Woodland Fairy Lair

I'd originally planned to submit this to atcsforall monthly contest, under the theme "Woodland Creatures", but was told that it didn't fit the theme. I guess I always thought of fairies and gnomes as living in the woods (not to mention I've cut enough dang deer, bird and rabbit diecuts to last me til' June!) but oh well. At any rate, here's my girl!

It was a fairly simple card...I ran cardstock through on PTI wood embossing plate and used distress inks to color. Using the little masonite gothic window, I decided to take the easy way out and score the 'hinge' instead of attaching a real one. Mostly because I'm not very good with hinges and I doubt this will be used enough to compromise the paper. 

I used mounting tape to attach the glimmer paper to the back and more to attach the fairy. I used a few rhinestones and stickles on her, glued some moss, fake greenery and mushroom and it was DONE!

I'm off to play around with a circus and fabric atc. We've got this huge winter storm that's going to hit tonight (I'm in NC...our 'storm' constitutes a little ice and an inch of snow. They cancelled school for tomorrow at 2pm today-HAH!) so it's either stay in the craftroom and keep my sanity, or feed the kids enough benadryl to keep them sleeping til' Monday. ;)

Cheers!

ATC "Window Wishing" and Blawg Stalking

Let me just start by getting this out of my system.

I, Carmen, am a stalker.

Granted, I don't follow my fixations around town or do creepy things like sniff their mail, or whatever  real stalkers do, but I'm still a stalker.

Albeit, a very lazy and unmotivated stalker, but a stalker nonetheless.

 Well, maybe not a stalker...maybe more like the movie where the girl wanted to be the other girl and the next thing you know the scary girl was murdering people and wearing the other girl's Manolo's! (which was the REAL tragedy, there)

 Yeah! That's what I am! 

Fine...maybe with the exception of dressing like my obsession and the whole 'leaving the house to murder people' thing-I mean, really...I get my own groceries delivered, people!...But I could totally be that girl.

After reading what I've written so far, I've come to a disturbing conclusion. NO...not that I've put way too much study into the whole stalking/crazy life-stealing, Manolo-snatching, murdering girl thing...it's the fact that I'm really not even qualified to BE a good stalker! I don't have that kind of focus! I'm even MEDICATED to help me focus, and I STILL can't bring myself to do the whole 'be the best stalker you can be' thing! 

Sigh.

Well, if I can't do right as a stalker, I can at LEAST share her blog and technique for making this incredibly awesome ATC card.

Laura Carson at artfullymusing.blogspot.com did an incredible ATC card of a girl sitting in front of a transparent stained glass window. The tutorial is HERE. 

I've wanted to do this card for ages. But my printer wouldn't print on transparency film. So, I did what anyone would do! That's right...I went and bought a new printer. 

I found the stained glass online and downloaded it. Changing it from a jpg to pdf (easy..free programs all over to do it in seconds) I transferred it to MS Word and resized it to ATC measurements. Printing on transparency film, I touched up the color with Copics on the back (that's the rough part the image is printed on). 

Here's where the magic comes in...using Versamark and clear embossing powder, I covered the FRONT (the smooth part that you did NOT color/print on) and carefully heat embossed it. That's where you get the cool stained glass effect. (TY LAURA!!)

 I cut the frame from chipboard. Dresden on the sides and bottom and a brass finding at the top was tinted with copper gilder's paste, and the woman and swan were cut from collage sheets. I put white feathers on the swan, which totally breaks the whole ATC measurement rule if you care, which I don't. 

It's hard to see just how transparent this is so I placed it over some white cardstock to give you the idea of how awesome this project is. 

I'd like to offer my apologies to Laura...she's talented enough to deserve a first-rate stalker: something I'm just too lazy to be. But I will continue to stalk her blog and throw her name out as if we're BFF's, when talking to crafters of note, and hint around at a totally imaginary collaborative project that we may or may not be working on together. 

At the end of the day, I really feel that she knows that I totally respect and admire her talent and body of work. And that I'm grateful for all I've learned (which has been significantly more than EVERY class I've EVER paid to take...trust) for FREE from her. Thanks, Laura! 

And if she DOESN'T know that, well, at least it'll actually be HER signature on the restraining order!!! OMG!  ;)

Tim's Tags 2016 #2

This year, I swore to myself that I would be more daring, more original, more versatile and thinner. 

I realize I might as well as sworn to be a billionaire and President, as they're just as likely to happen as the other four.

But hey! I can always try!!

AND buy lottery tickets. 

I've never done Tim's tags in their entirety before...this year, I'm going for it. I'm really digging mixed media and want to incorporate a lot of it into the 3D work I'm currently NOT doing at the moment. And with that non-existent 3D work, I'd like to transfer the texture ideas to the jewelry that I'm also NOT making. By the end of this year, I suspect I'm going to be an absolute genius in all of these areas in which I'm doing nothing.

I'm telling you...I'm TOTALLY rocking the nothing this year!! 

Anyway...I cut self-adhesive foil into sections and attached it to the top and bottom of the tag. After running it through an embossing folder, I covered it with distress paint and wiped some off to show the pattern. I stamped the robot in versamark and used winter white antiquities ep. I covered it all in chalk and wiped it off. The best part was finding the gears and little compass to 'assemble' him with. His eyes are the little dew drops, of which I have a couple million.

Side note...dew drops are something you MUST be careful with. Not because the kids or pets might swallow a few, but because they secretly mate when you're not looking. Then, several weeks after you've purchased a small bottle of 100 or so, you have 10k of them spilling over the containers, onto the floor and ready to give you a heart attack when you vacuum over the suckers and they make a racket loud enough to make you think you've taken out a wall or something.

Sorry. Back on topic.

I found this lightweight chain in the trim dept. of Hobby Lobby and sloshed some black alcohol ink to damp down the bright silver and, using a gear and long brad, attached them to the top. That'll look cute on a kid's birthday gift, don't you think?? 

Dang. I totally JUST broke my vow to not lie. Because I would NEVER put this in the hands of a child who will throw (what ends up being about 20 bucks and 5-6 agonizing hours of work to put together, photo, upload and write about) in the trash.  No way. Not even my OWN kids will get something like this.

I finished off with some gears on the legs and taking a wooden embellie that I embossed with silver ep, I took the sentiment from Tim's Small talk book, cut it in half and flipped the word 'original' upside down. Because leaving it intact made me feel that it would look like I TOTALLY did NOT get the message to begin with.

I glued a small wrench charm to the edge and called it done.

And no...you cannot ask WHY I would have a wrench charm in my stash. Mostly because I have no idea. 

Although, I wouldn't put it past those %$&#*(&$( DEW DROPS having something to do with it.  

Tim's Tags 2016

I know that I'm the LAST person, it seems, to jump on the Tim's Tags train, but I am absolutely delighted that I did!

Mixed media freaked me out. There were just too many choices and the product selection was overwhelming. Not to mention that it was hard for me to just 'play'. I was ALWAYS feeling like I had to finish everything I started.

So, I grabbed a pack of cards, started back in 2008, and started making tags. Or the tag backgrounds, that is. Smartest thing I ever did. I had this background made by cutting adhesive backed foil and laying them on the tag. Using a ballpoint pen, a card and craft pick, I made 'rivets' and 'seams'. I washed it in black and used steel wool to lift most of it off.

I cut an extra set of fan blades (after using the embossing/chalk technique on the stamped image) and popped them up on mounting tape. Using 2 gears and the chain clip from Tim, I hung a fragment with a rub on. An extra long brad, also from Tim, and crystal accents held all of that in place.

I ordered the stamp set of robots and they should be here tomorrow. I'm totally seeing a second entry. I never thought I'd like the whole 'industrial' look...but I'm digging it!

Love, Anniversaries and OTHER things that go bump in the night...

Let me start by saying 'yes'...I know I posted two pictures. 

One has a white background and the other, black. My OCD couldn't use one to out-nitpick the other, so I just threw them both on here to just get on with it.

I had a piece of colored foil left over from by butterfly (see previous post) so I decided to make an atc card. 

Since Valentine's Day (or "VD-Day" as my 1st grader once yelled to me-do NOT see the previous posts for that story...I'd just soon forget that one) is right around the corner, I decided to use that for my theme. For my inspiration, well, that's going to take a little 'splainin'. 

I'm not much of a movie/TV watcher. Unless it's Outlander. Then I'll watch and rewatch (and watch a THIRD time, but just the dirty parts) until I get all that Alexander James Malcolm McKenzie Fraser out of my system. Great....I have no idea what I was talking about. Happens every time. I start talking about Jaime and Claire and then I'm out scratching at every rock I can find. Sigh.

Ok...movies/tv. Don't do them very often. But if one of my old faves comes on and I just happen to pause, I'll stay to the end. Which is what happened to me yesterday, and which I decided to use as the art inspiration for this Valentine's ATC.

The movie was Predator.

WHAT???? Predator is a GREAT movie!! It's has great dramatic tension, a truly terrifying villain, and it's the only movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger has a whole bunch of lines and delivers them as if he's a real actor!!! 

When the scary Predator thing hides in the trees like a chameleon, well...that's what my inspiration was for this ATC. I debossed the card, embossed the cupid, ran the archival ink over the cupid to highlight the embossing, cut another cupid in black and offset to give just a hint of shadow/separation and cut 'Love' in black 3x, glued together and coated with glossy accents. And it worked!!! 

Certainly NOT as cool as Predator, but I'm digging it. So there we are.

I'm sort of getting into this ATC thing, so I'll check in with you later. Unless Outlander is on...then it might be awhile. 

The Butterfly Effect

While visiting Dina's blawg here, I saw she got involved in a wonderful project called The Butterfly Effect...Be the change. 

Volunteers would be sent wooden butterflies to decorate and then hide...using clues and pictures posted to social media, others would find the butterfly and then have 250.00 donated to a charity of their choice. 

Go here www.butterflyeffectbethechange.com to volunteer or read more.

Those of you who know me, well..you KNEW there wasn't going to be any cutesey stuff going on with MY butterfly. The most important thing was that SOMETHING on this was gonna MOVE.

I embossed 2 long sheets of Tim Holtz's foil adhesive with different folders. Then I cut them in pieces and stuck them on at random. Then, I took an archival ink pad and ran it all over the front to highlight the embossed areas. A large piece of Dresden and a clock mechanism and BOOM! I was done. Well, almost...my OCD kicked in and I had to take strips of dresden and glue it around the outside edge to finish it off, but it came off well, I thought.

Yesterday, Jan 10th, was my drop date. I took my pictures and posted my clues and the thing was found within 12 hours. Hey...it's Burlington, NC, people...it's not like we have a lot to do.

Congrats to the person who found it and thanks to The Butterfly Effect...what a WONDERFUL group of people! Check them out! 

And while you're at it...BE THE CHANGE! 

The good change...not the one that serves as a cautionary tale. Like most of my changes. 

heh heh

FINAL DAY – ALL Paper Flowers & Leaves On Sale!

FINAL DAY – ALL Paper Flowers & Leaves On Sale!