Today's tutorial...chalking

Today I am demonstrating the use of chalks for images that have been printed off on computer paper or you can stamp on paper and use this same technique.
Chalks are found in array of colours today with the paper craft industry booming and giving artists another medium to play with. I have several colours to match papers and depending on the effect I want.
So enough about that let's get started.
Gather some supplies, chalks, some q-tips or cotton buds as some of my UK friends call them, a white eraser, cardstock and some images and some paper towels.
Here I went ahead and applied some images and stamped a grouping of birds in black on blue cardstock. you can either use a lightly coloured printed image or even black and whites work well with chalks.


Below I have decided on the chalk colour I am using for this little girl image. She is on a tan coloured piece of paper so I want to add a shadow behind her and around her head a bit. Now chalks do come with applicators much like eyeshadows but I like getting my fingers right in there plus I actually feel like I have more control where I want to put the chalk.So get a lot of chalk on your finger and lets move on. A little tip I suggest, if you glued your image on using a glue stick or glue from a container, make sure the glue is good and dry or the chalk will lay in that wet spot and sort of clump, your eye will catch that if you don't know to do that.

Now start with going from the image outward, why you ask? This is because you won't have a hard line where your chalk begins from the outside in. As you apply the chalk move your finger in a circular motion. Notice I am getting chalk on her head? that is ok right now, don't worry that's where the white eraser comes in handy, keep rubbing chalk where you want it and even deepen it if it is not what you are liking. This chalk looks orange here but it is actually a honey brown.

Now that you have the area chalked and are happy with it take you white eraser and just gently remove the chalk, I removed it from her hair and I went around the outside and softly blended the chalk making it look more subtle.

Now here, the little girls dress is actually a very pale yellow but lets make it more yellow. Load up that finger again, just wash off the chalk from your fingers to move onto other colours, or use another finger if you plan to use that colour previoulsy used. Rub that chalk in and if you want it darker then keep rubbing it into the paper. Again clean up with white eraser and just give the image a little blow to remove any unwanted chalk bits.

Below here is the same image but reversed on the card and I wanted just to show you the variations of colours you can use. I used a dark purple on the pink card all around the image then her little dress I wanted to use this pretty lime green colour.

There really isn't any rocket science to this, you can even use chalks wet but I personally rather use mine dry.

Just have fun, be creative, just changing a simple colour makes it look like a whole new image. This technique is great for ATC's and inchies too or regular greeting cards.

Now here I am showing you a version of chalking but using stamped images.

I love this grouping of birds and so lets make that image stand out a bit so it looks like it is coming off the paper.

Again do the above method using chalks, this time just chalk either the left hand side or right hand side of all the birds, this is my painting experience coming out, in painting you have a shadow side and a light side. or where the light reflects from one side. I am going to show you here with chalk and a tiny bit of white ink.

Here I have chosen to use a dark blue chalk against the light blue background and chalk around the birds on the right hand side facing you. Here I used a q-tip to lay down the colour because the space between the birds is rather small.

Now rub that chaclk and notice how you see a shadow forming??? at this point make this darker if you like or leave as is. I also applied a bit of chalk below the branch the birds are sitting on.

Next, tap a clean dry q-tip into some white ink and then gently remove some of that ink on a paper towel.

Next on the left hand side of the birds, just dab a bit of white where their wing might be, the one side of their head or on their tail and skip a bit of white across the branch but not a solid line.

That's it, you've just created a chalked image, wasnt' that easy?

If you would like to show me some of your cards just email me.

Love to see them.

Thanks for dropping by.

May the bell toll for them

I am a huge boxing and MMA and UFC fan. I started watching boxing as a kid with my dad, we would sit on the couch together and watch fights Saturday afternoons. Dad would sit there taking every punch in, every time an opponent got hit dad would take it too. LOL
Anyways I am saddened by 2 boxers that had their lives shortened this past couple weeks. Artruo Gatti and recently Vernon Forrest. These 2 boxers I have watched many times as I have seen a lot of fights. Such tagic endings to their lives but their names will live on for a very long time.

A big surprise...

Ok there is a little story I have to tell you about this " little surprise" that JB springs on me over a week ago Sunday. We are at Lowe's and shopping for a few things and out of the blue he says " there is a suprise for you next Saturday". Hmmm my birthday is over, it's summer time, is someone coming? I have to clean the house top to bottom??? is his mom taking me for my late birthday dinner that she suggested a few weeks ago?? So thinking it was the dinner I said oh I know what it is...it's the fish and chip dinner your mom wants to take me for since she couldn't think what to do for my birthday. (I am a very picky person when it comes to fish, so if it is lightly battered not too greasy then I can handle it, but to eat fish that tastes really fishy?? forget it. Anyways so I had myself convinced even up to Saturday that we were going for lunch at Kelsey's. We live in the country so we go the usual way into town, even right up to the traffic lights in town to but we are in the wrong turning lane...so I said hmmm so are we going to the Boathouse (our favourite F&Cplace). So JB turns into the parking lot of a supermarket and he says what is going on over there? Hmmm I look left and I see a bunch of balloons, some people walking around, the radio station is there...then I see some Pittsburgh Penguin t-shirts.
Well I still do not know what is going on....then we get out of the truck and I walk with him towards this covered area but roped off and it is the .......STANLEY CUP....
One of the players..Matt Cook is from Stirling Ontario, north of Belleville and it was his turn to have the cup...so as a charity function he brought the cup to Belleville and was signing a photo of himself and autographed for 5.00 and all the money was going towards his charity that he sponsors. Anyways I am a true Leaf fan but hey I have never seen the cup, we did not line up to see it up close for photos. JB got a shot of me and I the same for him but behind the ropes. I did get close enough to see the names on the cup but it was tightly secured. The line up was very long and it was going to be hours before you would get close to it...the sun was beating down and I was needing food.
Anways this is the actual Stanley cup that is raised by the players on the ice. I may never see it in real life again unless I see the real one at the Hockey Hall of Fame. This was truly a great surprise. JB is such a sweet guy. :) xo
That's me in the back with the glasses, heads were getting in the way and well you had to dodge to get yourself in the pic, but it was fun.

Inkurable Stamper's July Challenge entry

I don't do many challenges online but at Inkurable Stampers I do. I believe it helps me to expand my creativity and to break away from the usual cut and pasting on ATC's in this particular challenge.

This month's challenge is to alter a playing card. Well I love doing that and I pondered on many ideas and sought some inspiration but nothing really jumped out at me.
One day I said lets play with Shrinky Dink paper or Shrink plastic.
So I first picked my playing card that I wanted to use. In this case the King of Spades.
Then I cut a piece of blue cardstock and stamped it with bubble wrap with Tim Holtz distress ink in Tea Dye and also inked the edges for a suble look. Then I carefully positioned the top layer over the playing card and drew a small window to view just the face of the king. Then I carefully cut a door making sure I just had the middle section of the playing card showing when the door was open. I used a piece of drywall tape and placed it over the window, then cut a door size piece of paper and cut out another window and placed and glued it over the entire door inside the card. Now everything is concealed.
Next I took an Inkadinkado flourish stamp and stamped in black on Shrink Plastic, making four stamps in black and I drew 3 spades and coloured them in with Sharpie permanent black marker. I cut all the pieces out carefully then shrunk them with my heat gun, great tool that is.
Then I made sure while the shirnk plastic was still warm (and do NOT burn yourself) I flattened them with an eraser, sometimes the shrink plastic gets a bit distorted so to lay flat I make sure while it is warm I flatten it.
Then I positioned all the pieces on and glued them carefully and let dry. I then inked the edges just a bit with black ink just to give it a little more oomph.
This is called the House of Spades.
I hope I win, but, if I don't, it was fun trying.

Back to ART

The Wall

emboss resist using acrylic paints

Reach for the Stars

stamping and painting with bleach
Dream
stamping with bleach, inked edges

Fused ART

fused plastic, painted, sewn, inked, inchie painted with Twinkling H20's

(sorry the pic is darker than it shows)

Now that things are starting to get back to normal if you can call it that I finally was able to upload some ATC's I have been working on. These will be up for trade at the ATC for beginners Yahoo group I am a Moderator for.

I recently purchased a book by Bernie Berlin who lists many easy to do techniques and has lots of inspiration. I love techniques so here you will see some of my experiments. I apologize for some of the quality of the pics, I used my scanner instead of my camera, sometimes scans don't quite get as good a quality. If you see a card you might like to have just email me, I love to trade.

Well this is it for now.

Thanks for dropping by and I should be able to do some tutorials again soon.

Off to the land of nod.

ZZZZZZ

What a week or two

Well most of you know why I was not around online, my computer decided to suddenly end it's electronic life and of course with little back up means I had to bite the bullet and get a new system. I tried to use my old Windows 98 system but of course the browser was older and many of my groups and sites I wanted to visit would not support them.
I am finally back up and running and trying to get used to my new system, getting contacts back into my address book, I lost all my favourite sites, hopefully I will be able to retrieve some momentos pics off my old hard drive before it meets it's eternal end.
On the weekend we needed to clean our front window, now this job would normally take less than 2 hours. Since I can't reach up to things I volunteered to clean the panes when JB took them apart while he cleaned the panes that were mounted on the window. So a job that was only to take a couple hours like I said ended up being a 5 plus hour job. An old house doesn't mean everything goes back where it is supposed to. With nerves fried and a husband who was holding his temper in check and I mean really holding it, I could see he was about to blow like a volcano, we did finally get it back in place.
Ok that was a job much needed doing and we now can see out the window.
Sunday we go out and do a bit of shopping, we wanted to have a little bistro set on our deck we put on the side of the house last summer. We already had the umbrella
but we wanted to get a nice little cafe style set. Ok we find the set, bring it home, start putting it together and between the threat of rain we managed to get it all done and JB sits in his chair and there is a crack in the back part of the chair, in the metal of all places. So temper in check he held up pretty good.
I said I would take the chair back to the store and see if we could just exchange the chair. Well that all worked out fine.
Monday, Lesley goes for her yearly mammogram and ultrasound and what should have been maybe an hour, my appt was at 10 am and I didn't get in till well after 10:30, then the ultrasound tech was taking forever to do her thing and I wasn't finished until 12:30. Something wrong with that picture.
Plus shopping for a computer only to find out my existing flat screen monitor decided to die as well so back to the computer store to get my new monitor plus take back my new hard drive to have them look to see why I couldn't connect online.
Then to my surprise I am all hooked up finally and Lesley is a happy camper.
My brother is doing relatively well.
What a couple of weeks.
Did I get much accomplished you ask with all this down time? well I did play a bit with Shrinky Dink plastic, made a couple ATC's but with no means to print or get graphics was really trying my nerves.
With hand surgery looming the end of August I must try to get in the painting groove ahead of time for my fall show that I do every November. I sure hope I get my butt in gear here soon or it may not happen. I do work under pressure but not to the point of late night hours.
To those of you who kept in touch via phone and the odd possible email I thank you, you know who you are.
Well I yammered on enough.

Framed inchies and fused plastic

Hello my fellow bloggers, well today I have some things to show you. I had a brainfart the other day while making inchies and I decided to get some paper punches out and play, well I made inchie frames. Ohhhh aren't they nice? I couldn't stop making them, one turned into 2 then 3 and before I knew it I had a pile of them. The ones here are mostly black but I have others punched, I just think these little gems look so nice framed and I have yet to see any out there, well someone probably has them just I haven't seen any. I have various backgrounds I do as well, watercolours, Twinkling H20's, emboss resist, packing tape transfer on the feet inchies, rain drops made out of glue stick glue, and a few more of my trademark secrets.

And here is this amazing piece of art called, fused plastic. In case you are not familiar and I was not until the other day when Jen posted hers and showed us and said it was made from recycled plastic shopping bags. HUH??? well I couldn't wait for her to do the tutorial and another girl Tammy said she found a blog with it on there. So I cut up plastic shopping bags, heated with an iron, and this fused all the plastic together. I then sprayed a clear acrylic spray on it so the acrylic paint had a tooth surface to stick to. Then I proceeded to paint, stamp, then stitched this all on my machine with black zigzag stitching. Wow, I have 2 more that I made for an art journal I am working on.
Well Jen, thanks for the idea, I couldn't wait, I am a stinker that way. Mother told me I was impatient and you know what, she was right!

Movie Star inchies

Hi everyone, first of all thank you for all the prayers and well wishes concerning my brother. He is home now and has to stay off work for 2 weeks. He is not one to stay still too long but after this episode I think it was a reality check at the 10th degree. He is really tired and just going to take it easy and let his body heal. Lil sis will be checking up on him regularly.

Well here are my 10 movie star inchies that I have made for the July inchie swap at Addicted to Inchies

these actors and actresses are some of my favs. Of course Clint is the most charming and sexy of them all, that rough beard, soft talk, fiery eyes. Ok enough said about him, makes one a little frisky.... Our hostess will gather all the inchies from everyone that wants to be in the swap then she will put them all in a bowl or somehow mix them up then give 10 back to each of us. Depending on how many are involved in the swap depends on how many of your own inchies you may get back, which really doesn't matter to me, I like all of them.

Each inchie has a star somewhere on the square, either behind the actor or in front. Some of them even have a real negative film strip on it. I knew I didn't throw things away for a reason, you never can tell when you need scraps and bits.

That's it for today.

Update on my brother

I am so relieved although serious enough as it is, my brother had a blockage in his main artery and if he had ignored the symptoms it would have been far more serious. After a 4 hour angiogram they found the blockage and did the angioplasty right then and there. If all goes well tomorrow he will be home.
Thank the Lord for his recovery.

Scary bikers

Well here we are, yesterday was a beauty day and we sported our leathers and took off to the Trenton Air show. As you can see in the background, as JB took the pic he "had" to fit the bike in.
The air show has not been to Trenton in almost 10 years and they finally decided to do one.
It was rather interesting this year, seemed to be a lot of delays in the air maneuvers but we had a very neat area that we parked ourselves to watch it. We were settled on a road at the end of the runway. This road is a residential area but there are stretches where there are no houses. We were in fine company with other bikers so it was quite enjoyable. It amazes me the "brotherhood" that is amongst the bikers, JB left me for a bit in amongst all these bikes and before I knew it the owners came to sit on their bikes which were parked in a nice shady area and it was like I was surrounded by a group to protect me. I haven't once felt intimidated by them. Most bikers are everyday individuals that enjoy to ride the open air blowing in your face, bugs bouncing off your face in the wind, ouchie, and just enjoying that rumble under your butt. Yeah I know sounds sick doesn't it? Well to those who have never ridden, go for a ride on one and I can guarantee you will enjoy it.
I am still waiting to hear on word of my brother's angiogram and whether they had to do a angioplasty so I won't be here long.
Have a great day everyone and be good to one another.

update on my ATC's from yesterday

Well I am down to 1 card left, He's got the whole world in His hands. It just amazes me how quickly these little gems go.
Thank you to the girls who traded with me.

Bubble wrap backgrounds

Hi bloggers, well today was a bit of a scary day, my older brother is in hospital with heart problems and it might be a blockage. We always think these things happen to much older people when we are young, then all of a sudden we are older and things start happening to us and the people we love. Anyways I sure hope they find out what is wrong and bro will be back on his feet before I finish this tut.
Speaking of this tut, I got all the pics done, put them on disc then had a problem with the disc, so back to putting onto another disc and here we are.
Lets begin.....
Ok you need bubble wrap, not a large piece but big enough to work on your card stock (C/S), a paint brush, paint to co-ordinate with your paper colour, water container to clean brush, paper towel, coloured C/S and or ink pad.

For the painters that want to do this make sure you put a small puddle on a palette or plastic lid , dampen your brush but squeeze as much water out of it on the paper towel, you just want the paint to glide smoothly on the bubble wrap and not dripping or this will cause a clumpy mess and too wet for the paper. Now smear the paint across the bubble wrap as shown below and cover most of the wrap.

Now, press the bubble wrap onto your paper, you don't need a lot of pressure.

Lift the bubble wrap off and see what happens, you now have a nice texture of circles on your paper. You can't tell here but I have a green paper then I used a Folkart metallic green paint. If you are satisfied with the amount of texture and want to leave some areas not covered on your C/S then you are done. How easy was that?

For those that like to use ink, you pretty much do the same thing. Here I have a nice light blue paper and thought some Tim Holtz distress ink in Tea Dye would look nice and aged.

Press the pad on the bubble wrap. (I used a fresh piece for the ink, do not mix, you can wash your bubble wrap off between colours or mediums) .

When the bubble wrap is covered with your ink, lay it on your paper and then lift.

So here is some blue paper with some tea dye ink, below you will see what I did with it.

And here I have done different colours of ink, paint, on various colours of C/S. Mix and match if you like. Use more than one colour and overlap. Just have fun with it. Make some up ahead of time so you have some to play with for cards, ATC's, inchies or a layout for your scrapbook.

And here is the ATC I made using the blue and Tea Dye Distress Ink. I wondered after I did this if anyone might be offended with this card and I certainly did not intend for that. When titles come into my head I pretty much look at my art then say that's it.

Thanks for coming to see the bubble wrap tut and leave me a comment or show me what you did with yours.

The Gallery is open

Well I don't have a gallery as such but I thought I would share some of my recently made ATC's.
In early May a group of us fellow painters met for our 2nd reunion, we all met online and have formed friendships that you would not believe. Another story another day.....well when I was in Pittsburgh one of my friend's husband comes to me with one of these small easels in his hand and said "are you looking for these?" or something to that effect. Well of course I was just all over it, not him the idea. Anyways I proceeded to an area for ATC's, for those of you who are new to these or don't have any idea what they are, they are small pieces of art that are traded, or exchanged between artists. No money is changed hands, there are several groups out there that you can join and it is a wonderful way to meet people, exchange ideas, techniques and just ooh and ahhh over these little masterpieces. Some of them you would not believe. I have a binder full of these gems and I love looking at them. So back to the easels, I have a corner shelf in my living room and every now and again I put a new piece of art on each easel. JB always knows when I change them, today I have put up 2 of these 5 I am about to show you. These cards do have a regulation size of 2 1/2"x 3 1/2", the same as a regular size playing card.
So without further ado I will show and explain a little about each then I am off to upload them to my ATC for beginners and see who haggles for what. These gals are crazy. Before you know it your email is coming in with wanna Trade? in the subject line. You sometimes have to read what time what email comes in so the first one asking gets the card. I tell you it is like going to an auction and wanting that item, the haggling and bartering and I will make you this or tell me what you want me to make is amazing. He he and all over a little piece of artwork.




So here are my 2 fav at least for today, the one on the left is "He's got the whole world in His hand", fitting I think. I coloured on some C/S with watercolour pencils, let dry, then rubbed some chalks with my fingers around the edges , added some Folkart Metallic Periot paint, the hand is a packing tape transfer and the world is a graphic I printed off from a program.
The one of the right is called "It's raining again", what you mean like today??? yup. I did the same sort of idea using the watercolour pencils, when dry I really rubbed the chalk to blend the colours a bit more. I used a corner punch and inked that so you could see the bit of embossing, then the rain drops?????? how did I do those you ask??? HOT glue, I put some hot clear glue from my glue gun on an acrylic block, let it cool then just glued them on the umbrella. I just love how this one turned out. I also have an inchie with this same image and small glue raindrops too.

Below is my "One Two buckle my shoe" remember that one? Yes I know that was quite a while ago now but we won't talk about that today will we??? I have been visiting a blog by Trish Bee from the UK and she is the one who I am also doing a workshop for the ABC Altered ART journal. Anyways, she did this tut for shredded paper and I just love how this turned out. You glue all this shredded paper onto a piece of C/S. Let it all dry, then I used oil pastels and really rubbed in the colours into the nook and crannies of the paper, then I take a tissue or paper towel and start rubbing some of the intense colour off of the paper but only on the surface. Some of the pastel colour still remains on the paper like a dye but if you take off too much you just add a bit more and rub and blend. Here I used a brown and light blue. After I did that I proceeded to rub some Folk Art metallic Inca Gold here and there, although it may not really look like sticks I sure wouldn't want to have to pick up all those pieces from the floor. I also added some Stickles to the woman's bosom and her shoes for a bit of bling

Next is Kitty Love, who doesn't love a kitty? and this poor little fella needs a good home. I have done a tissue paper background, rubbed the paper again with some metallic gold paint, then a gold gel pen around the perimeter like a border on the card. Then I stamped the Kittly Love after I did some w/c pencil on C/S, the words are from something I was about to throw out, a flyer or something but when I saw those words I had to save them just like I saved this kitty.

Last but not least....Carte Postale. This was fun, quick and just love how the background turned out. As you can probably tell by now I love my backgrounds and techniques. I am known on a couple boards as the "Technique Junkie" and I believe I am. Is that a bad thing? certainly not!!!
I stamped this large stamp Becky gave me with Versamark embossing ink, then embossed with clear embossing powder, let cool, then I blended some W/C pencils on the C/S. After the paper dried I then placed the paper between a folded computer page, ironed the image which lifts off the embossing ink and you can see the original colour of your C/S and the blended colours all around.

Well that's it for now and thank you for visiting my gallery today. Off to see what kind of trades I can do. I will keep you updated.

Canada Day

Happy Canada Day

Today is our Canada Day and we are just having a quiet time at home. Our capital Ottawa has a big celebration which is being broadcasted on TV. If I know JB as well I do there might be some noise makers going off later this evening. He is a kid in an adult body, but, aren't most men? Last night he lit a firecracker and the noise of it scared Rosie and she ran to the front of the house and got in behind the front cement steps. Trying to get her out of there for a while was a challenge. Poor kitty.
Anyways for those of you celebrating today, drink responsibly and keep the car keys out of your hands. Play safe and be a Proud Canadian.
For our troops overseas, God bless you and thank you for keeping our country safe and for the danger you put yourselves in each and every day.