I wait...

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Favourite Technique".  One of the things I've always loved doing is scraping paint onto card.  I've tried using an artist's palette knife in the past but I find that I keep coming back to the Ranger craft scraper for this technique - it just feels better and I think the results I get are more successful with it.  Add to that the fact that the Claudine Hellmuth Studio paints are so packed with pigment that you get great coverage with the smallest amount and it's a great combo!

I started out by using the Ranger scraper to apply layers of paint onto my manila tag - teal, red, tan and finally white.  I stencilled the circles with Fired Brick distress ink applied with an ink blending tool.  To get the patchy effect on the black stars I applied ink to the stamp in a haphazard way and repeatedly stamped them with my acrylic block at an angle so only part of the stamp made contact with the tag.

The pointy bit along the bottom is an old wood mounted stamp of Tim Holtz's, which he has now brought out in cling form in one of the Classics sets.  It was stamped separately and coloured with blended distress inks, cut out and fixed in place.  The circle stars were stamped seperately and coloured with distress stains then cut out and stuck to the tag on 3d foam for a little added dimension.

Finally I took my trusty white pen and drew on the lettering of "I wait".  Oh, and of course I blended a little Gathered Twigs ink around the edge for a slight aged feel.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Paint the town...teal!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Paint It Up"  I'm really loving the Claudine Hellmuth Studio Acrylic Paints right now, they're really packed with pigment.  Even the thinnest scraping gives great colour coverage!  All paints mentioned below are from that range.

OK, so on to what I did.  This is gonna take a bit of explaining, so I'll make it as brief and clear as I can.  Hold on to your hats, here we go!

I started by using a Ranger craft scraper to cover a square of white card with a thin layer of Classic Teal paint.  I followed that with layers of Traditional Tan and Gesso and some thin lines of red, made with the edge of the scraper.

I stamped the circles from Tim Holtz's Mixed Media set on the right hand side using Peacock Feathers Distress Ink.  Because the painted surface is water resistant the ink is pooled and mottled as it doesn't sink into the paper - love that effect!

Using Ranger Archival Jet Black I stamped the circles from the Psychedelic Grunge set on the left hand side.  Usually when I use this stamp, I will apply colour to it in some way, but today I wanted to have a gradual fading of colour from right to left, from the rich teal circles to the monochrome, so I left it as it was.

I took a square of Tattered Time card stock and scraped on a thin layer of Classic Teal paint.  The men from the Steampunk stamp set were added with black Versafine ink.  I stamped then again on white text-weight paper and cut out the faces, applying them onto the teal background.  Finally I used a white pen to pick out the highlights on the hats and the flower in one man's buttonhole.  This allowed me to keep the faces and highlights white while still allowing the teal to show through the shading on the jackets and hats.  I edged the square with some Walnut Stain distress ink applied with an ink blending tool.

I cut a circle from some white card I'd painted teal and used a copper eyelet to apply it to a tab I'd cut from some Tattered Time card and fixed it in place.  Finally I mounted the piece onto a square of teal painted card and then onto my white card blank.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Oh, before I forget, did you know that Simon Says Stamp also like to hang out on Facebook?  If you "like" them, head over here!

Born, never asked

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Spritz, Sprays and Stencils". How to explain my entry this week without typing a mini-novel that will bore you to tears? I'll try to make it brief!

I have been a huge fan of multimedia artist Laurie Anderson for over 25 years. I have seen her perform more times than I can remember, I have a signed copy of her career retrospective and she was even the subject of my final degree dissertation back in my college days. I'm sure that many (if not most) of you won't be familar with her work, it's definitely more "arty" than mainstream. She sings on some albums, tells stories on others and is a gifted violinist. Above all she is the queen of digital technology, frequently inventing the instruments she uses in her music. My piece this week is inspired by her track "Born, Never Asked", which I love for her emotive violin playing. If you'd like to give it a listen it can be found here.

I started out by making 2 stencils for this piece - the first was a block of numbers, used in the centre panel in the bottom row. The second was the lyrics of the song that inspired the piece, which are:

It was a large room, full of people. All kinds. And they had all arrived at the same building at more or less the same time. And they were all free. And they were all asking themselves the same question: What is behind that curtain?

I used that stencil in the top-left and centre-right panels. Oh, by the way, while we're talking about making your own stencils, it's an activity that definitely has it's pros and cons! Yes, you have a unique stencil of your own design that is perfectly suited to the project you're working on, and once made, you can use time and again. However, and it's a big "however", be prepared to spend hours picking tiny pieces of plastic out of the stencil and then even longer finding them in your hair, on your clothes, in your mouth and even in your food!

Ok, a quick skip through what I did on each panel, starting top left and working left to right.

• Coloured with blended Distress Inks, stamped with letters stamp and stencilled with text, both brown Distress Ink (I forget which brown). The hand was moulded from paper clay and coloured with Promarkers.
  
• Letter blocks paper from Tim Holtz's Lost and Found stack.
  
• Stamped the hand and coloured it with Promarkers. Edged the tile with brown Distress Ink (same edging on all panels).
  
• Coloured the tile with blue Distress Stain. Splattered blue and red Distress Stain on my craft mat and pressed the tile onto it then stamped the ticket.
  
• Photo from the Lost and Found stack.
  
• Covered the tile with Tissue Tape then painted it with green Claudine Hellmuth paint. Stencilled the text with red C.H. paint.
  
• Background is text blocks from Lost and Found stack. Coloured the base of a grunge block with brown Distress Ink then stamped dates image on it. Coloured the grunge T with black Distress Ink and fixed them both in place.
  
• Coloured tile with blended orange and yellow Distress Ink then stamped numbers grid on it. Stencilled numbers with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink.
  
• Coloured the tile with Peacock Feathers Distress Ink and stamped the dots with Dusty Concord Distress Ink. Used a black Distress Marker to edge the main details on the man stamp then stamped it on Kraft Resist paper. Inked it and stamped again on white card. Cut out the man's face and fixed it to the Kraft Resist image then fixed both onto the tile.
  
• Finally I fixed all the tiles together with the Tiny Attacher and mounted them onto black card.
  

Looking back at it now, it's clear to me that I was also playing around with ideas of scale - big hand/small hand, big numbers/small numbers, big text/small text. I confess that I wasn't aware of it while I was doing it, it must have been subconscious, lol I have a running joke with a friend of mine, any time we look at someone's art, whether it be in a gallery or on a blog, one of us, at some point, will say "Do you see what they're doing? They're playing with ideas of scale!". It's quite possible that that was rattling around somewhere in my head during the making of this piece.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com
Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)