recent ATCs

i had the most wonderful day today. i got together with a very dear friend and we played. it had been quite a while since i'd seen her or her partner, and even longer since we'd had an art day, and it was so so good. we played around with gelatin monoprints, and talked art and queer politics and everything in between, and she showed me the various steps she took in making her wedding thank you cards (mine arrived while i was away - i'll definitely be posting it soon, it's so amazing!). we had a little show and tell, and oohed and awed over the amazing pieces i received in last year's chunky pages swap and tip in page swap.

i want to experiment a bit more with the gelatin prints before i post pictures, because today i mostly just started on the base layer of what i'd like to do. i was inspired by an article in the most recent issue of quilting arts magazine, and did a bunch of research online, and our results weren't quite as we expected, though still pretty damn fabulous!

however, in the meantime, i wanted to post the first ATCs i've made in months and months! on wednesday evening i went to the ATC trade group at the richmond art gallery. it was only my second time there and i hadn't made any more cards since i went in may, so i was busy for a few days before, working on some ATCs to take.

i'm feeling very scattered right now, and my supplies are all roaming about the house, so i basically sat myself down and told myself that i was ONLY allowed to use the stuff that was on the table. i pulled out ink pads and some stamps to go along with it, and got to work. i'm quite happy with them.


bluebirds

vintage sheet music, strip of pink tickets, strip of page from a vintage medical book, and blue birds scanned from a vintage card

snip

asian language paper with a blender marker transfer, stazon ink applied through punchinella and part of an invoice ticket.

music/language

stazon ink applied with a netting mask onto vintage sheet music, small pieces of the asian language paper tinted with stazon, pink coupon and vintage silver leaf

admit one

vintage sheet music with an overlay of a left over german/russian dictionary page, punchinella stamped invoice ticket, purple triangles inspired by the fabulous phizzychick, pink coupon

oedipus

the background for this one is from a very old medical book, the paper is extremely fragile until it's glued onto a sturdier surface. the particular page used is talking about the oedipus complex, so i chose postage stamps with a "father" type figure and a "daughter". it's over stamped with two different designs, in green and in blue stazon. vintage silver foil leaf in the centre, and a blue resister glued on using glossy accents.

constitution

the background is a dictionary page, punched out invoice tags, british postage stamp, a scrap of patterened paper, and vintage hole protector thingies (they have a very cool texture in person, they're fabricy!), finished off with blue ink

family strength

transparency image of my great grandmother overlaid on sheet music, b&w film strip along the edge, vintage dictionary snippet, and stazon detailing.

obsolete

vintage photo found on my most recent trip, scanned and printed out. sheet music and asian language page, vintage silver foil leaf, and an office supply stamp "obsolete"

royal command

sheet music stamped with red stazon polka dots, british stamps, cigar band, and vintage pharmacy label

queen 997

stazon inked over netting mask onto a page from a vintage german children's book, triangles cut from canada post labels, punchinella mask stamped invoice tag, and a british stamp

contempt and contemplation

dictionary page stamped with green flower design,asian language page cut with a fiskars scalloped punch and stamped with stazon, then the small praying hands cabachon was glued on with glossy accents. small bits of yellow paper, and part of a vintage card with sewing snaps.

15 cents

vintage sheet music, a vintage ticket, green strip and triangles cut from canada post mailing labels, and a stamp with a neat design.


what do you think? i was quite happy with them.

the group was fairly small, but it was fun. mostly people i hadn't met yet, and a neat mix of styles for trading. i had more cards than there were people at the meeting, so despite trading for 2 cards with a few people, i still have some left for next time. i'll slowly be building up my stock!

new ephemera packs added to nimbleheart.etsy.com, and today's prizes!

while gathering up goodies for today's giveaway prizes, i bundled up a whole bunch of ephemera and goodies and listed them on etsy! i'm so proud of myself, i've been saying that i was going to do this for ages!

i did ledger sheet packs -

10 pages with graph-like lines. 7 different page in the 10, the majority are ledger sheets. the largest sheet is folded for shipping.






Fun and Games packs -

over 60 pieces!









Sheet Music Packs that are apparently too big to fit in envelopes, so i haven't listed them yet!

12 sheets of vintage sheet music, including one handwritten page





and my favourite, but also the most time consuming by far, the Book Pack

over 40 pages from books varying from first aid, plays, hymnals, bibles, dictionaries, textbooks, encyclopedias and more. includes french, polish, german, russian and more.








For Today's Giveaway prize, I've put together two ephemera and papercrafting bundles. In addition, each bundle will ALSO include one of each of the bundles above! I think i'm going to regret my generosity when it comes time to ship them.... ;)

The Prize Bundles are pretty much the same, with just a few variations. Things like playing cards are obviously different, and the info typed on the catalogue cards, the words on the German/Russian dictionary pages, the images in the slides, the holes in the player piano paper etc. in addition, one set includes a 7 gypsies walnut ink tube, and the other includes the glitter that Megan from the Upstart Crow donated.

Bundle 1





Bundle 2!






after going through so much stuff yesterday, i'm super inspired to play with it all!


but not today! can you believe that i haven't even found the time to enter any of the other giveaways? so silly!

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!

whew! my challenge project is complete! (ish!)

i didn't honestly think it would be, and it probably shouldn't be, i probably should have slept instead, but oh well! i had to send out 60 inchies yesterday morning, so i couldn't start on this until last night!

it is a work in progress, because i don't want to bind it right away, i'm hoping to add more pages in the future. but these pages are done!

(in case you missed it, my last post is about the adventure itself, including what the challenge was, and has lots of these photos in their original form)

all of the pages are difference sizes, which i love! this is what it looks like with most of them stacked together (a few were still drying!)



page 1

the photo was bleached and then torn, to really focus on the row of mailboxes. i added two solvent transfers and then the original of the postmark/date thingy, it's from ARTchix collage sheet "lavendar lovelies".

page 2

the eggs are from ARTchix collage sheet "E is for Egg" and i tinted them blue a bit to match the page better. all of the stamps are Invoke Arts, in various blue shades of stazOn.

page 3

the photo was altered with bleach, i used a q-tip to draw the oval, and then dripped bleach over the outside areas. again, the egg is from ARTchix collage sheet "E is for Egg" and i tinted it blue a bit to match the page better. all of the stamps are Invoke Arts, in various blue shades of stazOn.

page 4

the photo was sanded and painted with watercolour crayons. before gluing it down i added a library card catalogue for the book "Sea Swan". the images in the bottom right are from the ARTchix collage sheet "Petite Parade", tinted a bit, as usual!

page 5

the photo was sanded around the sides, and then it was coloured with watercolour crayons. after it was glued down, i used stazOn ink to blend the photo into the background better. the writing in the centre is stazOn, and the images in the 4 corners are ARTchix, from the collage sheet "Petite Parade". i smudged them a bit with grey stazOn before gluing them down.

page 6

this one is pretty simple, i'll probably add more to it at a later date. the photo is altered using bleach to write "WALK", and it's glued onto a piece of joss paper.

page 7

i edited this photo in photoshop before printing it out, and then scratched it up a bit after it was glued down. i added dabs of white stazOn, and the foil and the image were both free gifts from ARTchix.

page 8

simple, really. i edited the picture in photoshop, and then scratched "thrift" into it. i glued down some patterned paper on the sides before the photo was glued down, but you can barely see it.

page 9

this photo was printed off on my ink jet (the majority were printed at a photo lab), so i spritzed it with water a bunch to lighten it a bit, and then the edges were scratched and sanded. i added the lavender receipt from the ARTchix collage sheet Lavender Lovelies" and the moth is a solvent transfer from the ARTchix collage sheet "elegant insects".

page 10

fairly simple again. i used saddle brown stazOn to blend the paper and the photo together, and then stamped "exciting!" across the photo.

page 11

this a photo of the Upstart Crow sign, printed out and sanded around the edges. i added the blue stars sticker at the bottom, it was also a free gift from ARTchix, but i cut off the part that said "STAR" because it wouldn't fit!

page 12

this is an angled shot of the rows of carved wooden crows along the front window of th Upstart Crow. i bleached the photo and then sanded it.

page 13

photo of beads at the upstart crow bleached. i added the hand stamp (Invoke Arts, i think. maybe Alpha Stamps?) and the horoscope wheel and moon from the ARTchix collage sheet "Mystical".

page 14

photo of the Kroma paint display at the Upstart Crow (Kroma is a local brand!) that has been bleached around the edges. i stamped Art repeatedly with an Alpha Stamps stamp and stazOn, and then went around the edges of the page with the same ink.

page 15

this page is actually the backside of part of page 16, but since the page folds in, it comes first when you go through the book! simple again, sanded edges and paper and stamped Inspire with red stazOn and Invoke Arts stamp.

page 16

this page folds out to show two photos in a mirror image. the photo is of me, sleeping after all my adventures! i edited quite a bit in photoshop and then sanded and scratched the edges.

i'm pretty happy with it, and i'm looking forward to doing more pages and binding it, and hanging all sorts of dangly things off of the coil! i kind of feel like the backgrounds are kind of boring, because i didn't have time to do any background techniques that required drying! maybe that'll teach me not to leave my inchies to the last minute next time!