The Creative Word Book made by Joyce D.

Joyce D. ordered a Creative Word Book recently and look how she has decorated & embellished it. She really did an outstanding job on the book. Thanks Joyce for sharing this with us.

These books are available at the store and you choose the word you want the book to say.Maybe you are going on a trip or the book is to be a gift to someone special.Your choice. Many nice papers to choose from to further design the book. Stop in to make the arrangements. Books are ready in 1 week or less.

Thanks for visiting and stop back soon,

Barbara

Watercolor Cards

   

On my May 21st post I mentioned I had 2 watercolor cards that I would share with you next. Well I got busy and forgot about that for a while. I just remembered and I wanted to share these with you. Thanks for waiting, hope you feel it was worth the wait.

Dianne Witt teaches the Art Impressions Watercolor technique here at the store. They have developed an array of stamps that you use to build your scene and then, you use Marvey Markers and a watercolor brush to actually color those stamped images.

I have always loved the look of the cards when everyone completes the classes. However, I have never taken the class before. Well, the last time Dianne gave the class, I actually took the class with the other students. Dianne makes the class so easy and I actually did the two cards you see above. Art Impressions has just recently introduced a new series and these are in it. When I saw these I really fell in love with the images. Birdhouses are so cool. The other images in the series are rural mailboxes and a plant stand. Those will be featured in the June class here at the store.

Hope you like these cards as much as I do.

See you soon,

Barbara

The Wall Hanging - Tim Holtz style

A while back I happened upon a post on Tim Holtz' blog about a display that he was giving away to some lucky recepient. The piece he gave away was a 9 piece grouping of the letters of the alphabet.Nine little 4X4 canvasses the displayed the letters of the alphabet. I just thought that would look great in my house on the wall in my family room.I decided I would try to do a similar grouping but instead of the small 4"X4" canvasses I decided to use 12X12 canvasses. It would be a better size for the wall I wanted to put this on. I scrounged thru all the "stuff I've saved over the years. I gathered things up that I felt would look great on this project. I sent away for the canvasses. They finally came in and I started with coloring the canvas. I used 9 different colors of the Ranger Color Wash. Next I dried the canvas with the heat tool(Because I am so impatient). After all the canvasses were colored. I then colored the grungeboard. Got that dry the same way. Then I started to lay out all my goodies to see how each canvas would look. After I was happy with the placement then I got out the e6000 glue and started to glue it all down. Below are the results.

      

     

  

This project was so much fun to do. Easy and kind of fast once the canvasses were here. The hardest part was trying to decide what stuff to put on which canvas.

Right now these are laying on my dining room table but soon I will be bringing these to the store for a short display.Hope you like these and let me know if you have questions.

Thanks for stopping by & see you soon,

Barbara

My Concertina Book

On my last post I showed you the Concertina book that the customer brought in. She had made hers in a class in Mississippi. That book got me thinking. I hadn't done a concertina book for so long, so over the long weekend, I made one. I used the Scor-Pal to score all the folds, I used the nestabilities to cut the rectangle scalloped windows. I then used the Cuttlebug A-2 folders to emboss and I also used Coke cans for the metal. And they emboss up great in the a-2 folders. This is actually the back side of the book.

Here is the front side of the book, see the metal? Coke cans cut so easy with a steak knife and I used my Fiskars Rotary Trimmer to trim out the metal pieces.

Hope you enjoy this.

The Concertina Book

                                                                                                                                                    

 

Look  what a customer shared with me last night. Phyllus B. took a class in Mississippi from Barbara Rankin. The class was sponsored by Magnolia PaperCraft Guild in Hernando, Mississippi. This concertina book is named The Beauty  of Nature and it is. The pictures just don't do this justice.

I love books and this really caught my eye. Phyllus did a great job on this.

This is the coolest concertina book I have yet to see.  Great job Phyl !!!

                                                                                                                                                             

A Man Card using the Truck Stamp (from PrintWorks)

We carry PrintWorks stamps here at Creative Stamper and the stamp of the month for May is the coolest truck stamp.I just had to stamp this up.

I stamped it on glossy paper & then used alcohol ink to color the truck. Next I used my craft knife and cut the window out.I actually put transparency in the window.  I then worked on the bumper. I applied double stick tape(my fav adhesive) & covered the bumper. I then used silver leafing paper to give it the metallic look. Next I needed red brads for the taillights, but I didn't have any. So I took my brad and smooshed (like that technical term?) the head down on a pigment ink pad, then dipped the brad into red embossing powder & heated it with the heat tool. (Use tweezers or a clothes pin to hold the brad so you don't burn your fingers.) I then heated the brad again & dipped it again into the E.P.. I did that about 3-4 times to build the E.P. up on the brad. Next I scanned a map onto cardstock and then tore it to the size of the card. I adheared the map with double sided tape. Then I used tape to adhere the truck. I hand wrote the little sign "On the road again". The truck stamp is 30% off in the store right now til June 1. Really cool. This is good for those cards for men that we always have such a hard time with.

See you tomorrow with 2 cool watercolor cards I made. - Barbara

Tags from Altered States of Mind club

Here are the tags I received at the last Altered States of Mind meeting. We make tags and then exchange what we bring. Currently we are working on tage 1-9 & 0.

The rose and the cards tags were made by Ramona and the zero tag was made by Sandi.

This is an ATC that I received in exchange for the ATC that I took to the meeting. Marian made this ATC.

We have a great group at ASOM club. Next month's meeting will be June 9 at the store.

This weekend is the holiday and the store will be closed Monday. I have a lot of the items that I need for the project I want to do that looks similar to what Tim Holtz did a while back. I plan on getting started on this Saturday. So hopefully next week I will be posting a photo of the project. 

ASOM project from last month

ATC from last months project

I bet you are wondering what ASOM stands for. Well it stamds for Altered States of Mind. It is the name of the altered group that meets at the store the 2nd Monday of each month. OK that said. At last months meeting we worked on the class project, watercolors on baby wipes. It actually was fun. At the end of the meeting we were to make an ATC  using the baby wipes as a background. I was able to get this done after dinner. The baby wipe has mostly greens and since it is soft like a tissue I mounted it to cardstock. It is too porous to stamp on, so I stamped a flower on a trancparency using red staz-on for the bloom and green for the stem. Next I mounted the stamped transparancy over the baby wipe background and wella..... my ATC.

Hero Arts

I really like this stamp. I made this card using the large stamp and a coordinating 4 stamp set. This scan does not really show the pop dotted areas but it came out so good on the card.

Time to go. See you next time.

Art is your emotions flowing in a river of imagination.  ~Devin, Los Cerros Middle School, 1999

 

Tomorrow the Tags are due

Happy Mothers Day to all. It has rained here off and on all day. It is a great day to get stamping projects finalized. Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of the altered group, Altered States of Mind. At past meetings we were to bring altered tags that comprised the whole alphabet. We did 2 tags a month and and traded our tags. That means we did not keep our own tags. (I didn't scan my art work so I don't have any pics to share, wahhhh.) We just wrapped up the alphabet last month and to compliment the alphabet we are including numbers 1-9 & 0. We are making 3 tags per meeting to speed this along. Numbers 1.2 & 3 are due at the meeting tomorrow nite. I decided I want to make my tags in a series so they will all be similar and will all have metal as the main component. I love working with metal but haven't done any metal work in a while and I feel these could be much better. Since I wait til the last minute, I have no time to make better tags for this month. However, since I now know what the rest of the tags will look like, I will finish the other numbers over the next few weeks just to finish this series ahead of time. We will be doing a group project tomorrow evening working with watercolors. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. More on that on my next post.

I am still gathering my "stuff" together for my wall hanging. I ordered my 12X12 canvases and as soon as they arrive I will get started. My plan is to lay each panel out to see if I will like the composition and then get started. Last nite, I worked on 5 puzzle pieces that someone gave me. I alcohol inked them up to cover up the image on the face of the pieces. They really turned out great. I am thinking they will look great on some of the panels. Time will tell.

Well, its time to start dinner. See you later. 

Tim Holtz Inspired

Have you checked out Tim Holtz's website or his blog?? I go out there often and back in January he gave away a really cool alphabet display.Tim's was 9-4x4 canvases that were butted up to each other to form a square. Each of the canvases contained 3 letters of the alphabet and the last square only had 2 letters. Well I loved it so much, I really felt it was calling my name so I decided that I would make a similar display and each of the squares will probably be 12X12. My goal is to have a complete wall hanging for my family room.

I decided to do a prototype so off I went ,I purchased a smaller canvas just to see how this would work for me. So, here is the finished canvas and I think this is going to work really nice. My art piece will consist of 9- 12X12 canvases that will contain the complete alphabet with a smattering of cool things to add interest to the total piece. As I work on each of the individual canvases I will add to the blog. I am anxious to get started but my canvas supplier has the canvases I want to use on back order. This will give me time to develop the design for each square and gather all the different items. I will keep you posted as this project evolves.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.  ~Henry Ward Beecher