A Year of Memories

Last Saturday I went to Posh Scraps to do this adorable Memories canvas and chipboard album. The album is Maya Road and comes with 4 chipboard and 2 canvas pages. All the papers are Lily Bee and embellies are from different companies and were provided with the cost of the class.

We were given three hours to complete our books. I got my cover done and all 4 of the chipboard pieces covered with paper and my two canvas pages colored with my watercolor crayons and stamped! And I don't work slow!  It's taken me three days on my own to finish it up. Granted, a lot of time was spent waiting around while Stickles dried! Stickles is notorious for taking days and weeks and months to dry on paper. It's worse on canvas! I talked about how easily canvas will burn when you use a heat gun in an earlier blog post. Pay special attention to the July page and you'll see what I mean! I was talking to Diane, the teacher and not paying attention to my drying and not keeping the heat gun moving and I burned my canvas! No matter! I just made it part of my design.

Love you banner

I went to another of Diane's classes at Posh Scraps last weekend. This time we created a canvas banner tag. We used another of the Suzi Blu stamps that are no longer available. Thankfully, Suzi is now designing for a new company so we should soon see some new stuff from her.

We started this one just like all the others. Apply Gesso in a thin coating so the canvas will accept the ink and watercolor crayons. Dry carefully with a heat gun. Gesso burns very quickly, so keep the heat moving and don't get too close. Stamp image on canvas using Archival ink and heat set. Cut out mask to cover image and stamp word background over entire canvas. Using watercolor pencils and/or crayons, color image. Blend well with lots of water. Also color background. Stamp sentiment on tissue paper and cut out close to the sentiment. Using Multi Medium, adhere sentiment to canvas and apply Multi Medium to entire canvas and dry completely. Using a fine tip Sharpie, touch up any lines on stamped image that may have become blurred during coloring. I added some bling to the flower in her hair and along the bottom edge of her dress and some lace to the top of the canvas. Her flower was a bit tooooo pink for my taste, so I added some burgundy and rose watercolor crayons and sprayed it with some water to de-pink it a bit!  Apply Stickles to highlight.

Fly canvas

t!m introduced a new cutting system and new Distress Markers at CHA and in conjunction with that, one of the classes he taught used both new products. The butterflies were cut with the new system and were then colored using the new markers. I loved the canvas that the class created and since I have neither the cutting system OR markers, I used what I had on hand. I had planned to take step by step pics like I did when I did the metal tag. And I remembered the camera was sitting right next to me when I attached the last element! So there are no step by step pics. Sorry! The smaller canvas is 4 x 3 and the larger is 4.75 x 3.75

The first thing I did was used old dictionary pages and cut them into various sizes and tore some for jagged edges and left others cut neatly. Then I used Distress Ink Gathered Twigs to ink all the edges. Using Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium, I attached them to the canvas using a paint brush and completely covered the top and sides, alternating the papers so they didn't all run in the same direction. Once completed, I brushed more Multi Medium over the whole thing and let dry well overnight. I used a heart punch to cut the heart out of a Journaling Ticket and applied Picket Fence Distress Stain around the cut out heart and outer edge of the ticket. Then once that dried, I came back with Stream Paint Dabber and colored the whole "positive" of the heart and around the "negative" of the edge and edge of the ticket and then followed with Copper Paint Dabber. I also painted a BINGO chip with Copper Paint Dabber and once it was dry, distressed the edges a bit with black Brilliance Archival ink. The butterfiles and dragonfly are a CTMH set called Butterfly Kiss which I stamped using the Brilliance ink and heat set then used my CTMH markers to color and used Diamond Stickles on top for some shimmer and shine. The pen nib I heated up with my heat gun and dipped in Zing Brown Sugar embossing powder, then heat set it and dipped the tip in black embossing powder and heat set it as well. I used some natural jute and ran it thru my Broken China ink pad to color it to tie around the ticket. The buttons are more of the ones from mom's friend Ruth. I think everything else can be figured out on it's own, but if you've got questions, let me know!

this is the canvas that the class created

Be

So guess how long this project has been half done! I started it back in March, I think it was. But it was for me, so it kept getting put on the back burner for other people's projects. I decided it was NOT gonna stay half finished into 2012 and in a matter of about an hour, I had it completed.

I found the idea in a catalog. What they were selling was almost $50 and I knew I could make one cheaper. I bought a canvas and painted it black. Then I sanded it and used some Vintage Photo Distress Ink and White CTMH ink and made the canvas look old. I used all sorts of different CTMH alphabets since I am an alphabet ho of sorts and can never have enough! I used pigment ink and wasn't real concerned about getting complete coverage since I wanted it to look old and worn. I added a couple of different "be's" that really pertain to me and left out some that were on the original that didn't. So this one is uniqely mine. Now...where to hang it in my room! And yes, I know Be Bold is on there twice. As I stamped the second "b" in bold, I realized it was the very first "be." Oh well!

Noel

Went to Hobby Lobby the other day. They have all of their Christmas schtuff marked down 50% already. I picked up some things for projects for next  Christmas and I found these little gems! Course I couldn't wait to get paper on them! Kept them pretty simple. I was afraid if I tried to embellish them too much, the letters wouldn't fit on the blocks straight. I used CTMH Wonderland paper pack and distressed the edges with CTMH Chocolate ink.

Canvas Boo

One of the companies I was most excited about seeing their products after the CHA reveal party at Whim So Doodle was Canvas Corp http://canvascorp.com/home/ All sorts of alterable things that are right up my alley! Last week, Whim So Doodle posted on their blog that they had gotten their first shipment in, so I ran (OK...DROVE!) down to St Pete to get me some! I picked up a couple of different stretched products. One is burlap and the other is canvas. Wasn't real sure what I was gonna do with them, but I knew inspiration would hit at some point! Canvas Corp posted a cute canvas project the other day and it gave me the inspiration I needed to break out my burlap piece and go to work. I used , in addition to the Stretched Burlap, CTMH Mischief paper pack and Typewriter Keys stamp set, Staz On Pumpkin Ink, Maya Road Canvas Banner, Canvas Corp mini clothespins,  Claudine Hellmuth Studio  Purple Palette Acrylic Paint and various  Halloween ephemera and jute from my stash. Now I have to wait til Oct 1 to put it out on display!

I can see me buying more of these burlap and canvas stretched products for every season!