Birds and Tulips and Everything in Three's

My new Dina Wakley stamps were the impetus for this layout in my art journal.  You can see and/or purchase this set of stamps here.  The set is called Woodcuts.  The leaves on a branch was my favorite stamp when I first saw some of Dina's work using these stamps.  I also love the tulip style flower stamp.  In the background I used a Donna Downey stencil called Leaf-Stem Trio.  I must confess I love leaves and flowers!  I have so many stamps and stencils that are leafy and flowery.  Oh, birds and birdhouses are a favorite too.  I punched three circles out of music note paper and inked them with picked raspberry and abandoned coral distress ink and stuck them down on the far right.  Everything seems to appear in three's in this layout.  I guess three is a good number!

Here are a few close-ups of each page.

Thanks for looking!  

A Bit of Queen Anne's Lace For You!

Blues and greens are by far my most favorite colors.  The red-orange flowers really seem to pop off the background and I like that.  The stencils I used are some new ones that I bought at CREATE in October.  The royal blue fans stenciled in the background are from Nathalie Kalbach's Art Deco Wallpaper stencil available from Stencil Girl.  You can find it here.  The other stencil I used was Cecilia Swatton's Queen Anne's Lace stencil also from Stencil Girl.   You can find it here.  Who says Queen Anne's Lace has to be white?!

 Here are a few close-ups.  I also used my dots roller stamp.

Thanks for looking!  Happy crafting and creating!

Bright, Bold Flowers

Here's an art journal spread from this past October.  I really had fun drawing these flowers with a black sharpie.  I also used some spray ink with stencils for the background.  It's a bit of a splotchy look but bright and warm none the less.

Here are some closer-up photos.  I love how the black sharpie really makes the flowers pop off the page.

Thanks for looking!

Art Journal Pages from Nathalie Kalbach's Class at CREATE in Seattle

This past October I treated myself to four days of art and learning at CREATE in Seattle.  I took 5 classes over the four days and had a blast.  Two of the classes were taught by Nathalie Kalbach.  One was an art journal class called 'It's All About the Layers' and the other was a canvas class called 'Texture Galore'.  I loved both of these classes!  Nathalie is really funny!  She grew up in Germany and now lives in Jersey City, New Jersey with her husband.  Here's a link to her blog.

Here are some photos of the art journal spreads I completed while taking her day long class at CREATE.

 It was a lot of fun to use Nathalie's stencils and stamps!  Of course I ended up purchasing quite a few of her stencils and stamp sets as well.

We used a magazine cut out for this page.

 For this last spread Nathalie asked us to incorporate a magazine model into our page.  It was fun to add paint to this woman and really make her apart of my art journal spread.

I didn't realize how much I like elephants until I saw Nathalie's stencil.  They are big and powerful and beautiful.  Check out this recent post from Nathalie's blog where she shares two canvases she made using her elephant stencil.  I love these!

Flower Cards and a Birthday Card

A month or so ago I saw a card at Doodlebugs, my local scrapbooking and paper crafting store, that inspired me to create the following cards.  I didn't have the same set of stamps they had used on their sample card but I had fun nonetheless with a set of Altenew stamps.

I stamped the flowers with black archival ink and then colored them in with Inktense pencils.  Then I took a water brush and painted with water over the colored areas turning it into more of a painted/inky look.

Another card I made last week was a birthday card for my Dad.  I always struggle when I need a card for a man because all of my flowery and pretty stamps, stencils and dies are out of the question.  I decided to use some gelli printed papers and other papers that I have made to create kind of a collaged background.  I stuck with mostly blue, green, yellow and orange papers. I die cut the words "happy birthday" and "DAD" out of some sticky backed foil, adhered them to the card and it was done.   I was pleased with how this turned out!  Can you guess how old my Dad is??

An Art Quilt in my Favorite Colors

Recently I've been very inspired by the work of Jane LaFazio.  She makes some incredible art quilts where she combines fabric, paint, stitching, drawing and more.  Here is a link to her blog.  You can check out all the photos in her gallery.  She also makes beautiful machine needle felted quilts with lots of hand stitching and appliqué.  I took a day long class from her at CREATE in Seattle and learned all about machine needle felting.

There was also an article in my most recent, January/February 2015, edition of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine called Free-Style Patchwork by Linda Willis.  I basically followed her directions to make the following little art quilt which measures 10 1/2 inches by 11 inches.

 The middle piece of fabric (with the green stitching) was a piece of cotton muslin that I did some gelli printing on maybe 6 months ago.  It was really fun to incorporate that into this quilt.

A close up of the stitching and added sequins.

I loved how quickly this came together!  It's very different than traditional quilting where everything  has to be precisely measured and planned to make pieces fit together just so.  It's a different look and I want to make more!!  Thanks for reading!

Valentine's Cards

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I had a Valentine's card making frenzy!  I completely took over the kitchen table and went to town with stencils, distress inks, some paint, a few dies and stamps.  I created 7 different cards.  The first four that I'm showing here all include a bouquet of flowers that I die cut using my new Memory Box Blushing Bouquet craft die.

I used platinum Stickles on the center of these flowers.

I glued on pink sequins to the center of these flowers.

For the background on this card and the last one I used Wendy Vecchi's clear embossing paste.  I had anticipated it to go on clear and then I would add color to the paper . . . but there happened to be some pink- maybe Dylusions spray ink - that came off the stencil and mixed with the embossing paste as I was scraping it on with my palette knife through the stencil.   I decided I liked it and would use it!

Embossed and die cut hearts on some stamped and stenciled paper.

I added a little washi tape to this one.

A die cut doily and a die cut heart.

I adore the enamel dots that are available now in so many colors.  As you can see I had fun with some pink and red enamel dots on these last three cards.

Now I'm hard at work making a Birthday card for my Dad. 

Have a great Valentine's Day!!

Birthday Cards

Today's post features three different birthday cards I made between June of last year and January of last month. I really love making birthday cards!  Though I have a stash of ready made cards, I really like to create one especially for the birthday boy or girl.  It gives me one more excuse to have fun with my paints, inks, stencils, dies, papers and more.

This first card is a birthday card I created for my dear friend before she and I and another friend spent a day on Whidbey Island last June.  I really like the Sizzix trellis die in the background.  I'll have to pull that out and maybe incorporate it into a Valentine card.

This next card was a card I made in November for my daughter to give to a good friend of hers.  They are in Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble together and he plays both the clarinet and the saxophone.  I printed the pictures of the sax and clarinet off the internet and covered them in packing tape to give them a bit of a shine.

This last card was a card I made just a few weeks ago to send to my partner's mom for her 90th birthday.  He was visiting her for her birthday and I didn't get the card made before he left so I had to mail it.  This would have been no big deal but I decided a 90th birthday called for a very LARGE card.  This card measured about 8 inches by 12 inches and so had to be mailed in a large envelope.  I had so much fun using Gelli printed pieces of deli paper and creating those little ribbon wrapped 'presents' at the bottom.  I also had both of my daughters write a note/birthday wish to her - so on the inside there are 3 separate notes included.

I am currently working on Valentine's Cards and having so much fun!  

My big challenge is to come up with a birthday card for my Dad whose birthday is on the 16th of this month.  He likes to golf.  I think I need to invest in more golfing stamps.  Making a card for a man is always so much more difficult for me than making cards for women.  Any great ideas for manly, golf-related birthday cards??

Transfer Foil Fun!

Oh my goodness!  I am in love with transfer foil!  I guess it was everywhere at CHA (Craft and Hobby Association Show or Fair).  At least that's what I've heard.  I've never been.  A few weeks ago on her blog Julie Fei-Fan Balzer did a post everyday (Monday through Thursday) sharing different ways to use transfer foil.  Each day featured a different technique with it's own video.  Here's a link to the first of these posts.  She used some fun rainbow foil which I fell in love with.  I could not get my hands on this foil fast enough.  I ended up ordering some from Dharma Trading and it came this past Saturday, much to my delight.   Tim Holtz also has a video where he uses transfer foil along with Sticky Embossing Powder.  Here's a link to that video.  You can use transfer foil with stamps, stencils, masking tape and more.  Here are some photos of some of my experimenting and fun with transfer foils.

For this one, I used:
-a black craft tag
-a stencil
-a Top Boss Embossing stamp pad
-a Ranger Mini Ink blending tool
-Ranger Sticky Embossing Powder
-iCraft rainbow DecoFoil

For this one I used:
-a black craft tag
-a stencil
-rubber cement (allowed this to dry before laying foil down)
-iCraft rainbow DecoFoil left over from first tag

For this one I used:
- a craft tag
-a rubber stamp
-a Top Boss Embossing stamp pad
-Ranger Sticky Embossing Powder
-iCraft DecoFoil in turquoise

 Here's what the packages of DecoFoil look like.

And here's a feather that I made using a rubber stamp, Top Boss, and transfer foil.  I stuck this feather down on a page in my small art journal that I had played around with using NeoColors for the green background and then some new StencilGirl stencils and black paint over the top.  I always love a page with lots of green!

Hello!  Somehow almost 9 months have gone by since I last posted and shared some art.  Yikes!  I guess life just gets crazy at times.  After taking a break from my art over the summer, I started creating again in September.  Here are a few pictures from my small Dylusions art journal from the end of September.

The orange butterfly was die cut out of some gum packaging that I thought was too bright and fun to throw away.

Lots of fun with stencils, stamps, paint, washi tape and more!  

I have a goal to be back with a post in no less than one week.  Maybe even tomorrow!  We shall see!

Have a great afternoon!  It's pretty rainy here in the Pacific Northwest!