Paint-a-thon

I like making ATCs. And I like swapping ATCs. And I like getting involved in swaps and personal trades and various other fun and games over at ATCsForAll.com.

 

And this past weekend they had a "paint-a-thon". From Friday to Monday the idea was to make hand-painted ATCs. There were a few prompts you could choose to follow but they weren't compulsory. The idea was just to have fun and to create and to share your creations with fellow ATCers.

 

I was away from home Saturday to Sunday for a school reunion but I was really taken with the idea of the paint-a-thon and I managed to find time to join in a bit on Friday, on Sunday evening and on Monday.

 

I should say that I have never really considered myself as being any good at "art". I can draw okay and used to draw a lot when I was younger but I was never really any good at painting... however I do think in recent years my papercrafting - particularly using Promarkers etc to colour stamps/digi stamps - has really improved my skills in using colour on images. So I took the plunge and got painting... and, d'you know, I loved it! :)

 

I'm actually really *really* pleased with the results - some more so than others but I like all the cards I've made in their own different ways...

 

Acrylic paints on watercolour card
One of the prompts during the weekend was "Autumn"

Acrylic paints on patterned paper over watercolour card

Acrylic paints on oil card

Fineliner pen and watercolour paints on watercolour card

Acrylic paints on watercolour card

Acrylic paint on watercolour card

Pencil and ccrylic paints on watercolour card
This is one of my real favourites - I managed
to get some proper fine detail onto this card

Biro and mica watercolour paints on plain card
This card has an amazing light-reflective shimmer
that the scanner sadly doesn't really pick up

Watercolour paints on plain card

Mica and watercolour paints on plain card

Metallic and acrylic paints on plain card

Metallic and acrylic paints on watercolour card

Acrylic paints on watercolour card

I found painting these cards so enjoyable and so inspiring - I have a gazillion ideas for more painted cards and could happily have carried on with the paint-a-thon all week! :lol: I'm definitely going to carry on making hand-painted cards. I actually feel like I've made proper "art" here, rather than "just" papercrafting. :)

 

X Marks the Spot

Time for a new challenge at One Stitch at a Time and the theme this week is Anything Goes - With a Twist. There are no rules as to what you can make... but the twist is that you need to use a Stitchy Bear product in your make.

 

I used a great Pirate Girl stamp by Ike's Art and decided to make a pirate-themed ATC:

 

 

I printed out the digi stamp and coloured her with my Promarkers before cutting her out. Isn't she great? :)

 

I cut an ATC from kraft card and stamped over it with a detailed map stamp using brown ink. I then swiped ink around the edges of the card and heat embossed it with copper embossing powder.

 

 

To finish off I doodled an "X marks the spot" on my map background to show the location of the buried treasure... ;).... and attached my pirate girl.

Hope the challenge inspires you to create something and have a go! :)

I'm entering this into the following challenges:
613 Avenue Create - Anything Goes
Catered Crop - Map It
Challenges 4 Everybody - Anything Goes
Hobbycutz - Create Your Own Background
Colour Me Creative Challenge - Anything Goes
Crafty Calendar - Anything Goes
Crafts 4 Eternity Recipe Challenge - Time To Go
Papercrafting Journey - Anything Goes
Sassy Studio Designs - Artist Trading Cards

Favourite Things

Time for a new challenge at One Stitch at a Time and this week the theme is Favourite Things.

 

One of my favourite things is ATCs - Artist Trading Cards. I love making these little works of art - they are fun to create and great for trying out new ideas and techniques. I also love to trade them and have swapped cards with people all over the world.

 

So for my project this week I made a set of ATC's using Gingerloft's Dream In a Dream Poe image from the Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet:

 

 

I made one card in a sepia colour scheme, just because it seemed to fit the image:

 

 

And I made another two using a red, white and blue colour scheme, inspired by the IndePOEdence challenge at Quoth the Raven, Nevermore:

 

 

 

I used kraft card for a base and made the backgrounds using Distress Stains. I added the Poe image and, to finish, stamped and heat embossed a flock of birds (hey, they look like ravens to me, right? :D) and, on the blue and red cards, added some highlights and little stars with a while gel pen.

 

The challenge runs for a week and entries using a Stitchy Bear product have a chance to win our main prize. Entries not using a Stitchy Bear product will go into the draw to win a $3 gift voucher for the Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet.

 

I'm entering these cards into the following challenges:

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore - IndePOEdence

2 Sisters - Stars

A Gem of a Challenge - Anything But Square

Hiding In My Craft Room - Freestyle

One Stop Craft - Make Your Own Background

Brown Sugar - Anything Goes

Crafts 4 Eternity Recipe Challenge - Inky Fingers

Pattie's Creations - Monochrome

Simply Create Too - Anything But a Card

MilkCoffee Challenge - Emboss It

Crafts and Me - Anything Goes
Fun With ATCs - Set of Three

 

 

 

 

Sweet Pea Stamps ATCs

A few weeks ago, one of my awesome Sweet Pea Stamps DT colleagues, Milo, posted these absolutely gorgeous ATCs on the Sweet Pea Stamps blog. Now, I love ATCs and have recently gotten hugely back into making them so my first thought on seeing these (okay, my second, cos the first was, "Wow!!" :D) was, is she gonna be trading these (and, if so, can I please have one!)?

 

So I asked and she said yes. And I said, "Hurrah!" :)

 

And so I promised to make my own set of Sweet Pea Stamps ATCs so that I'd have one to trade with her. And then real life got in the way a wee bit and here we are several weeks later... and I've finally gotten around to doing just that. And this is the result:

 

 

I used Rebecca Sinz's gorgeous Sweet Demon digi stamp - digi stamps are great for projects like ATCs cos you can resize and print them to any size you need - and coloured her in with my Promarkers before carefully cutting around her. I went with a red and black colour scheme on the image and then remembered that, in my stash of Gelli plate backgrounds that I made while on holiday back in April, I had a luscious one that was all black and red and gold. So I cut my ATC backgrounds from that and added some fragments of netting, some flourishes dotted on with a gold Perlen Pen and a few little paper flowers (that I coloured black using a Promarker pen!) with more Perlen Pen dots, and a little metal flower, for the centres.

 

Here's the three cards in close-up:

 

 

 

 

I love how these turned out. They're kinda gothic and gloomy but at the same time a bit bright and glitzy with the warm red and all the shimmery gold.

 

I'm definitely going to make more ATCs with Sweet Pea Stamps images... they have such an awesome range of beautiful, gothicy, fantasy, streampunky images. And, speaking of which, I'm also going to enter this set of ATCs into the first challenge at the PunkyouGirl challenge blog. :)

 

WOYWW 212

Another Wednesday is upon us and crafters the world over are sharing sneak peeks at their workdesks in the biggest blog hop in craft land, all hosted by the ever gracious Julia at her Stamping Ground blog.

 

My desk is in its usual chaos... in fact, even more so than usual!

 

 

As you can see, the chaos has eaten pretty much all of the (small, remaining) usable workspace! Whoops. :) It's the good kind of chaos though... the post-creative kind of chaos. :)

 

I have been doing quite a bit of crafting this past week and the various bits and bobs littering the desk are testament to my creativity - stencils, paints, inks, pens, stamps, you name it! :D There's also a sheet of digi stamps that I've been colouring this evening while chilling on the sofa.

 

My creations over the past week have included my first ever attempt at an original painted canvas and a whooooole lot of ATCs. I've been on a major ATC kick lately, particularly hand-drawn ATCs, and over the weekend I joined in a zentangle-a-thon happening at ATCsForAll.com and created all of these:

 

 

 

 

 

I had a lot of fun making these cards... and playing with some inks and pastels to make backgrounds to zentangle over. :)

 

I've got several more in progress, plus an idea for another (bigger) original canvas. So many ideas, so little time! :lol:

 

Oh and before I go, here's another photo specially for Julia, who was concerned last week about the apparent disappearance of my AIMEE alphas which have been stuck to one of my computer screens for.... oooh probably over a year now(!), waiting to be reused. :lol: Worry not Julia, they're still there... just hidden behind the ever-rising piles of crafty chaos! :D

 

 

Happy WOYWW folks - thanks for stopping by. :)

 

 

More ATCs

I have soooo many ideas for ATCs and projects running through my head atm... I've gone crazy for original art/mixed media stuff lately... to the extent that before going to sleep last night I had to turn the light back on, grab my phone and type in a quick memo of the idea for these ATCs: :D

 

 

 

 

My idea was a line drawing of a face - in close-up - with random, splodged brightly coloured inks as "eye shadow". My idea was for the colour not to be contained within the lines of the drawing so I used watercolour paper and sprayed it with water before splodging on Dylusions spray inks (I sprayed the inks onto my non-stick craft mat and then dipped a paintbrush into them). I also tilted the cards and let the watery ink run a bit before drying them and dabbed some spots of Stickles onto the ends of the eyelashes.

 

After I made this set of cards, I had the idea to do a similar set, this time with the eyes open and using the splodged, watercolour-effect colours for the irises.:

 

 

 

I filled up the white space at the top and bottom of these cards with some Distress Ink sponged lightly through stencils (this doesn't show up all that well on these scans).

 

I'm really rather pleased with all of these. They are quite simple and yet quite striking, I think. :)

 

The Eyes Have It

I've been getting back into ATCs in a big way lately... and, as part of that, I've been getting more and more into drawing. And remembering that I actually used to be pretty good at it! :lol:

 

With that in mind, I spent my one, precious, child-free afternoon per week today chilling out on the sofa with repeats of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on the TV and a fineliner pen in hand, and drew these:

 

 

 

 

I'm really quite pleased with how these came out. I'm fascinated by eyes anyway, they are such beautiful, complex structures and look beautiful when drawn well. I'm not sure how "well" these are drawn but I like how they look. :)

 

I put these up for trading at ATCsforall.com and they've all been snaffled within an hour of me uploading. :D