Language of Flowers ATCs

Alpha Stamps is hosting a Language of Flowers atc swap this month, so they asked the design team to create a few atcs. I am still having so much fun with the Little Darlings collage sheet that I decided to use a couple of the kids for the cards. Party hats, butterfly wings, and flowers. Everyone's happy, with the exception of that poor boy on the right with his sad tale of woe. Am I a bad person because he makes me laugh? Probably.

I created a Star book to display these cards. On Wednesday, I'll publish it along with a full tutorial. Come back and see me then!

Playing Around With Spellbinders' Media Mixáge Line

One of the perks of my job as a contractor for Craftster.org is that occasionally some of our wonderful sponsors send me products to try out. I love that! Recently, Spellbinders sent me products from their new line, Media Mixáge, which is tailored for the mixed media artist. Look at the goodies they sent! There's the new Artisan X-plorer Machine, a paper pack, some dies, texture plates, ICE resin, and round bezels and bezel dies. The wonderful thing about this line is that the dies cut shapes that fit exactly into the bezels. No awkward edges or ill fitting pieces here.

This was my first project using the largest bezel, which is about 2 1/4" across. I filled all these bezels with resin after adding the art and other elements.

Then, I got frisky and used a pig image from their paper pack. I added a little tutu and the words "oink (oink)" cut from an old dictionary. I love the little rubber pig at the top. I glued some magnets to the back of this so I can keep it on my fridge. You know, as a reminder: only one pig per household!

For my last (and favorite) project, I finally tackled the smallest of the bezels. I used a bee image from some Graphic 45 paper, some glitter, and a foam dot to raise the image of the bee and give the pendant some dimension. The bee charm is from Alpha Stamps.

Spellbinders sells packages of five of the smaller sized bezels. They also have them in other shapes, like hearts, triangles, and squares. I'm definitely going to have to make more of these for gifts for this Christmas. Thanks again, Spellbinders! To read more about how I made each of these projects, click here to go to the Craftster blog.

The Doubtful Guest

I love the works of Edward Gorey. I just participated in a Gorey swap on Craftster.org. It was harder than I thought it would be to think of things to make. I didn't want to try to do illustrations like his; he's definitely one of a kind. I finally settled on trying to recreate The Doubtful Guest, an interesting little fellow that popped up one day and unexpectedly moved in with family, creating chaos and discomfort. I made my doubtful guest out of paperclay. He's a little fatter than the original, but maybe that's because he made himself at home in the pantry and fridge.

 

Instead of trying to paint the texture from the drawing, I drew on the figure with a Sharpie. Actually, a couple of Sharpies; they tend to dry out and die fairly quickly when drawing on paperclay. I was lucky enough to have some black and white striped fabric that was perfect for his scarf. It's even got enough body to it to look like it's flowing out behind him. A painted trinket box from Michaels is the base. I really love the stark black and white: just like a Gorey illustration!

I don't work much with clay at all, but I am pretty happy with this Doubtful Guest. I hope my swap partner liked him as well. 

 

Billy and Tess at the Circus

Alpha Stamps came out with another great collage sheets containing vintage images of kids. I saw these two children standing together and decided to send them to the circus. Once they were there, they chose to dress like clowns. Billy and Tess: who knew?

I was happy I had an old sardine tin ready to use, because putting the hats on the kids made them too tall for an Altoids tin.

The sardine tin is a bit of an odd shape, and had a little metal lip around the opening. I gave that a scattering of gold glitter, then glued on some red and white baker's twine and surrounded it all with black pom poms. The image of the kids was colored with Copic markers. I added the polka dots to Tess' shirt and the stripes to her leggings with the marker. I also gave them some skin tone, but not on their faces because I wanted them to look like they had some white makeup on. Billy's hair was done with colored pencils before I cut the image out, and their flag was cut out from scrapbook paper.

The top medallion is fan-folded scrapbook paper, with Alphabet Baby Beads. I colored those beads with the Copics, too, because they were just too white to go with the rest of the tin. Because of the pom pom border, the tin wouldn't stand alone. I glued a thin wooden block onto the base for stability.

Have fun at the circus, kids!