Things are changing...

Things come and go, and things change in the world.  That's just the way things are. I'm not one who really likes change but I think this change is welcomed.

It all started about a month ago.  ArtFire, who I've been with for a long time, has decided to make some business changes.  They decided to put ads on product listings. It's not just one ad or two small ads it's a bombardment of ads.  Ads at the bottom of the pictures and ads just below the shop categories make it hard to tell if the links are for my product or someone else.  This is their business and it's their decision to make.  They feel they need the income revenue from the ads.  It's a decision I don't like. Personally I don't like having ads all over product pages that I am looking at. I don't like feeling bombarded by them and I do not like the placement of the ads.  This and more has lead me to step away from ArtFire. March 31 will by my final day there and I have to say I don't think it's going to be a bad thing. I have moved on to, hopefully, bigger and better things.

I opened a Zibbet shop that will now house supplies. The tons of supplies I have been sitting on for some reason or another will now be making there way into that shop. There will be beads, toggles, charms, book binding supplies and more.  It's going to take me a bit to get everything in there but I'm determined to do it.

So what's going to happen to everything that's in my ArtFire store...Well, that's getting moved to my Etsy shop.  This will become my main shop where all my goodies can be found.  New photo's will be taken of some older products from when my photographing skills were severely lacking.  I'm hoping to expand upon things there in the future as well.  Keeping my fingers crossed that when they change things around there they will be gracious enough to give us a few more shop sections.  I am doing my best right now to try to make things as easy as possible for everyone to find and once the shop gets really full I will add some special links to help sort my products in my announcement there.

I'm really excited about how this and have a really good feeling about it all. So for now I'll leave you with a new product. An altered composition notebook.  All signs of it being a composition notebook have been erased. It is completely covered outside with a crinkled blue paper and a black velvet paper on the spine.  The interiors of the covers have a decorative light blue paper with white marks covering them up.  On the front cover are a few fabric flowers with some white and blue feathers.  All this leaves you with beautiful notebook with lined pages inside to write whatever you'd like.

Altered Blue Composition Notebook

Working on Embellishments

I figured I share with you some embellishment making for my next mixed media canvas I'm going to be working on.

I have some laser cut wood pieces from Michael's, a chandelier and a chair.  I also have a Tattered Angels frame that I want to turn into a mirror.

I start off by gessoing everything with a white gesso.  Then I paint on some Liquitex titan white paint to brighten it up.  After that I paint on some Liquitex black acrylic paint to the chandelier where the metal look will and the piece for the mirror.  Because I want to give them an aged metal look the base needs to be dark.  I paint on a coat of Golden titan buff fluid acrylic on the chair to give it a softer look. Once the black base coat for the metal is dry I dry brush on some Blick acrylic silver and copper paints. I put those aside to dry.

While the chandelier and the mirror are drying I decide to work more on the chair. I cut out a piece of pattern paper for the cushion, making sure there are tabs so that I can make it pop out.  At Michael's I found this pink ruffle ribbon that I want to use for the ruffle on the chair.  To age the ribbon I use some Tim Holtz walnut distress stain and lots of water.  This dulls down the pink so it's not so vibrant and new looking.  I also brushed a little of the stain on the chair to give it a little bit of a worn look.

Going back to the chandelier I wanted to make it look like the strands of beads are pearls and the hanging parts are pink crystals so I grabbed my Pebeo 3D pink crystal paint and some white liquid pearls.  Carefully I apply a dot of liquid pearls to each of the round sections of the strands and the 3d paint to where the crystals would be.

Everything dried over night and I assembled the chair eventually adding some liquid pearl trim where the paper and the fabric meet to give it a more finished look.  I'm not quite sure if I'm happy with the metal chandelier or mirror frame.  We'll just have to wait and see what I decided when I put the canvas together.

Mixed Media Canvas - Inspire

It's been so long since I've posted.  It's just been crazy around here between the conventions, followed by the holidays, and then the crazy winter we've been having. The kids being home from school for what seems like forever due to snow days has not helped out the craziness.  It feels so good to be able to sit and write for few. 

My latest completed project is a mixed media canvas titled "Inspire."  I got inspired to do this piece from a sort of kit I picked up at my local scrapbook shops tag sale.  The kit contained a lot of sewing items including a smaller version of the dress from that appears on the canvas.  The dress form really got me thinking about an altered Barbie doll I had planned on making but never got very far with.  I figured I'd take what I had planned for the doll, minus the face and ear details, and put it on a canvas.

The fair wings I had made so long ago when first planning this doll. They are fabric backed, color wire formed and slightly pose-able when heated.  I add a little matching glitter to them to give them the shine I wanted. 

The dress that you see is pretty close to the dress I had planed for the doll as well.  It is made from all the fabric I had original picked up to use.  The only difference is that the black outline on the top is a 3 dimensional paint from Pebeo and not trim. 

The canvas is a brown linen canvas from Michael's that I applied clear gesso to and then layered on some Recollections Signature printed tissue paper and Prima Marketing paper Madeline Collection "Beautima" #842383.  I went ahead and grabbed my modeling paste and my Ronda Palazzari Designs "Texturized" stencil and added some texture. Once the paste dried I sprayed on some Plain Jane Baseboard "Gravel" mist and Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists in "Latte" and "Cork." 

I made the stain glass looking window from a dollie that was a kit I picked up.  I cut the center of the dollie out and sprayed it with some Heidi Swapp Color Shine Sprays in teal and chartreuse.  Then I drew on the design in the black Pebeo 3 dimensional paint. 

Finally I glued on all the embellishments which included Prima Marketing flowers and pearls, Tattered Angels chips, wood word Inspire, the dollie and the dress. Viola finished canvas.

Want to see how it was created or the list of products used, check out my YouTube video:

From Trash to Treasure

From Trash to Treasure...I found a broken journal at one of my local Michael's and couldn't resist buying it.  I had to see what I could do.  Looking at it the only thing wrong was that the elastic closure was pulled out from where it should have been tucked into the book. That's a slightly easy fix if things go the way they should. 

I brought the journal home, repaired the elastic (thankfully everything did go the way it should,) and got to work on painting. I painted and painted and painstakingly painted with the tiniest brush I had. 

All in all it took me about four to five days of painting on and off.  The intricacy and the tiny details made my eyes go buggy.  I had to do it in sections and at intervals to give my eyes a break. 
Looking at the brown and the gold I immediately thought that this book was screaming to be a steampunk book. I set off to find a digital steampunk stamp that would be a perfect fit for this book.

I came across that stamp on StitchyBearStamps by a creator known as BB Kakes.

Steampunk - 3 pc set

I purchased it, read the TOU to make sure it I was within the right to use it for this project, and printed it out a few time on some Copic marker friendly paper.

Why a few times you might, well it's so I can use one test colors and play with, one to lay out my colors, figure out shading and how I'm going to finish it, and the last one to do my final colors on.

Here's my second one with my colors listed so I know which markers to use where on the final.

And here is the final all colored and fussy cut out.

 On the final image I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stains and Paints for the gears and metal. I used some Ranger Glossy Accents on the glasses and the face of the pocket watch after shading in the gray color to give them the glass look.

Then it was off to the book....

I used some Prima Marketing Engraver Collection "Cesello" (845315) paper as the back ground.  Glued my stamp just off center.  I placed the "Jouranl" sticker from Prima's Engraver collection (563479) so that the end of the sticker lined up with the edge of her shoulder.
I used some Prima flowers for embellishment (Black rose -552619, Small maroon roses - 553302.)  On one of the small roses I pulled out the center of the rose and added a button (550776.) The key paper clip (564681) I cut the clip part off of to make it look like just a key.  I then added miscellaneous mechanicals, gears from Tim Holtz and Bead Landing along with some clock hands and key hole from Bead Landing.

Here's the journal all finished:

 


 

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #10

Cutting it close with this one. Last day of the month posting....It's been a crazy month with the kiddos last few days of school just last week. I managed to squeeze in some time to do some coloring for the new Make-it-Crafty's  coloring challenge.  In case, you missed my posts for a few months you these coloring challenges are a fun way to challenge or work on your coloring skills.

So there are two different challenges, a hard and an easy one.  This month the hard is coloring curly hair and the easy is coloring with pink and brown.  Because I was on such a time crunch this month I opted for the easy one.

Lets see....I started with two different digital stamps from Make-it-Crafty.

Here's the first: 

 

Daffodil Swing Digi Stamp

And the second was:

Sitting Annalise Digi Stamp

I chose these two images because it was also "something girly" (the challenge's title, and the Facebook group challenge.)  As a little girl I loved to swing, and so do my daughters, so I thought this would be perfect to do as something girly.




To make the final image I took the two into Photoshop; flipped Annalise, rotated her a little to line her up with the swing and removed some of the daffodils to come up with my final image.  I held off coloring until my new favorite color pencils arrived, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. This was the first image I colored with them and I'm in love.  They blend beautifully and lay down easily, by far the best pencils I've used.  To top it off all of Faber-Castell's lines match so you can use markers, pencils and watercolors with ease. So excited to do more with their products.

Any who....I used my finial colored image to alter a medium sized Moleskin lined journal.  Added some new Prima Marketing Inc. flowers to it.  Throw in some papers, Tim Holtz Distress Stickles, glitter, metal frame, Silks paints, leaves and a fun inspiring saying and you get the finished journal.  By the way the cute little saying is "In a sky full of stars it's amazing to find that each is one-of-a-kind."

I hope you like it...