Saturday Special - Collage, Collage, Collage

Hi Everyone, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I've been busy creating a lot of Collages this year. I thought I'd give you some in's and outs on how I create my backgrounds and Collage my pieces.

This Piece is in Honor of the Horrible Tragedy that Happened this week at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I just can't get it out of my mind.

Anywho I start out by collaging the pieces of Designer Paper. In this case I kept my colors soft and wintery looking.

Then I add some Acrylics paint to give it some color. Sometimes I add a lot and sometimes less to show more of the design of the paper.

I dry each layer of paint so I don't make mud when combining colors. 

Then I go to town doing my background.

I usually take a stencil at this point and spray some inks through the stencil.. I found out that if I don't like what is going on say it sprayed too much or I don't like the stencil at this point I can spray some water down and wipe off what I don't want on the substrate..  For instance when your spraying inks you can get this mist that comes down if your stencil wasn't close enough to the substrate.. I can wipe this off where I want to.

I heat set my stenciled inks. I found it makes them less water soluble.. They will not smudge as much.. They still smudge but just not as badly.

I add some stamping now both with inks and with acrylic paint.  I'll chose colors that go with my palette to blend the stamping in and also Black ink so it stands out. 

I use Archival Inks for this as if I want more layers it won't smudge.

At this point I might do some doodling on the substrate. Maybe some black acrylic circles, some marks, some borders .. Just get some doodling down..

another fun thing to do is to get a used toilet paper roll and put some paint on it and stamp with it..

The same with some corrugated cardboard.. There are so many household things around the house you can find to stamp with.

Now on this piece I cut out my trees using Designer Paper. I cut my first one out and then used that as a template. I could have die cut them also. I just didn't want my pieces for the tree to look totally perfect.

Glue down your trees and now to intergrate them into the piece.

First I will give some shadows to my trees by using a Pitt Pen.

Pitt Pens will smudge if your quick enough when adding the ink.

So quickly go around the edge and with one hand add your color and the other smudge it.

Then take some Black Acrylic Paint or you can also use a Black Pitt Pen and go around the edges again..

You don't want to be perfect about this. You want it to have that doodled look.

Now it's Rub on time.

I get some rub ons and randomly place them on my Tree's and on my Canvas..  I do the same with some stamping and mark making. 

Keep going until your trees are totally integrated into your Canvas..

I then printed out my Words and cut them up.

Now sometimes I might edge these pieces of paper with a Brown Distress Ink..

This time I adhered my words with Matt Medium and then took a Green Gelato and smudge it onto the paper with my finger.

Then I edged it with Black Acrylic Paint... Once again I don't want this to look perfect.

Time for more Mark Making on the trees and in the background until I felt I was finished.

and my Collaged Wintery Piece is done!

I'm sending this piece to Sandy Hook Elementary School

along with a card for my condolences...

If you would like to send a card to the school

here is the Address

Sandy Hook Elementary School, 12 Dickenson Drive, Sandy Hook, CT 06482. 

I Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year and please stay Safe..

Robyn

Friday Feature - enjoy the journey

Hi friends.  It's Melody with a Friday Feature for you.  With all the family things going on for Christmas, I didn't get a chance to sit down and create until today, so I'm a little late posting. 

My project today is a tag that could be attached to a gift.  I started with a pre-cut tag and swiped some distress stains onto it -- peacock feathers, ripe persimmon, and wild honey.  While that was drying I die cut a rosette from some pattern paper and put it together with hot glue.  I love how the geometric pattern on the paper changes when formed into the rosette. 

I stamped the tag with Dylusions stamp set, around the edge, in jet black archival ink and colored in the leaves with shabby shutters and crushed olive distress markers.  Then I added some vintage photo distress ink with a foam ink applicator and distressed the edges with a distressing tool. 

On a piece of ivory card stock, I stamped the sentiment from a Tim Holtz set, just thoughts, and cut it into a flag shape, adding vintage photo distress ink and distressing.  I attached this piece to a black flag with my tiny attacher. I pierced lines along the top and bottom. 

I used a strip of black card stock and punched several 7/8" circles, which I cut in half and added along a couple of the edges of the tag.  I decided to use the negative piece as well, tucked in behind the sentiment. 

To help the rosette stand out a bit, I cut two black squares and offset them behind the rosette.  Both the rosette and the sentiment piece are attached to the tag with dimensional foam tape. 

My tag just wasn't complete without a butterfly, so I dug one out of my stash of die cuts (Tim's mini butterflies movers & shapers die), and added it to my tag. 

The tie is made from black cord.

Many of the products used on this project can be found at Outlaw Women Scrapbook Emporium. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

A Place in Time Calendar by Graphic 45

Merry Christmas and Happy Hannakuh!
Today I'm sharing a calendar gift with you. I had such fun making it. I used Vintage Photo Distress Ink on all the paper edges and on the December Page I combined that with Evergreen Bough Distress Ink. I used the design team for Graphic45's blog for my inspiration.

Argghhh....I cut off my head and wore a too tight shirt...please watch the calendar instead of me!!!
You can order supplies from Outlaw Women Scrapbook Emporium.

Her are some photos of the pages!

Saturday Special - Easy Peasy Snowman Ornament

I'm still into creating Ornaments, can't stop now!.. Last year I bought Tim Holt'z Winter Wonder Die and never used it. So I got that out determined to use it this year. LOL  I grabbed some Grunge Board and some of Tim Holtz's Tissue Wrap - Composer - and glued it on to the Grunge Board. I cut out the Snowman with my Vagabond Machine. I cut it out again in Black to make the hat.

Now I went to town painting his nose and eyes. Then I cut out some Designer Paper for his scarf.. Hot glued a button onto the scarf and then gave it some shadows by painting around everything in Black Lines.. 

I then Used "Brushable Glue" by Sparkle and Sprinkle. I have had this glue for years and just love it when you want to use Glitter and there are details. I put some glue on his belly and a little on the middle of his face. I then sprinkled Dazzling Diamonds Glitter on him.. Then on the edges I again applied the Brushable Glue but this time I used Diamond Dust which is a bigger glitter. On His Hat I took my Snow Marker and added a touch of snow..

Easy Peasy!! This took all of about a half hour to do. I'll probably put a small hole in his hat and hang him on my tree..

Many of the Products I used I bought at Outlaw Women Scrapbook Emporium 

Give this a try, it's a lot of fun and real fast to make.

Have a Happy Holiday!!

Robyn

Friday Feature - blessings

Hi friends.  It's Melody, here with another Friday Feature for you.  Today I have a card that was part of my technique class yesterday.  The technique featured stamping on canvas. 

I started by stamping the green card base with a background stamp, victorian diamonds (Rubbernecker), with dark brown ink.  Every layer on the card is edged with vintage photo distress ink. 

At the bottom of the card is a piece of rust card stock, stamped with a sentiment from an older set from SU, graceful words. 

The die cut circle is part of a brown paper grocery bag, stamped with a Penny Black background, circles and lines. 

For the main image, I die cut a piece of canvas with mini labels movers & shapers (Tim Holtz/Sizzix).  I then stamped the leaf from natural beauty (SU) in jet black archival ink, holding the stamp against the canvas a bit longer than normal to make sure the ink settled into the fibers. 

My canvas is just yardage from the fabric department at my local Walmart, but you could also use sticky back canvas.  I heat set the ink with my heat gun to make sure it was dry. 

The next step was adding color.  I decided to try watercolor pencils (I'm using Inktense) to see how well they worked on canvas.  As you can see on the center leaf in the photo above, I just added a small amount of the pencil and then used a water brush to blend it and spread it out, being careful to stay within the lines. 

In the above closeup, you can see the color is more vivid when wet (bottom leaf) and fades a bit when it is dry (top leaf).  I dried it with my heat gun. 

I wanted to add some vintage photo ink along the edges, so I very carefully used a small sponge dauber and pounced on the ink rather than rubbing, so that the threads didn't fray.  Sometimes that would be OK, but on this piece, I didn't want fraying.  I again heat set the ink before attaching the canvas to my card with Fabri-Tac (Beacon Adhesives).   And here is my finished card. 

I'm really happy with how well the watercolor pencils worked on the canvas. I hope you get a chance to try this technique.  I would love to see what you make with it. 

Some of the products used can be found at Outlaw Women Scrapbook Emporium.  Thank you so much for stopping by. 

Poinsettia Tag

Sharing another tag I made using Tim Holtz dies, embossing folder, ink pads, paints and more.
Use Vagabond to die cut Tim's poinsettia bigz die with grungepaper. Color poinsettia with bottle and fire brick dabber paint, heat set to dry, squeeze a tiny bit of rock candy distress stickles on craft sheet, then use your finger to spread a thin film over the poinsettia and then heat set to dry.
Use distress ink to ink Tim's TF embossing folder, embossed with Vagabond or similar tool. Clean embossing folder with soap and water, dry throughly.
Merry Christmas was made with my digital craft cutter and then painted with bottle dabber paint. The star was painted with metallic white paint. Add the layers of poinsettia with glue, the center flower was painted with gold dabber and then clear dots were added to center with glossy accents.
Add red trim, bling from my stash of finding and old jewelry to finish my tag.
Find many of the supplies I used on this tag in club; http://ididitcreations.com/club/

Suburbia and Stamping Gear

Sharing a couple of fun things today!

Here are close ups of the stamping gear designs:

Does anyone remember Spirograph???

Check out Outlaw Women Scrapbook Emporium for inks, and Stamping Gear!