Mixed media cards

Yesterday I decided I wanted to get inky so I made a master board on watercolor paper. What's a master board? You make one large piece of art and then cut it up into smaller pieces and further embellish. Years ago when I first started card making it was called "one sheet wonder!"

I used two colors of green Distress Inks and one blue one, swiping them on my craft sheet and spritzing with water. Then I "smooshed" the paper into the watery color several times, repeating as needed to fully cover the paper and drying between each step.

Once I had achieved some pretty color, I stamped some script and numbers with black Archival ink. I also added some heavy white gesso through a number stencil and splattered watered down gesso over the cards.  The final touches were adding white floral die cuts (Tim Holtz) and some word strips (also TH). Then I edged the card fronts with black ink and mounted them on white cards.

I love how they turned out and had fun getting messy again!

Altered Trading Coins Received

These are the two altered trading coins I received in April.

The first is a darling 3D shaker coin with lots of glitter and mica.

And this one is from Cindy - I love the layered die cuts and the sparkle on the butterfly.

Documented Life Planner - Week 22

May Theme - Touchy Feely (Texture)

Week 22

Art Challenge: Textured Paper

Journal Prompt: I'm So Not Feeling It

This week's journal prompt was exactly how I was feeling while working on this page - "just not feeling it!" My muse just couldn't decide on how to proceed with all the old textured papers I found in my stash. I finally discovered a page on the FB group on which the artist split a heart and used the "holey" packing material (right side). Since I also had that same paper, I went from there.

She had layered different papers behind the heart but I couldn't get that to look right with the papers I had. I found the square doily and the white doily-type wings which I'd been saving for years so thought I should just start using some of my treasures instead of squirreling them away forever!

The textured papers here are the doily, the handmade paper (left side of heart, which I painted), the packing material which I painted white, the small white heart--shaped doily, the red heart which is textured wallpaper cut into a heart shape, and the wings. In the lower right corner of the spread, there are also two strips of embossed paper (which I inked with pink) and a lacy tissue-type paper.

I used black-and-white-patterned washi tapes for under the die cut days of the week. For the background I first stenciled gel medium which resisted the pink paint when I painted over it. I then stenciled some numbers with red paint and small white dots. I also randomly smudged orange gelato.

Once again, I finished before the end of the week! I'm relieved this page is done!

Tomorrow we leave on a 6:30 am flight for Albuquerque. We'll be babysitting Drew and 4-month old Grant (or rather helping their Dad while Mom is out of town on a business trip). Looking forward to seeing my little guys again!