Colouring...

I love to look at all the beautiful colouring books that are available, and I've been avoiding buying them since I have quite enough to do as is! But having the need to do some colouring, I decided to stamp myself some images for cards, and I'm posting this one for the Country View challenge (Crackle).

I started by stamping some "o" letters from this alphabet set onto card bases. What happened to the one on the right you can see here, the one on the left I coloured rather slowly and thoroughly with my Faber Castell Polychromos pencils. No solvent, just lots of layers of colour, trying to create some shade and dimension. I love the way the patterns pop after a layer of Crackle Accents. Super simple!

T is for Talapoin

The Craft Barn alpha challenge is asking for t. I'm working in the last minute with all sorts of things popping up (though I have been on holiday for a week now!). I checked through the index of my wildlife encyclopedia, found a few t-names that didn't give me a clue as to what sort of an animal they might be. Some were too big for these cards, but luckily one was this lovely little monkey. The smallest of all old world monkeys, the body being around 10-15 inches.

Talapoins live in jungles and mangrove swamps, allways near water... So I picked one of my ink jet photo paper experiments for the background. This is with Paperartsy Infusion in Sage. I love the wet marble look it gives! I recommend trying photo paper with Infusions or Brushos, the effects are quite interesting, I just diluted the crystals on my craft sheet and dipped the paper into it. It's as if the paper takes a photo of the puddle :) Here is the back of the card. These little monkeys live in small groups and eat plants, insects and whatever grubs they can find on land and in water.

Enjoy the detours

The third page in my art journal this year... hopefully summertime will give me a bit more time for this, but luckily there are challenges that make me squeeze the time. Besides, this was a quick one :) I'm posting for Art Journal Journey (Journeys) and the Paperartsy challenge (Doodles and scribbles). These were a lovely pair to combine!

I started by stamping my brand new Paperartsy stamps on the spread with the idea of filling them with doodles, a bit like Debs Wainwright on the first theme post on the Paperartsy blog. But after doodling a bit on the womans collar I started seeing all sorts of lines and patterns in the images that called to be stretched and continued, so of I went on a detour. The stamps are from the "Everything Art" series, I found them in a dutch webshop. Here are some photos of how the stamped images grew together.

My original plan was to fill the whole page and add colour too, but I ended up being happy with the white space. At least this is completely different from my usual textured and inky/painty pages :) I started with clean neat lines, and they turned grungier as the page grew. I especially enjoyed the narrow vertical lines, they will certainly be revisited!  Here are some closeups.

Doodles

Since I haven't been doodling for ages, I decided to play safe and start with some basic patterns that I drew with a stencil (like Gabrielle Price, but mine became the focal point, no stamping this time). I'm posting for the Paperartsy doodles-challenge and the Country View May challenge (use a stencil). I'm not much of a doodler, but after seeing Zentangles here and there, I did spend a trip (about a year ago) checking through and practising tangles that I found on the  Tanglepatterns.com website. the step by step guides were easy to follow, and keeping that in mind I dared myself to "just do it".

The stencil I used is from The Crafters Workshop, I drew the outlines of the ferns on an ivory 6x6 cardbase. I started doodling with checkers and stripes and circles, counting that I'd turn to the tanglepatterns page when I ran out of ideas... but actually I didn't have to: the more I did, the easier it became and all of a sudden all the leaves where full :) I'm burning to try some Jofy or Lin Brown flowers next! I used a Micron pen (0,3mm) for the doodling and added Glossy Accents over the patterns to give a finishing touch.

Bunnies

I'm linking to three challenges today: Crafty Individuals (anything goes), the Craft Stamper 'Take it Make it' challenge (anything with stamping goes) and the Craft Barn (at least two papers). Actually Jane from the Craft Barn made this an easy one, I count at least five papers here: the card base, the textured blue matting card, the inky background on Crafty Individuals Silk card, inky kitchen towel and Letraset Marker Pad onto which I stamped the bunnies. And on top of that the small lasercut paper flowers and ferns...

I made my background with brushos. I stamped some ferns and grasses with a resist medium before adding the colour. They were barely visible, so I tried some stenciling with the CI ferns and grasses masks. They were barely visible too, so I stamped some more with green and teal inks. The front was kind of empty, and I decided to cover it with torn strips from kitchen paper that I had used while playing with the Brushos.

The bunnies were stamped with memento ink on a marker pad and coloured with colour pencils + solvent. Plenty of fussy cutting, but I enjoy that, and thats why I often work with rather thin paper. I mounted them on thin foam tape and added some twirls of thread. The shrubs in the front are lazer cuts. The ferns are from Dutch Doobadoo and the flowers from Karen Marie Klip. 

Paskis #320

Paskiksessa on tällä kertaa luonnos, ja täytyy tunnustaa ettei homma oikein meinannut lähteä käyntiin. Pyörittelin pöytälaatikossa lojunutta väritettyä leimakuvaa eri gelli-vedosten kanssa kunnes sitten vaan päätin, että kokeilen. Ja tulihan tästä lopulta ihan kiva!

Gelli-vedos on tehty 3x5 tuuman levyllä varsin yksinkertaisesti: telasin kahta vaaleanpunaista akryylimaalia ja on taputtelin kuplamuovilla ennen vedosta. Revin palat käsin ja ompelin kiinni aika kaukaa reunasta jotta voisin rytätä niitä. Yhdeksi luonnoksen paneeliksi tuli tuppo sideharsoa. Tässä on kaikki ommeltuna korttipohjaan...

Onhan se ihanaa kun aurinko paistaa, mutta näihin kuviin se luo aika väkevät varjot! Kukka on Rubber Dancen leima ja se on väritetty Promarkereilla. Kiinnitin sen sellaisilla paksuilla liimatäplillä,  kun tuo sideharso on vähän haastava alusta. Teksti on stanssattu Tim Holtzin stanssilla. Jos omistaisin enamel dotseja, niin tähän olisin ripotellut muutaman keltaisen, mutta menee tämä näinkin... :) 

Jos haluat käydä leimaostoksilla, niin Rubber Dancen verkkokaupasta voit syöttää kassalla koodin kristiina2016 saadaksesi 15% alennusta. Leimat ovat syvään uurrettua punaista kumia ja niitä saa sekä mountattuna että ilman.

Balancing...

The VivaLasVegaStamps May challenge has a cool moodboard, from which I chose to be inspired by weird, unique, epiphanies, big ideas, rats, black, grey, white, sprays, splatters, grunge and numbers. Besides VLVS I'm posting for the WOW challenge (anything with embossing goes) and the Craft Stamper Take it Make it challenge (anything with stamping goes).

I played with a product I've had for ages called Perfect Resist. I saw it recently in a web shop and remembered I have it somewhere and have never used it. After some rummaging, I found the bottle and stamped the scribbly star onto coated cardstock. I guess it's some sort of wax, the medium was runny and I used a foam piece to dab it on the stamp. I added grey Brusho powder, spritzed with water and when the card was dry I stamped with the VLVS numbers stamp.

To make my focal point, I stamped the Banksy rat onto white paper with Versamark and heat embossed with black. The chain was too short, so I continued it with an embossing pen.

I fussy cut the rat image, stamped the sentiment and mounted the smaller pieces with low foam tape that can be cut under narrow areas (like the chain). The background panel got dimension from a piece of corrugated cardboard.

I stamped the star on an envelope with grey and black Distress inks and a spritz of water. Here goes!

Since I really liked how this turned out, I had to do a couple more with other sentiments... strange how different the colours look, they are actually the same!