Stampaway Today!

Today I went to the Stampaway convention in Cincinnati. And I got the pleasure of seeing Dyan Reveley demo - and she was demoing in customers' journals if they purchased one of her journals at the Stampers Anonymous booth. I'd been thinking about getting one anyway and so she did a page in mine! She is such fun and I love her artwork. I actually remembered to snap photos as she worked - she said that I could. I think I'm gonna love working in this black paged journal. And I love her Dylusions paints.

 Here she is starting the page by brayering white Dylusions paint using this mini brayer (which I had to go back and buy, of course).

 She layered yellow paint - also brayered it on the page and then put the extra pages that she tore out of the journal face down on the craft sheet and rubbed the excess paint onto the page that way.

 Sometimes she used the edge of the brayer handle to scribble into the excess paint before pressing the page onto it - that was really cool!

 Here was how the pages looked at that stage.

 Then she pulled out a stencil and added more white using the Tim Holtz foam dauber tool.

 Then she used her coloring sheets and trimmed parts of them out and taped and  glued them on the page - using both double stick tape and a glue stick.

 The finished page! So cool!

These were the other two extra pages that she tore out. Lots of juicy layers. Not sure what I will do with them - but it was so cool to see how she did them.

Organizing Tips and Tricks

I have been organizing again - taking stock of all my supplies and making sure I have it all organized. I thought I'd share a tip I came up with for my stacking Distress Ink Pads. The thing that frustrated me with these is that when they are stacked you can't see what colors are what. So I got some file folder labels at the office supply store (see image, bottom left). For some reason they have a little black line at each end that marks the middle - which turns out to be really handy. I cut between the labels - so I only have one - then I ink it - which I initially did with the pad itself, but now am doing using the little foam applicators (upper right of photo) which works better and gives a better idea of the stamp pad color. After applying the color to the label I cut it in half with an x-acto knife then peel and stick to the edge of the stamp pad, wrapping it around the corner. I do the same on the other side with the second half – that way no matter how you pick up the pad you can see color on the side!

Now when they are stacked I can totally see what colors are what! Very handy and very easy to see. I suppose if I wanted to I could write the color names on, but I don't find that necessary.

I used another similar trick with my Distress Paints and Stain bottles. I pile them up in clear shoe boxes but then can't easily tell them apart when I want to grab one. So I paint (or stain) some white card stock, let it dry and then punch it out with the proper sized punch - I think the 3/4" sized one is what worked for this. Then I glue it to the cap. Voilá! Easy to sort them out quickly when I need them. And actually the colors are ever so slightly more accurate because I'm seeing the actual paint or stain color – or at least how it looks on white paper. Handy.

And for my punches - when I'm out shopping I can seldom recall which sizes I already have at home and which size I was wanting to add to my collection, which is always growing. So I cut some card stock (I chose black) in half - 5.5" x 8.5" - and then punched out of lavender paper so it would show up nicely, yet is light enough that I could write notes on it to indicate sizes and companies of the different punches. This is a handy size I can carry with me when out shopping or attending a stamping convention. I think I have a 3-ring binder this size I could put this into, too.


What do you do to organize your craft supplies that you find handy? I'd love to hear!

Back in the Saddle Again (so to speak)

After quite a long hiatus here.... life's been busy and I just haven't taken time out to post the many things I've been working on... I am making a comeback and want to make a greater effort to keep you up on what I'm working on and experimenting with. Lately it's been Gelli plate printing and I'll post some of my samples. THIS time around I'm finding that I'm actually putting some of the prints to use in my card making and I'm quite pleased with the results! I think they give a bit of a different look to my usual cards... and that's great! If you have questions, leave me a comment and I'll try to answer it. Thanks for stopping by!

Let's make a Deal! What's behind Curtain #3? - Day 16

Did someone yesterday mention Alice? Well here she is! She's a stamp from a set that Sharon and I had made quite a long while ago - with that hat punch added on her head. The swirly stamp is a favorite Magenta stamp of mine and the little creepy skull baby thing is one of Sharon's that I just love - and can never remember what company it's from! It's so wonderfully creepy-weird. The words were also from the Alice set that Sharon and I concocted and the tiny tag is from a paper set I got at a convention last year from some really cool loose papers that we picked out - they had some really cool Alice Halloween and Wizard of Oz Halloween papers and tags that I just loved - maybe it was Paper Crazy? Sharon? You remember the name of the booth?

(update) I *may* have to turn the security code thingy back on - I'm starting to get spam bots leaving lengthy comments that I have to delete. I will see if they persist before turning it back on - I know it's a pain, though I see several other Wicked Bloggers are continuing to use it, so we will see if it proves to be necessary.

More of my NaNoJouMo Journal Pages

Journal page Nov. 6- Being a Woman

Musings on how I feel about being female. Funny that since making this I got a bit outraged at how the news is headlining stories about the female police officer that stopped the shooter at Ft. Hood army base as "Unexpected Hero." Like I said I'm no feminist, but why should it be SO unexpected that the hero who stopped the guy was a woman? If it was a guy who was 5'2" tall would THAT be so unexpected? I mean really! That's the stuff I think is really uncalled for and the media doesn't even seem to realize they are doing it. Just give the lady the same credit they would give ANY police officer who did what they would be doing in the line of duty.
Ah well... we still aren't quite there yet with respect to equality but for good or for ill we have differences and they aren't all bad.

NaNoJouMo continues

I've kept up so far, posting the first 3 days worth of my journal entries (I spiffed up the first page a little since the last post, some of it faded a bit more than I had hoped). So far I am enjoying doing this - I hope I can keep it up all month... which is a tall order for me. It's easy to do for a few days, but I really do go in spurts and doing anything in a constant, disciplined manner is hard for me on a regular basis. This will get particularly tricky on days when I work from 8 a.m. through 10 p.m. Not sure how that will work out. But the effort is worth at any rate, and when I do set goals for myself I can be fairly dogged (some might say obsessive?) in meeting them. So we will see how I do... the main thing though is to have fun with it. So far I have!

New Journal Pages

My friend, Sharon, and I have been working and working on journal pages and having a great time! First I created lots of background pages in an altered book I decided to work on. Then I added pages as ideas came to me. Several ideas came from Visual Chronicles book by LInda Woods & Karne DInino. We have a lot of reference books on journaling. Another one I like is by Lynn Perrella, Artists Journals & Sketchbooks. I'm really happy with my results so far. We still have a few more days to play so it will be fun to see what we come up with!

the start of a new journal

The start of a new journal... on kromekote (shiny) white card stock... using stamp pads, paint, rubber stamps, handwriting and what ever comes to mind. I decided to go back toward my comfort zone so I would actually do more stuff. I can toss in new things as I go I figure, but this way I'm more likely to actually work on it more often. (or so I hope). So far I'm pretty pleased, I cranked these out pretty quickly last night. I think I was really ready to make some art.