Under the sea tangling

I am so excited to be visiting my best friend Jo-Ellen in Florida. She lives so close to the beach you can hear it when you go outside. After spending some time walking on the beach, on a perfect day, I just had to post some artwork she created at her annual Zentangle Retreat to Paradise, which she hosts. The Zentangle patterns she used are inspired by sea life. I just love what she's created. This work isn't finished, but it inspired me to start working on my own.

This is Jo-Ellen's artwork and the Zentangle patterns she used are: Moooka, Flux & Orbs, Poke Root, Poke Leaf, Cat-kin, Sanibelle and Bumper & Jersey Cheer, Aquafleur and Antidots.  There are a few more, I will have to update this post later. 

Cool technique

I found this card and had to capture a picture to remember this fun technique.  

It's pretty basic, take brightly colored inks, and apply harmonious colors to make a bright background.  Then choose a stamp that has a lot of open areas, and areas that allow for small embellishment.  Once you stamp the images randomly, you use a white gel pen to add highlights. 

The best white gel pen is the Uniball, which I am able to get at Paper Source stores.  It is very opaque and really pops.

This one is all about the colors and the stamp you choose.  

Clever art installation at the Kimmel center

Dan and I went to see a show a couple weeks ago in center city Philadelphia.  The show Cirque Eloize Cirkopolis was beautiful. I'm not adept at selecting words to describe what we saw.  If you want to have a tiny taste, visit this site and watch particularly at 2:30 in the video a dancer master a hoop. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

http://www.cirque-eloize.com/en/shows/cirkopolis

After we parked, we walked through the Kimmel Center to reach the theater and happened upon this very cool art installation. It consists of busts of famous Classical composers, made from books.

I love that artists have found ways to use old books, that otherwise might spend an eternity on a shelf. Just like the art of altering books, I find this so clever and fascinating.  It's really well done.  From the front, I had no idea what material had been used.  I initially thought some type of wood had been "laminated" and glued together, after being covered with gesso or white-washed.

The link below takes you to see more samples of these clever works. 


http://kimmelcenter.tumblr.com/post/78442359615/innovative-art-installation-a-new-look-for

Have a heart

This card was created after my class a couple weeks ago with Marjie Kemper.  The background color here is a bit more subdued when compared to the bold, saturated colors for the pieces we created in the class. 

Marjie provided us with a heart stencil, so when I came home I decided to test it out using the Golden Glass Bead Gel. It's a product I mentioned in one of my very first posts in January.  I also used it on a card recently, with a numbers stencil. 

The Golden Glass Bead gel goes on clear and when dry, leaves a layer of glass beads.  In this case I decided I wanted to have a purple glass bead heart. So I used the Distress Stains to tint the gel.  I applied a layer to the stencil, smoothed it evenly and then lifted off the stencil.  I let it dry overnight and finished by stamping hearts, adding arrows and a cute candy heart brad to finish it off.  

It's no irony that I love this heart!

It's my turn

So I am back and here is my latest addition to the book!  I don't know that my latest batch is up to the level of Marjies's work, but I can say that I am having fun working on them. 

So I used a favorite background from Marjie's class and stamped the circle - which is a clear stamp, making it easier to line up, then added some touches with the white Uniball pen. It's the best white gel pen you can get. Opaque and juicy, I love it. Don't work with this pen on paper that is damp in any way. It balks at that. I had to break out the heat gun first.  I also added color with the Distress Stains and dried each layer with the heat gun. It left a very interesting, saturated look. 

The definition memory was used because I layered inks using stencils in closely matching colors, so they are hard to discern. They remind me of an echo, of sorts. The plastic spinner is from Coffee Break designs. I purchased these ages ago, just glad that I get to put them to use. 

I will be rolling out one a day,  so see you tomorrow!

Face the facts

This is one of my favorite stencil techniques that Marjie showed us in the class.  I also saw this in the Creative Jumpstart 14 videos. 

You need a stencil, and the cut out pieces of the stencil, or the negatives that fall inside the outline.  In the case below, it would be the area between her arm and her body.  I first colored the card with yellow ink over the entire surface.  Then place the stencil image down (where the honeycomb pattern is) and then color around with inks, sprays, etc. Remove the stencil and then place the negative part of the stencil down, and line it up around the image (this would be anywhere that has the background with the orange ink color). Don't forget the small pieces of stencil between her arms and her body.  Now ink up the honeycomb background stamp in black and carefully stamp on top of the stencil, covering the open area on the paper.  It will appear to stamp the image only on her body.   

I think my explanation might be a bit difficult to follow, so I hope to find a stencil and demonstrate this in a video.  It's a bit confusing to explain with words, but if I can find and create the right stencil, it would be much easier to demo. 

The numbers on the left are done with the Golden glass bead gel. I mixed in some of the Distress Stain color in with the glass bead gel, used a stencil and applied it.  The glass bead gel normally dries clear, but this time it dried with the color of the ink, a purple color.  It's raised and when it dries it's really a great texture, somewhat translucent.  I applied a strip of skinny black masking tape and then found a watch face in my embellishment collection.  What better to use for a face, than a face?

I hammered the watch face a bit, because it had two prongs on the back.  When I folded them down to flatten them, it left bumps. The best way to mask a mistake is to make more of the same, and make it look intentional.  That's why the watch face appears a bit bumpy.

I even gave this piece a title.  

PARIS card

This one is simple, but I love it.  We colored the background with Distress Stains and then when it was dry, used the embossing folder to create the texture.  I was sure to place the ATC so that the word "Paris" was in the lower left corner.  

The last step was to use the Ranger ink blending tool, to add black to the high spots and highlight the dry embossing.  I found these collage elements that I had lying around that had a ribbon and a round medallion, so I cut out a piece from the tags we decorated (use shipping tags to soak up any excess ink when you are working with the Distress stains and dylusions inks).

More to come tomorrow!!