Don't fall over from shock! Two posts in the same week from me is hard to believe lately.
I got all 6 of Dyan's new Spray Inks and her new Ocean Backgrounds and Under The Sea stamp sets last month when Whim So Doodle got them in. And when I was there last month for Dina's class, I got HER silhouette masks. I combined the two since Dina and Dyan love each other so much and played in my Dyan Journal. I love the vibrancy of Dyan's new inks. So lush! The White Linen ink is how I achieved the look on the silhouettes. And the stamps are pretty fun to play with as well. I decided to turn the silhouette lady with legs into a mermaid! There's also lots of Signo Uniball White pen work around all of the sea creatures and stencils.
There is a Contest going on thru the 25th over on the Ranger blog. And of course I had to try my hand at it! The challenge is to use Ranger products in Valentines Day colors. And while my tags aren't Valentines, I do have a couple of co-workers having birthdays this month so I used the colors and opportunity to make a birthday tag for each of them.
I started with Tim's new Distress Paints in Fired Brick and Spun Sugar on the tag and misted pretty heavily with water to get the paints to move around. Then I dried the tags and used one of Dina's stencils with Picket Fence Distress Paint and one of Dyan's stencils with Barn Door Distress Stain. Added a bit of black to the tag with a spray ink top smooshed into some of Dyan's Black Marble Spray Ink. I then used one of Tim's new Mini Blueprint Stamps on watercolor paper and used my Distress Markers to color everything but the flame and that is Stickles for that bit of bling! I used Fired Brick and Black Soot Distress Paints to paint the numbers with and left a bit of the silver showing on each. The 17 and 26 are the dates of the two girls birthdays. I used Tim's idea for using a piece of Tissue Tape folded in half and crumpled to make my "ribbon" with.
Tim is using a bunch of new products from CHA on his gorgeous February tag. Stuff I don't have. Yet! So never one to let that stop me, I used what I did have. The heart is from a now retired CTMH set called Love Language. I did use Distress Markers to color in some areas on the stamp to make them pop out a bit. I used my new Distress Paints in Fired Brick, Spun Sugar and Black Soot to color my tag with. And can I just say how much I love the fluidity of these paints. Oh My but they blend and spread so well!! And unlike Distress Stains and Inks, once you heat dry the layers, they will no longer re-wet when you add additional layers and/or water. I also love how they color the wrinkle ribbon. I used some Bakers Twine I had and ran my blending tool with Vintage Photo Distress Ink over it to give it an aged look. And since I didn't have any of the cash keys, I used a bottle top instead. Sorry about the glare. Inside the bottle cap says I Love You.
This was our CTMH January special. I wasn't going to order it, but decided what the heck and I'm glad I did! Dang but it's cute! I filled the tubes with M&M's and will be sharing them next week with friends at Whole Foods Market.
I had the pleasure of taking a Dina Wakely class last week at Whim So Doodle in St Pete. If you've never taken a class with Dina and ever get the chance, I highly recommend you do. Not only is Dina a great lady, but she's also a "no rules" sort too, which makes her A-OK in my book!! Also joining me was my new "craft class" buddy Donna Gibson and we got deliciously inky and painty together.
We made an interactive art journal-y piece that I finally got finished up yesterday. I find it quite amazing that some of my layers of paint from class over a week ago are still sticky. Hoping that as the acrylic cures that the sticky-tackiness goes away. The lady on the front is my first foray into Dina's "magic pencil" as she calls it. It's pretty cool in that it goes on like a pencil, but once you wet it, it turns into more like ink. The trick is not to wet all the lines but to leave some of them still looking like pencil. As we were finishing up for the night, Dina was telling us to make one something that would be the "flow" between all of our pages. She like circles. And she spotted a piece of art on the wall that had birds on it. And she said, "Take this picture. You think you can't draw but I bet all of you think this bird is cute. You can draw this bird. Just try it." So I did! He is the bird at the bottom right hand corner of the third picture. The little yellow one. So the birds are my "flow" from page to page. I came home and drew three different size birds. I cut them out and used them as a template and cut about a gozillion out of old book pages and a page that we also created in class with acrylic paint, spray inks and stencils. I used the magic pencil around them as well. There are also a few bird quotes on the pages. Dina uses a big loopy script on her art that you can kinda make out a word here and there, but not every word is meant to be read. So I tried to follow that lead and mine aren't necessarily going in the "right" direction, but that's the way I wanted it to be. Oh, and the orange piece on the second page? That spins and has four different stamped images around the circle.
Had a great time, Dina. Come back and see us soon!
