LBH Art Group

Yesterday was the first monthly meeting of our new Art Group at The Little Blue House.  We had a three-hour daytime session and repeated it again in the evening.  We had almost a full house and lots of fun! The art group is going to be a technique-based series, learning about and creating many altered projects and including swaps, challenges, round-robin projects and more.  I am really excited about this and hope that this will provide an avenue to get many of us out of our comfort zones, trying new and different art forms.  If you want to learn more, check out the link to The Little Blue House above and make plans to join us if you live nearby!

For the January meeting I altered tags using the 2010 Christmas Tags of Tim Holtz as my inspiration.  I adapted his #6, 11 and 12 tags for Valentines and used a lighter, more feminine palette.

"Key to My Heart" uses an embossed resist technique with a handmade stamp made with an Alterations Edge Die and fun foam.  What fun you can have with this technique - any of your dies could be made into stamps!   I used black Ten Seconds Studio art metal and an Alterations key die as a substitute for an antique skeleton key and sewed lace on the bottom of the tag.

 The background of this tag is covered with a beautiful Valentine paper from Echo Park which is sanded lightly around the edges of the tag and some in the middle to achieve a shabby chic look.  Instead of using Tim's metal corners, I gold-embossed the bottom corners.  The heart was die cut from chipboard with the Winged Heart Alterations Die. Wings were painted white and then overstamped with a script stamp; the solid back heart was covered with white glitter paper and the top filigree heart was painted red and then crackled with Crackle Accents.

This tag uses one of the new Sizzix Valentine embossing folders - a beautiful and intricate chandelier.  I used another of Tim's techniques stamping the embossing folder before embossing (the scrolls).  Once the tag is embossed, the stamped images appear behind the embossed design.  The chandelier was colored with a Cut-n-Dry pen nib (from Ranger) and Black Soot Distress Ink then topped with clear Stickles for sparkle.  TH music tissue tape was pleated and added to the top of the tag and a little hanging jewel attached to the bottom with a jump ring.

Next month we will be making altered hearts!