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.

Celebrating a Milestone

Today I am celebrating a milestone. Now it could be for posting 50 blog entries, I never knew I had that much to say or that I could post somewhat regularly. But no, I think I would need more than 50 posts to rate as a milestone worthy of celebrating. This is for a Flickr milestone. I have an ATC made for the black background Created Byhand Tuesday Challenge which I posted in my Flickr Photos on Nov. 6, 2007. I have been watching for the views to reach a certain number and then I would post my blog goodies. While I was creating a new series of similar ATCs for giveaways, more people kept looking and now this photo has been viewed a phenomenal 2,131 time to date. So now I have a new series of 3 ATCs that are similar to the original one that has so many views. The first is my "Love where you're at" quote stamp created by Suzanne of Quietfire Design stamped on black cardstock with scarlet pigment ink and embossed with copper detail embossing powder. I used a border punch on 1 edge and mounted it on to purple cardstock. This is trimmed with 2 paper flowers layered together with a brad. The second ATC is stamped with scarlet pigmant ink and embossed with amethyst embossing powder on a slightly curved edge black cardstock and again mounted on purple cardstock. The 2 paper flowers are attached with a silver brad. This is the least visible on the scan and is very subtle in real as well, but is my favourite. The third ATC is stamped with white pigment ink and embossed with silver embossing powder on border punched black cardstock and again mounted on purple cardstock. This one has 2 little purple heart stickers added. So now for the giveaway, leave a comment on this post and check back on June 11, 2008 to see if you are one of the 3 names drawn at that time. No need to sign-in but please use a name or nickname so I can identify the winners. Once I have announced the winners I will ask them to email me privately with the address for mailing the ATCs. Winner number one will also receive a mystery bonus to be announced later.

More May ATCs

I worked on these ATCs back on about May 6 so now I'm just getting them posted. I started with unused flower gift cards and re-purposed them for the background. The "Boy" one has a collage image from Quientfire Design and the lettering is purple cardstock run through a Dymo labler and highlighted with white stamp pad ink. The red button was glued on. The "Girl" uses another Quietfire Design collage image and the word sweet stamped with an alphabet set in metallic pink ink then a pink button was glued on.

Playing With Some Floral ATC

Well here I am with more left handed creations, this time I'm using my digital photos and filters in editing software. The first ATC is a pink rose, cropped and stamped with a Quietfire Design quote stamp. The second 2 are photos of lilacs using several filters and digital effects and my poems. I finished off with purple and pewter foil. Some of these will go to the Grind swap tomorrow and some I hope to mail in time for the Byhand Artists monthly swap.

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.