TIME

Hi! This will be the first of two posts today. At Pixels and Paper we have the inspiration of a carnival/ fair with a ferris wheel, dodgem cars and bright colours.

For my layout, I chose to take the circular shape from the ferris wheel and translated this into a series of cogs. The large one was a chipboard piece covered with embossed aluminium flashing.

The smaller ones were diecut from layers of crumpled aluminium foil. All pieces were coloured with alcohol inks which I tipped on, rather than using the applicator method. To further suggest movement and time, I've used 12 photos taken of sunsets, clouds and the moon,during various months of the year. These have been  placed in a spiral shape- again suggesting movement and cycles.
The background paper came from the  Bo Bunny Back To Basics -Somewhere in Time" collection. This, with its pattern of cogs and gears, fitted perfectly with my layout theme.
Pop on over to:  http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ to see the inspiration photo and to see what the rest of the team has done.
Thanks for dropping  by.
Cheers, for now, Di

BIRDS OF A FEATHER?!!!!

Hi and welcome. The inspiration for this month's challenge at ARTastic is to include texture.... a great source of inspiration for me, particularly lately, as I have been exploring and playing with  inky, painty and gooey things and what happens when they are used together!

My piece for this ended up as a painted scene on a heavy watercolour A3 paper. Acrylics and texture paint were used to create the background scene and some of the features (tree and dove cote). 3D stamping paint was added in other areas (pond, parts of birds, and cogs). The birds were stamped with my new Chocolate Baroque Steampunk set...lovin' this!

                                   

                                          Close up of owl and doves!!! and dove cote
    
                                    

                                             Close up of parrots showing beading and cogs

                                                    Duck and bulrushes, cog flowers.
                                
They were coloured using metallic gel pens,  Lumiarte acrylic pigments and Silks acrylic glazes. To give more texture to the wings, I glued on micro- beads.
Cogs were made from aluminium flashing, embossed and painted with Vintaj patinas. Wool ans single beads were used for the bulrushes.

                                                  
A bit quirky, but a lot of fun in the making.
There's still time to join in our challenge at ARTastic. Pop on over to:http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/  to see what our inspiration picture was and the fabulous artworks by the rest of the team. We'd love to see your art here.

Thank you for stopping by. Catch you again soon.
Cheers, Di.

CHRISTMAS STOCKING SURPRISE

Hi and welcome on this glorious Christmas Eve. I hope everyone has a wonderful day, with family and friends.
Christmas has been a popular theme this month, and ARTastic has also continued with this theme, using a 'wordle' as an inspiration. I'd not heard of these before, but what an interesting concept. I can see many uses for it in a classroom, (as a retired teacher) with students having a great time.  While I didn't do a wordle for my piece. I did use some of the words from the inspirational one. pop on over to: http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ and see what the very talented DT has done with this.
I decided not to do a layout. Instead I made a stocking from firm cardstock and decorated it with: aluminium flashing tape (embossed, inked with alcohol inks), die cut poinsettias (from a gauzy tissue paper and Tim Holtz Tattered Poinsettia die), vintage photo print, and 3D Stamping Paint.

The stocking has tabs on the edges and this was all adhered to a firm backing with mounting tape, so that something could be placed inside.

In this case, the surprise is a giant wordsearch of Christmas words with every letter of the alphabet represented.
                                       

Again have a safe and joyous Christmas.
Thank you for visiting  and for your inspirational comments. Cheers, Di

Steampunk Tag

Hi and welcome!
I've had my first go at producing something in the Steampunk mode... at least I hope it is! A lovely crafty friend, Judi, lent me her Chocolate Baroque set, with a gorgeous butterfly. It is this that I chose to use as part of a tag for the current ABAC Challenge 23 'Steampunk'. See what the design team has come up with at: http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/
I started by covering a tag with self-adhesive aluminium plumbers flashing; embossed in 2 different folders, just to give a couple of different textures on the background. This was then smooshed with alcohol inks.

 

I thought that this didn't look quite old enough, so I smeared on some 3D stamping paint and when dry, lightly sanded back some of the raised sections.

 

 

 

The effect can't fully be seen here, but this did tone the colours back quite well.
The butterfly was stamped onto silver mirror board and coloured with permanent markers before being adorned with brass brads and bling.

 

 

Cogs were also die cut from the same card and inked with alcohol inks and Vintaj Patinas.



 

 

 

Roses were quilled from folded strips of aluminium kitchen foil. This took a little experimentation to find the right number of times to fold the strips so that they stayed intact. Alcohol inks were swiped across the petals, and Patina carefully tipped on and smoothed out with a small brush.

I completed the tag with a strip of lace from my stash.
 

 

 

This was an interesting challenge and it certainly took me in a new direction of experimentation.

 

What I used:

Alcohol Inks: Latte, Ginger, Espresso, Mushroom and Metallic Copper.

Vintaj Patina: Verdigis, Rust.

3D Stamping Paint: Black

 

Thank you for visiting and for your lovely comments.

Cheers, Di

 

 

 

 



At 4

Hi and welcome. Today I'm showing the result of playing with alcohol inks, a medium I enjoy working with. I've used them on two very different products which were then used on a layout  as embellishments.
Aluminium flashing ( the self-adhesive, non-tarry one) from the hardware store was put through an embossing folder (TH Riveted Metal) and then daubed with alcohol inks: espresso, latte and ginger.

The cogs were die-cut from glitter cardstock (silver) and coloured with alcohol inks: espresso and denim. I tipped these directly onto the cogs before dabbing them slightly to spread the ink; no blending solution was used.

The frame around the photo was the one that originally came with it. It was also put through the same embossing folder and smooched with distress inks: weathered wood (a favourite of mine) and antique linen. Some dots of copper Kindyglitz were added to some of the rivets and the foam title.
A journalling tag, which can swivel from a brad, completed the layout. The tag lists some of  son's favourite things at the time. These included using tools and building with Lego and Meccano.

This layout is being entered in the ARTastic challenge for march: using a portrait photo. Find out more about there challenge here:http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/

Thank you for visiting and leaving great feedback. Come again. I love hearing from you.
Cheers, Di