CBC - Red+Blue=Purple

Red plus Blue does equal Purple!!  And it's a fun color combination too!!!  It's my turn this week to have the sample for the Created Byhand Challenge (Ning Forum and/or Blog) sponsored by Quietfire Design.  I started with a Ranger #8 Manila tag and added Distress Inks using the ink blending tool.... barn door starting at the top left corner and working to the center... broken china starting at the bottom right corner and working to the center... blended the 2 colors together and then also added some dusty concord for more purple... also added some stormy sky over the broken china to get a little deeper blue.  To get the image in the background I used Tim's water stamping technique that is listed in the Compendium of Curiosities book except instead of using a rubber stamp I used his clock embossing folder as my stamp.  The edges of the tag are distressed using the paper distresser.... black dots are made with a Sharpie marker... white dots are made with the Inkssential white pen.  "How old would you be" rubber stamp is stamped using Archival Ink jet black.  I LOVE the flower and leaves and can you believe I made them with plain white copy paper???  I was so psyched when I was done with them.  For the flower... I used Tim's Tattered Floral die cutting 9 of the smaller 6-petal flowers... I stacked them up turning each layer so the petals did not match up... pierced a hole in the center of the stack and added an Idea-ology hitch fastener to hold them all together... next you start with the top flower pulling all the petals up and squishing them around the hitch fastener... move to the second flower and do the same thing... continue doing each flower separately until you have them all done... then begin pulling each flower back down - not straightening all the petals but allowing them to form the flower.  After all the petals were the way I wanted I sprayed the flower with purple twilight Color Wash - I sprayed from each side but not too close or too much as I didn't want the flower saturated with color - dried the flower with the heat tool.  Then I took a little bit of grape fizz Perfect Pearl (found in the Confections set), put it on my craft sheet, sprayed on a little water, and mixed to have a shimmery paint... using a small paint brush I brushed a bit on the edges of some of the petals.  Next came the leaves... I cut 2 leaves using Tim's Tattered Leaves die, sprayed them with meadow Color Wash, dried them, added a little dusty concord ink along one edge of each leaf, trimmed off the large end of each leaf, crumpled them up, used sour apple Perfect Pearl (also in the Confections Set) to make a little shimmery green paint and brushed some on the leaves... not everywhere, just for highlights. I'm still amazed when I look at them how great they come out!!!!  The ribbon is 13mm white silk ribbon colored with distress inks and scrunched as I dried it with the heat tool.

Steampunk Owl

So I had one of those messed up Pooh Rainbow tags sitting on my work area... didn't want to waste the manila tag by just throwing it away and thought I would just cover it up.  Some time ago I got a couple of Viva products as I was hearing about them on blogs and hadn't ever tried any so I decided it was time to open them up.  I first used a pallet knife to add Viva Terra (sahara color) to the front of the tag and then used a wadded up baby wipe to give it a texture and let it dry.  Next I brushed on Viva Ferro Metal Effect Colour old gold adding water to my brush as needed to help spread the ferro and let that dry along with giving it some help from my heat tool :-))  Then as I was taking some time to catch up on emails and a little blog hopping I noticed that this months challenge over at Dezinaworld is "Golden" and decided to pull out my Dezinaworld images and see what I could come up with.... and this is it.  The owl is from a sheet of birds and eggs (I can't seem to find it on the site right now) and the hat is from the Steampunk 3 sheet.  Along the left side of the tag is a piece of Tim Holtz tissue tape colored with Distress Stain peeled paint.  I used Tim's Gear dies, both the large and minis, to cut gears from grungeboard and then decided which ones I wanted to use - the medium sized on from the large die and the 2 minis.  The largest gear I painted with tarnished brass Distress Crackle Paint and the other two are painted with Gold Paint Dabber... let them all dry and added some black soot Distress Ink.  The circles you see on top of the tissue tape are actually the left over circles when cutting out the gears... they are painted with gold paint dabber and the black dots are made with Ranger Enamel Accents.  Tim's Idea-ology gears are mixed in with the grungeboard gears.  A piece of black rickrack is along the bottom of the owl image.  A hitch fastener is at the top... it's been colored with Alcohol Ink gold Mixative.  "things to discover" is from Tim's Stuff To Say stamp set.  

Inspired Tag

Above is the front of a tag I made for a wonderful lady in our local ATC group who just celebrated a special birthday (below is the back of the tag).  "Inspire" is a metal piece I made some time ago but hadn't used in a project yet...  it is made with Ten Seconds Studio metal, mold, and tools.  The tag is a Ranger #8 manila colorized with Distress Stains including the new picket fence.  I used the technique Tim shared in the video on his blog Here putting the stains on the craft sheet and rubbing the tag in it... this technique is great with Distress Inks or stains by themselves but add the white... totally different and fabulous!!!  All stamps used on the tag are Wendy Vecchi Studio 490.  The butterfly is stamped on Wendy's Clearly For Art with black archival ink, heat dried, cut out, colored on the opposite side of stamping with alcohol inks, heated and shaped.  The flower uses Tim's tattered floral die... the smaller 6 petal die was used to make the rose.  The flowers and leaves are colored with the stains and stamped with Archival Ink.  Rock Candy Distress Stickles added to the red flower and Sunflower Perfect Pearls Mist sprayed on the yellow one.  Seam binding ribbon colored with the stains.

The back of the tag is also done by pressing the tag into stains on the craft sheet, no white added this time but there might have been a little residue of white left on the craft sheet.  The 3 larger flowers were stamped on grungepaper, cut out, colored with stains.  Sticky back gems added to the smaller, stamped on the tag with Archival ink flowers.  Ideology snaps added to the centers of the larger flowers.

Corrugated ATCs

I made these ATCs last month to take to an in-person swap.  The base for each one is thin corrugated cardboard with some of one side ripped off so you can see the corrugation...  I then spritzed each one with Ranger Color Wash spray, dried them and lightly brushed over some areas with White Paint Dabber and gave each one a spritz or 2 of Kiwi Perfect Pearls Mist... some of them I also edged with Gold Paint Dabber.

This first atc uses a part of an old mini calendar page, crinkled, colored and attached along the bottom.  The truck is an Art Part stamped with it's matching Studio 490 stamp...  stamped with Black Archival and colored with Distress Ink.  "Journey" is a Quietfire Design stamp... stamped with Black Archival onto a scrap of white cardstock colored with Distress Ink, attached using Tim's Tiny Attacher.  "dreams" is from Tim's Stuff To Say stamp.  White Enamel Accents make the white dots along the top and bottom.

Idea-ology film strip ribbon is attached over a piece of printed paper from Tim's crowded attic Paper Stash.  The butterfly is Tim's sizzix mini butterfly die cut from Clearly For Art... paint dabber brushed over the back, scratched some away and then painted over the back again with black Paint Dabber.... a little alcohol ink along the edges on the front for more detail... black sticky back gems along the body.  "embrace life" is also from Tim's Stuff To Say.  White dots made with Enamel Accents.  Black dots (under the word life) are also Enamel Accents.

Lady is an image from Dezinaworld off the sheet called Lilac & Lavender.  Bird is the mini Tim Holtz movers and shapers die cut from grunge.  The wing is 2 petals from a paper flower.  Leaves are a Sizzix die embossed with Tim's dot matrix folder and sprayed with Pertect Pearls Mist.  Tissue tape along the bottom behind the lady.  "timeless story" is again Tim's Stuff To Say.

The "Artful" piece is shrink plastic... a piece I did a long time ago... stamped the word and added the eyelets before shrinking the plastic.  Flower... bottom layer is grungepaper cut with Tim's Tattered Florals die, colored with Paint Dabbers, stamped with Studio 490 dot background using Archival Ink.  Next layer is screen also cut with Tim's Tattered Florals die.  Next layer is a metal twist on bottle cap cut down the sides where the seams are, spread out, colored with Alcohol Inks.  Next layer is again screen cut with Tim's die.  Center is an Idea-ology accoutrement.

CBC - Rainbows/Multi-Colors/Wings

As you can see I went with Rainbows for my choice of options for this weeks Created Byhand Challenge... blog here or ning forum here.

I'll first point out that quote stamps beautifully but I accidently tipped by acrylic block just a bit when I was stamping it and that is why the lower right side looks thicker, almost smeared a little bit... grrrrr.  This was actually the 3rd... yes, you read that correct - 3rd, as in 3 - Three... time I made this tag. The FIRST time I didn't get the rainbow quite how I wanted it but went ahead anyway and then when I was coloring in Pooh and Piglet I was using a water brush and got too much water and the color was bleeding out of the lines.. almost chucked it then but continued... until I stamped the quote crooked.  So I started a SECOND one... rainbow was better, coloring was better... double and triple checked that my stamp was straight on the acrylic block and then managed to fumble the block when I was stamping and got a double impression on part of it which looked totally bad.  Those 2 tries were last night and then I gave up, lol... just to decide to try again tonight and well, I almost chucked this one too but decided to share anyway.

I started with a Ranger Inkssential #8 manila tag... stamped Pooh and Piglet with black Archival Ink.  Colored in the image using a small paint brush and Distress Inks - just a touch of water added.  The craft sheets works great for this... dab the ink pad on the sheet... in a different spot spray a little water... touch the paint brush in the water, brush of extra, rub it in the Distress Ink and paint... sooo easy.  I used wild honey and barn door on Pooh... spun sugar and worn lipstick on Piglet.  The "rainbow" is made with Distress Inks (dusty concord, broken china, bundled sage, mustard seed, spiced marmalade, barn door)... I used an ink blending tool tipping it so I just used the edge/side/corner of the sponge... began with dusty concord and worked by way up... went back over each color a 2nd time blending them together more where they met.  The quote is stamped with black Archival. Using the ink blending tool I also added antique linen under the rainbow area and some peeled paint along the bottom.  Edges are distress and "stitching" added with a fine tip pen.  Some rainbow colored ribbon to finish it off.

The quote is a Quietfire Design calligraphy stamp.

The World of Reality

When I sent out the blog candy packages I just had to include art and made a tag for each person.  This is one of the tags and the others were nearly the same.  I started with a Ranger Inkssential #8 manila tag (did you notice that they've now released tags in kraft and black... I'll be trying those soon).  I added Distress Inks rusty hinge, pine needles, dusty concord and barn door using an ink blending tool.  Next I stamped Tim's background from the Papillon set across the tag using the water stamping technique from his book and dried it.  Butterflies from the same set are stamped down the left side using Archival Ink monarch orange.  The edges are distressed with his Distressing tool. The butterfly is cut from grungeboard using the Tim Holtz movers and shapers mini butterfly die, inked with wild honey Distress Ink, stamped with monarch orange (same background stamp as on the tag), edges with gold Paint Dabber and glittery pink sticky back gems added to the body.  The roses and ribbon are colored with Distress Stain spun sugar.  I added pool Paint Dabber to the Ideology token, let it dry and then sanded it off the high spots.

CBC - Peridot/Shades of Green

This weeks Created Byhand Challenge (blog or Ning Forum) is Peridot or Shades of Green.  

I started with a #8 manila tag...  sprayed it with meadow Color Wash and a bit of water and then pressed it onto a craft sheet, heated it, pressed it into the droplets left on the craft sheet and heated it again...  embossed it with Tim's gear folder... used a sponge to add white gesso just on the raised areas, dried it... went over the gesso with Distress Ink shabby shutters using a blending tool, dried it... distressed the edges and inked them with peeled paint... added stitching with a black pen.  

Die cut 2 flowers (Tim's tattered florals) from manila cardstock... inked both the front and back them with shabby shutters... gave them a light spritz with meadow Color Wash... embossed them with Tim's dot matrix folder... inked over the dots with peeled paint.  

"Don't let yesterday" was stamped with Archival Ink jet black onto a scrap of natural cardstock, cut apart, and inked lightly with shabby shutters.  

For the clock face and spinners... I put some gesso on the craft sheet, spritzed some meadow color wash on the gesso and mixed them together... sponged the mix onto the pieces and dried them.  I added a little spritz of the Color Wash to the spinners to make them a bit more green.... sanded the paint off the high spots of the clock face.