Life Outside the Fishbowl

Compenduim of Curiosities 2 - Week 2

Linda Ledbetter has left behind Grungy Monday and is off and running with a new challenge series based on Tim Holtz's new book, Compendium of Curiosities Volume II. I missed out on week 1 and so here I am, just squeaking in under the wire with week 2.

This technique is Faux Patina (page 58). And it's wonderful - and fast. I used it on all the metal pieces on this tag as well as the grungeboard clock piece.

The background of the tag was made by dragging a tag through a leftover pile of Dylusions spray ink on my craft mat. Gorgeous! I then added an image transfer, some of Dyan's stamps, and tried out a new set of stamps I just got from Artistic Outpost. Love the paperclip!

And, to adhere the metal and grunge I used ScraPerfect's Best Glue Ever. It's really fabulous for metal accents.

Finally, to clean up my craft mat I sprinkled some blending solution over the leftover alcohol ink and swiped a piece of glossy cardstock. Great way to start another background!

 

Work In Progress Monday

Here's what I've got for Scrapscene's Work in Progress Monday.

This weekend I worked on backgrounds in my art journal. I'm slowly working my way through some of the 21 Secrets workshops and trying out new things here and there. Rachel and I did some "art classes" together and she basically has raided my supplies.... sigh...  where can I hide the Goldens?? Oh, and the heat gun, too. She loves using the heat gun.

So.... these three pages started life as something else. Two of them I use to blot ink off of stencils. Once I tried out a new stencil and the more I added the less I liked it. I started off adding paint and ink to the background and just went with the flow. At the same time Rachel was playing with paints as well, making her own page. A lot of the paint & ink I used on these was just trying to use up leftovers from her.  And some newspaper for image transfers. Love how text looks on the page.

On the bottom page I adhered pieces of newspaper I pulled off of a canvas panel. I did image transfers onto the panel and instead of throwing the pieces away decided to stick them on a page - something I'm definitely going to do again!

So this is what I've got. I also have parts of several scrapbook layouts lying around waiting to be finished... but no pics...

What did you do this weekend?

A Seven Year Old's Fashion Sense...

I kept saying I was going to take pictures of my daughter on a daily basis so I'd have a plethora of blackmail material when she's a teen. She's since stopped the total clashing and gone into total monochromatic looks.

But I do have some pictures! Including this lovely ensemble from last summer. This isn't the worst one, trust me.

And so I started this layout for one of Shimelle's starting point challenges, but couldn't find the right alphas to finish it in time for the challenge. However, challenge 9 from last weekend's scrapbooking weekend challenges was to revisit any of her previous challenges. So I am.

The original starting point challenge is here. For my layout I started with a piece of Lily Bee Designs paper. I used a scrap of Basic Grey for the middle, and have paper and ephemera from Pink Paislee, October Afternoon, 7gypsies, Echo Park, and Studio Calico. Most of the word stickers are from an old sheet, with clear alpha stickers and the sticker phrases from Cosmo Cricket.

A Sketch a Day....

I'm quite behind in daily sketching thanks to last week. But I did manage to do this sketch on Saturday. It's from a photo of the "distressed" shed in our backyard. The inspector told us it would probably fall down within three years of buying the house. So far, it's still standing - but don't step on what's left of the floor. I'd love to be able to put a new floor down for this thing. It'd make a great playhouse if it was cleaned up.

This sketch is the first step towards the next pastel paining. All in front of the shed were blooming daffodils. Happy! So, in preparation I picked up a small set of conte pastel pencils and a set of half-pieces of Sennelier pastels.

Now, if I could manage to avoid dumping these all over the floor like the Nupastels.....

Celebrate Earth Day - The Best Cleaner Ever

I'm reposting this from ScraPerfect --

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It seriously works like magic (without the hocus-pocus).

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And here's my two cents - this stuff is amazing. It takes solvent inks off your hands, tools and stamps. It's totally safe for stamps. It cleans gummy residue off your scissors, workspace, and skin (even from bandaids!). I even used it to remove some Archival ink I'd stamped over paint in my art journal - wiped it right off! It has a pleasant scent. And, the best part is that it's made from 100% food grade ingredients.

More Echo Park

So I just spent a good half hour putting together a blog post with photos, links, etc. etc... only to have my browser crash on me losing the entire post. Grrrrrr......

So, instead I'm going to post another Echo Park project I did for ScrapbooksPlus this month. Let's see if it can handle one photo and no links.... That's what I get with a "vintage" computer of a ripe old age of five years....

And these photos make me smile, which I really need right now ;)

We had the This and That collection this month. I dove into the "girly" papers for this layout using  four Hipstamatic photos of Rachel hamming it up, as usual. I added a few accents with black, starting with the border strip to tie into the black frames around the pics. Then I continued adding - a Maya Road tag, Tim Holtz plastic alphas,  Jenni Bowlin tag and black flower.

Art with Rachel

After many days of begging, we had "art class with Rachel" last night. I pulled out Art Lab for Kids by Susan Schwake and we started thumbing through the pages.

This book has some great ideas for kids -- and adults.  Rachel wanted to do gelli printing again combined with a few other things, but since it was getting late we settled on doing leaf printing with acrylic paint. One thing for sure, it's sure using up all the old Making Memories paint bottles I've had for years!

We also pulled out a circular plastic needlepoint thing and used it as a stencil with Dylusions spray inks. Rachel was over the moon about these inks - she loved how the colors blended and made purple from the blue & pink several times.

My First Really Finished Pastel!

So taking the two smaller pastel sketches from last week, our homework assignment was to work on a larger size finished painting. Gulp....

I'm learning & learning with this. Like, for example, that you need to put something down on the floor under the easel if you don't want to spend an hour scrubbing pastel dust from the space between the wood planks.... sigh...

I wish I'd taken a photo of how the painting looked before class... but here's the final product.

And a closeup ....

Next up, more sheds! Specifically, the "distressed" looking one in our backyard...

Layouts with Transparent Elements

Here's another layout I did this weekend from Shimelle's challenges.  I started with challenge 11, using two contrasting patterns, and then added in challenge 7, put it in a pocket.

I had these three hipstamatic pictures of Rachel getting a mani/pedi (she begged to put her feet in the water like all the other ladies) but just couldn't find a way of arranging them on the page that I really liked. But they looked cool in a pile. Hmmm...

So I pulled out a photo sleeve from a Martha Stewart thing I bought at Staples and cut one of the pockets off. Here's what I had - papers from several different Cosmo Cricket lines, a strip of tape from the Smash line, a scrap of Graphic 45 paper, my photos and one 4x6 photo pocket.

And adhering transparent things can be tricky if you don't want the adhesive to show. Well, it used to be - before the Best Glue Ever. Really, this stuff is amazing. All I did was place a thin line of glue around the pocket and wait for it to dry tacky. I could have easily used less glue and just placed a few drops in each corner and it would've held just as well.

And once it's on the layout -- it's totally invisible. You can see where I cut the flap off the protector, but you can't see the glue.

And the finished layout. I also used the Best Glue Ever to adhere one of the photos to the outside of the pocket, as well as the two transparent doilies from Maya Road.

A Few Scrapbook Pages...

Shimelle had a weekend online crop going on over the past weekend, with scrapbooking challeges. They kept popping up in my twitter feed, so I checked them out. They were a great inspiration to dive into my paper stacks, grab some neglected paper and embellies and make some pages. In fact, I made four and have another one half done. Pretty quick for me!

And it got me cleaning out my stash. I've been collecting art supplies left and right and running out of room. A trip to Ikea to pick up a kitchen trolley helped get paints organized, but my drawers were overflowing. So... I've been spending time consolodating, weeding out, and reorganizing buttons, flowers, brads... slowly moving around tackling all my drawers.

And I found I have lots of flowers, brads and buttons not being used. So one of the things I challenged myself to do was to add them to my layouts.

Look at all those flowers & brads! And even a butterfly....

The entire layout. Shimelle had a challenge to use an envelope on a page to hold something. Here, it's holding my journaling. And I also used old stash - a scrap of Daisy D's - and mix up paper companies. Hmm... Basic Grey, Daisy D's, Lily Bee, and Cosmo Cricket. Embellishments - Basic Grey, Crate Paper, Maya Road, Making Memories and Jenni Bowlin.

And another shot from the same night. While the layout above focused on the Cherry Blossom dance the Girl Scouts had, this one focuses on the kimono itself (well, it's more like a robe, but don't tell Rachel that...)

I think I got three different paper companies in this one - Simple Stories, Cosmo Cricket, and Graphic 45.  Embellies are from Jenni Bowlin, Basic Grey, Studio Calico and Crate Paper.