The theme of this month's ATC Swap through the Scrapbook Cupboard is Vintage Fashion. I'd bought a stamp with the vintage shoe image year's ago and thought it was the most appropriate time to finally use it.
The background is a page from an old book that I covered with two different colours of paint (MM's Shopping Bag and Golden's Raw Sienna) using a brayer ... I am just loving the rustic style painting the brayer creates. I then stamped the shoe stamp with clear Versamark and embossed with a metallic brown/copper powder. I added a vintage image of a girl, machine stitched some ribbon with the number 14 on it (I think this ribbon is the type used in clothing to show the size of the garment ... I bought it from a local Op Shop), added a word and inked around the edges with Adirondack Sepia.
"The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!" ~Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887, Author~
I was invited to join another Yahoo Group recently called Aust_ArtSisters and they have an Art of the Month (AOTM) concept, which I quite like. How it works is whoever registers to play for the month each makes one piece of art to send off to another person who is randomly chosen.
So for my very first time playing I received a piece of art from the lovely Kasha Rolley and I was to make something to send to Gaye Todd.
Kasha made this gorgeous wall hanging on a piece of wood, which is painted, stamped, has images of a bird and children, some flowers placed in the tree with tacks (I think) as the centres (I like it) and some bead work ... it's a beautifully made wonderful addition to my Art Wall.
Wall hanging by Kasha Rolley
I made Gaye an ATC using a techique that the talented Kyla de Ruiter taught me the other day. Start off by gluing a serviette onto the background, then place a Heidi Swap stencil onto the serviette and paste over the top of it with impasto - remove the stencil whilst impasto is still wet. Allow the impasto to dry overnight then fill the grooves in with alcohol inks (might I suggest not doing this part whilst a little tipsy or drunk ... very difficult to keep within the lines ... hence the rustic-ness of this piece!!!). Paint over the top of the whole piece with crackle medium and once dry rub alcohol inks across the top to enhance the cracks and rub off straight away. I added a few flowers to the branch, a bead for an eye and rubbed Timber Brown StazOn around the edges of the whole ATC.
ATC by Diana for Gaye
"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
~Freya Stark, 1893-1993, British Travel Writer~
I completed my interpretations of the next instalment of the ATC_World swap based on Bernie Berlin's book Artist Trading Card Workshop. The 3 techniques for this month's swap were Friendly Plastic, Hand Journalled and Folded ATCs.
So here is my Friendly Plastic ATC ... I didn't make the whole card out of it as per Bernie Berlin's book, I just used the Friendly Plastic as an embellishment instead. The background is turquoise Basic Grey paper that I embossed through the Cuttlebug, I inked the raised bits in silver, added some German Scrap along the bottom. I created a design using various colours of Friendly Plastic that I melted together and ran a comb through to make the patterns, I then cut out two large wings and two small wings, stuck these to the card with a silicon glue and made the body with wire an beads.
Friendly Plastic butterfly on ATC ... sorry about blurry picture, I really do need a better camera.
FOLDED ATC I was completely stumped about what to do for this technique and then I did a google search on "Folded ATC" and I found a blog (http://hermaf.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/folded-atc/) with a template that was just perfect.
I started this ATC with black cardstock, scored all the fold lines then covered the card with a serviette. I felt the card was too "flat" with just the serviette, so I painted over the top with my brayer and 3 different colours : shopping bag (a beige colour), raw sienna and red oxide. I was really starting to love the background, so I then stamped over the top with black StazOn to tone it down some more. I added a diamond shaped picture from a Graphic 45 paper called Botanicabella Garden Suite, which fit perfectly in the centre after coating with crackle medium and some alcohol inks to highlight the cracks. I never feel like my ATCs are finished unless there is a border, so I used Gold, Patina and Spanish Copper rub 'n' buff around the edges.
Folded ATC
Folded ATC Open
Folded ATC Standing.
HAND JOURNALLED ATC I really had no idea what I was going to do for the hand journalled ATC and then I heard a song on the radio and a few lines stuck with me and my creativity was awakened. I was so excited and immediately started my search for a picture of a train, which I added to this card using a gel medium transfer technique and then I creatively hand wrote the words to go with the image.
After I'd finished and sent my ATCs off to Tammy in the USA (the hostess of this swap), I realised I hadn't written the artists name on the back of the card and actually didn't even know who sings the song ... so promptly searched the internet to see if I could find out who it was. I found a site with the words and a video clip of the song and lo-'n-behold, the word "train" doesn't appear anywhere in the song ... whooops ... a slight faux par ... it's meant to be "dream" (LOL)!!! Ah well, I'm sure that whoever gets this ATC in the swap, will get the gist of what I meant.
Here's a Behind The Scenes video of Natalie Bassingthwaighte singing Someday Soon ...
"Someday soon you're going to catch that DREAM you've been chasing." Natalie Bassingthwaighte
For the Live Swap this month held at The Scrapbook Cupboard, I made a simple ATC using an image of a vintage bather and some birds. I added half a transparency of the same image over the top and stitched around the card with some ribbon along the bottom. I embossed a flourish on the right hand-side of the card, added some punched birds out of vintage text paper and the title "the Joy of Nature" to finish it off.
Some vintage images just don't need much done to them as they are gorgeous left in their entirety ... I absolutely love those pictures of vintage bathing ladies.
"We were not created to be eaten by anxiety, but to walk erect, free, unafraid in a world where there is work to do, truth to seek, love to give and win." ~ Joseph Ford Newton, Author~
The monthly swap at Addicted to Scrap was on Thursday last week and this month's theme was Roaring 20's or Vintage. I opted to go with vintage because I'd already printed the images out for another swap and didn't use them. The image is courtesy of Shelly's Flickr Group Past Portraits.
Addicted also has a quarterly swap going for each season and Autumn came around really quickly. This card started off great with a piece of grungy yellow and white striped scrapbook paper, but then I decided to grunge it up more with walnut ink and didn't like it anymore as the stamped image of the tree kind of blended into the background. So I carefully restamped the tree with clear ink and embossed it, added some flower soft (that the lovely Laura Carson sent with a swap return from the USA) and it's kind of growing on me.
Ferg and I went up to Maleny on the weekend and had a fantastic time, so I'll post some pictures in my next post once they're downloaded from my camera.
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." ~Albert Camus, 1913-1960, French Author and Philosopher~
I love the paper arts / crafts and trying out new techniques. I live with my beautiful husband and gorgeous dog in a surburb of Sydney, Australia. I work full-time so don't spend as much time creating as I'd like ... but life's pretty good all the same.
