Tiny wonky houses......

May was a SUPER busy month, but I managed to slip in a fun class creating a canvas board mixed media artwork piece! Mixed media is not my 'forte", but I've made a few little 5x7 canvas boards that are in my ETSY SHOP HERE.  Most of my canvas art is fairly simple... I painted a piece of canvas and glued stuff on top using mod podge! This class, given by a new "friend" I've met here in Madras, was so much fun and I learned some new techniques. 

I took the class mainly to meet other "crafty ladies" in Madras. I NEED some like-minded gals to craft with and it was my fortune to get this gal's name, who taught the class, from another gal in a shop I walked into a few months ago, asking about classes. 

This class was the day before my nephew's wedding up in Portland, Oregon, and I wasn't going to go at first, as I had so much to do and was making him and his fiance some quilted pillows and a special wedding card (to be shown on a later post) and I felt really pressed for time! But I really really wanted to go, so I pushed myself and got the wedding gifts done by Friday and most of my stuff packed for our trip, just so I could go to the (all day) class. I'm so glad I did. I learned some really fun and new techniques (to me anyway) for mixed media (and met some new friends to boot!)

Here are a few techniques I learned:

Texturing (above)....... using stencil and texture paste and a little palet knife, you stencil designs onto the canvas which are raised... then paint over them with one or two colors. See the little dots in the sky?  

More texturing (above)......... I painted, then textured, then painted on top, and then used a brown waxy paste to make it look antiqued. I also learned to use little tiny words which are kind of embedded into the paint and outlined them with black pen. I swiped silver "Inka Gold" metal gloss paste over the words with my finger. The words are Tim Holtz cut-out words that I mod podged on over the paint.

Drawing around things with a pen (above)...... I pasted all of the shapes on using scrapbook paper that I tore, and then mod podged it down. After it was dry, I drew around most everything with a Pigma Micron pen to make things "pop". (I love things that pop, don't you?)!!  I had so much fun drawing little dotted lines and scallops and swirly bobs.

Using "Zendangle"...... see the little dangly things I drew above? Zendangle is a new technique I've just head about, a form of Zentangle, but you draw hanging hearts, stars, circles and shapes from a rod (in this case, the piece of back and pink scrapbook paper). I love how this looks on the little pink and blue house.

This is an 8x10 canvas and I put "texture" on it first (which I've never done before), using old tissue sewing patterns. The texture made the board kind of bumpy and old looking. I adhered it using mod podge.  After it was dry, I then painted the lower 2/3 with green and the upper third with blue for the sky. Then I did the stenciling with a circle stencil and texture paste, and some swirls (which you can't really see), to give it some raised areas.  

Then I did some stamping with black Staz On ink (see the right upper corner?) and in other areas using decorative music stamps and scrolls.  I tore scrapbook papers to build the little houses with their roofs and doors and chimneys. The gal who gave the class had all of the supplies so I had a blast picking through her scrapbook papers, paints, stencils and pastes, etc. I tried to be really spontaneous and not take too much time to pick out colors. All I knew was that I was making this for ME for my pink bedroom, wanted it mostly pink and green and whimsical!

Using Inka Gold Metal Gloss paint (silver)...... I had seen this used on YouTube alot.. and have always wanted to try it!

Wow is it gorgeous... I just smeared it on the edges of the canvas using my finger, and here and there on top of the texture, and over the little words at the bottom. I love it!  It comes in 18 colors and I want them all!

This butterfly was white chipboard and I found it in a pile of stuff and as an afterthought, stamped some black on it, but some lines and dots around the edge and smeared the Inka Gold silver paste on it. I really like how it looks fluttering above the house, although it IS kind of a giant compared to the house!

Can you see the greenery in between the houses and to the right? There is a little birdhouse on a post and on the right a tree with a blue window? Those were things I just tore out of a garden magazine I took with me to the class, and they were mod podged onto the canvas at some point. The pink door with asparagus I cut from a piece of scrapbook paper... who wouldn't want an asparagus door with a little green heart shaped doorknob?? Me!

I'm very happy with my little canvas and it's now hanging proudly on my pink bedroom wall. I do so love little quaint houses and some day want to make a quilt full of these whimsical and wonky houses.

Until next time.... stay cool! (Was 102 degrees here today).

HUMMINGBIRD AND ALPACA CARDS.

I am finally getting around to posting some more of my photo cards! I got busy with making some for Thanksgiving, took pictures of them, and then my camera broke and there was no way to load the pictures to my computer! To say the least, I was NOT a happy camper. After a few days of stewing about it, a light bulb went on in my head, and I realized I could scan the cards... duh.... 

NOTE: you don't like to read all of my explanations, please go on to the cards below.. if you just like looking at the pictures!  I tend to get too wordy.

Being a Close to My Heart consultant, I try to use mostly CTMH products, but I did not purchase any Thanksgiving or Fall stamps this year with sentiments.  Another problem... how do I add sentiments to my cards other than printing them out from my computer and cutting them up? 

So, I decided to use a nifty program called Smilebox which I absolutely love!  You can use some parts of it for free, or sign up on a monthly plan which is very inexpensive.  You can make all kinds of things, like greeting cards, invitations, calendars, collages, scrapbook pages, and little journals. What I love is that you can also send your creations by email, with music and photo slideshows! 

I could go on and on about Smilebox, but for the here and now, what I did was find some neat little Thanksgiving cards with sentiments I liked, made them by uploading the photos I wanted to use, printed them out in a small size, and then adhered them to my pre-purchased 5-7 cards.

Here are a few of the cards:

I finally got to use my neat hummingbird photo that I took last summer!  I love this sentiment and adhered the collage to some "other" pretty papers I had. I also used some sparkles to add a little bling.

For most of the cards, I used creamy cardstock on the inside with one of the stamps from the retired CTMH Acrylix Live Inspired stamp set. I used the Cocoa CTMH ink.

 Here's my Hem Your Blessings card using my own photos.

 

 Plant Your Blessings card:

These are all photos from my yard or my neighbor's yard. Smilebox has these neat layouts where you can add your own text, which I did in the middle.  I used some "other' papers for this card as it matched so well.

I stamped with the Smokey Plum inks from CTMH.

Here's a card using photos of our alpacas. We raised them for several years from 2004 to 2009. What cute critters!  This was a little Smilebox collage/card and I added my own sentiment, then mounted it on a black pre-purchased 5x7 card.

Though I was trying to keep these cards simple, I did add a couple of banner strips on the inside, to match the banner on the outside of the card.

Here's another cute alpaca card. No, the flowers aren't my added embellishments! They are in the Smilebox program. This was a little scrapbook layout and I just used one of the pages that I printed out to mount on this card. I used the "Life is Good" sentiment from the recent It's Your Day CTMH My Acrylix stamp set and added a couple of sparkles.

One more DARLING alpaca card!  I mounted this collage picture from Smilebox on some brown cardstock that I stamped with Cocoa ink from the CTMH August Stamp of the Month, Baroque Borders. Love that stamp set!

These cards were all fairly simple and fast to make.  Sometimes I just want something quick and easy and photo cards are the way to go!   

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO MAKE COMMENTS.. I LOVE COMMENTS. (you will need to click on the heading of this blog post to go to my actual blog, and then below the post, there is an area to make comments.)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL... and now on to Christmas............

FUN WITH COLLAGES.

I've had so much fun yesterday and today playing with collages! I discovered PicMonkey  where you can EASILY (and I mean VERY EASY!) make neat collages and edit photos.  I use lots of other programs too, but this one is so super fast and easy.  Here's a little collage I made which only took a couple of minutes:

I took these pictures the other day as I walked at McGregor Point in La Pine State Park (in Oregon) and boy was that a gorgeous trail!  I took over 100 pictures!

You can also change the color of the divider, the size, shape, and use a dropper to pick up any color in your photos for your collage dividers!  So cool!  I suppose this is only exciting for those who love playing with photos and taking pictures (which as you can tell, I do).

Here are some more:

My sister and me with her most DARLING Italian Greyhound "Zoie".... what a doll!  I used the dropper and picked up the color from the blanket so that the borders match it. 

There are all sorts of layouts... I chose these with 4 pictures as I'm thinking of doing some photo cards using these cute little collages.  I took these pictures from an old carousel that is located up in Bickleton, WA.  It was moved there from the old Oaks Park in Portland, Oregon many years ago and is preserved and in use to this day!

I like the "photo strip" collage.  I'm going to use these on some CTMH Die-cut Cards for another type of photo collage card.  These are flowers from my friend's garden from a couple of years ago. 

 Well... maybe you'll find a new "toy" in PicMonkey! I sure did and I'm having a blast making collages for Christmas gifts which I'll frame and maybe do some stamping and adding to.  I found another neat "toy" too, which I'll share with you soon!  I did actually get some cards made that I promised to share here, which I'll post in the next day or so.

HAPPY COLLAGING!