29 October 2008

Birthday presents



My friend A.'s birthday was last week, and I had quite a good time making her presents. The funny thing was that her card ended up being a wall hanging . . . couldn't figure out how to make it a card. My husband helped with suggestions on placements of the shards of mirror styrene; I ended up with an abstract easel supporting the sunflower collage. It worked out beautifully to stamp the design on acetate, color with alcohol inks, then use a Xyron to mount it on sunburst gold paper I got in England earlier this summer. I used foam tape to create depth among the background panel, styrene shards, and sunflower collage. This is one of my favorite things I've made!

I did also make a set of wine charms for A. These are done on 1x1" Stampbord using punched squares of paper and Liquid Laminate. Then I paint the edges with Liquid Leafing, punch a hole with my Crop-a-Dile, insert an eyelet, then add a jump ring and earring with suitable beads on it that complement the design while also maintaining a consistent look through the whole set.

16 October 2008

Making progress on magic grimoire

Tonight I made good progress on my grimoire that I'm doing for this month's challenge with A. I decided to go with the idea mentioned in a previous blog entry about illustrating the seven black arts banned in the Renaissance. That means I need to produce seven illustrations, then seven panels for the opposite side, and figure out how to attach the seven pieces of bookboard together.

So far I've completed the panels for hydromancy, aeromancy, and geomancy. My favorite so far is geomancy (I will put up pictures in a later post when the whole thing is complete), which funnily enough was the first one I did. I hope it's not all downhill from there!

What I did tonight were more new things for me. I couldn't find a drawing of any flames or fire that I liked, so I had to draw it by hand myself--horrors! Never done that before, but I prefer my rendition to anything else I've seen. I used white transfer paper, which I'd never used before, and wow! the possibilities THAT opens up are huge. Anyway, I ended up cutting a reverse mask (I guess that's what it's called) so that I could pretend it was a stencil. I used it to apply copper embossing paste from Dreamweavers to cardstock, and once it dries I will apply glue from the Palette gluepad, followed by variegated red leafing. I think it's going to look great! When it's complete, I'll cut it out and plan to mount it on a background sheet of either glitter black, black bumps, or black velvet. Don't think I can decide until the leafing has been applied and I see how that looks.

I also started work on the panel for nigromancy, for which I'm using the Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous circles stamp. I made about five different versions using different inks and embossing powders, then cut out bits of one and bits of another to layer over a base image. I'd like to figure out how to attach some of them so that the circles will actually spin around--maybe just a straight pin? It looks good, though, at least tonight. Hopefully in the morning I'll still be as pleased!

Flower Fairy card with new technique


For my cousin's birthday card, I used a technique I had read about in the May/June 2008 issue of Rubber Stamp Madness and hadn't gotten a chance to try out yet.

I took a Flower Fairy outline peel-off sticker that I'd gotten in England this summer and turned it so the sticky side was up. Then I used a small paintbrush to apply dry chalks where desired (I mainly used my shimmer chalk set). Once I'd applied chalk everywhere I wished, I brushed the entire surface with Perfect Pearls (Blush, then Perfect Gold). To finish, I did corners and applied to paper and card as shown.

The whole thing didn't take long, and it came out quite nice as a birthday card for a four-year-old.

01 October 2008

More thoughts on harmony; "magic" challenge

Harmony could be as simple as showing opposites that come together. It's things that are in tune with each other (there's that auditory component again!), or that complement each other. It's a feeling of rightness of place, that things are as they are supposed to be. Maybe I could do something with the Arched Glass stamp? That conveys a feeling of harmony.

Now, for my thoughts on the "magic" challenge. I decided that I want to do a book, and I think it will be an accordion book so that it will fall open like a pack of cards. There are two kinds of magic--the magician's kind, where things appear that weren't there before, or that were there and then disappear on a second look, and the "real" magic that transforms things, that brings a sense of wonder and awe and amazement, the beautiful things that seem too good to be true and thus we call them "magical". I guess there's a third kind, the magick of witches and wizards, potions and spells, fairies and elves.

I'd like to mix all of these things into one. The book will have seven panels joined together with something flexible (maybe tied onto skewers?), so that if I want to, one side could read "MAGIC" using the middle five panels, and then that would give me one additional panel at both the start and end to decorate.

Possible things to use: the frozen opals from Suze Weinberg's store. Glamour Dust. Holographic embossing powder. Pop-up or covered items. Watermarks.

A few hours later:
I Googled "magic" and took a look at the Wikipedia entry, and I came across an intriguing idea. It's a little more formal than I had been thinking, but it might be a neat challenge in and of itself. In the Renaissance period, there were seven prohibited black arts, which fits in nicely with my idea of having 7 panels in my accordion book. I could use each panel to illustrate a different black art (nigromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, and scapulimancy). That appeals to me . . .

Nigromancy--blackness. Maybe with some image in holographic EP? Skull from Mexican rubber stamp set?
Geomancy--use map, either image transfer or stamp, as background, then something on top.
Hydromancy--maybe build on last month's water challenge and put some water image behind a glass side (2x2"). That should be flat enough to work in a book format.
Aeromancy--this one is tough. I have a cloud Stampscapes stamp, perhaps work that in somehow.
For pyromancy, it would be neat to draw flames somehow and then put copper foil on them.
Chiromancy is palmistry--good opportunity for an image transfer. Key lines are heart line, head line, life line.
Scapulimancy--this is challenging--divination by way of the shoulder blades. That requires some thought.