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Our Creative Corner
bloglineswatercolor/acrylic backgrounds
I like to make large panels of “experimental watercolor” backgrounds to use later in cards and ATCs. In these examples I used 140lb cold press watercolor paper which makes wonderfully sturdy ATC backgrounds. The addition of metallic acrylic paints (lumiere, luna lights) gives the final product a very interesting shimmer and great texture. Follow along:
1)
Wet your entire panel of paper under running water, both sides and lay on protected surface (garbage bag cut open works well). Add regular watercolors with lots of water in any combination and pattern that you like.
2) Keeping everything nice and wet, add blotches of metallic acrylic paint, I used Luna Lights in this sample. Its messy 
3)Add saran wrap over the entire panel and crunch up. Here I wanted to go for horizontal stripes, so I pulled the saran wrap sideways with my fingers:
4) Let this dry completely. As it dries the color becomes much lighter and more subtle, pigments will accumulate along the veins formed by the wrap, some veins stay white:
5) When this is completely dry, peel off the saran wrap. You get a large panel of interesting background to work with. Punch out shapes etc. You can alter this also by adding more color in the veins with colored pencil or any other medium you prefer. Use a pigment ink or stazon to stamp on it:
6) closeup. The addition of Luna Lights makes for very interesting shimmer:
Here are some pictures of a second color combo that was done in a similar fashion, starting with watercolor, then adding white sparkle lumiere, lots of water. The saran wrap was crunched up in an irregular fashion this time:
What can y ou do with these? I used a piece of the second background panel to make this card:
The background makes for a wonderful jungle, doesn’t it? The parrot was cut from the digi image Pete the Pirate Parrot and is available at Belinda’s Digital Art. More info on this card can be found at The Cottage Studio .
So much Green!
All around the web, I wish there was more green in my garden 
Many challenges revolve around green in March, so is the Copic Creations #23 , use your green copics. Well I tried:
These are the colors I used for this ATC:
Stamped the sea bottom at an angle and popped up the sea star which has a bit of glitter on it. These ATCs are also for a swap with the theme “add some silver”. I used silver peeloffs for one plant as well as the sea bottom and water edge on top. All stamps are from Our Craft Lounge who is the sponsor for this week’s Copic Creations Challenge. This set I won in a sketch challenge from OCL
Swim turtles….
Another fun ATC :)
The March theme for the MidWestStamper’s ATC swap is any or all of “dogs”, “ribbon” and “funny sayings”. Well I tried to go for all this time. Using stamps from Our Craft Lounge with Pat the dog:
The bottom doggie playground was stamped twice and popped up a bit. All coloring was done with copics. My ribbon makes clouds in the sky and a bit of machine sewing holds it all together nicely.
Spring brings Birds!
That is the theme of another ATC swap that I am participating in. I used the beautiful “nottinghill” paper from 7 gypsies as a background for these, cutting it such that each card had a bit of blue flourish on the bottom for this weeks Theme Thursday: flourishes topic.
The bird was colored with copics and paper pieced. I stamped the flourished “Bird” sentiment in Brocade Blue over the paper flourishes and slightly clear embossed it. The top notes were stamped in Memento Cottage Ivy. Some white gel pen on the willows finish of this simple but pretty card
All stamps used are by Oxford Impressions!
Fly birds….
Welcome to my Jungle…
Well, that is what my life feels like anyway at the moment! If you have a lot of time one of these days, ask me what is involved in getting a driveway permit that spans two of your properties on a land that is less than 160 acres and has not been rezoned since 1983 hah!
Meet Pete!! Pete is one of the new images from Belinda’s Digital Art Shop .
If you look at the image of Pete and the sample color image on that page, they look very different from mine. Dare you to color OUTSIDE of the lines here and use your imagination on just how do YOU see the image. Often Belinda’s art is not coloring-book style, but has broken lines, incomplete shapes etc. You can just fill in whatever you feel like, that’s the fun of it! My Pete sits on the end of a quite airy branch. I colored in the entire background and added jungle plants using the brush tip of a green copic pressed down flat on the paper. The bottoms of my plants have hotfix pearls in them, treasures of the jungle
I am entering this into the current Dare you to Digistamp challenge which was to use pearls and this spawned my entire idea of the jungle plants in the background.
With this I’d also like to welcome Judy Parlin to our Design Team!! Check out her interpretation of Pete at The Cottage Studio !
all that is green :)
For a new ATC swap at MidWestStampers we were to make something that is or describes green.These swaps are always fun as this is a very creative group, you just never know what you get There is still time to participate, why don’t ya?
My first ATC shows the pretty green frog from Mark’s Finest Papers :
On Basic Grey Marbled Paper with a few crystals and microbeads on the bottom. As messy as they are to work with, I really like the look of microbeads! Froggie was colored with copics and glazed with clear glue.
My next ATC was done on an experimental watercolor background (cling and scrunch) in green and golds. I could not resist those pretty butterflies from K + Company, they are very dimensional in three layers. The flowers are from a new eksuccess slim line border punch. I ask you: border?! This makes a strip of flowers, but doesn’t leave a border Lol…. with the sentiment stamp again from Mark’s Finest Papers.
I wrapped some glitter sewing thread around the bottom of the ATC for, hmm, grass? I like the effect of wrapped very thin thread.
These pretties are ready to go, curious what I will get back
too much of a good thing
uhmm, no I don’t mean my obsessive playing of zooville on facebook!
I mean my Kefir culture! It is growing speedily right now and I need a few people to adopt some. Well, I can also eat the grains myself or feed them to the dogs, they love it! But why not spread the love a bit:
I cut the mason jar with the cricut (From My Kitchen). There are instructions inside the card and I will place this on my naturopath’s entry desk, I’m sure somebody there will want some!
Do YOU enjoy Kefir? . It is pretty neat stuff and tasty as well. Looks very innocent:
This is standing at room temperature in my kitchen pantry. In the summer I have to feed it (milk) almost twice a day, in the winter (colder) every other day is fine. You see, it is not about YOU eating the kefir, it is about your keeping the kefir happy …. OK when I dump the contents out it looks like this:
LOL, Teresa I CAN hear your retching noises!!! These are the Kefir grains. They can look many different ways which is fun to observe. My culture started out with tiny little rice-like crumbs that I did not believe they would do anything… But they make me thick and delicious kefir every day, love it!
Here is a picture of what it looks like when it is ready to harvest, you can see the whey separating and also that it looks a lot more bubbly on top:
This kefir is about the consistency of thick yoghurt. I f I let it stand longer it will be even thicker and stiffer.
