Guest designer project for The Altered Alice Chapter 7 Week 2: Text as nonsense

My guest designer piece is after The Altered Alice challenge information!

Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but went on: `-- and I thought I'd try and find my way to the top of that hill -- ' `When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, `I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley.' `No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last: `a hill can't be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense -- ' The Red Queen shook her head, `You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, ` but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!' -- Chapter 2, Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Using text as pattern is a trend right now that I really love. Your challenge is to use text as nonsense - not to read but as pattern on your project! Of course you can still have words or sentiments, but we also need to see text used in a non-reading way. I have a stack of old books and dictionaries that I use for this purpose.

Our sponsor is Stamp Attack, a British company that is well known (among other things) for their fantastic Alice stamp plates which have sold to customers all over the world. In fact, Helena Bonham Carter, the actress who played the Red Queen in the Tim Burton Alice movie, purchased sets of Alice stamps from Stamp Attack, which were then delivered to the studio!  Enabler alert: Stamp Attack offers speedy worldwide shipping for only £1 on unmounted stamp orders, so go on and check out their beautiful stamps!

The winner will receive a Stamp Attack gift certificate for £13.50, which is equivalent to one of the stamp plates that the design team will be using!

You have until Friday, September 23 to enter your creation at The Altered Alice and the winner and honorable mentions will be announced on the last Sunday of the month, September 25.  All kinds of projects are welcome, they do not have to be "altered art" and as always, entries that feature some aspect of Wonderland are given two chances instead of one in the random prize drawing. You may enter multiple times as long as each project is on a separate post.

We are also saying goodbye to our current crop of guest designers, so please leave them some special love this month as their projects have been FABULOUS! Thanks so much ladies, you have added so much to The Altered Alice! And stay tuned, there will be some special design team announcements next month too!

Hi again folks, thanks for dropping by to visit me, CuddlyBunny, especially today as I post my final guest designer piece for The Altered Alice!

Wow! What a fun group of wonderfully inspiring artists! Should you ever be asked to join the designer, as a guest or full-time member, say YES!

So, my piece with beautiful stamps from sponsor Stamp Attack is a triangle easel flip-top book.

Each page features different techniques and colors, so to keep things realistically short here ... let's see the photos and you can drop a question if you want to know how something was done!

OK? Okay!

Have a wonderful day everyone, hug the people you love!

Guest designer project for The Altered Alice Chapter 6 Week 2: Painting the Roses Red

'A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, `Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!' -- Chapter 8, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 

The cards were painting the white roses red to avoid angering the Queen of Hearts, so your August The Altered Alice challenge is to use PAINT on your creation!

Of course you can paint it RED like the design team will be doing, but you can also use other colors. You need to tell us what item was painted, what technique you used, and give us a mention and a link of course!

We are sponsored this month by Creative Inspirations [Store | Blog], makers of wonderful shimmering paint which comes in almost 60 colors, including clear iridescent Fairy Dust.

http://www.creativeinspirationspaint.com/

They also carry hot fix Jeweled Inspirations and Metallic Inspirations; I am particularly intrigued by the latter as they look like brilliant nail heads. The Altered Alice design team will be using Garnet paint, a bright sparkling red, and I hope the Creative Inspirations design team might decide to play along! The winner of this month's challenge will receive five colors of their choice.

Enter by 11:59 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC -4:00) on Friday, August 26. The winner and honorable mentions will be announced on August 28, the last Sunday of the month.

My inspiration piece is a vase of metal roses with petals cut from yet more of the Guinness can flats I've mentioned here so often.

 

We don't drink cases of this stuff every day, by the way. We only enjoy celebrating St. Patrick's Day a lot. For the entire month of March. Sometimes we start early, say February.

Anyhow, the flowers are layers from the Holtz Alterations tattered florals die: I ran the die through six times to end up with really "thick" flowers with extra layers. Next the layers were bent and curled and punched through the center then spray painted with white high-gloss enamel paint.

The leaves, cut from the Holtz Alterations tattered leaves die, also were curled and bent before being painted with high-gloss enamel in green: Veins were added beforehand as well, by "drawing" them on with a piercing tool.

After the enamel dried the flowers were combined with craft wire attached to button centers. The wire is threaded into copper tubing from a toilet repair kit with a drop of glue at the top to steady the bud.

Wire also is wrapped around the leaf ends where they meet the copper tubing "stems."

Finally, and the best part, we have one rose painted with Creative Inspirations Garnet glimmer, and a few droplets left behind by that crazy Five card who can't seem to control his brush.

This glimmer paint is truly amazing in it's reflective nature that has a lavender-pink shimmer! Another fun aspect of this product is the viscosity: You won't have to worry about it dripping and dribbling and going everywhere you do not want it to go.

My creative "drips" were actually a tricky achievement; isn't that wonderful? I love paint that doesn't easily splatter and trickle here and there!

Though I did find it ironic that the one freakin' time I actually wanted paint to drip ... I had to work to fake the effect.

OK folks, it's still early in the month so no excuses for you not getting an Altered Alice piece finished and posted by August 26!

The Altered Alice Chapter 5 Challenge Week 2: Tea-things

'And ever since that,' the Hatter wnet on in a mournful tone, 'He won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'

A bright idea came into Alice's head. 'Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.

'Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: 'it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'

'Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.

'Exactly so,' said the Hatter: 'as the things get used up.'

'But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.


The Mad Hatter's tea table was full of tea-things, with place settings all the way around and many teapots and teacups. Your challenge this month at The Altered Alice is to have a teapot or teacup on your project, and, as an option, to use something OTHER than a stamped image as your focal point!

That's because The Altered Alice design team will be showing off with digital collage sheets from One Crabapple [Etsy Store | Blog], which has of the most interesting and different Alice in Wonderland categories I've seen!
 
The owner and artist is taking care of some family priorities, so if the store is closed when you visit, just put in your email in to be notified when it reopens. It is well worth waiting for I promise; most of the design team members had a difficult time making  their choices and a couple of us needed all of everything in the Alice category! The winner will have their choice of five collage sheets from One Crabapple! 

July is a long month, so as of today you still more than two weeks to enter your project! Plenty of time for even our stragglers to play along, just be sure to enter before 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time, GMT -5:00) on Friday, July 29. The winner and honorable mentions will be announced the last Sunday of the month, July 31.

 
My pieces for this months' challenge take full advantage of the two collage sheets I received from One Crabapple, and I'm sure that you'll see these images again and again in my future works because they're awesome!

So, the main piece is a plexiglass base with images adhered to the front and back so that a 3D or "floating" effect is created. I also used paint markers to write on the back and front of the piece, "Alice's Teacup Cafe."

As I mentioned to the group at The Altered Alice: I swear this piece is cool in person ... it simply doesn't photograph well.

My second project is a card with multiple layers often referred to as a step card. I love to create these cards because they're so interesting and beautiful. And, honestly, because my non-crafting friends are always so impressed (shh, don't tell them how very easy these are to make).
 
Thank you for dropping by, and please make sure you visit The Altered Alice to the gorgeous creations from design team members Lynne Phelps (The Mad Hattress herself), Barbara Washington, and Sue Roddis.

Remember to become a follower while you're at The Altered Alice so you don't miss the cool creations that are revealed every week!

The Altered Alice Chapter 6 Challenge Week 1: Tea-things

`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, `he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'  
A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.
`Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'
`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.
`Exactly so,' said the Hatter: `as the things get used up.'
`But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.

The Mad Hatter's tea table was full of tea-things, with place settings all the way around and many teapots and teacups. Your challenge this month at The Altered Alice is to have a teapot or teacup on your project, and, as an option, to use something OTHER than a stamped image as your focal point!

That's because The Altered Alice design team will be showing off with digital collage sheets from One Crabapple [Etsy Store | Blog], which has of the most interesting and different Alice in Wonderland categories I've seen!

The owner and artist is taking care of some family priorities, so if the store is closed when you visit, just put in your email in to be notified when it reopens. It is well worth waiting for I promise; most of the design team members had a difficult time making  their choices and a couple of us needed all of everything in the Alice category! The winner will have their choice of five collage sheets from One Crabapple!

July is a long month, so you have almost four weeks to enter your project! Plenty of time for even our stragglers to play along, just be sure to enter before 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time, GMT -5:00) on Friday, July 29. The winner and honorable mentions will be announced the last Sunday of the month, July 31.

A bonus project: Celebrate Mad Hatter Day with a Mad Tea Party, Altered Alice Style!

Sticky and dirty after a weekend camping trip, I'm quickly swinging through to show you this bonus project for the Altered Alice Mad Tea Party.

This month we're sponsored by The Artistic Stamper, who are giving away an amazing prize for the Altered Alice challenge. They also gave each of us on the design and guest design teams a stamp to use in our projects: The Mabel Lucie Attwell Mad Hatter stamp.

After finishing my main project, I just couldn't help to keep playing with this awesome stamp that is so deliciously detailed and perfectly cut! It needed to be used as an un-colored image with a monochromatic design.

It embosses perfectly and is, as you can see here, the ideal size for a small, mailable invitation or greeting card!

I think I really will be forced to host a Mad Hatter party just so there's an excuse to send this card to everyone we know ... of course it'll be this time next year since the October Hatter day is already filled for us this year.

Sheesh ... already scheduled months in advance. Things really are mad 'round here.

Week 2: Celebrate Mad Hatter Day with a Mad Tea Party, Altered Alice Style!

Let's start this post with a paragraph about our sponsor for this month's The Altered Alice: The Artistic Stamper. 

The Artistic Stamper is generously offering offering a £15 pound voucher for The Artistic Stamper stamps! They have a WONDERFUL online store that offers free worldwide shipping on orders more than £35 and they carry loads of my favorite brands. The Artistic Stamper Creative Team Blog offers amazing inspiration and interesting challenges, so be sure to visit! Jennie has kindly provided our design team with the Mabel Lucie Attwell Mad Hatter Stamp for our projects this month!

This stamp is absolutely ideal for our team since our challenge this month also focuses on what we, and you, are bringing to our Mad Tea Party!

Check out The Altered Alice week 2 post here to see what each of the design team, and guest design team members brought to the party!

In addition to a garden of flamingos in week one, I've also brought my Altered Alice art along for week two!

I enjoyed creating this piece from the black embossed Mad Hatter stamp on vintage book page to the mushrooms and tree tops on vintage music pages.

Each of the individual tree top "blobs" is a swirl of multiple layers of Cray-Pas in yellows and greens which were then melted with a heat gun. This caused the oil pastels to blend and bleed together and then harden after cooling. 

The same technique was used to create the mushrooms that are a combination of yellow, orange and red, along with a bit of blue grey for outlining purposes.

The embossed stamp is colored with pencils and, in my opinion, has a fantastic appearance in person: The glossy embossing literally and figuratively pops on the page while the colored pencil fill in is transparent, allowing text to show here and there.

The only thing that could have made me happier with this piece is if I'd been able to use an Alice in Wonderland book page.

Which also would have made me sad actually. Because that would mean someone was so mean to an Alice book that it became damaged enough to use for altered art.

So I guess this all means I could not, in fact, be happier with this piece.

Now don't be shy fellow artists, grab your hat and your umbrella bird and drop in at the Altered Alice tea party: We're impatiently waiting to see how this theme comes together for you!

Celebrate Mad Hatter Day with a Mad Tea Party, Altered Alice Style!

Two Mad Hatter Days are celebrated every year at The Altered Alice: One is on the 10th of June and the other is the 6th of October.

This glorious twice-a-year celebration is the single positive result of the differences in U.S. vs. U.K. date abbreviations: In the U.S. we comically choose to order date references month first, while our smarter U.K. friends begin with the day.

‘Tis the Mad Hatter, you see, leading us all with his hat tag: “In this Style 10/6” or This style of hat for 10 schillings and 6 pence, or half a guinea in the 1800s when Alice took her amazing journey. 

Luckily no one knows why a raven is like a writing desk and no one can agree regarding the best way to abbreviate a given date; we get to celebrate two times a year! Two times!

Our generous sponsor this month is The Artistic Stamper, and they are offering a £15 pound voucher for The Artistic Stamper stamps!

They have a WONDERFUL online store that offers free worldwide shipping on orders more than £35 and they carry loads of my favorite brands. The Artistic Stamper Creative Team Blog offers amazing inspiration and interesting challenges, so be sure to visit!

 Jennie at The Artistic Stamper has kindly provided our design team with the Mabel Lucie Attwell Mad Hatter Stamp for our projects this month. It will be interesting to see how everyone applies their own style and vision to the same image!

 

So, what in the world is the challenge this month? Isn’t it quite obvious?

Create a project to celebrate the Mad Hatter, and to bring something to our Mad Tea Party!

Take a look at the design team's contributions to the party! Hats and tea cakes and wee cups and more!

What will you bring to our Mad Tea Party? Find something fun to show and tell when you link your project that celebrates the Mad Hatter!You have until Friday, June 24 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4:00) and we'll announce the winner of the £15 voucher for The Artistic Stamper stamps on Sunday, June 26!

Happy Mad Hatter Day from The Altered Alice!

The Altered Alice Chapter 4 Challenge Week 5: Timely winners and honorable mentions

Hi everybody! Today's the big day! The day the winners and honorable mentions for The Altered Alice Chapter 4 are announced!

See that little image on this post? It's a teaser! You have to go to The Altered Alice to see who won, and the entire winning piece!

Don't forget to check out the honorable mentions, too! You know how we art bloggers love comments from appreciate readers and fellow artists!

Thanks to everyone who participated this month!

The Altered Alice Chapter 4 Challenge Week 4: Time

Thank you for dropping by to see my first The Altered Alice Guest Design Team Member piece!

Before we get into the mechanics of my piece I have to remind you to get on over to The Altered Alice to see what's been happening there. Seriously. What I create is OK, sometimes it's even very good, occasionally it's awesome: I like it in any of those states. But the art pieces that you're going to see at The Altered Alice will remind you of what you aspire to become as an artist.

I'm starting on my way with this piece in which I used the digi stamp "Wait for Me" from The Altered Alice's monthly sponsor, Fresh Brewed Designs. There's little wonder that I'm not the only Design Team Member, guest or otherwise, who chose this stamp since it's so completely cool!

My own piece started with a black and white print out of the Wait for Me stamp which I then colored with pencils and Sharpie markers: The Sharpies were used as I often do to highlight the hard lines and give the entire image extra depth.

I left Alice's face and hair with highlighting only before trimming the stamp and inking everything (except Alice, of course) with Distress Ink frayed burlap. This gave the tree and mushrooms a weathered look.

The trimmed image is mounted on a canvas that was sprayed with Butterscotch color wash before a clockwork mask was applied. A second wash of color, this time a homemade green-toned glimmer mist, was added and the rectangular clock stamp was added.

I removed the mask, added the round clock stamp and the game spinners which I'd made black and gold with Sharpie paint markers.The text, and the clocks, were stamped with black archival ink and the clockface near the top left is from a vintage watch.

Other items include the silver chain as a hanger, two idea-ology corners, lace dyed with color wash and clockwork bits from actual vintage watches adhered to the Wait for Me tree.

Whew, aren't you impressed with my description? I rarely worry about explaining what I've done, or with which products. I'm usually much more involved in telling you some random, unrelated story.

I guess the team at The Altered Alice are bringing out my professionalism: At least for now, before the silly genes overtake my I Can Be A Grown Up facade.

Until then you've got a few days to create your own amazing The Altered Alice piece, and show it off at, you guessed it: The Altered Alice!

The Altered Alice Chapter 4 Challenge Week 1: Time

Observant readers of this blog will notice that I'm a guest design team member this month at The Altered Alice!

 

What no one needs to be terribly observant to realize is that I'm filled with glee and excitement for this guest spot! I love The Altered Alice!

So, below is the Chapter 4 Challenge Week 1 introduction written by The Altered Alice's Mad Hatter, Lynne Phelps, please read on and find the time to participate!

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'
`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.'
`I don't know what you mean,' said Alice.
`Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!'
`Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.'
`Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. `He won't stand beating.'
-- Chapter 7, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Time marches on and it's time for a new challenge at The Altered Alice, and the challenge is to make something that represents TIME! Take your time, you have until May 27 at 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4:00) to show us YOUR timely creation!

There are so many ways to represent time: You could use a clock or a watch, hourglass, calendar. Take some TIME to think about it and then be sure you submit on TIME because TIME flies! OK, I think I have it out of my system . . . or is that my clockworks? 

Click this caption to visit Fresh Brewed Designs

Our sponsor this month is Fresh Brewed Designs, and they have some fabulous Alice in Wonderland digi images that some of the design team will be using. The randomly chosen winner of this month's challenge will receive five digi stamps of their choice from the Fresh Brewed Designs store!

While it is not required that you use Alice in Wonderland images, we do encourage it. Entries that feature some aspect of Wonderland will be entered twice for the prize drawing!

Three guest designers will be joining us for May:  Jess Marin of My Scrap Diary will be sharing her project in our Week 3 post, and Retta Fox of Foxy's Weblog and Tracy (CuddlyBunny) of Not a Moment to Spare will be sharing their creations during our Week 4 inspiration post.

I know you will enjoy seeing the work of these talented designers, some of whom you will recognize as past entrants to our challenges!

The colors of blue and yellow: The Altered Alice

The third chapter at The Altered Alice is Alice Colors of Blue and Yellow, which suited me beautifully as I'm feeling the need to incorporate some bright colors into life.

After all, as much as I adore winter and throughout July, August and September my greatest desire is a snow day, this year's succession of grungy-skied Spring days in Northern Nevada has been cheerless. Depressing. Freaking dreadful.

As I said though, no more of that lusterless talk: Let's dive deep into the well of sunshine yellow and clear sky blue!

My Altered Alice Blue and Yellow piece also wandered through the garden at Bugaboo Stamps and Alice's tea party at Octopode on Etsy.

Don't you agree that the Bugaboo flower cups, which are originally designed as coffee cups, make a brilliant Alice-esque tea party background? And isn't the Octopode March Hare a perfect and wonderful representation of that moment before your first cup of caffeine in the morning?

The tinsel-embossed phrase hanging above, You Warm My Heart, just had to be added on it's own little wire spring dangling above the March Hare because he really does warm the heart with his one crazy eye, droopy ears and scruffy clothing!

Later today I'm going to make a holiday card on which I'll let the Octopode March Hare dress up as the Easter Bunny after a long morning delivering colored eggs. I'm sure he'll be thrilled.

But not nearly as ecstatic as he is to be joining the fun at The Altered Alice! You can also sign up for this Artistic Outpost-sponsored party, just so long as you link up before 8 p.m. April 22!

Hall of doors: The Altered Alice

Welcome to my submission for The Altered Alice Chapter 2 challenge: Hall of doors!

This is an appropriate challenge for all of you crafters out there: After all, what is art, but a search for something bigger or smaller, lighter or darker, stranger or ... normal-er.

Despite not being able to finish that previous sentence with the flourish it deserves, it's true that we're all opening and closing doors to find ourselves and the odd, tardy rabbit within.

So, it was with pleasure that I began this project by spray painting an Altoid tin in my not well-ventilated craft room. Oh well, bye bye to six more brain cells ...

Burning through IQ didn't keep this project from turning out nearly the way it appeared in my mind: In fact, aside from the slightly cartoony feel of the interior contents, I'm very, very happy with this creation.

It's no small wonder: Which of us doesn't love this sort of thing? A gloss white enamel base covered in various colors and densities of alcohol inks, rock candy distress stickles, color wash and archival ink stamping.

Add some ribbon, a fragment, hitch fastener doorknob, key, shrink-plastic rabbit, tiny Fimo cupcake ... and *insert magic wand sound here* ... art! Yay!

Maybe I should try to rid myself of more brain cells. I seem to benefit from the loss.

While I'm busy killing off unnecessary thoughts of work and clean dishes, spend a little time over at The Altered Alice. They've got amazing inspirational design team art and until March 25 to finish up your own crafty door!

Changes in form and Dress forms: The Altered Alice

I apologize to anyone who has been wondering why I haven't been politely responding to blog comments or even posting any new creations.

First, work has been consuming a lot of time (way more hours than those for which I'm paid, but such is life working for a non-profit).

Then My Guy ever-so-helpfully introduced me to Lord of the Rings On-line. What a stupid game. I don't know how many hours I've spent to figure that out ... and I have no idea how many more hours it'll take: But it's important to note that I'm at level 15 with 250 silver pieces and a horse. So, you know, I should only need to play for a few hundred more hours to realize it's a grind and boring and silly and totally uncreative.

Finally, about a week ago I discovered The Altered Alice challenges. Clearly I lack the time for another challenge piece. I also obviously lack the skill because, well just look at it, and the form spent several days sitting on my craft desk before I finally gathered the nerve to dive in this evening.

My dress form, handmade with copper and an altered card stock Plumbob Papercraft, makes me happy enough. With practice I could easily make some cool artsy dress forms using perhaps something more appropriate than the Plumbob base.

Come to think of it though, the entire creation does make me happy: After all, there's plenty of comedy in this piece.

Hopefully you can at least decipher that my sad little doll form is the Red Queen dress. No matter what, just don't think about Snow White (which is who I think of when viewing this dress that was obviously made by Dopey).

And, instead of Burton's Red Queen with the bulbous head, my queen is short of leg and long of torso. And chubby. And her royal photographer will surely be sentenced to the guillotine.

So, yeah. Aside from all of that, I like my Red Queen of the Stubby-Legged Kingdom.

I know you can do better: Take a minute to decide which better project you're going to complete and show it off at The Altered Alice.

Oh, and be patient with me for awhile more. I'll try to get back to everyone soon ... but can promise nothing until next week.