so I had to improvise here.  Instead of inking up the felt and making a custom stamp pad (which is definitely on my list of things to do in the future!), I was very comfortable inking the stamp itself with Marvy dye markers, which I do have in plentiful supply.  This was a great solution, especially since I really didn't have an immediate use for multiples of this stamp in color.  So I colored the part of the image I wanted, breathed on it to re-moisten it just before pressing, and stamped!  
• I used a K&Company rub-on for my word "wish" instead of a word cut out and pasted.
• Ooooops!  I got T!m's instructions backwards for stamping the tag.  Instead of stamping with black archival ink and then coloring the background with distress inks, I colored first and stamped over.  Not a problem.  It works either way.
• I have only 3 stickles (*sniffs back a tear*), but picket fence is one of them, and it worked perfectly to create snow and icicles on the roof of the charm when I squeezed it over a teeny bit of titanium white acrylic paint applied with a toothpick. 
• I was lucky enough to have the frames, the glass, and the memory capsules in my stash.  I even have a selection of Barbara Trombley's fabulous glass glitters, but alas, none of it is "clear".  So I had to improvise, and once again, I love how it turned out!  I used a tiny smattering of Suze Weinberg's iridescent Zamora beads (which generous Carol gave me for free as she scooped them up from the floor of her shop after I broke the jar--clumsy, butter-fingers me!), along with a few speckles of silver glass glitter, just for the charm and sparkle.  The iridescent beads are awsome!  They play off the lights beautifully and don't occlude the background image.

I think that everything else I did was done from T!m's instructions, which is fabulous because there's so much to be learned in using someone else's techniques along with the products they're actually using.  Even if you'd rather use your own stash and methods for projects at hand, it's valuable to accumulate stores of information and experience from the heads and hands of other artisans which can be applied to pieces of your own work in the future.  I know I said this very same thing in yesterday's post, but really, it is worth repeating.

Now I'm off to...

See what needs to be cleaned-up after last night's desert hurricane.  The rain was driven horizontally by 75mph winds, and this lasted for hours!

Infuse myself with lots more caffeine to stay awake through the afternoon and evening.

Forget about cooking and let everyone make their own soup and sandwiches tonight, 

While I make more tags!!

Have a great day, Everyone!

A Banner Month...

...One For the Studio...

A couple of months ago I downloaded the Spring Garden Fairies  from Ten Two Studios.  I love working with sheets of components to mix and match, and I love separate arms, legs, and torsos because I can pose them any way I choose.  The vibrant colors in these dolls are fabulous. They are the perfect contrast for the layers of mixed yellows, umbers, and titan buff (raw titanium matte) which pick up some of the other yellows in my studio, and the glaze pen border on top of the acrylic painted pennants!

There's another great banner in my studio that Tracey Lynn Huskamp made.  It's gorgeous.  It says "S-T-U-D-I-O, and it's made of vintage, glided edged portrait mats and vintage glass glitter.  I'll cherish it always and never replace it,  but it's the same color as my wall, and after a lot of soul-searching, I really don't want to repaint the wall, even though the banner is worthy of a better background.   So I came up with this companion banner. These pennants, threaded through with khaki silk ribbon, sit on the opposite wall from Tracey's banner and spell out: "My * Sanctuary".  The facing banners are very different, but perfectly compliment each other.

Here's a bit of a wider view (above), and the entire piece (below).

I must apologize for the photo quality.  I'm not the world's best photographer, but I clean-up well in Photoshop...or at least I could clean-up well, if Adobe would ever get my copy of CS-4 in the mail!  I ordered the X-plat upgrade in May, and I'm still patiently waiting...promises, promises!

Those very few of you who are my Flickr friends have seen pics of my studio (which I will not share with everyone), so you'll know how beautifully this banner fits!  And speaking of fitting in, the Crazy Amigo theme posted last Tuesday was "ladies", One Powerful Hour on Thursday asked for "favorite color", and on Friday, TGIF challenged "use words".  I think the banner is a pretty good fit for all three of them!

With that now done and lots more on the horizon, I'm:

Taking a break to cook dinner for my family, then

Find something good on Hulu (last night we watched "Super-size" me--tonight we're eating organic!)

Sink deeper into the Gormanghast novels, which--I agree with the literary critics--surpasses Tolkein in both scope and descriptive detail, and then finally,

Get some much-needed rest so I can start fresh tomorrow!

Have a great day, Everyone!

Summer...

...And How "Heat" Is Merely An Anagram For "Hate"...

Heat...

Yesterday was Thursday, but who knew!  Surely no one here.  It's too hot to think.  If we weren't experiencing this cool spell, I wouldn't have been able to figure it out even today.  But now that it's merely a balmy 109 degrees, I can think again, and I realize that it's Friday.  Probably too late to play with the OPH group and their "summertime" theme, but I'm going to go for it anyway.  And I hope that dyslexia counts, because I answered Creative Catalyst #69 backwards.  They want to know the favorite thing about where you live; I've given them my least favorite.  Oh well.  Blame it on the heat!

Ink...

My ode to summer in the journal page above is probably 50% wabi-sabi, meaning, the ink may not dry permanently on the acrylic paint.  It has been my experience that when writing on acrylic, Sakura glaze and Souffle pens work perfectly, as well as the gelly roll whites.  But the gelly roll metallics, as smooth as silk and joyful to write with as they are, sometimes, not always, tend to smear on an acrylic base.  Why only sometimes?  I have no idea.  But because they glide so beautifully smoothly and look so fabulous, I write with them anyway, let them sit overnight, and sometimes even two days.  Some of the time they dry, other times they don't.  Regardless of weather.  So I usually don't use them on top of acrylic, but it's hard not to because they write so luxuriously smoooooothly!  When I just can't resist, I take the chance, and also take the photograph.  That way, if I have to wipe clean and do over, I'll have the original digitally immortalized.  There's always a toothy ground that I could apply to take the ink, but in this case, I wanted to retain the glazed layers and not matt-up the depth of surface (that unfortunately this photo doesn't show because I'm presently Photoshop-deprived).

More Heat, Possibly...

Which brings me to a real bone of contention:  Adobe!  I still have yet to receive my X-plat upgrade to Photoshop CS4.  Adobe requires that the PC copy of CS3 and all it's components be removed and the software destroyed, and an Adobe document must be signed, received and "authenticated" before the upgrade for Macintosh is "approved".  The sticking point?  I've been without Photoshop for a month and a half.  After losing two affidavits two separate times, Adobe finally acknowledged receiving my document.  I began this process in May, and I am still waiting for the "authenticating" department to OK the upgrade.  In the meantime, as you recall, I was required to destroy software that I had paid for--software that I own!  Are there damages?  We'll see what the AG's office has to say, since Adobe has stopped answering my inquiries as to an ETA which I have been asking via posts to their support portal over the last few weeks.   To be continued....

On A Positive Note...

I've decided to close with a list of things that make me happy, so here goes:

The software update for Safari, the world's best browser!

IPhones, even though I don't own one

My hot pink Razer mouse

Sweet tea mixed with ice water over lots of ice in a frosty glass

The new video by director Anton Hecht which is on my Facebook now

And my NetChix pals, who keep me going even when I'm not painting and *gluening*!

Have a great day, Everyone!

  

"That Fourth Of July...

...When I Was Learning Chinese..."

I think you'll probably be able to read this page if you click it to enlarge.  The point of all this is that it took place over a period of time that included my 7th Fourth Of July.  And while the model in the photo does not look a bit like my mother, the scenario fits.  There is no question whatsoever that my mother could have given a fish a drink from a faucet while flying a plane on a mission in white kid gloves!  She was equal parts deadly-serious and fun-loving, which makes this piece a perfect fit for this week's One Powerful Hour challenge.

My parents were unique, having already lived their lives and careers before I was three years old and retiring--well, only "kind of" retiring--but that's another story.  

Roll the Credits...

Credits to Kohler for the ad, Tim Holtz and Ranger Industries for the stamps, Staz-On (Tsukineko) for the ink, and Sakura and Pitt (Faber-Castel) for the pens, Basic Grey for the paper, and K & Co. for the fish.  An extra BIG thank you to Sakura of America, who will be suppling me with a set of metallic pens as an RAK from the Creative Catalyst team.  

And a Note To My Facebook Friends, and Others Who Are Reading This In Syndicated Formats...

You can always read my notes in their original format, and view all archived posts and artwork, by clicking the link on my profile page to visit my typepad blog.  Questions?  Email me!

Right now I'm

Arranging a portfolio

Hoping to spend more time in paint and glue before the day is done

Feeling guilty for indulging my fast-food cravings...

..."Only one?, right!"...and no, I didn't eat both of them!

...And now that it has "cooled-down" to a mere 104 degrees at 8PM in Phoenix, we're on our way to watch the fireworks display from our back yard patio

Have a happy and safe 4th Of July, Everyone!