Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Dirty Spies Down Under!!

Dirty Spies CASE of designer Susie W.'s design HERE

This was my second month in the Dirty Spies Challenge. The idea is to CASE a card by one of the Dirty Girls at Splitcoast. Now, I'm not going to give any more details because, just typing 'Dirty Girls' is good for about 10 thousand blog hits. I don't want to be greedy.

Susie is from Australia. Although we've never really talked about it, I really thinks she feels the same as I do about art, life and the fact we really need to change the spelling of her country to Aus-TRAIL-ia. It's how I've always pronounced it and I'm too old in my ways to do anything about it now. They just need to change it already.

I really love what Susie does with her art. She isn't afraid to put it all out there. I can't tell you how many projects I start, then trash because it looks too outlandish...even for ME. I see stamping/papercrafting as lots of flowers and cute bugs. Like ladybugs and whimsical spiders. No roaches or stink bugs. They're just not cute...even in whimsy.

But Susie does what she loves. Just like Kittie C., who was my first Dirty Spies CASE and one of my idols. They both do exactly what they love and it SHOWS!!! That's why I CASE them...it's not the techniques...Hell, I can CASE the best of them. But creating is where I draw a blank. I swear to you...I actually feel like I'm having panic attacks sometimes! A 4.25 x 5.5 inch card looks small, but it's a lot of white space to fill when you don't have a clue about what to do with it!

 I also love her humor. No one laughed harder (or probably even understood, except for me) how you can start with stamping and end up having to replace sheet rock. You're talking to someone who ended up in the ER, injured with STICKLES, for God's sake!! I wonder how many people actually thought about creating a brayer out of a plastic baggie and a link of frozen sausage? Except for ME? Huh??? Huh???? I'm telling you, she's funny!

At the end of the day, thank you, Susie! You're an awesome lady. I love your work and the person you are. There's a joy in creating art, no matter what medium you're in. And Susie has found it. I love her for that!

Recipe: I started with a whole lotta praying. I don't know if it helped the piece but it kept me from dissolving into histrionics. For now. But I embossed the tag (which I painted first with black acrylic) with a folder called 'Tiny Mosaic'. I ordered it off of Ebay from the UK. None to be found here.  I used versa mark all over the front and covered with clear embossing powder. I used a Julia Nutting stamp, which I fussy cut. I colored her skin in E21, her hair in some kind of yellow and used red, sparkle embossing powder on her head band. Tiny, red crystals formed her necklace and bracelet. I covered a sheet of cardstock in Ranger adhesive backed foil. I embossed half with a bird theme folder and a dot folder on the other half. I stamped the doll image on the back and cut it out, forming the skirt and, after stamping again, the top. I cut the pleats from the image on the stamp and just took thin slices out to separate them a bit, then put a bit of black tulle underneath. The Memory Box die on the left was cut from silver, mirror paper and the roses were from an MFT set.

4 comments:

  1. Holy Crap! You AMAZE me! That embossed dress is astounding! And with tulle underneath?!! How do you come up with these things?! Is this the kind of stuff you learn from CASE? I really need to try that. Where do I find some dirty girls? (Other than my mud-loving dog, as she's not that into paper crafts.)
    I can't wait for you to come play where I play, you are marvelously creative whether you know it or not!
    (This is my third attempt at posting a comment, it might be easier for me to just fly down there and tell you in person how awesome I think you are!)

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  2. YOWZA YOWZA YOWZA!!! Carmen, this Is breathtaking!! I must try to make this. Do you have printed instructions? Where can I find Dirty Girls (is it a stamp?) Love the detail, especially in her dress! Outstanding! XO

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  3. Dang, y'all!!! You make me feel great but NONE of this is my idea! At splitcoaststampers.com (BOTH of you need to hang out there! It's FREE!) they have a DT they call the 'Dirty Dozen'. Shortened to 'Dirty Girls'. I joined the fan club (25 bucks a year) and there's a few challenges open to fc members. One is to CASE (copy and share everything) a current or former Dirty Girl. This is a copy of a wonderful woman named Susie Williams. As to the dress, I just stamped the girl on the back of a piece of cardstock I had covered with tim holtz adhesive foil (or just take foil and a glue stick-just let it dry for several hours) then run it through your Big Shot or whatever you use in an embossing folder. Having the stamped image on the back to go by, I fussy cut the dress. The stamp had 'pleat' lines and instead of cutting straight up, I cut them as thin slivers to give dimension. Then some glossy accents under and some tulle shoved up there! I KNOW it looks involved but it LITERALLY took an hour. Again, I have to give credit to Susie for design...I copied her...but the dress idea has SO many possibilities! OH! I did take tim holtz distress acrylic and rubbed it over the foil, then wiped it off. Same with the top of the dress.

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