Part of the Team!

I'm pleased to announced that I've been selected as one of the new Certfied Educators for Webster's Pages!  I'll still be teaching all my classes you've come to know and love, and now I'll also feature classes using products from Webster's Pages beautiful lines!  Hopefully, I'll have my first class sample ready within the next few weeks.  Stay tuned ...

Kraft Resist Technique

I love reading about the blog challenges out there, and I'm finally going to enter one.  This one is from Linda Ledbetter's blog.  The challenge was to use the Kraft Resist Technique from Tim Holtz's  A Compendium of Curiosities, Vol. 2 book.  I created this card for a Distress Ink demo I was doing at Michaels, and it actually only took less than a minute to create.  All I had to do was cut a piece of the paper, ink it, distress the edges and adhere it to a card base.  The saying was on the same sheet, and I cut cut it out, inked, distress & added the embellishments.  I attached it to the card base with Dimensionals from Stampin' Up!   The paper and the Distress Inks work wonderfully together to get quick, fabulous results!

Giveaway Winner!

My hubby was busy, so I just asked my son to help choose a winner for the Tim Holtz stamp set.  He thought I was ridiculous, and asked me "why don't you just use a random number selector?" "cause I don't know how,"  I answered.  "Duh, Mom, you just Google it."  I swear, that kid uses Google for everything!  Anyway, he was right!  He showed me how easy it was, and the winner is:

PlumTuckered's Paper Plays said...

I'm a new follower of your Blog (via email). I enjoyed reading all of the posts, especially the tag you made following Wendy's tutorial and the post about your adventure in making a dress form..can't wait to hear/read more about it :-)
Thank you for the chance to win that fabulous stamp set!!

 

Congratulations!  Please send me your address, and I'll get this right out to you!



CREATE NJ--Day 2 + a Giveaway!

I'm having a giveaway to win one of the new Tim Holtz stamp sets. Click here to get in on the fun.

Day 2 began with our first big class ... The Archivist's Relic with instructor, Leighanna Light.  This was the class I was most anxious for!  Here are two of Leighanna's books, that she sells for $125 & $150!

The materials list was a mile long, but the class was oh, so worth it! Working with the metal covers in this class started a little spark in me.  I only had a sheet of aluminum (not all the techniques will work on aluminum, so I was limited), so I wasn't too excited about my cover.  During class, I did pound it with a hammer, and then swiped some patina on it.  I finished the cover at home during a playdate with Andrea, and this is what I came up with:

Aaaaah!  Loved working with copper!  Wait til you hear about Day 3 classes!  But, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

We began by stamping designs on our large sheets of watercolor paper with gesso.  Then, using Adirondack re-inkers, we added color to the papers.  We used a ruler to rip them down to small pages.

I have this thing for earthy colors, and leaves and nature, so I kind of got carried away.  The nice lady at our table had some homemade papers with lots of grains & seeds in the fibers, and she shared some with us to add to our books.

It was so much fun playing with the colors ... adding water, drying, layering on more color.  It seemed to take forever to dry my pages with the heat gun!

After lunch, we sewed our pages into signatures and added the covers.

She gave us oversized pieces of canvas in case anyone messed up on the pages measurements.  A quick 'ripping' off (did I say quick?  I  meant struggle.  lol) the excess canvas, and then we glued our covers on.  We clamped the book, and then added some tiny screws.

I finally got to meet one of the 'other' Stephanie's from the All Things Tim group, Stephanie Navatski.  She's just delightful, and soooo talented!  The dolls she creates are just awesome!  You really should check out her blog here.

I got my photo op with our instructor, and we also got a pic with Stephanie.

After the class & dinner, we were excited about the 'artists faire'.  The instructors had booths with some of their artwork for sale, and a couple vendors were thrown in.  It was fun looking at all the art from the instructors, and getting a little shopping in!

Here's my haul:

Detailed pics:

Can you believe this whole package of honeycomb paper was only $4 bucks?!  I think I paid that much for one color online!  Ouch!

These are very cool--like mini Configurations boxes!

I had to buy a bag of  'old & rusty bits' to decorate my new book!

This was the most expensive package of tissues I ever bought, but my daughter loves this saying, and I wanted to support Stephanie's friend who had a booth  (I also bought the really cool ribbon from her, pictured above).

And, finally, I discovered Sept Apter this weekend.  I had to miss his Text Tiles class because we were taking the Banner Wrapped Beach Glass class, but I went into his classroom when ours was over to check it out.  A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!  So bummed I missed it, but he's actually going to teach it again in September here and I'm already signed up!  You have to be a member of their group to sign up, but it's no biggie to register.  His blog is here.  If you scroll down a few posts, you'll see the class info.

I bought one of his little books, and I felt like a stalker trying to get a good pic of him.

Very cool!

CREATE NJ--Day 1 + Giveaway

I'm having a giveaway to win one of the new Tim Holtz stamp sets.  Click here to get in on the fun.

Finally finished up some projects from Create NJ, so I guess I should start posting about it.  Andrea & I were signed up for 5 classes, and the 1st was on Wednesday night.  I couldn't wait to get down to Somerset for this artsy event, and what made it even more special was my birthday!

While checking in at the Doubletree, the girl surprised me by wishing me a happy birthday.  How sweet!  I found my friend, Eileen B., who I met on a couple of the Tim Holtz cruises, and chatted with her while waiting for Andrea to arrive.  When I got back to my room, Andrea was there, and so was this:

Talk about sweet!  I was thinking "boy, Doubletree really makes you feel special!"  Which they did, but actually, it was Andrea who arranged for this wonderful little surprise.  Gotta love her!

We had a quick dinner, and it was off to our first class, Banner Wrap Beach Glass.  I wasn't sure what we were going to do with the seaglass, but my hubby, Rick, and I spent many a weekend this year collecting the stuff so Andrea & I had plenty to play with.

Our instructor, Eve Sherman, was fabulous!  She had seaglass for us, but I brought down alot to share with the class.  Here are a few of her beautiful pendants:

I love seaglass, so deciding which piece to use was a difficult choice.

 I finally settled on this guy.

The technique was a little tricky at first (turns out she forgot to mention the little tricks to make it easier!  lol), but I just love my first piece.

 

Unfortunately, Eve forgot the little spacer beads she uses on the banners, so she had some Roman Glass for us to use instead of the crystals.  We'd never heard of this before ... turns out it's about 2,000 years old and comes from Afganistan(?).

Although I liked the Roman Glass, I thought my particular piece of seaglass was too small for these larger pieces, so instead of making a banner, I coiled up all my wires, and I love how it turned out!

We had plenty of time to make a 2nd piece, so I chose to use copper wire for my wrapping.  This one was much easier now that we knew the tricks!  I went with a much larger piece of seaglass so I could try the banner technique.  I also chose a fairly large piece of Roman Glass, layered with a smaller piece.

 

I've got to practice a bit more with this technique.  I didn't realize that we were supposed to 'swoop' our wire down across the glass.  Looks fine to me. I'm happy.

Eve was nice enough to take some pics of Andrea & I while we were busily working:

 There were only 6 of us in class!

Here's one of Andrea's pieces with mine:

The piece of seaglass she chose had some wire inside it!  It's cool to see the 'layered' effect of the wires.  She used copper wire, and added 5 pieces of Roman Glass on top.

Our classmates took some pics of us with teacher:

 This was the piece Eve was working on while teaching us:

 Three proud jewelry designers showing off our pieces!

 Pieces our classmates made:

Our first class was alot of fun.  When I got home and showed these to my Rick, he thought they were awesome!  He thinks I'm going to start cranking these out and making mega bucks!  lol  He's so cute!  He loves the fact that I'm using all the seaglass we've been hunting for the last few months!

Stamp Set Giveaway!

I scored 3 new sets of Tim Holtz's stamps, and by accident, I ordered two of the Mixed Media set.  So, I decided to have a giveaway!  All you have to do to win this set is:
1. Become a follower of my blog
2. Leave a comment on what your favorite post on my blog was.
That's it!  I don't know how everyone does this random generator thingy, so I'll just have my darling hubby Rick pick a name.  I'll give everyone until this weekend, so check back and I'll post the winner.

Fun Technique

Today I was playing around with a product I've had for several years, but rarely used.  I don't know why, because I've always had fun with it.  Anyways, it's called Stencil Paste by Dreamweaver.

It's a paste that's kind of like gritty pancake batter, and you apply it over a stencil with a spatula.  I was first introduced to this stuff while vending at a Breast Cancer Awareness Crop in Pennsylvania about 6 years ago.  The people in the booth next to mine were using it for a cool make 'n take.  I loved the stuff so much, I bought some then & there in white, black & silver.  Over the years, I've also found it in copper & gold.

So, getting back to my project, I was cruising my favorite blogs, and Wendy Vecchi has an awesome tutorial using it on her blog.  She's been cranking out lots of awesome new products the past few years, and the latest are her stencils!  Can't wait to get some!

I did my tag a little reverse of what Wendy did, because I thought it'd be easier to stamp without the dimensional paste in the way.

I started out by laying a base of color using Tattered Rose, Shabby Shutters, Stormy Sky & Rusty Hinge Distress Inks & a blending tool--I've been making a conscious effort to just grab any color in a particular family instead of reaching for my usual favorites--gotta give everybody a turn ya know.  Added some Vintage Photo around the edges too.

I then used a few of Tim's stamp sets:  Mixed Media over the background with Coffee Archival Ink; a saying from Words For Thought, and the hand from Steampunk w/Black Archival Ink.  All three of these are my most recent acquisitions from Joann's recent half-price sale--score!  I decided I have to use any new products I buy at least once before finding a home for them.

I laid the stencil over my tag and taped off any area I didn't want paste on with painter's tape.  I smeared on the paste (make sure you clean your stencil and spatula right away), dried the paste (remove stencil first!) with my heat gun, and then replaced the cleaned stencil over the dried paste.  Tip:  I left the painter's tape on the stencil (a Balzar Designs stencil from Crafter's Workshop) and just wiped the wet sponge over it.  I laid the clean, wet stencil w/tape on a towel and patted dry.  I was able to easily line up the pattern over my tag again.

I colored the paste using Dusty Concord Distress Ink, and stamped the stripes from Wendy's It's More Flower Art stamp set w/Black Archival Ink.  I did as Wendy suggested and added black journaling pen around the paste.  Good idea Wendy--just the right touch to make them pop!

I gotta be honest tho ... this wasn't my first try.  On the first tag, I thought I'd pull out my Tattered Angels spray mists to color the paste--not good.

Not only did I not get good color coverage, but the liquid ink seeped under the stencil.  I liked where this tag was going, so I started a new tag from scratch.

Gotta give hubby some stef time, so I'll try again with my chicken wire stencil and the silver paste soon.