21st Century Pillow Book

Happy Friday the 13th! Today is Day 13 of the 31 Days of Halloween. Today I've got something completely different from what I've been sharing so far. It also took quite some time to complete, though I had so much fun doing it. My family and I went to Target and found this $3 unfinished skull. I had to have it because of all the possibilities it presented. Because the skull is made up of slats, I decided to go with a few of my ideas all on the one piece. I am adding this to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge , which is Anything but a Card. Take a look. This guy is about 12" x 12." I treated each panel with a different technique using various DecoArt Media, Stampendous , and Imagine products. Let's break each panel down individually. The panel all the way to the left was created by first giving the wood a coating of Carbon Black Fluid Acrylic from DecoArt Media. Then I used Silver Creative Medium from Imagine, along with the Mosaic Swirls Stencil from S...

Greetings! It's time for a new challenge with A Day for Daises ! And, we are going to be changing things up a little bit...so please be sure to visit the ADfD Blog to get all of the info. For our newest challenge, we ant you to use "School Paper." What that means is up to your interpretation. Here's my creation. I used the Painter's Palette image for my piece. I have been playing with my new Zig Clean Color Markers, and I cannot say enough great things about them. They're awesome, and soooo perfect for this image. I love how the colors turned out on the palette. I used 2 Zigs for each paint drop, and i think the finished effect was cool. I also played a bit with a water brush, which I have ever used before. I still prefer a regular brush with a cup f water to a water brush, but it's fun to play with and good for traveling. For the "School Paper," I took a calendar page out of my son's planner from school. It's last year'...

Hello! It's time for a new   Day for Daises challenge. Plus, the Design Team and I are showing off the new May Club Kit images. They are just darling! The challenge for the next 2 weeks is "Paint it Up," which is fabulous...I love adding paint to my projects. I used Little Dancer Flower for my card today. I colored her with my Tombow Dual Brush markers and I fussy cut her out. Using watercolor paper, I spritzed some water on it and then sprinkled some Color Burst on the wet paper. I played around with it a bit to get the results that I wanted, and I love how it winds up looking very painterly without actually being "painted." After the watercolor paper dried, I used a border punch on one side. I made a card from pale yellow cardstock, and wrote "dance" on the side with a PITT pen. Please be sure to visit the rest of the A Day for Daises team over on the Blog . Thanks for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!

Hello! This week, the Stampendous team has been feeling a little distressed....but in a good way! We are sharing all sorts of projects that share various distressing techniques. I used several techniques on my project. I love the distressed look, so this theme was right up my alley. I started off with a piece of wood that was pre-cut to my background shape. I used Andy Skinner's Faux Rust Technique along with Deco Art paints. You can check out a video for that HERE . After I completed that step, which by the way, really looks like rust and made me very happy...I started on the oval which is made of chipboard. I painted the oval using various Deco Art paints, and then I used the Gears stencil and Gold Embossing Paste . I used my embossing gun to quicken the drying process and because I wanted it to get bubbly. I painted Prussian Blue paint mixed with the Ultra Matte varnish to give a wash over the whole piece. I wiped it away from the gears, but not completely. Again, add...

Hello! It's time for a new Left of Center challenge. This week, we are sponsored by Ike's Art and the theme is Splash of Paint . I used Raven Poe for my card. I decided to not do anything to alter that image, but rather to play with my background. My card base is a single layer Monoprint, done with the Rectangles Creative Palette from Stampendous. I used acrylic paint in 3 colors on the palette. Them I embossed my Crows stencil with Black Embossing Paste . After the crows dried, I splattered some Stormy Weather Memory Mists  on to the card. Last, I applied Ike's Raven Poe. I love to play with paint! If you do too, then you should join in with Left of Center 's challenge this week. Please be sure to visit the challenge blog to see even more painted projects. Thanks for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!

Linn ie Blooms and Stampendous...what a fantastic combination!  You're going to find oodles of fun projects to really take your mixed media in a new direction.  Of course there are prizes for 3 lucky winners!  Just click on the Stampendous link  HERE  for details. For my project, I started to create a mini book for my dogs.  That's my boy with our dog Abigail. They're really good buds. I started off playing with what will be one of the inside pages of the file folder mini album. I don't know why, but I typically leave the covers for last. They tend to be the hardest parts for me. I cropped down my photo and pulled acrylic paints to coordinate with it. I painted some Christmas Green on the canvas first, and let it dry. Meanwhile, I cut out a mat for my picture, and I heat embossed with a couple of the lovely vials in the Blue Frantage Encrusted Jewel Technique 5 Jar Kit. Say that 3 times fast! Now that my green paint has dried, I grabbed a turquoi...

Hello! I am excited to be a part of Kickstart Your Art with Smeared & Smudged . For the next few days, there will be an art journal prompt that we need to complete within 24 hours. This prompt was to use primary color drips. I decided to work with my kids on this. I dripped my paint, and the kids and I blew the legs for our funny little monsters. We were excited about the next step, so I used a blow dryer to dry the paint a little faster. Then came the doodling! We decided to name our monsters, put some describing words, and wrote out a couple of general things about our monsters. We also each signed the page, since we all worked on it. And here are my happy kidlings with the finished page. They really enjoyed making this with me. Depending on tomorrow's prompt, maybe we will make the Day 2 page together. Looking forward to the next prompt! Thanks for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!

Greetings! It is already the 15th of the month, so that means it's time for a brand new Desert Islands Crafters Challenge . This time around, we are sponsored by Floppy Latte. Here's the itinerary. 1. Non-Traditional X-Mas colors (hot pink, turquoise, lime green, etc) 2.  Paper Rosettes 3. Ribbon 4. Put a Tag on it 5. Put a Tree on it 6. Snowflakes 7. Snowmen 8. Use Paint 9.  Make it a Gift 10. Stars I decided to steer away from this sort of Christmas in July theme. I used #'s 1, 3, 4, 8, and 10. This is the pretty Floppy Latte image that inspired my scrapbook page. I colored it with Spectrum Noir markers. This page is of my kids with my grandmother. We call her Nana, which is Maltese for Grandma. It is so nice that they have my Mom's parents around. They actually live only a mile away, so we can see them pretty much whenever we want. They love each other very much. It's wonderful to see them together. Please be sure to ...

Greetings! It's the 10th, so it's time for a brand new  Movie Magic Monthly  challenge. This month, the challenge is Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter. You can make anything you want as long as it has something to do with at least one of the movies in these 2 series. I decided to make something for LOTR...as that's more my type of magic. Not dissing HP...but I am for sure a LOTR girl. I decided to go with an iconic moment. When Gandalf has a standoff on a bridge and shouts "You shall not pass!!!!!!!" Loved that scene. So, I made a door hanger using a brand spankin' new  Rick St. Dennis  image. Isn't he amazing? Here's a closer look. Click on any of my images to see it bigger. I really think Rick did an amazing job at capturing the emotion and severity of the moment. You can purchase this fantastic image for yourself HERE .  I painted a piece of cardboard with acrylic paints, and used assorted textured cardboard scraps to add details. I ...

Hello! I am SO excited to share this project with you. I have been wanting to share it for a while, just haven't had the time. Back in December (I told you it was a while!), my son's former teacher commissioned me to do a painting of a sugar skull for her daughter. I had given said teach a card with a Bombshell Stamps sugar skull on it, and her daughter absconded with it and proceeded to hang it in her dorm room. So, she thought a painting would be a great gift for her. I was overjoyed. I had not painted anything in so long, and I missed it so much. Here's the completed painting, then I will show you the steps I took to get there. What do you think? It was requested that I use teal and orange, as those are the color's of the girl's dorm room. I painted on canvas board, and the size is 8 1/2 x 11. I used acrylics. I did some research on sugar skulls, looking to see what types of designs I liked best. How many flowers? Do I want a spider web? And it goes on. ...

Hello! It is time to share the September Pin-Up Challenge from Bombshell Stamps . This month, Lizzie , our Pin-Up of the month, challenged us to use paint splatter on our projects. This was SO up my alley!!! I love to splatter paint! I decided to work with one f my newer (for me) sets, Girl's Ruin . This was so much fun for me. I started off by stamping the focal image from Girl's Ruin twice. The first version, I colored only the Bombshell's skin and tights. The second (which I had separated from everything else so that I wouldn't ruin any other images with paint), I went to town with. I chose three colors (very 80's combo, don'tcha think?), and splattered the whole thing with a fan brush. I had so much fun flicking and spattering paint everywhere! When I was happy with my splatter, and it was totally dry, I cut out the large shoe, her bikini top, and her teeny shoe. I kept them attached to each other. This was actually a pretty easy cutting job c...

Did you miss me? It was weird to take a day off of blogging after posting for 31 Days straight. Truth be told, I should have had a post... There's not only a new Desert Island Crafters Challenge , but also a new Beyond the Burtonesque Dolls challenge. With the computer nonsense I've been dealing with, it's been tougher than I would have anticipated to get things done. When did I become so technically reliant??? But on to the good stuff. Bombshell Stamps is having a Forum Relaunch Party! It's been going on since Halloween. If you haven't been over there lately, please stop by. There are prizes up for grabs, lots of fun chatter happening, and heck...who wouldn't want to hang out with us Bombshells? ;) Mary G. came up with a great challenge that I just had to play along with. It's called Howl at the Moon, and you need to create a project with a moon in it. I broke out one of my newest Bombshell aquisitions, Homeward Bound , for this one. I stamped the imag...

Happy Tuesday Everyone! This week’s challenge is brought to us by Julie. Here is the challenge : Today’s Twilight Tuesday Inspiration Challenge is about the character that every Twilighter seems to love — Alice! Our theme is specifically about Alice’s past, before she met the Cullen family and was known as Mary Alice Brandon. We don’t know too many details about Alice’s life before the events of the Twilight saga occur, but if you would like a refresher on her past, visit the Twilight Saga Wiki here and read! The craft portion is to depict an aspect of Alice’s history. You can take your inspiration from what we know from the actual Stephenie Meyer text, or you can use your imagination to depict something that could have happened in Alice’s past. The comment portion – talk a bit about Alice’s gift. Would you like to possess her ability to see the future? Do you think that that would be a blessing or a curse? So I had so many ideas for this challenge. Originally, I wanted to do somet...