Milestone Reminder

Don't forget to check out my Milestone Post and add your name to the draw by posting a comment. I was going to do the draw on June 11 but you will have one more day to get your name in as I will draw late on the June 12. Check back on the 13th to see who the winners are. Good Luck to all and thanks for helping me celebrate.

ATC Mini Shrine "Freedom to Change"

Well I finally made my first shrine last night. This idea has been cooking in my brain since I bought these little black boxes from Ruby Dog's Art House and discovered they are the perfect size for an ATC. For the front I started with a piece of black cardstock cut smaller than an ATC and glued green, purple, blue and white handmade tissue paper on. I then added my house pin from the Byhand Artists Challenge minus the pin back. This whole piece was glued on with PVA. The final step was to glue the metal photo corners on with E6000 glue. Now for the inside left I used a previously made ATC with a Quietfire rubber stamp, beads on wire and a butterfly charm all on painted watercolour paper. Because I wanted this image to stand out more, I glued it over a piece of foam core. The image on the right is another previously made ATC (one of my favourites) with another piece of hand painted watercolour paper for the background a digital image from the internet, faux mica transparency, digital text, wire and beads. This image was glued right to the back of the plastic box. The back was made new for this project and is another painted watercolour paper background and another Quietfire Design quote stamp, stamped with scarlet pigment ink and embossed with amethyst embossing powder. The beads are part of a necklace I recycled. There are some flat clear beads and after stringing the beads together I glued one of these flat beads to the side of the box with E6000 glue.

Byhand Challenge Buttons

This weeks challenge is to use buttons, so I made an ATC using my rose photo with a canvas filter, mounted on black cardstock and glued 3 buttons on. This time I did the whole card myself, even to getting the back on a little crocked. Can't blame anyone else, but maybe it will be my left handed art signature.

Background For Byhand Artists Swap

Well here it is, my first attempt at left-handed art, well actually one-handed, with my right arm in it's cast. The byhandartists Yahoo Group are having a background swap, so before signing up I gave a trial run and found I could handle this technique, so now I am in. I started with a piece of single-sided black corrugated cardboard approximately 12 inches by 14 inches. I used matt medium to glue torn pieces of handmade tissue paper in purple, white, blue, tan, light and dark green onto the cardboard, pushing it down into the corrugated grooves. This is finished with four coats of the matt medium, allowing each coat to dry before adding the next one. I added a small amount of Spun Gold and Silver Morning craft acrylic to the finale coat, but that does not show up very well, perhaps there is not enough of it in the gel medium. And here are two of the pieces cut to the required size of 4 inches by 6 inches.