ArtiphyTheHeart

The Forgotten Page

This is only a backdrop.  It's a beginning.  A bare-naked  journal page.  

I just finished binding another book and I did a flip-through video of the raw pages.  It's just to inform me.  It's what the signatures looked like in the book upon binding with the minimal prep that was done before they were stitched into the spine.  The video isn't pretty or interesting.  The lighting is bad and it was taken with a cell phone in one hand while manipulating the book with the other.  

But I want a complete record to look back on, and I don't want to do the video over again, so here's the page I flipped past.  Now I can compare my before and after as soon as the after is complete.  

For the curious--those hell-bent on self punishment--here's a link to the flip-through:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfVkAEfGSbc  

You'll need the link if you want to see the video because it isn't public on YouTube.  Don't expect to be impressed.  Even the cover is bare.  At some point it will be collaged, or printed, or something. But for now, it's all just bones.

 

The Beginning Of Time

Monday marked the official start of Creating Time, a mega event that you can learn more about and even join for free by clicking the link on my right sidebar.  Part of this event is the featured launch of a new book by Marney Makridakis of Artella: Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life.  I've been anxiously awaiting the release of this book for ages, and I can't wait till a copy is in my hands!

Every day throughout this event a new exercise in seeing, thinking about, and experiencing time in unique and potent ways is presented to each of the participants.  Monday's activity focused on answering a list of questions about time specifically and in general, culminating with an art project to illustrate the essence gleaned through the process.  You can see mine in a minute.

But first, before I share the journal page I did for this project, I'd like you to take a few seconds and watch this snippet of a video I put together with watches from various magazine ads.  And I want you to notice.  Notice what?  Well, that's what you have to figure out.  What do you see?  Don't scroll down till you've watched or you'll spoil what may be a surprising fact.

 

Ok, now that you've watched, did you notice anything unique?  Unusual?  Different?  Similar?  Surprising? Or perhaps even suspicious?  

Before I tell you what I noticed and what it means, let me share my journal page for Monday's Creating Time, Day 1, and tell you a little bit about it.

The first thing I did was to sketch my little drawing of someone (me, perhaps?) laid-out flat in her efforts to uphold time.  She has to keep time balanced while the clock is ticking without letting it crush her in the process.  Sound familiar?  I'm sure we all feel this way at times.  

Next, I found the clock image I wanted to use.  I could have drawn it.  It would have taken less time and effort, but I wanted the contrast and interplay that comes from using multiple types of images in collage.  I found a few other parts of pages in magazines that caught my eye, so I ripped them out too.  Then I decided which journal to use.  

I keep several "open" (aka: ready for use) journals of different shapes and sizes available at any given time.  One of the benefits of this is that there is always something on hand, ready to accomodate any size page that a combination of images will dictate.  This way the artwork is king, not the size and shape of the page.  I grabbed the journal that best suited the project, and started arranging and re-arranging the components until I came up with a pleasing composition, then I glued them down.  

All the while, I kept my answers to the time questions in front of me so that my answers stayed in the back of my mind throughout the selection and arrangement process.   When everything was on the page, I took a break, had a cup of tea, then came back and took a look.  The page contained all my answers, and more.  It showed me things I hadn't thought of while answering the questions.  Things that were just as pertinent, perhaps even more.  So I began to write.  First a thought here, then a thought there, then another over in that corner, and also one right here at the side.  My thoughts flowed onto the page, becoming commentary on my perceptions of time.

And now, back to the video.  I was searching for clock face images when I happened across the watches I clipped for the video.  I wanted a clock face or two to add to my little drawing.  I kept finding images of diamond watches, artsy clock faces, and unusual artistic shapes when all I wanted was something clear and the proper size for my drawing, but  I decided to cut them all out as I went through the magzines and sort them later.  

As I clipped, I noticed that all the watches were set to the same time.  10:10.  I looked through another magazine.  Same thing.  10:10, regardless of brand.  I started to Google "watches set to 10:10".  The minute I typed-in "watches", the words "set at 10:10" automatically popped up in the search.  Apparently lots of people know this.  My husband knew it when I asked him about it.  You probably already know it too.  I would have thought that I would have known it, having worked in advertising, but then I never did a clock or watch ad, or worked for anyone who carried those accounts.  Here's the deal:  10:10 is an industry standard.  When watches and clocks are used in advertisments, setting them at 10:10 puts the hands in the best position to frame the name of the maufacturer.  It's easiest to read "Timex" or "Rolex" when the hands are set at 10:10.  

So there you have it.  Now you can say:  "I knew that!"  Or, you can say, "Wow!  I never knew that." Or you can get your friends to watch my little video and ask them what they see.  If you have the time, of course.

All The Collage Pages From RIM

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I'd post a slide presentation of the pages in the book which I completed for Revel In The Moment, showing each page in its first stage, with collage.  With the collage completed, the book is now prepped and ready for additions.  Things painted in and things painted out, drawing, doodling, stencils, text, journaling, and more can now be added to these backdrops.  Usually I work a page from start to finish, but I got caught-up with the collage in this book, and chose to just run with it. 

 

I'll post another slide of the pages when they have been worked and completed.  I'll probably post both videos side by side, this one and the next, so you can see the transformation.  

I created this slide presentation in iPhoto, converted it to a QuickTime video, and uploaded it to Vimeo.  I've done this successfully many times in the past, but this time I had to upload it over and over again, five or six times.  Each time something different was changed, left out, or the video skipped.  It totally ignored my smooth dissolves and each page now cuts abruptly, one to the next.  Finally I just settled on the version above, but I noticed that every once in awhile the first page would be skipped during replay.  Just in case it doesn't appear in the presentation, I've included it below.  Next time I might use Picassa instead of Vimeo.

Every page in this book has meaning that is very personal to me alone.  My interpretation would be a reflection of what is inside me.  What you see in my collage is a reflection of what's inside of you.  

Maybe I'll take a page or two every now and then and talk about my thought process as the page was created.  You don't have to read those posts, of course.  They might be bore you.  But if you're interested, some of this collage tells some very interesting stories from the pages of my life.

In the meantime, if you'd like to see some beautiful completed pages, check out Kelly Kilmer's Wanderlust Book by clicking HERE.  

More Collage

I love knowing what people are up to and reading status updates, but I hate whining, so I hope you won't think I'm whining when I tell you that from the 18th of December until just a few hours ago, I had the flu.  It affected a knee joint.  Flu + trouble walking was not a fun combo.  The knee is somewhat better but it still bothers me, and the flu is pretty much gone except for the residual tiredness.  Still, I managed to get some things done, and also to teach myself to use iPhoto for the slide presentation I uploaded to Vimeo.*  Sitting at the counter in my fuzzy slippers, cutting and glueing was really good medicine.

 

 

Here are the 13 pages I created during flu fog for Kelly Kilmer's Revel In The Moment workshop.  Much fun!  I didn't realize just how much a person could create when even too foggy to read a book or watch a movie.  This was the perfect thing.  I could work, drink tea, then rest.  I've been doing this for so many years that I've found I can collage on auto pilot, which is something I wouldn't have guessed if I hadn't been placed in the situation.  Although, I vaguely remember being sick in bed as a child and my mother bringing me a tray with magazines to cut out, scissors, and paper to glue things on.  So maybe collage is my comfort food.  

Now that so many pages have been done I've decided  to collage the entire book before working the pages with with the good stuff--paint, mark making, lettering, and journaling.  Not the way I usually do it, but hey, nothing wrong with being pushed into a different way of working in order to adjust to the situation at hand.   Who knows?  I just might find I like this well enough to do it another time.

 

* A head's up for those of you who have ever used slide.com:  Slide will be leaving the web in early March of 2012.  You have only a month or so to get your photos moved, or lose them forever.  Just saying, just in case...

Day 5 Of 30 Days Of Drawing

There are more components to making art than most people are aware of.  Encapsulated within each component of the process is the entire process itself, in much the same way that the entire plant is contained within the seed.  

Drawing is so much more than skill with pen on paper that the skill with pen on paper is often dwarfed in comparison to the rest of the process.  The choices to be made are first and foremost.  What paper: Plain?  painted? patterned? photograph, etc.?  What medium: Pencil? ink? paint/type of paint? crayon? pastel, etc.?  What will the first mark be?  Where will it be made?  Will it be from the imagination?  Or from a model?  How much to add?  When to stop?  What to take away?  Positve space?  Negative space?  Photorealisim?  Realistic?  Abstract?  Whimsy?  Serious?  Color?  Grayscale? Lighting?  Collage/placement?  ...the list goes on, and it is endless.  Many of these decisions are automatic;  some are consciously thought out, sometimes easily, sometimes in agony.

Today's drawing is illustrative of a movie I saw and loved.  Nightwatch.  It's a Russian horror film, and a youtube video of the trailer follows.  If you are disturbed by horror movies, don't watch the video.  But if you love great special effects and are a fan of well acted, well scripted, beautifully lit, and beautifully fimed intensity, then this may be for you.  I won't tell you anything about it.  One person's description is another person's spoiler, and I hate spoilers.

As for my drawing, it's in the art journal/sketchbook that will be finished at the close of 2011.  Some of the decisions I made for this drawing were as follows:

• grayscale
• photographs
• deep green background paper
• Rapidograph and India ink
• Bats as stylized "V"s and other marks drawn around the roof tops of the photo on the left
• "Night Watch" as two words in all caps drawn by inking-in the negative space of a rectangle

 

I'm participating in Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Drawing.  There's room for everyone in this challenge, and I can guarantee that whatever you draw, you'll be better for it.  Click the link and join us!

Moleskine Rabbit

Once again, no time to grind ink sticks to a rich black and make the seven shades of gray.  Patiently grinding sumi-é ink is one of the most meditative and helpful practices I've found to center oneself for artwork.  But I have to live with my Western schedule, which sometimes means exchanging Eastern ink sticks and brushes for pencils and brush markers.   

I should have been more attentive to the limitations of the priniting in my Western dictionary.  The second character of the calligraphy was printed with an ink flaw which colosed it at the top, and I copied that mistake on to this page.  My daughter corrected me, but saw the dictionary mistake only after I had already copied  it onto my drawing.

I have a reason for making these sketches, beyond the calming joy and satisfaction the process brings.  They are seeds of a larger project which I will tell you about when the time is ripe.

If you are interested in sumi-é, I suggest you begin with looking at lots and lots of artwork until you begin to notice the subtleties that make each painting completely different.  

This isn't something to undertake if you plan to treat it casually.   It is most advantageous to have a sensei, or master teacher, if you are lucky enough to find one.  

If you plan to study from a book, the best book I know of for a comprehensive study is The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting.  

Also very good, Wang Jia Nan and Cai Xiaoli's book Oriental Painting Course: A Practical Guide to Painting Skills and Techniques of China and the Far East is one that I have read and refer to quite often.  

It is futile to study the technique without also practicing the way, as this type of art eminates from and communicates an unbroken inner energy, or "chi".  Without "chi", or with broken "chi", there is no life to the drawing, no matter how skillfully rendered.  

I recommeded a film to watch, and I posted the trailer to it in yesterday's blog post, HERE.   It's a documentary of a Japanese-American master painter, and one of the most uplifting movies I've ever seen.

Moleskine Cats

All I had to work with were three Pitt brush pens, a Moleskine, a couple of cats lingering in my imagination, and about 15 minutes.  I was itching for ink and a brush, but had to make do.  Much better than nothing, but to tell the truth, I don't like quickly covering large areas with markers.  I much prefer ink.  

Speaking of cats, if you haven't seen The Cats of Mirikitani , then you haven't seen one of the best films ever created.  Ever.  No exaggeration.  Here is the trailor, but it doesn't begin to do justice to the film, which will restore faith in human nature to all but those who are beyond hope.  

I've been told it's an instant play on Netflix, if you're a subscriber.  It's definitely a must-see, and after you've seen it, I think you'll agree that it belongs in everyone's library, to view, and view again!

Thar Be Dragons!

Yesterday I showed you my 18X Book and told you that I had an idea to replace the middle signature which had been destroyed.  After a couple of months, I came up with the idea of putting a pop-up in the center of the book.  

I've done some paper engineering and made quite a few pop-ups in the past, but I wanted this one to be really special, and I wanted to get some experience with more sophisticated techniques.  I chose to go with a template from an online source called EasyCutPopup, and I fell in love with the dragon!

It took one practice run, a re-size, then another practice run at the smaller size, and I was ready to cut and assemble the finished product.  It was surprisingly easy.  The part that took the longest was finding the scaling settings on my printer, but after that, I was off and running!

Rather than make you sit through poor quality videos from my camera, I opted for a slide.  If you'd rather see video, you're welcome to send me a new camera :)

I haven't decided how I'm going to fill the rest of the book.  As you can see, there's plenty of room for expansion when the book is closed, so I'm thinking interactive collage and mixed media.  But thar will be only one dragon!  And by the way, this design uses no glue or adhesives of any kind.  It's all about the cuts and the folds.

Day 23 complete.   Now on to day 24 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.

July 6, Day 5's Stuff

I'm trying to keep the numbers straight.  It's the 6th of July and the 6th day of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  I'm working on Day 6, but I'm posting what I did yesterday in Day 5.  I don't know why this confuses me, or why I even care.  Actually, I don't think it matters.  

This is what I did yesterday.  It isn't finished.  In addtion to other things, the library pocket will hold a list of the books I'm currently reading and the films I've been watching.  So often I've wished I'd kept a record.  Index cards with notes, summaries and summations. This book can make a place for those things.  I'm finding that I'm more at home working in this book (you can see it here) than in any I've made so far.  Maybe that's not quite true, since I'm really at home in all of them.  I think this one is just more open to my own natural style of play, and it's fun.  Love the deeper stuff to, though....

Marit suggested self portraits in her Summer Camp group, and Phinner shared a quick and easy tutorial with the group for creating stencils in PSE.  I found the corresponding filters in PS CS4, and created the stencil, top left.  Yes.  My face.  In a journal.  Only Mary Ann could convince me to do that.  In one of her vids for FTB, while she's working on a page, she's drawing a mustache on a black and white pic of herself.  It's absolutely wonderful!  

Now, for something completely different...or maybe not so different, since it's already in my journal...inside yesterday's monsoon, was the dust storm from hell!  Talking can't describe it.  You have to see it.  My cousin Cathy's husband is a meteorologist on the east coast.  She sent me this video he posted to youtube.  It's the best I've seen so far.  Watch, as the tower at Sky Harbor International Airport disappears into the cloud of dust!  7000' high, 50 miles wide, 50 mph.  I think it's the 50 mph that saved us.  Any slower and we'd be choking.   A little faster, and there would have been serious damage.  We got lucky!

Full Tilt Ahead

Still Boogieing with Mary Ann Moss and the FTB group, and I'm happy as a clam!  Finally finished my practice book which was much easier than I expected to bind and stitch.  Where I ran into difficulty was in glueing signatures together, but after an adjustment or two it was perfect, and turned out to be a case of needing more practice, practice, practice.  

Here are three pics plus a flip-thru of the inside pages.  What began as a 9 signature book, ended as an 8 signature book plus a pamphlet.  The video explains that happy accident.  

 

  The video quality....well, lack of quality....don't pay attention to the bad lighting, poor audio, no editing, etc.  Just get what you can from it and know that I really don't lisp, (it really is the camera's audio), and know that the pages look SO much better in real life.  I'm not a videographer, obviously, and my camera is as old and temperamental as they get...Don't judge.

HandBook Flip-thru from Barbara Hagerty on Vimeo.

 

 

2011--Year Of The Barred Owl

The year has begun with a creative frenzy.  If it continues at this pace, it will end as one of the best on record for the art blogging community.  Only two-thirds of the way through January, and I've already stumbled upon dozens of new workshops, challenges and creative tutorials, all given freely by talented artists as their gifts into the new year.  

I just completed the first three phases of a workshop by Pam Carriker for Strathmore Online Workshops.  It's amazing, and when it's finished, there are still two more to go!

Strathmore is where I met artist-blogger Effy Wild, who got a wild idea to host an art community herself, and without any hesitation, voilá!  Wild Precious Studio was born!  I joined along with 15 others on the first day, and now just a week later, membership has risen to 76 and counting!  

Among other micro groups, Wild Precious Studio features a weekly art journaling group. Week 1's challenge is painting owls.  My Barred Owl was born last night, but not before serendipity led me to Green Isles Crafts  where I found a journal prompt for "Wings".

My Barred Owl is below.  On the left he's painted in acrylics, and on the right, he's the feature of a darker, finished journal page created from a color copy of the original, including one of my favorite poems by Pulitzer Prize winning Richard Wilbur. 

 

Click to enlarge the pics and read the poem.  If you think "Who cooks for you, Who cooks for you" is mere poetic license, watch the video below of a live Barred Owl, and listen to its wonderful, haunting voice.

Late edit-  Here's the poem, in case you'd rather see it in print:

A Barred Owl   by Richard Wilbur

The warping night air having brought the boom                                                                                                             Of an owl's voice into her darkened room,                                                                                                                         We tell the wakened child that all she heard                                                                                                                     Was an odd question from a forest bird,                                                                                                                           Asking of us, if rightly listened to,                                                                                                                                          "Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?"

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear                                                                                                           Can also thus domesticate a fear,                                                                                                                                           And send a small child back to sleep at night                                                                                                                     Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight                                                                                                                   Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw                                                                                                                         Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

Another Thin Line

When you have a set of polar opposites, one at either end of a line, and you pick up that line as if it were a piece of string and bend it into a circle, you find that the opposites meet.  

It's good to take a step back every once in awhile and look from a distance at the things that make you feel the most free.  What if they all went away?  Not one or two.  All of them.  Could you survive?  Are you chained to them?  What do you really need?  And when that's gone too, then think again:  What is it that you really need?   

Now think about what makes you feel the most bound, the things that you most certainly feel have you wrapped in chains.  If those things went away, would you be free?  Really?  Or would you need to find substitutes or a surrogates in order to move about freely and authentically?

There are no answers here, only questions.  There are unique answers inside each of us, and that's where they are discovered.

There's a link on my sidebar to a gallery of some of my sketchbooks and journal pages.  Most of what you'll find there are intensely layered and complex pages.  I also do a lot of what I call graphic sketches like the one above, but I rarely post them anywhere.  

I work in many different journals and sketchbooks simultaneously, and I never worry about finishing any of them.  They'll finish themselves if they ever need closure.   The visual journal pictured above goes with me most places.  It's an altered ex-library book, a smallish discard, that I've mended and healed with masking tape, paint and paper.  This book and a .05 Rapidograph are the only art supplies in my purse.  Sometimes I'll haul other materials and sketchbooks with me, but that's another story.  This is the only one that's always in my purse.  I'll begin a prepared page when I'm on the road, and sometimes finish it while I'm out.  If there's more on a page than black india ink, then it was finished in studio.  

This particular sketch began with a thought.  A puzzle to solve.  I wanted to draw a linked chain, curling and curving, entirely in ink and entirely from memory.  So I began with a link or two where the boy's back is now, then I continued.  Most of the chain sat on these otherwise empty pages for a few weeks, until I decided that someone needed to be inside them.  So I drew the boy, then more chain, then more boy.  Somehow the ends of the chain decided to run off the page in opposite directions, and I wondered:  Is he bound?  Or is he free?  Then the drawing became smaller and the question grew.  That's just how it is sometimes.

This is day 5 of art journal pages in the new year.   Challenging myself, along with a few hundred other artists, to Art Journal Every Day.  Thanks Julie!  So far, so good!  

And now, not in any way connected with the rest of this post with the possible exception of the word "chain" in the title, you've got to hear this voice!  If you have never heard Akiko Wada before, or maybe especially if you have, trust me, you'll want to hear this!

A Bit Random, With A Touch Of Randananity

In this post: Part One: Random   Part Two: Randan + a coctail recipe  Part three: A Radom tutorial

These wild beauties were found randomly scattered throughout the lawn.  They now live in a glass cigarette holder which formerly held paintbrushes.

 

 

Randan - Riotous or disorderly behaviour; a spree.  On the randan - "On the spree" --OED

I mixed up this word like a cocktail, along with a couple of suffixes from an online suffix and prefix dictionary

Randananity - Randan+an+ity:   -an: Relating to, native of, like.  -ity: Quality, state

Used in context, this means that I am craving a trip to Peru...or perhaps it's lust to be tripping on Pisco sours.

My friend and neighbor Cecile is Peruvian.  She introduced me to authentic Pisco sours.  Not just some American bartender's rendition, but the real deal.  The overall experience was less like inebriation and closer to being drugged.  You (usually) wake up the next day.  Feeling awful, no matter how little you drank.  (punctuation is everything, don't you think?)  But on balance, that's not such a bad thing...
                                  

Machine-cut dies are not random.  Sometimes you want precision, sometimes you don't.  

  

If you're interested in a quick and easy method for making nested scalloped circles and structured uniformity is not what you're after, then you'll want to click HERE for my tutorial.  No machines.  No dies. Just scissors, card stock and a pencil.   

New Year, New Stuff....

 

...Paris--For Theme Thursday:

Some scribbles in one of my journals after a day of flipping through books on graffiti at Barnes and Noble.

Drawing--Quote No.1:

"If you're creating artwork, it's always about the drawing.  Always." --Hippie drawing Prof. at ASU in the '70s whose name I can't remember, but it doesn't matter because he was quoting someone else whose name he couldn't remember...  

What he was trying to get across to us was that even if you're making a sculpture out of two sticks and a piece of string and you've never touched pencil to paper, everything created is always drawn in your mind before it's created, even if so instantly that you don't recognize it.  There is no art without visualization.  Ever.  And drawing is about seeing, not motor skills.

Drawing--Quote No.2:

"A successful drawing is one that appears on paper exactly as your mind's eye pictured it" --Same Prof., again quoting someone else...

Q. But what if it turns out better than I pictured it?  

A. Then what you have is a less successful drawing that accidently looks better than your mind's eye knows how to picture.  Solution: Practice drawing AND seeing.  

Working In Books (as opposed to "workbooks"...):

At the moment there are five books I am working in.  The Paris page was done in a little hand bound book that I carry with me in my purse, always.  This book is filled with stuff:  drawings, scribbles, notes, lists, collages, glued abstracts, paint, pens, inks, crayon, pencils, watercolor, markers...ad infinitum.  I work on both sides of the page in this book.  It's bound with a variety of papers so that when I want to work in acrylic, I can.  When I'm just using pencil, there's a page for it.  When I want a colored background for gel pens, there are lots of those, too.  And watercolor paper, etc.

The other four serve different purposes; all I've bound by hand.   One of the collage journals is filled with acrylic backgrounds on one side of the page only.  Why?  I'm not sure, but there's something in the back of my mind brewing for the other sides of these pages.  Probably a description.  Anyway, I can use a box cutter and remove pages from this book when there's one I want to make a print of, and I don't have to worry about what's on the other side.

Another one is specifically for work I'm doing in A Life Made By Hand.  

Another one is a chronology.  I do a page every day, or every few days, in chronological order.  I don't skip around in this book and I date the pages.  Later on, this one will give me an idea of what I was up to in 2010.  

Oooops, I said five.  Not true.  There are seven.  The other three are unfinished working journals. I use these to try out new ideas and new techniques.  

I also do lots of things outside of books.

Less and More in 2004 2010:

I liked 2004 better because it rhymed.  Oh well.  Here are some things I'd like to spend my time doing more of, and others that I'd like to do less of.  This is as close to New Years resolutions that I'll ever come:

More:

Drawing

Glueing

Writing

Painting

Abstract compositions

White space

Playing

Getting serious

Laughter

Time with family and friends

Reading

Music

Focus

Organic

Less:

Non-productive time online

Rushing around

Time spent suffering fools

No:

Additives

Preservatives

Hormones

GMAs

I can already see that this will be a prosperous year, as the "mores" far outweigh the "lesses" and the "nos".

Here's what I'm up to at the moment...

Reading Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, Thomas Foster's How To Read Literature Like A Professor, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49 (all of them Tom's? ...very curious, indeed!)

Listening to Soft Machine's Six, and National Health's Tenemous Roads

Drinking tea (some things never change)

Watching HBO videos of The Flight Of The Conchords

Getting ready to celebrate Russian Christmas (old calender) tonight with friends of the family

Guest hosting for Mixed Media Monday next week, so stop by and submit some artwork!

Have a great New Year, Everyone! One great day at a time!

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!