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!

updates and goodies from the mail!

ohmygoodness, so behind!

i'm sorry for disappearing like that! i've definitely been trying to blog more often, but these last few weeks have pretty much sucked, healthwise. after a few weeks of actually feeling better for once, i started feeling crappy again, and it really threw me for a loop! it's funny how quickly we get used to things we like, and how long it takes us to get used to the things that we don't! after only a few weeks of feeling better, i had it in my head that i could do more, and that i had more energy, and so even though i felt so terrible this week, i still kept pushing myself. you'd think i'd know better by now!

this week was going to be my take it easy week, though it didn't end up quite as chill as i wanted it to be. i was really sore and tired and in a daze for a lot of it! i kept thinking of things to post about, and then by the time i had a chance to actually post, i was way too wiped out!

so i've got lots of things to update about, MSCEApril for one, and my adventures monday for another.

but before i get into them, let's talk about mail. i LOVE mail! this has been a really awesome mail week! i've received lots of swap goodies - two chunky houses, seven pendants from the pendant swap, a piece of my puzzle atc, and a fabric atc! that's just the swap stuff!

i also received lots of non-swap goodies!

a whole stack of loose embroidery patterns that i won for a whopping $0.99 on ebay! i can't wait to scan and organize these!


a huge order of unmounted rubber stamps from purple onion design's overstock sale.


3 awesome pins from the folks at yarnbombing.com. i'm so so impatient for their book to come out!


and all these vintage deer, which i purchased from shara at http://www.mydealoftheday.blogspot.com/ . aren't they super cute?!

i'd also found some locally, at this amazing cake decorating place, so now i have a TON of deer! my massage therapist said the other day "amy, i think you're the only person i know who has her own herd of plastic deer." gee, ya think!

wasn't that a fabulous mail week? i'm so sad that today's a holiday and i didn't get any mail!

inchies!

also received while i was away, my inchies!

the swap was for 10 sets of 5, though i ended up doing 10 sets of 6, because i had enough time, and the brad ones were so simple. you kept one set, and sent out the other 9, ending up with 50 inchies total. this was the second round, now i have 100 inchies that i need to figure out how to display!

foil set

foil tape embossed with a vintage seal stamped and applied to cardstock. the foil has stazOn black detailing, i blotted it on with a makeup sponge and then removed the excess ink with a piece of scrap fabric, leaving it only in the crevices.

felt set

felt squares with embroidery, self explanatory! i did these while visiting with my friend lindsey, we do a "stitch'n'bitch" pretty much every time we get together.

music set

leftover paper from the vines on my sparkly sacred heart project, velvet trim, dymo word

brad sets

mostly just an excuse to use cute new stamps! stamps are embossed and then a brad was added

button set

number tag ephemera with embossed button stamp from paper bag studios and text printed on coloured paper then glued over

my set

these are the ones i kept. i'm missing the "la" inchie, i dropped it somewhere between my studio and the scanner!

i really love the metal tape set and the button sets, they were definitely my favourites! i love how the button sets spelled out "button, button, who's got the button", though i don't think any of my partners actually put it together!

valentines loveliness!!

just a quickie, because i should be in bed right now! (i've gotten myself onto a nocturnal schedule again, and i'm trying to break it!)

but i wanted to show what i've been working on. kinda.

i signed up for the valentine classroom card swap on craftster because i LOVE valentines! i hate all the consumerism of valentine's day, but i love handmade things. i love the kitschyness, and i love any opportunity to tell people that they're loved. every year i send out valentines, and i figured that with the swap, i'd just make more! (plus, i'm trying to force myself to craft, no matter how terrible i feel, remember?)

i had my valentines all figured out already, i had a brainstorm back in december, but then i found the more fabulous scrapbooking paper, so i changed them slightly to incorporate it.

following the swap thread, people were chatting about making boxes to hold their valentines, like we used to in grade school. i decided to make a little pouch for all mine, and this is what i ended up with.







it's pale pink upholstery weight vinyl stamped with a ton of stamps in royal purple, fuscia pink, black cherry, and vibrant violet stazOn ink. after i'd stamped it, i stitched all over with three different colours of thread, pink, fuscia and purple, and stitched it together. it has a vintage dead stock zipper, as per usual (i love vintage zippers!)

and here it is with a stack of valentines!

the stack on the right is all the US addresses, and the stack inside it are the canadian and international addresses. i made over 60 valentines! i definitely didn't intend to make that many, i started out with 50, and that seemed like a lot, and then i ran short!

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!

where'd thursday go? oops!

i missed things i love thursday this week, obviously!

thursday evening was busy putting together something that i REALLY love though - a shelf!

my area of the house is set up in such a way that i have my bedroom, my studio, a little hallway to a door outside and a door into the house, and then i have a little room that connects to our crawl space. it's pretty full of stuff, it has an upright freezer, two filing cabinets, a dresser full of patterns, and two of those rolling bin things full of sewing supplies. the room itself has a very low ceiling, and we have storage on top of it as well (full of my little brother's crap, mostly). it has to stay fairly clear, because you need to go through it to the crawlspace, but a few weeks ago i got the idea that i could put up a shelf and clothes rack above the rollybins and the shorter filing cabinet. i kinda obsessed about it for a while, but i was scared to go buy the supplies myself and i bought the wrong thing!

so on thursday i finally convinced my dad to go to home depot (by threatening to do it myself - he was worried about me buying the wrong stuff too!!), so we went and got the supplies, and came home and put the shelf up. omg, i LOVE it! i made certain that the shelf was low enough from the ceiling that i could stack several containers on it, and now i can keep all of my organized supplies in there!

as much as my studio is an absolute disaster, some parts of it are extremely organized. that's my big cleaning avoidance technique. i should be cleaning, but instead i decide to sort the giant grocery bag full of zippers by colour and size, or organize all my stamps, etc.

i actually took pictures of the stamp organizing a few months ago, intending to post them here, and never got around to it. i have A LOT of stamps, it's quite ridiculous.

here's what i started with -

pile #1, from my bathroom


the overflowing rubber stamp bin


the overflowing clear stamp bin


and pile #2, also from the bathroom (that's my little stamp cleaning station, with the vintage holder, toothbrushes, ink removers, etc)


i didn't even take pictures of the overflowing ink bins!

it was impossible to find anything, and i kept making projects and then later remembering a different stamp that would have worked better. blegh!

so i organized.

the new clear stamps containers (blocks and alphabets on top, most everything else in the lower)


the new rubber stamps containers (foam stamps at the very top, alphabets and unmounted in the middle, and mounted stamps in the bigger one on the bottom)


and the inks (stazOn on the left, pigments and embossing powder on the right, and waterbased inks, alcohol inks and various other things like flocking on the bottom)

since then my dad bought me a whole basket of embossing powder at a silent auction, so i have another container just of them.

so now all my stamping stuff is nicely organized! except that until thursday, these bins were all over the studio, getting in my way all the time.

hence why i love my shelf! i can put all my papercrafting bins in there, as well as my jewelery bins (that rarely get used) and some of my less-used sewing supplies. and when i need them, i can just pull them out! the rod underneath is used for all of the sewing patterns that i've traced onto cloth or old sheets over the years, they hang on pant hangers, and clothes that i've made over the years that i can't bear to give up.

oh, so nice.

of course, looking at my studio, you'd never know that i just took all those bins out.... i have a lot more cleaning to do!

update post 4! halloween atcs!

this is the fourth update post of the day, so don't forget to scroll back and see some of the amazing things i've received lately, and the goodies i sent!

because i love both halloween AND atcs, i organized the halloween atc swap on craftster. when i organize swaps like this one, or like the no-paper atc swap, i set up groups of 3 or 4, and allow experienced swappers to join more than one group if they'd like. that lets people with less time available join even if they only want to send a few cards, and lets those of us who are slightly more obsessive send more.

i was in 3 groups (of course), sending and receiving 9 cards total, and i received some incredible atcs.

from a-roze


from twiztidblood


from rackycoo


from megan+mary


from goatgoddess


from whatzudoin


from teddybearbones


from panthermoon


and from qazicat


i had a lot of fun making the cards i sent, as you can imagine given the size of my stash!

sent to panthermoon

bat stamp is inkadinkadoo, bat and edges are embossed with black powder.

sent to a-roze

web and writing are inkadinkadoo stamps, image is from a crafty secrets heartwarming vintage collection journal note pad

web stamp from inkadinkadoo, embossed with black powder
(she got two because i sent them along with the altoid tin!)

sent to goatgoddess

image is from a crafty secrets heartwarming vintage collection journal notes pad, dresden spider web is from alphastamps.com, black velvet rickrack and halloween brad

sent to racky

image is from a crafty secrets heartwarming vintage collection journal notes pad, star stamps are making memories, writing is cosmo cricket

sent to megan+mary

cat and spooky are embossed. stamps are both from micheals, no brand

sent to teddybearbones

skeleton and edges are embossed. skeleton stamp is cosmo cricket

sent to qazicat

pumpkin and edges are embossed. pumpkin stamp is cosmo cricket

sent to twiztidblood

black velvet rickrack and the image is from a crafty secrets heartwarming vintage collection journal notes pad

sent to whatzudoin

embossed bats, stamp from cosmo cricket, halloween brad


and since i made some extras, there were a few that weren't sent to anyone

glossy accents outlining the tree and birds on halloween scrapbooking paper. the spooky is a stamp, embossed with clear embossing powder.

witch is embossed, star is plastic confetti, trim is black velvet. witch stamp is making memories