MMM # 6 - Inchies

I actually planned my day a little bit, so the intent for today was to complete my inchies for my little book of morsels. It was not looking good for me to complete them.

I first of all started off with 8 ATC sized cards, that I stamped and distressed.  But then I thought that these would truly be a waste if I were to cut them down to inchie size, and then I would have had to either throw out the left over pieces or keep them for a rainy day for recycling them onto another project for another day, but instead, I just decided to keep these for another time and project instead. So these have been set aside, besides, over at my friends secret exchange blog the theme for February will be published tomorrow, so I can't wait to see what theme goes up for next month!   (I am thinking it will likely be something to do with Valentines Day maybe?)

Then, I started looking around my studio in between all of my shoeboxes full of goodies, I have other goodies that don't get used as often as they should, such as my Recollection Water Colour Crayons, and I also have the Recollections version of Gelato's too, that have only been used maybe once or twice perhaps. Anyway, I decided to pull out my crayons, since they have not even been opened yet.  Good choice...I found a video on You Tube, where Dana Joy talks about how she uses this nice little find.  (When I bought this product, I only know I wanted to get some water soluble crayons, but didn't have a clue what to do with them, so that is why they have been on my shelf untouched for so long)

Like Dana says, this is an awesome product because they are pretty much the same as Gelato's only they are bigger, have more colours, and better priced too, for that matter. So I got out some pre cut ATC sized cardstock and then cut 1" x 3.5 strip off the card so that I could get two of those strips from one pre cut ATC card stock.  

I then added the colour of the two ends of each strip until I had the equivalent of being able to make 20 inchies (most of which I will save for a rainy day as I only need six for my little book.)  This way I was able to hold the enter of the strip and having as little waste of product as possible.   This what I achieved from this process.   

I have not had much experience in making inchies, simply because they are so small...I am all thumbs when it comes to fidgety things, just ask my favourite teacher, miss N.  So when I first saw this as a morsel, my first initial thought was, "I guess I'm going to be skipping that one" lol

But I gave it a try once again, since I had only tried it once before the morsels.   Then when I tried it again, I didn't seem to mind it too much, because now I have just finished making a 3rd set.  

I am quite pleased with how these turned out.  The nice thing about inchies is that you don't have this great big canvas in front of you to get you all stressed out about.   

Thats a wrap for tonight.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's project which I absolutely can't wait, I get to go to a Stampin' Up make and take day, where we will be making 12 birthday cards.  I am looking forward to crafting with and getting to know other crafty people in my area very close to where I live.  I will be sharing what I will be making here tomorrow. 

January - "Time" 5/4

I recently joined a new private blog where we make 5 ATCs per month for 4 different partners.  The first theme for the first swap for the month of January is Time.  What I have done here is called Emboss Resist.  I simply stamped the clock image with Mememto Wedding Dress colour ink, and then I used white embossing powder and set with my brand spanking new heat tool.  I then picked 3 of my favourite Distress Ink colours, Victorian Velvet, Peacock Feathers, and Verm Lacquer and a round distressor tool to apply the colours onto the ATC which brings out the embossed pattern of the clock.  I then could not decide if they were done, someone suggested quotes so I went into my stash of alphabet letters and found one of my favourite things that I got from Christmas advent this year, (something new that we tried and LOVED it) and decided that only 2-word quotes were enough to call this lovely ATC set complete.  The background colours kind of remind me of cotton candy or tie die even...love how they turned out, I hope my partners will love them too.  

Stay tuned for who gets one, and what I get in return for them!

Favourite Videographers

Well folks, a day has come that I just wasn't up to creating anything today.  The night is still on the young side yet, so I might get to work on something small, we'll see how the rest of the evening goes.

But since I didn't make anything, I have already thought of what to blog about for today.  My good friend Bonnie over at Jaspers Gems actually gave me this idea, and I even acquired her permission to use it.   I will blog about my favourite videographers...

I would never have been able to travel this far into my journey with out the internet, name google, is my first and foremost go to for seeking out a new idea for any theme for any project.  Back when I first started almost 8 years ago now, it blows my mind at how there were virtually no videos on how to techniques for anything multi media.  And look at it NOW!  I can't even believe how many hits you get if you do a google search on something as simple as "butterfly atc images" go ahead try it and be amazed!  Butterfly ATC images is all I typed into my google search bar, and the photos and variations of ATCs you will see are absolutely unimaginable!   And then, below those images, you will also get hits on Pinterest, isn't that amazing?  And we certainly can't forget about You Tube!

My good friend miss N over at Simply Sweet Stamping, has been my art mentor since the beginning of time...7.5 years ago...I met her and hired her to teach me all about Stamping 101 and Stamping 102...awesome awesome classes and a very talented artist and a very patient teacher.  You may have heard me say before that I do not have the pleasure of being able to say that I have been dabbling in art all of my life, like many of you can.  So I need to be able to have access to the Net and You Tube and Facebook and Pinterest just to help me collect ideas for what I do.

My number one and two go to videos for getting ideas are K Werner Designs and Jennifer McGuire Inc.  I don't know why I don't go to Tim Holtz's channel as often as I do Mike Deakin in the UK.  All are very talented and all use a variety of enough products and I even have many of the products they use, which isn't nearly as much as I (or we all would) like to have in my opinion.

There are two more that I really appreciate their efforts in videography are StampTV and last but certainly not least Cat Hand I have actually been playing along and making my own little technique sample book with her and absolutely LOVING this journey with her.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my favourites.

Torn Paper Collage x2

Its been a busy day today, it started off with making two lovely collage pages this morning.  I tore up several pieces of musical note paper, map paper, a french dictionary and a cottage life magazine.  This is what I have started off with....

I glued and put down and put down and glued, until I got the following 2 pages:

Whatever shall I do with them?  I don't even know if I am finished adding layers to them yet or not, so I guess we shall see, hmm?   lol....so I do not even know yet myself, I am open to suggestions!....but for sure,  it will be something fun!

MIXED MEDIA MORSELS with Cathand are wonderful little treasures to keep handy if you are a paper crafter like myself.  I would have given ANYTHING to have videos like this available to me when my journey into making ATC's began just over 7 years ago!  You can only imagine how bad some of my artwork was back then...but my goodness, how far have I come now?  

You can play along too, by catching Cathand on her You Tube channel, Or by joining her Facebook group.  You don't have to have life long experience dabbling in art, or even short lived art experience like me, but any one can play along.  You don't even have to have to go out and spend a whole ton of money to acquire many of the fancy dancey yummy products that are out there, you can simply get yourself started off by getting a few things from your local dollar store, or

Here is the link to a video I created (which is actually on my facebook page) to show all of my extended artist family & crafty friends (and non-crafty friends too) on how my Little Book of Morsel's is coming along.

(Link to follow shortly)

The third and final thing for today, when I started blogging on a daily basis, I talked about blogging other things I do as well, like exercise for example.  Today we decided at the last minute to go out and do a little bit of snow shoeing on our property.  Just a little bit, though because I know my hips are going to be screaming at me like crazy!  Here are some photos, I took.

Dar and Abby Waving                Alan's Tree & Whisky buried here

beautiful sunset tonight, and its selfie time!!!

Some outdoor fun!

And I think we have a wrap for today!  Whew!  No wonder I am so exhausted!

Started New WC Class

wow, 11 days into 2017, and here I am still blogging, every single day.  So far, so good, eh?  lol

I am so happy today...as up until 8:30 this morning, I had no clue whether or not the second part of the art water colour class was going to happen!  I could not wait any longer to make the call, it was suggested that I call at 8:30 but I called at 8:20 to find out what the score was...and I was told that we were a go!

The roads were still quite ice covered and the hammer lane was far worse than the granny lane, so it was good enough for me to drive myself up to the Tom Thompson Art Gallery in South River.

I absolutely LOVE the drive up there, and the setting that the Art Gallery is located on is just breath taking!  Sometimes, I will get there a little bit early on purpose to go to sit in my car at the Tom Thompson Park.  Its just beautiful, and gives me a chance to take a deep breath and clear my stresses and thoughts to go into class with as fresh a mind as possible.

When I got there, there are only two of us in the class.  I was quite happy to see my new friend Linda from Powassan there.  Anyway, we pretty much jumped right into the class lessons for today, and oh my gosh, I had no idea how easy using water colours to paint incredible images is!  See below to what I created already today...(and the day is still young yet)

Isn't the power of suggestion through art amazing?  I sure think so!  I throughly enjoyed the art lesson today, and love love love learning new techniques.  Its incredible that out of all of the techniques that Kristina has been teaching, there has not been a single repeat of anything that I have learned over the last 7 years in my journey of making ATCS (artist trading cards)

So now that I am home, and my Abby is at work, I have a chance to do some more!  I can't wait to see how these paintings above turn out when they are done! The very best thing about water colour paint is that not only is it easier to clean up than acrylic, but with each of the 3 primary colours, you don't need to buy any other colours!  Using Red, Blue & Yellow, you can make ANY colour you want or need.

For the music I have in my back ground today, I thought it would be nice to hear some sacred drums....here is what I found to listen to and its quite relaxing while I get some of my admin stuff done before starting another project.

I hope you enjoyed my blog for today!

Private ATC & Rolo Trade

Wow, I have actually made it to the tenth day in a row of Blogging.  I actually ended up having a pretty productive day yesterday art wise...I think anyway, because I ended up making my "No Man Better Than A Snowman" ATC for my friend over at Simply Sweet Stamping.  Here is what I made:

I am actually quite proud of it because I free hand drew it.  I used my Bic markers and my white gellie pen.

The same friend, also asked me if I wanted to do a Valentine's Rolodex swap, as well, so I had started to work on that today.  My inspiration for this Rolodex card came from K Werner Designs click on the link to check out her card that gave me the idea for this rolodex.  LOVE it...thank you Kristina.

LOVE how this turned out, I'm not going to bother explaining the process of this because its all in Kristina's video...But here is the end turn out.

I may just give the red shiny embossing powder a try on this because white on white on white doesn't seem to be showing up very well here....

Ok, I think I have a wrap here....what do you think Miss N?

I LOVE it, I hope you will too!!!!

cheers

Dar

First Birch Trees of 2017

Today went quite a bit better art wise.  I have started and finished a painting of my lovely birch trees. Its still quite the same as my original because my original has almost a cartoonish look to it.  I guess I need to have the original in front of me to get a better one of it.  Or I might just have to get some prints done.  Anyway, here is what my accomplishment for today is.

I am actually going to offer this one for sale.  I will start it off at $50.00 to see what everyone thinks, and maybe, just maybe one of you might want to buy it...😃

Also today was a good day because I had been fighting fatigue the whole day.  I was up for 9:30 (instead of later) and so far have stayed awake all day.  I wanted to lay down so badly and sleep but I knew that Abby was working on the snow blower, which between the two of us, it got fixed.  The belt went on it, so it had to be replaced.  What could I have possibly done to help her?...lol...well I held the flashlight for almost an hour!  lol...she acknowledged that she couldn't have done it without my help.  So that was great...but in the mean time its snowing like crazy out there...(still is) and my fingers were almost frozen.  

But just before all of that, Abby said was sure she heard a moose, so I went out for a walk and walked down the hill to the neighbours on Station Road to see if I could see or hear anything.  I am disappointed to say that I not only not heard a thing but I also did not see a thing...foot prints either for that matter.  I decided to take picture of the current true snow fall that we have up to date...and tomorrow I will post another photo of what we will have tomorrow because this storm is supposed to last all day tomorrow too...anyway here is the photo I promised.

If you take a look at the top of the skid gardens...from there up is the true amount of what we have gotten in snow since it started early in November.  I can't wait to see how much more there will be by the time this storm is done tomorrow!

P.S.  I have FINALLY finished my version of Romeo In Flight drawn by Karen Lukens

As I just asked after I posted it in her colouring group on Facebook, Will I EVER be as happy with my own colouring as I am with others'?

Colouring & Art Heart #2

Today was mostly a quiet day.  I didn't get up until 11 am.  I wish my body would be in healthier condition.  Stupid diabetes.  Anyway.  I did a little bit of colouring today hoping it would help get me started into a crafty state, but I didn't get too far...but at least its a little bit.

I did start to do my Art Heart Challenge Rolodex #2 by picking Teal for my background and using the MMM #1 as my background technique.   I love shiny it comes out. Silly me as I almost forgot to use water again.  It's amazing to think that water is the magical thing that makes this technique work so well.  And water is free!!!!   Anyway here is what it looks like before I embellish it.

I thought about using up some of my gems for this one.  So when I started going through them I found some large heart shaped gems and some small ones too.  

So this completes my week number 2 for Art Heart Challenge. 

Since we are home tomorrow I am hoping to get to do more crafting...maybe even a painting.

And to finish today off, I have actually done a bit more colouring in the page I started this morning as posted above...its coming.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Karen Lukens adult colouring pages.  They totally make me smile!

Heart Art # 1

Today I didn't go outside at all.  I don't know why, I just didn't feel like it.  I guess I just got so wrapped up in sorting receipts to help Abby with her paper work.  Abby went to work for 3pm, and I decided to just go with it for my take of the first Art Heart Challenge.

I have decided that I am going to be doing my 52 Art Heart weekly challenges on rolodex cards, so this should be loads of fun and interesting at the end of the year to see my rolodex...

My background for #1 is using the baby wipe technique.  I really didn't have a plan of attack for this one, but usually I don't anyway.  Once I get the idea for what my background is going to be, it will not take me long to figure out the rest.

My first one is just simply hearts, flowers and words, thats the nice thing about hearts; it doesn't matter what size, colour, or texture they are, a heart is a heart and that speaks volumes!

I am looking forward to next week's already....which isn't too far away!

Wintery Photos

I actually attempted 3 different crafty things tonight, but nothing worked out enough for me worth blogging, (except for my decorated envie).  I have decided to accept Bonnie's challenge to play along with her for Bea Grob's art heart challenge.  You can watch her video here if your curious.

I did make a bunch of sky and grass backgrounds using water colour paint, but they have not amounted to anything yet.  I was thinking of using my die cut image of a certain tree that I have and dangle hearts from it, but I haven't thought that far ahead yet as to what I am going to do.

I also attempted a heart stamp onto a rolodex card for the art heart challenge that I have and some embossing powder, which I don't know how to proceed with out any further thought into that project at all yet, so I filed it under g.   I am sure I will come up with something for the art heart challenge sooner or later, preferably sooner, as I don't want to get far behind.

And I did put the moon and some snowy shadows on the birch trees of my decorated envelope that you saw in Yesterdays Blog. It actually turned out pretty good, I think anyway...so I am happy with it and will call it finished.  I have another envelope that I have to decorate, not sure what I am going to do with it yet.

I thought I would start today's blog with showing a few photos of what its like up here in the north right now.   But before I do, just want to give you a brief description what its like this year, compared to last year in 2016.  At Christmas last year, we had absolutely NO snow here in the North.  Which is amazing to that this is completely UNHEARD of.  But boy oh boy are the heavens ever making sure that its getting made up for lol....so are you ready?  Here goes!!!

so its really been an incredible winter wonderland up here!  LOVING it.  Our challenge for this winter is that this is the first time we don't have a way to use our hitch plow since our Honda Civic does not have a hitch on it.  We have had to invest in a snow blower which I myself have not used but Abby has, so according to her its better than nothing but it just doesn't to the same job our plow does. So we have had to invest in paying a guy to come and do it for us.  Its amazing how many plowers there are here just in Emsdale alone.  But needless to say that the job is getting done one way or another.  We now know a number of people who are willing to come and plow our drive way for us if we need it.