Breaking out with the gelli plate

 It has been a while since I have done two posts in the same day, life has really been busy.  Who would have thought the gelli plate could be this much fun.  It very rarely disappoints me in my "what if" moods.  Instead of applying my paint with a brayer I decided this morning to apply it with my hands.  I suggest that if you are going to try this to be sure and use a "flow extender", this will keep the paint wetter as you manipulate it with your fingers.  I used "Golden" Acrylic Flow Release. approx 1 part to 1 part.  I used two colors parchment by Ceramcoat Delta and Chateau Moss by Accent.  I pulled on tissue paper.  I love the mountains and valleys that pulled out.

This is the second pull.  On the mornings I am not sure what direction I am going to go, this helps to stimulate my creative process, a little morning exercise for my muse, lol.  It is almost too hot to think or create but I am hanging in there and moving slow.  Happy Sunday, hugs

Romp in the snow

Last week I went with a friend to lunch, the restaurant is next door to JoAnns, in order to walk off some lunch we went in for a look around.  I love this Tim Holtz die but not enough to pay full price, JoAnns had them for 40% off, so I took it home.  I cut the deer from Italian wrapping paper I found on my excursion to San Francisco last month.  The background is a tissue I printed a snow scene on. Love the fun of it.  Trying to stay cool here it was a doozy yesterday.  Hope everyone has a nice Sunday, hugs

Eat Vibrant

A fun digi page for The Art Journal Caravan and a reminder to everyone to eat all those glorious fruits and veggies during this crazy heat wave.  No cooking going on in this house until it cools down, lol.  The chef is one of the Mannequins found on my wonderful excursion last week to the fixture store.  The background is a gelli pull and the fruit is from NLD "1001 Nights" at Scrapbook Graphics.  Hugs

Happiness

Hope everyone stays cool and inside this weekend as temps soar in the southwest.  This is a hybrid page from our Art Journal Page Swap.  The background is a gelli pull with distress inks and white acrylic wash drips.  I used some of my textured washi tape on this and a real twig.  Hope your weekend is filled with happiness, hugs

Christmas Cards

As hard as it is to believe the year is 1/2 over and we move into month 7, this is my month to start pulling together elements and papers I have collected since last Christmas for the next seasons greetings.  I am working this year with my gelli pulls and other patterned papers printed out on tissue and mounted on chipboard blocks, then embellishing with other wonderful elements.  I love the soft yet bold statements they are making.

The background is a gelli pull, I then brought in a Christmas Tree photo and layered it onto the paper with photoshop and then did some masking on the photo to feather out most of the background.  Martha Stewart dove and Lori Whitlock bow were the finishing touches.

The cards are 6"X4 1/4" and are the biggest size that will go with a standard 1st class stamp.  I found the envelopes at my local paper distributor on clearance for a song.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week.  We actually have rain falling with cool breezes, love the break in the heat, it is supposed to be back in the 90s tomorrow, LOL.  Hugs

Friends

Posting another of my hybrid pages for the Art Journal Swap.  The Zebras are from the Silhouette Library, flowers by Prima, handmade tag, background is David Smith "Gold" watercolor using a zebrastrip stencil and acrylic paint over it, then sealed with a fixative.  "Friend" is a rub-on and cannot remember whos it is.

Time - a winged bandit

Morning everyone, I have had two amazingly wonderful days back to back this week, I am feeling inspired and so very thankful.  This digi page is about my Wednesday.  For 15 years I have passed by a resale store fixture warehouse that is open to the public, each time I say to myself, I am going to go in there and just look around one of these days.  Well not only is necessity the mother of invention but also the spur to take you were you need to go.  I inherited a peg board stand that I have transformed into my paper punch storage, my nemesis has been finding the hooks that would work, as I deleted the primary hardware stores from my resource list, this place came to mind.  I was telling my friend and neighbor about it and she said, oh I have always wanted to go there too, so we made a date.  Early Wednesday morning we set out, now the funny part is that I chose the day they were in the final day of their move to a new facility, thanks goodness I phoned ahead.  We got there and it was a chaos of boxes and bins and in a state of confusion, 1/2 the personnel were at the old facility, so we were left to our own devices, we spent the better part of 3 hours roaming, calling out to each other as a treasure was found.  To our delight there were mannequins everywhere, some dressed, some not, in bins and cubby holes, even some in cages, ROFL.  I took so many photos I ran out of room and had to use my friends camera and still not everything was captured.  We will definitely be going back.  I did end up with some wonderful hooks that work for my peg board storage.  I especially love the legs hanging out of this bin and as I started to play with it this morning, this digi page happened, it makes me giggle and hope you get a chuckle from it too.  Happy Friday, hugs

A new "Hang Out"

Morning all, last night I was reflecting on the fact that this year is 1/2 over, wow and what a year it has been for me on so many levels.  July of this year will mean I have had my Silhouette Cameo for a year, it came with a learning curve I embraced head on.  Then in December I saw that beefing up my photoshop skills would enhance the Cameo even more and took that on.  In pursuing the photoshop knowledge I realized that my progress would be enhanced by joining an Art Journaling Group I found at Scrapbook Graphics, so the end of December I made the 1 year commitment and signed up. Whew! Little did I know what these seemingly small decisions would make in my love of creating, my love of sharing and growing.  So what does all that have to do with my relatively new "Hang Out" projects?  These began last month when I was cleaning the garage and came across a stash of clothes pins and had an idea on how to use them.  I wanted a project that would allow me to share some of the wonderful things I have learned with the Art Journaling Caravan.  In order for a project to stay active on my radar, it has to be able to evolve, it has to lend itself to many mediums, it has to serve a function and still be funny, interesting, inspiring and/or comforting and in particular this project had to simply use words and images.  So far they are standing up to the test.  I love that this one you cannot tell it uses a clothes pin unless you look at it from the back or side, the humming bird hides the pin.  The block is a Spellbinders die and it is sandwiched between 2 pieces of transparency to give it some protection (I am amazed I did not get a flare on this shot, yippee).  The sandwich is held together with two eyelets, one on each side where the ribbon is.  The humming bird is from Marta Van Eck at Deviant Art Scrap.  The coloring on the journaling block is Pan Pastel after blending I do spray it with a matt fixative.

 The bonus is I decided to extract the piece from my photo and it can also be used as an element on one of my digi pages.  The background is a gelli pull on tissue.

This is a side view of the "Hang Out", there is a transparency hangar attached to the back of the block, it slips over the clothes pin before the humming bird is attached to the base of the clothes pin, that means that the jouraling block will never slip off the pin.  So thanks for going the entire post with me, I know it was a little long this morning, I guess what I am saying in short is that you will probably see more of my "Hang Outs", lol, hugs and Happy Hump Day!

Best of Friends

A thinking of you card.  Memory Box tree and bird, EKSuccess photo corners, the Butterfly is from Studio Digilicious at Scrapbook Graphics, font is CK Blackout.  I love the black and white with just a snippet of earth tones.  Happy Monday

Friends - The AJC Journal Page Swap

Happy weekend everyone.  Our Journal Page Swap shipped out this week and so I decided I would share some of the ones I did for this special swap, it was soooo much fun to do.  This is an 8X10 page, the background is layers and layers of color.  It was about friends and support, I do not know what I would do in this life without my friends, sometimes in our day to day we forget just how much friendship means.  I created a lot of my own elements for the swap and this page is all mine, I learned a lot as I did these, tried some new things that worked and some of course did not but that is the fun of it all.  Love your friends today, hugs