chunky houses!

i was in the first round of the chunky house swap on craftster.org, and then i missed out on round 2 because i was already in too many other swaps. i signed up for round 3, thinking that i'd do similar houses to the ones i made for round 1.

then i took the micheal demeng classes, and changed my mind entirely! i got really inspired by the paint layering we did in the class, and decided to play with that a bit instead.

i used sturdy chipboard houses that i bought at micheals in the $1.50 area. they're made by crayola, and are strung together on a binder ring. i separated them and trimmed them down a bit to fit within the swap guidelines, and went at it!


vintage wallpaper base painted with payne's grey, vintage doily, stamps, painted cocktail sword, number ephemera


layer of kroma cackle over gesso, then a wash of golden pthalo green and then a layer of golden interference green. vintage craft leaf painted pthalo, vintage earring and bingo chips glued on.

this one i didn't end up sending. i don't like it nearly as much, the copper in the right corner bothers me. luckily i'd misremembered how many i had to make, so i didn't need it! i want to pry the copper coloured thing off and redo that corner.

golden molding paste used with punchinella for the top


golden molding paste used with punchinella for the bottom and textured for the upper. brushed with a wash of micaseous iron oxide paint


golden molding paste used with punchinella for the bottom various ephemera including vintage cardboard bingo chip. dry brushed with interference blue

i love how they turned out! they took longer than just collage because each layer needed to dry, but the end result was definitely worth it. i'm really loving the golden molding paste and liquid paints!

chunky houses! (catch up post 1)

these actually AREN'T that late! the last one was received just the other day, so i'm actually pretty current with posting them!

these were for a swap on craftster.org, of course, and were pretty free in their definitions. just a chunky house on a base firm enough to not bend, 3"-4" wide and up to 7" tall.

i made 5 instead of the required 4, and sent the extra to the fabulous rackycoo, who was one of the organizers.

this one was my favourite, and i sent it to phizzychick. i was super tempted to keep it though!


the stamp used on this one was a tim holtz "dance partner", i just only inked part of it (i skipped the little boy part).



the stamp used on this one was the swirly one that i lost the label for ages ago, and the bird and circular label stamps from catslife press



the stamp used on this one is M040G "square motif" from lazarstudiowerk.com



the stamp used on this one was from paperbag studios. i love the card on the front, it's from a vintage copy of the "dating game" board game.

and the yellow one


the "dashed circle" stamp used is from daisy bucket designs

they were fun! i've never really challenged myself to work specifically within a colour scheme like that, and it was interesting to look through my stash and see which colours i had te stuff for!

vinyl goodies and a chunky page!

and here's the package i sent gingerquilts!

mm, i love this bag! it turned out so well. the teal colour is so awesome, i'd totally forgotten i had it until i went looking for vinyl to use on this bag. i ended up buying more black specifically for this purpose, because i wanted a black vinyl that was a little shinier. the matte stuff i had just didn't look right. the lining is a quilting cotton, and i think it matched really well.




i added a little loop at the bottom of one side of the strap, it's handy if you have your keys on one of those hook things (carabiners? is that what they're called?) the strap itself is a strip of vinyl sewn to thick strapping.

the pocket on the back of the bag



and the inside, with lots more pockets! (i turned the bag inside out for the pics, obviously!)

the zippered vinyl pocket on one side


the cotton pockets on the other side to hold pens, ipod, etc.


elasticized pockets on the sides to hold cell phone, etc.


i made her a matching checkbook cover as well, with a simplified version of the branches on the bag.




the bag took forever, partly because there are so many pockets, but mostly because the design was so complicated! i used the same image as on the wedding totes i made for jean a year and a half ago, which is gorgeous, but finicky! i love the end result though.

and here's the chunky page i made. gingerquilts told me that the one she made me was fairly simple, so i took her word on it (she lied!), and made a fairly simple chunky page for her. i hope she liked it, even though it wasn't nearly as cool as the one she made me!

the front - i started with ledger paper and stamped with ink using a paper doily as a stencil, then i overstamped with a brighter blue with a stitching pattern stamp. i added a vintage snap card and the embossed scissors, needle and thread and thimble (stamps by victorine originals), then glued on some vintage buttons.


the back - the same background as the front, with an embossed sewing machine by victorine originals


details - vintage buttons, ribbons and fibers

my amazing sacred heart quilt from gingerquilts, and more!

i have been a craptastic swapper, and it took me this long to post pictures of the awesome stuff i received from gingerquilts.


gingerquilts and i were partners in the IYP swap (IYP = invite your partner - she invited me, i was so flattered!) and we decided to each send one big project and one chunky page, since we were never partnered up together in the chunky swap. i saw the sacred heart wallhanging that she'd made for stifflersmom a while ago, and i've been lusting over it ever since, and she wanted one of my vinyl bags.

first, the chunky page. she told me it would be "simple"!! it's fabulous, and definitely not simple!


and the back


i love the sewing girl! her dress is so fricking cool with the letters in it, and the face is perfect! and dude, pompom trim!!

the big project. i wanted to post an action shot of this, but i haven't been able to get a proper hanger for it, so you can kind of see the blue gingham curtain rod i used instead!

isn't it amazing?!

and a wider shot, so that you can see how fabulous it looks in my bathroom!


i love it so much! she sent me a bunch of other goodies because she felt bad that the quilt wasn't embellished enough - whatever! it's gorgeous! (but i still love the goodies anyway!)

she sent me a glow in the dark virgin mary figurine, which i adore (the one on the right!)


and another wider shot, it fits perfectly on that shelf!


and awesome skull fabrics!! we have way less selection of fun fabrics here, and since i've declared a moratorium on online shopping (oh god, my poor visa), this is MUCH appreciated!


and these incredible vintage buttons! i LOVE vintage buttons, especially the big ones, and these are so perfect! she packaged them up in a little fabric bag, you can see it peeking out in the corner of the picture.



she totally spoiled me, thank you so much gingerquilts!

more chunky pages!

i've been so impatient for these to arrive, because i was so excited about posting them here!

they were both made using the silicone transfer technique that i was talking about the other day, and damn, it's slick!

these pages were for rackycoo, who's just too bloody amazing for her own good, and i got all stressed out and had to send her two, i just couldn't make up my mind!

the first page is the red winged blackbird page, titled mother nature's art (i tried to put the word "art" on all the pages i did for this swap)

i painted the background a strong orangey red, and then used the silicone transfer technique to transfer the red winged blackbird. i added black and gold ink around the edges, and then decided it needed a bit more, so i used crackle medium over the ink. i added the cigar bands just because they're cool, and i wanted a bit more gold in it.


the back is very simple, a piece of joss paper with this stamp from invokearts.com.


the fibers were fun - the charms are all shrink art stamped with staZon ink using the stamp from the back and stamps from this set at invokearts. the lettering comes from this set.

and the second page was a circus themed page, titled "the art of childhood"


the base is mat board, and i did a silicone transfer using an actual bingo sheet instead of a reversed photocopy, so the numbers are all backwards, which just adds to it in my opinion! i think next time i'll paint the matboard, because it needs a bit more protection from the water than just the silicone. after the transfer had dried, i lightly painted it all yellow, and rubber stamped it with a cheapy stamp i'd bought micheals for $1.50 using purple pigment ink. it used to say PARTY down the side, which i hated, but i loved the diamond design, so i carefully cut the party part off (not that careflly - i stabbed myself while doing it!). i embossed the diamonds to adda bit more depth, and used green pigment ink to create a bordre around th eedge of the vintage playing card. i embossed that as well, mostly because the pigment ink didn't want to dry on the gloss of the card. i added the orange ticket and th red bingo chips, and a piece of a tim holtz distressables card, which i sanded lightly and edged in blue pigment ink. the bing chips have the letters A R T stamped on them using staZon ultramarine, which basically looks black!


the back was again very simple. a piece of patterned paper, brushed over with orange pigment ink to make the colours brighter and deeper, and the title with my name and stuff. the word art on this one is a stamp from alphastamps.

but the fibers! ooh, the fibers. i went a little overboard! as racky put it, the fibers are a circus all on their own!

polka dot and stripey ribbons, bright variegated wool and left over dyed green twill tape from an earlier tip in page, all strung with brightly coloured pony beads, bingo chips, a little strawberry button, a plastic hamburger, a bow, a few plastic flower beads, a little plastic scottie dog and at the vey end, a bell, same as on the jester's hat.

the silicone transfer technique is very cool, it came from the Collage Discovery Workshop by Claudine Hellmuth. i had to special order the silicone from a hardware store in the US, because we don't have the elmer's brand that's brushable up here. i'm really loving it.


i also sent her a copy of tim holtz distressables, which i picked up at a spring sale at clipper street in langley and never got around to sending her. i got a copy for myself as well, and it's quite a cool book. thought it's obviously all about using his supplies, it's got some awesome ideas in it as well.


and in other exciting news, i won a giveaway today! cynthia at big girl feet had a draw for her blogaversary, and i won! she's been doing her blog for 3 years now, which is awesome. i've only been blogging since september 12th 2007! i actually first saw cynthia's work about 8 years ago, when we were both selling at the same local store, and i fell in love with it then. i realized that she was on craftster, and found her blog that way. i managed to get a couple of her pieces a few years ago when she was doing a studio clean up sale, and they're both hanging in my studio now.

ancestor piece and chunky page

more stuff to post!

a few more pieces that i've made have been received, so i can post them now.

first, another altered ancestor piece.

the recipient didn't know who these people actually are, she just found the pic with her family photos, so i used the friend stamp. she said she liked blue and brown, so i did that, and i was a bit worried it was too similar to the other piece i made, but it's different shades.

the background is the peeling paper technique from the claudine hellmuth book i bought a few weeks ago, using music. i saturated it with blue walnut ink, and then blotted it to get an even colour. it took FOREVER to dry! once it was dry i stamped it with staZon, the two brown shades, using a stamp set from joanns. i made the pic more brown before printing it, and then edged it with the dark brown staZon to create a "frame".

and a chunky 4x4 page

the background is strips of text attached with acrylic medium that was mixed with blue and white paint. the typewriter stamp is from alpha stamps (love!) and is stamped with staZon ultramarine (also LOVE!)


pop up! well, kinda. more like "pull tab"!


very cool stamp from alpha stamps, again stamped with the staZon. background was painted with the leftover medium/paint mixture from the front.

close up of the fibers - full of beads and teensy little shrinky dinks

that staZon ink works fab for shrinky dinks!

i was really happy with these two. this week i've been working on some more pieces using a silicone transfer technique, which is SOOOO damn cool, but all the piece i'm working on are still secret at the moment.

chunky 4x4 pages and altered ancestor pieces

here's a chunky page from back in march! it went to australia though, so it took a while to post!

kind of a hodgepodge... i'm not sure what language the background is, but it's something middle eastern... and then i found the stamp from pakistan, and decided they went together. i like the varying colours of the metal, and i did the foil transfer with double sided tape, which i'd never tried before.

i like this random frame. it's not framing anything, but that's okay!


for someone who loves clocks and the imagery of time


i was really stuck on this one, because the recipient had commented on this page i made, and like it, but said she wanted colour... i knew i was going to do the clocks, and i ended up having a ton of ideas, but i couldn't decide which one to use. once i remembered the playing cards i'd bought with the clock gears on them, it all came together!

i tried to do a packing tape transfer with the playing cards, but that failed! it did allow me to scrap off the majority of the card though, so the circles on the front are much thinner than they were originally. and then i tried desperately to make the little embossed gold wings move, but that failed too, and i eventually gave up. i did leave them unglued, so if she's displaying the page on the wall or something where it won't be flattened against other pages, she can bend the wing edges up a little bit.

the backside is paint and ink and clock stamps overlaid with a contact sheet transfer of the "time" entry in a children's dictionary. the little clock came from alphastamps.com - i ordered it for this page, and then forgot all about it until the last minute!

i hope the clock pieces stayed okay in the fibers - they were so tiny, and the fibers were too chunky to really tie them around them, so i glued them on with glossy accents.


and for someone who appreciates sacred hearts as much as i do!


i'm SOOO in love with that heart! i finished it weeks before i got around to finishing the page, and it sat on my coffee table the whole time. everytime i saw it i had to pick it up and look at it! my family was getting soooo tired of me telling them how much i loved it!

i cut a heart shape out of cardboard, and then wrapped the red velvet around it, sewing across the back to stretch the velvet. the background is paint and this really cool acrylic medium with eensy little glass balls in it, very cool texture. i cut vague flames shapes out of chiffon and lining fabric and singed the edges, causing the fabric to curl into itself and become flame like, and then i tacked the flames onto the back of the heart. i glued the whole thing onto the backdrop with silicone sealant, since my dad has stolen and lost my goop AGAIN.

the word ART is stamped on the backs of asian game tiles of some sort, i liked the organic feel of them, and the fact that they're black. (duh!) i drilled holes in them to thread the wire through. i really love that wire too, it's got very subtle colour changes through it, but i didn't get to use enough for this piece for it to actually show.


i cut long strips of the flame fabrics and burned them as well, they're the fibers hanging off the side of the page, along with some black velvet rickrack, but you can't see how long they are.



and i've also joined a new swap called altered ancestors. we all e-mailed out photos of our ancestors, along with little bios, and every two weeks we make up a new art piece for someone in the swap. it's really neat, i didn't truly appreciate how difficult it can be to make art using a specific person - you feel as though there's such a need to be accurate! sure, that stamp of the eiffel tower might look cool... but did that person ever leave north america? it's been really fun though, and i'm working in a 6"x6" format, which is a nice change from the 4x4 size of the chunky page swap.

these were the first two pieces i did.

this is the swapper's grandmother, mom and uncle. her grandmother married at 15, and was widowed at 17, when she was 5 months pregnant with the uncle. her husband was 30 when he died of TB. hence the word "strong".

i've been DYING for a project to use one of these glass pieces in! they're exactly 4x4, so they don't work for chunky pages as easily - the edges are kinda sharp, so they need to be surrounded by something. i coated the sharp edges that aren't hidden with glossy accents, that shit works for everything! the base is super thick cardboard, painted dark brown, you can see it peering through the holes. the background is player piano paper, and i stamped it with punchinella and ink, using a make up sponge. that's partly why i'm so excited, i can NEVER get punchinella to work the way i want it to when i use paint, but ink works fabulous!

and the back

very simple. i don't even know if we're supposed to decorate the back or not, but i didn't want to leave it totally bare. the ribbon and the metal thing are positioned to help hold the glass in place. it's not actually glued, just held in by various pieces on the front and back. it's pretty secure.

and the second piece -
i was all worried that it wouldn't be as cool as the piece above, but i really like it. i LOVE the photo she sent me, it's of her great grandparents on their wedding day. they were polish immigrants, and the picture is about 90 years old. it has water damage on it, but i think that just adds to it!

i was in love with the bits of blue caused by the damage, so i went with a blue and brown page.

the background is a slightly mottled blue, then i stamped it with plastic lace and one of my nick bantok stamp pads. it didn't work as well as i wanted, so i added swirly stamps in another shade of the nick bantok inks, and one of the tim holtz ink pads (old photo, i think). the big swirls are grungeboard, in the polkadot pattern. i painted them the same shade as the edges of the base, matched to the backing paper, and then added ink (tim holtz old photo again). the photo is printed on transparency film, and there's a piece of cream cardstock behind it, and then an oval of white tracing paper between the people and the cardstock, because i didn't want them to be too yellow/creamy. the corners are pewter, stamped with staZon saddle brown, as is the charm at the bottom that says "cherish". the twill tape was stamped with staZon as well, the other shade of brown. i used glossy accents to glue the metal bits down, it works better than regular glue.

i'm working on my next two pieces tonight. i bought the book "collage discover workshop" by claudine hellmuth and i'm trying out some background techniques from it, but everything's taking FOREVER to dry!