"Artify": To make arty; To imbue and beautify with art. "Heart": The center or inner core of one's being. Thus, to "ArtiphyTheHeart" is to imbue the inner core of one's existance with the beauty of art.
I'm a curious and creative explorer of the world, currently working in book arts, collage, mixed media, fiber arts and acrylics. Each day I try to share a snippet of my life and musings through a piece of artwork, and every once in a while I spice it up with a pinch of practical wisdom.
Day 13 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, and I'm experimenting with the many frames I cut as practice runs for the thicker mats that will make it into my next book for FTB. In the meantime, I was 2/3 of the way through today's spread when I realized that King Richard the First really deserved his own frame (look at the muscles on those arms!). Tomorrow you'll see how it looks on the page, but for now, here's a quick peek before it is glued forevermore.
I used my hand-carved stamps to decorate the frame as a special tribute to my friends Belinda Schneider and Hermine Koster. Belinda and Hermine began Wednesday Stamper many years ago. But all good things must come to and end, and WS closed its doors at the end of June.
WS was the original, or at least one of the very first and certainly one of the longest running, blog challenge sites on the web. I started blogging in 2007, shortly before Belinda's SantaClaus Fest, and this is when and where I met some of my longest-standing and dearest friends on the web. In addition to web friends, through Belinda's posts from Luxemburg, half a world away, I was introduced to a friend right here in Phoenix.
Belinda's Icicle Doll Fest was the first and best swap I've ever participated in. A couple of years later, Belinda's swap and our icicle dolls were published in Sew Somerset.
The good things which have come to me personally through my association with Belinda, Hermine, and everyone who participated at Wednesday Stamper are too numerous to mention. One of the absolute best things, hands down, was meeting my best blogging buddy, Rosie Rowe. So to commemorate the end of an era, I'm about to post my offering as a final tribute to WS, the place on the web that started it all. It may be over, but it will never be forgotten.
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 I mentioned how much fun I'm having taking my in-studio vacation to make T!m's 12 tags of Christmas? On day three he made two tags. The one above and the one below are my interpretations of T!m's examples and instructions, using what I had on hand to make them both.
3-b:
If you want instructions for making the tags, you'll need to get them from T!m's blog. You'll also need to see T!m's tags to understand what I did differently, for comparison and contrast. I've listed my adaptations below:
Using What I Have On-Hand...
As much as I would love to have them, I do not own a distress ink stamp pad or re-inker in "soot", which was needed to color the tags. I substituted washes of sumi-e ink, but I suppose you could use black watercolor washes as well.
T!m used washers and brads to attach the worked images to his tags. I'm absent washers, so I set some nailheads instead, then used the studded hammer tip of Ranger's texture hammer (LOVE this tool!) to rough them up a bit.
Alas, I do not own the glorious trees stamp that T!m used, but last year I carved my own tree, so I pulled that out of my stash, masked the image to layer it, and created my forest on 3a.
On both tags, I substituted a Rhona Farrer flourish for T!m's, and on 3a, I used Hero Arts "dot pattern" for the negative image snow flurries instead of the stamp that T!m used.
My metal "Joy" charms are, well, not metal at all. I used 120# kraft, die-cut the circles and embossed the larger ones, giving each of them separate washes of metallic Japanese ganzai paint. You could use perfect pearls just as easily, I'm certain. I antiqued the edges with Ranger's walnut distress ink and used a Micron pen to write "Joy".
I think that everything else 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 using. I think that 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.
A Hint Or Two...
Somewhere along the line, T!m makes a point to say that "it's all in the details". This phrase should be listed as one of the supreme life-lessons for artists. As with all projects of artistic merit, paying attention to the little things makes all the difference in the world. I tell my own students: Be careful not to confuse acquiring the patience to do things precisely with being "fussy". Paying close attention to detail is often the only line that's drawn between amateur and professional, and it is what will train you to do what you intend to do with ease.
And one more hint (just because I'm feeling generous): Never confuse "happy accidents" with "mistakes". While true "happy accidents" are sometimes encountered -- often leading to wonderful new discoveries, "mistakes" on the other hand, are neither "happy", nor "accidental". They are sign posts that read: "more practice needed".
If I ever hear another student whine and say something like, "I don't need to take this too seriously, it isn't like I'm going to be doing it for a living..." (and I will hear it, again and again...), I think I'm going to keel over and go mad! In a nutshell, even if you're a hobbyist, an accomplished hobbyist is a happy hobbyist, and you can't be having fun if you're unhappy with your work. Did you hear me use the word "perfect"? Never! "obsessive"? You've got to be kidding! I said "accomplished". There's a huge difference here. Accomplishment has everything to do with how you feel about your work when you've honestly assessed it, and it's that sense of well-being that drives us to artwork in the first place. So there you go "n" and "n" -- you know who you are, LOL! Some good advice that I hope will help you get even more enjoyment out of everything you do!
And thanks, T!m. It really is "all in the details"!
Now I'm off to...
Put the finishing touches on a pot roast
Finish one of the books I'm reading and get back to The Time Traveler's Wife
My fashionable (MMM theme) Zetti (WS theme) was made with images from Crowabout, and from my own private stash of patterned papers (TT theme). And since the passing of time is a recurring theme in my dreams, it fits for the Three Muses theme, as well.
Tonight's post will be short and sweet. I'm a little under the weather, and as it's always better to be on top of things than underneath them, I'll be calling it a night early, hoping for lots of rest and pleasant dreams. I plan to hop into bed with the book I'm reading: The Needle's Eye by Margaret Drabble, a glass of wine, and I'll try to catch an episode or two of the original Prisoner series on DVD before I drift off to sleep. We're trying to finish the original series in the order they were made before the new Prisoner airs this weekend. I must say, I'm not optimistic about the re-make. From what I've been told, not much of it seems to even follow the original story. Still, we're only a couple of episodes away from finishing the original, so it will be fun to have those fresh in our minds when we see what the studios have come up with on Sunday.
...And the creative power of dreams. Wednesday Stamper's theme this week is "green", and page 15 is certainly very green! The only thing stamped is the swirl at the end of the bee's stinger, but hopefully this is enough. I did make one big mistake that has me groaning as I look at this: I meant to cut out with a craft knife, the white area inside the boy's folded arm. Too late now. It has been gel-mediumed to the substrate. Someone once told me that these little mistakes are the most valuable of all because they keep us humble. That may be true, but I still wish I had looked before I glued!
Right now I'm:
Sipping water
Listening to the muffled sound of a TV in another room
This Thursday It's All About... "Playing With Paint"! You'll want to join-in on this challenge because, after all, who can resist paint? And anything goes here, so what ever you paint, or craft and just dab on the paint, will count!
My little snow deer is another page in my funky, chunky art journal. The darling little deer is "Joel", from our sponsor, Toodles and Binks. Isn't he adorable? I colored him with Prismacolors and a white Sakura gel pen, then placed him onto one of the pages done in blue and lavender acrylic paint, using dimensional tape. The three trees in the background use one of my hand-carved stamps, and the little tree in the foreground is from Art Journey. The icicles and snowflakes were done with a combination of white Prismacolor and Sakura gel pen.
Now, meet Simone! More playing with paint--or should I say, painting with Prismacolors. Yes, you heard me right, I said painting with colored pencils. I lay down the pencil very thickly, and then dry brush over with a little Sansodor to blend. White accents are done with a Sharpie paint pen. I just love these Toodles and Binks designs, and they are coming out with more!! Hooray for that!
You're going to want to stop by the This Thursday challenge blog and take a peek at the great prize you can win if your entry wins the draw! I'll give you a hint: You'll get three Toodles and Binks stamps and a packet of clear and red Zoomz (I've used clear Zoomz with Joel in the snow, above).
Late edit: I just found out that Wednesday Stamper's, theme this week is "Snowflake Kisses". Joel, the little snow deer qualifies, so I'm posting him there, as well!
Have a great day, Everyone! And good luck in the draw at This Thursday!!
If you ever have the opportunity to take a class from Terry Medaris, DO IT! I spent last weekend learning his technique for vibrant color in pencil, and not one minute was wasted! He teaches everything from the basic principles of how to care for your pencils, erase unwanted marks and sharpen pencils properly (things you thought you already knew, until you learn a better way...), to some of the most advanced principles in color and technique, and how to achieve them in your work. It's not quick work, but it is such a satisfying technique that you'll need to set an alarm clock because the hours will melt away as smooth as seconds!
My Christmas Angel is an unmounted rubber stamp of one of Terry's designs. The color is done entirely with Prismacolors, and in real life, the subtle gradations and shadings are truly deep. Scanned, you get a good idea of the range and depth of color, but not the highlights and shadows.
Hold on to your own techniques for colored pencil, whether you use a blending pencil or Sansodor. They can work side by side this method, but all that is used here is pure pencil. When you want vivid, vibrant color, complete with shadow, shade and highlight, Terry's method produces a smooth, airbrushed quality that is unequalled! I added a half of a piece of a black German scrap wing and a black linen cardstock frame, but to properly emphasize the color and line, I kept it simple.
If I don't start now, it will never happen. With the holidays fast approaching, and always more to do than was originally planned, the only way I'll finish my 2009 calendar is to begin now, and not stop till it's finished! I have a photo carousel that was given to me as a Christmas gift a year or two ago. It arrived with one broken pane of glass, and I've never used it. The carousel holds 12, 4"X6" vertical photos, and it occurred to me to remove all the glass, and use the carousel for 12 pieces of collage. This is something I've been going to begin for over a year, but it wasn't until this morning that I realized how perfect it would be as a revolving calendar!
So thanks to Wednesday Stamper's open theme, I've taken the opportunity to complete January 2009. The calendar itself is printed from an Excel template, cut out and distressed. Bugs are images from Dover, cut and glued to the background. The bottom portion was embossed with a combination of black, and malachite embossing tinsel from PSX. The strip was cut from an old book and distressed. The background was washed with watercolor, then stamped with Anna Griffin's very large rose and hydrangea stamp, using a Adirondack's willow dye ink and Color Box stucco pigment inks. The colors are almost a match to the background color, so the effect is a very faint watermark, which doesn't show up at all in the scan, but looks lovely in real life. The border was stamped with one of Kelly Panacci's border stamps with a much heavier application of Color Box stucco, as were the dots, which were stamped using the bottom end of a Ranger Cut and Dry nib. The numbers are clear stamps that you can set like movable type from a Martha Stewart set. I wish the scan could show the shimmer in the embossing and the watermark background, but you get the idea.
If when I get all 12 months done, I'll photograph them in the carousel.
Wednesday Stamper's theme this week is "favorite thing to alter". When I'm not using every object in sight for a mixed media piece, I usually have a handful of things that I need right beside me while I'm working. I pick something up, use it, set it down, look for the next thing, then look again for the thing I just set down...wouldn't it save time and frustration to have something arty to hold just the few things I need immediately? And something that won't take up space? So I thought about it, and Hermine's suggestion to alter something gave me the idea to alter something just the right size to hold a few pencils, pens, knife, glue, scissors, so I looked around, ...and there it was!
Among other things, I have been saving empty tea tins, just knowing that there's a better life waiting for these useful things, and here you have it! I put the lid in the recycle bin, and got to work on the tin. In honor of its recycled nature, I'm also posting this to Arty Girlz On-going Recycling Challenge.
I muted the color of the dark gray diamond paper, and the scrolling edge of another paper, with white and very pale yellow acrylic paint washes, then I aged and distressed the papers with pounces of mushroom Adirondack ink. I stamped the large bird, one of my all-time favorite Studio Art Stamps, and the small bird, which is a tiny part of a larger stamp by Character Constructions, with black VersaFine, and added a couple of leaves to the branch with a black Pitt pen. Then I spread glue over most of the background, excluding the stamped images, and dipped it all in snowy opalescent glitter, then hung it up to dry for a couple of hours before running it through the Xyron and sticking it to the tin. Next, I used smoke Adirondack alcohol ink around the bottom strip of metal and let it seep up a little into the paper to make it look a bit more distressed, then after adding the 7Gypsies "Once Upon A Time" rub-on, I used a strip of dimensional tape to adhere the scrolling paper to the top of the tin. Last, I added a string of black seed beads around the top perimeter with Diamond Glaze, and let it dry. Quite a difference, ce n'est pas?
In keeping with Wednesday Stamper's "goth" theme, I have created an 8 X 8 art journal page using Jill Penney's "Jill" stamp, and yes, it is from Stampotique!
The background paper is Rusty Pickle's "Princess Bride". The slate gray paper and the hard-to-see- patterned paper on top of it are both RAKs from Rosie, and "Jill" was stamped with black VersaFine onto a piece of index card that, truthfully, I've had since I was a little girl. I whitened her face and added the red with Prismacolors. Next came the rub-ons from Basic Grey, and the frame stamp from Kelly Panacci. I finished it off by scribbling the opening verse of Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party" in my signature scrawl. You gotta love Danny Elfman!
This week's Wednesday Stamper theme is "brown combo". The challenge is to use brown in your background, and add another, or other, colors and something stamped. The page above is one of many that I created last weekend during Kelly Kilmer's wonderful workshop at the Frenzy Stamper in Scottsdale, AZ. It's a prepped background for a future art journal, so it's unfinished, or, in it's second life as a finished page (with it's first life in its background stage). The first color laid down was burnt sienna, and others followed. I wish I could credit the three stamps used in this piece, but I don't own them, and I can't remember their names or the manufacturers.
The Workshops
At the very last minute on Friday night I found out that I would be able to attend both of Kelly's Saturday workshops, back to back, and I got to spend a glorious day from 10AM to 7PM with only a short lunch break--we ordered-in so we could continue working--and one quick FUN trip to the Scottsdale location of Sprinkles of Beverly Hills...the gourmet, designer cupcake shop! Here we all are (that's me, far right) inside the shop! I must admit that the lemon and ginger cupcake I chose was way to sweet for my taste, and my daughter Amy and her friend Sasha split the second half of it between them and decided they'd had enough sugar in just the quarters that they ate! There were mixed reviews, but it seems that everyone who had the chocolate-peanut butter combo loved it! I ate way too many Reese's peanut butter cups one Halloween many years ago, and still cringe when I think of it, so I'll just take everyone's word for it!
When we returned to Frenzy, Kelly noticed this heart shape in the lot behind the store....it seems that when I dumped the water from my first round of acrylics, it dried in a very artiphy-ing shape...all by itself...coincidence?? I certainly didn't plan it that way...so Kelly had me shed my flip-flops and she photographed my feet with the heart.
For more pics of our weekend, click HERE and take a peek at Kelly's blog! Also, take a look HERE at the workshop pics on Frenzy's blog!
Needless to say, we did LOTS in all those hours of work. Here are 12 and 4/5 backgrounds I created. And this is not all we did. These are simply the EXTRAs!
Other backgrounds ended up as prepped pages--their destinies earmarked for future art journals. Take a peek here! This is the group of prepped pages that my Wednesday Stamper piece was taken from:
We spent the final couple of hours binding together a funky/chunky book. Here's mine, both open and closed. All of the pages are slightly different shapes and sizes, and some of them fold back like flaps. The content will determine itself as time goes by, but for now, the pages, in and of themselves are little works of art!
Now I'm off to create more, and have some fun adding to these!
And one last thing: If you look closely, you will notice that one of my background pages in the first slide has a rectangle cut from it. This piece formed the backdrop for the shadowbox canvas I designed for today's This Thursday It's All About... challenge, and you can see it by clicking HERE. The theme this week is "the spooky season", so if you're so inclined, come and join us!
This week's Wednesday Stamper theme is "pattern", and my first Christmas card in 2008 is a feast of black and white pattern, beginning with the background paper which was part of a wonderful RAK from Rosie!
The "Merry Christmas" stamp is from PSX, and the three tea-folds-turned-inchies are made from the four tiny square blocks within a block, which are part of the architectural stamp set from Layers of Color. If you are interested in how I made these, you can find my video tutorial by clicking HERE. Because this is a scan, and not a photo, it's hard to see the dimension in these tiny, snowflake-like designs, but they are definitely 3-D!
A New House
No, I'm not living in a new house; I received one from a friend! Pauline, who was part of the wonderful row house swap hosted by Jeri earlier this year, thought it would be nice for us to swap houses personally, since neither of us received houses from each other as part of the main swap. I received Pauline's in the mail today, all the way from Malta! Isn't this the most cheerful bit of Halloween art you've ever seen? I LOVE it!! Click HERE to see more of Pauline's lovely work! Be patient, Pauline! I'm still working on yours. . .
If you are interested in seeing the other houses that I received in the swap, as one as the houses I made, you can take a look by clicking HERE.
If only there were a way to make the fine pencil lines show up well in a scan! There's so much more to this piece than shows here, but at least you get the general idea. This journal page made for Wednesday Stamper's "peace" theme, has circles, with ruled pencil lines, that frame every flower in this piece. The main thing to realize is that this page will eventually be written on top of, so the space that you see will be filled with over-written text.
In real life, the colors are even more subdued. The orange and green in the lettering are much creamier colors than scan depicts, as are the ink colors. The idea is a '60s theme, with retro-Scandinavian colors, and the original works quite nicely. The very pale colors need the stark white background for the clean, North European look.
The main stamped image is from StampFrancisco, and was brayered over in three colors of acrylic paint--the same colors used for the words. All flowers are clear stamps from Inkadinkado's Brenda Walton's garden collection. Adirondack lights in lemonade, Bellini peach, Juniper, Willow and Shell were used for the dots and the flowers. The pencil lines are hard to see, but make up most of the page.
Fame does have it's price, and for my entirely fictional Olga Fedorovna (aka model for Juicy Couture), it meant travelling thousands of miles and dressing in that little pink cap for her debut on American Idol. From the reaction of the fans, I'd say she won!
Speaking of little pink caps, Wednesday Stamper's theme for the week is "put your thinking cap on". The background for this piece is hand-painted vellum over 140# card stock. My "Olga" is from an ad for Juicy Couture (see, I wasn't fibbing), and the hands, as well as the logo are from another fashion piece. Dots were made with a Micron pen, and the stamp is from StampFrancisco.
This is getting more and more fun. Sherry's month-long blogiversary party, complete with games and prizes, is definitely worth checking out! Today there's a word game, and I think I've got all the words figured out. So that I won't spoil the fun in case you want to go to Sherry's blog and play along, click HERE for my answers when you've posted yours, or go ahead and take a peek if you give up. But no cheating!! And remember, you never can be sure if I'm right, so you'd better figure it out for yourself! If you're late for the party, don't worry! Sherry's attitude is better late than never, so join-in! The more, the merrier!
Congratulations to Sherry who is having a month-long blog party throughout September in celebration of her one-year blogiversary! Go visit her blog "If I Could Set My Soul Free", read about her party, and join-in on the fun!! The Wizard of Oz swap button on my sidebar leads to one of the many fun projects that Sherry has initiated. Go take a peek!!
And this got me thinking...My own blogiversary is coming up in October! I could use some hints, suggestions, etc. for creative and fun ways to celebrate!! Not sure I'll be able to make it a month-long, but if you have any ideas for fun but not too terribly time consuming ways to celebrate, I'd LOVE to hear your suggestions!
In the meantime, click on the picture above, or click HERE, and go visit Sherry's wonderful blog!
