Life Outside the Fishbowl

"Ghosting"

Yesterday morning I spent some time going through Twitter and following links. Which led me to this cool idea on Paula Phillip's blog - ghosting - using gesso and Ranger's Color Washes. Check out her blog post - she's got a good video demonstration.

Basically, you start with a black gesso background. The paint is key. I tried it on Ranger's black tags and it didn't work. I should try a plain black paint background and see what happens....

Then, stencil and/or spray with Ranger Color Wash. After it's dry -- really dry -- you can go over the top with white gesso. The colorwash will come through the gesso.

Here's an art journal page with this technique.  Love how this turned out!

 

Only a Couple Days Left!

until Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas starts. Each year gets better and better!

And Tim did a fabulous video this year, which I'm reposting. Click the link above to check out Tim's blog -

Happy Thanksgiving

... to everyone. We've got our desserts done, stuffing ready to cook, onions prepped and turkey in the oven. We're packing up to drive over to Burke to share the day with friends. Hope you have a wonderful, pumpkin-pie filled day!

Card supplies - My Mind's Eye paper, Martha Stewart paper doily, Cornish Heritage Farms stamp, Ranger Archival Ink, ScraPerfect's Best Glue Ever and Perfect Crafting Pouch.

My Mind's Eye Layout

I did the Wednesday make-and-take layout for ScrapbooksPlus this week, using some lovely papers from Lost and Found 2 by My Mind's Eye. I thought the colors would be great for a Thanksgiving layout. The paper is accented by Prima flowers and some Tim Holtz mini leaves covered in gold Stickles & glitter.

Use the box for journaling, or a smaller photo. Don't have portrait photos? You can easily fit four landscape photos on the page.

Carve Your Own Stamps

The surface design class I took this fall really got me into stamp carving. We made small "inchie" sized stamps in class to use on our fabric. It's really addictive. So, with my trusty linoelum cutter and a pile of speedy cut by my side, I spent a bit of time this weekend making these:

Here's a bit from my class. If you're near Lorton, I'd certainly recommend the Workhouse Arts Center. I can't wait until my next class!

Some of the fabric I'm working on. I used several different hand-made stamps on the fabric in the upper left of the photo.

Stamps I carved used to make a background for an art journal page...

Swaps!

Swaps can be a lot of fun and stretch your creativity. I've done three with the All Things Tim yahoo group, and just finished one for Red Lead Paperworks.

Going green tags - I posted this on the ScraPerfect blog awhile back. The challenge was to recycle as much material as possible in constructing your tags. I started with fused plastic bags, added flowers cut from packing envelopes and book pages, die cuts from cardboard packaging and more.

Twilight - with the new movie coming out, I joined a tag swap and a charm swap. I'd shown a sneak for the tag, but since they're finally being mailed I can share the entire tag. Lots of Tim Holtz - and book pages. Rosettes, fragments, metal and tissue tape.

And, one of my favorite parts of the book - that was NOT in the movie. :(

And the charms in a pile, ready to mail....

Finally, I just sent these back to Red Lead for an ornament swap -

Little Yellow Bicycle Projects

We have the Hello Fall line from Little Yellow Bicycle for our November DT kit at ScrapbooksPlus. Here's a few pages I made with the kit -

Cathy Zielske had a free Halloween download on her blog. I really liked the simple lines and thought it'd be great to use with some of my Hipstamatic prints.  The LYB corregated leaves are fun and really cute!

And a multi-photo layout - with a bit of Tim Holtz tissue, KI Memories, and Echo Park accents.

And one more. I used the journaling card as a starting point for this layout. The woodgrain paper is Cosmo Cricket and the stamps are Hero Arts (except for the small sunburst - I think that's from Cocoa Daisy). I cut a couple of flowers from sticky back canvas then stamped them with the Hero Arts envelope pattern. Other elements - Sassafras Lass chipboard and Basic Grey sticker border.

Sparkle Girls

Don't you wish that you could have an invisible camera to capture all the funny things your kids do?

On the walk home from the bus stop on Friday, Rachel announced that she was in a band. The Sparkle Girls. Audrey started it and was the leader, Michelle was going to play drums and Rachel was going to play the recorder.

When she got home she started working on their theme song. Then she sang it for me....

I think she's been watching too much"My Little Pony" but man, I would've killed to have that on tape!