brand new art crush!

this time i'm captivated by watercolors, specifically the whimsical, colorful, doodle-y flowers of alisa burke! if you want to see some totally drool-worthy examples, click this link! meanwhile, here's my ICAD tribute:

036: inspired by alisa burke

i'm determined to practice more with my watercolors. specifically, i'd like to be better at blending!

037: je connais tiny stapled collage

(posted on monday to go with my daisy yellow guest spot!)

038: collage of leftovers

this was most of the stuff left on my worktable the other night: paper strips, a dina wakley stamped bird, scraps of lace and ribbon and tape, and a little bit of magazine text.

039: doily collage

yep, i'm still totally obsessed with both overlapping layers and using even the tiniest scraps of doily, so clearly this one was just a matter of time! :)

speaking of time, i'm trying to blog more regularly and avoid loading an entire week's worth of index cards into one post. it's hard to believe that ICAD is more than half over already, this summer is just totally flying by!!! ♥

wooden ships

isn't that a fabulous title... "wooden ships"? i've had stephen stills singing it in my head for days now because it's this week's challenge at shopping our stash. i bet you can't guess what the brief is, so i'll just tell you: make a card or project which incorporates wood veneer embellishments ...OR... which has a nautical theme. see, told ya you wouldn't guess it, but isn't it cool to do something completely different? yeah, i thought so too! i have to confess that i've been slow to embrace the wood veneer trend. for example, i've had this packet of pink paislee wood shapes that are beyond cuuuuuuuuute for at least two years, and hadn't even opened them yet! so this was the perfect inspiration to get me going:

(patterned paper: amy tangerine/american crafts, maggie holmes/crate paper, plus a few clouds punched from miscellaneous scraps; tag and wood veneer arrow: pink paislee; index card sticker: amy tangerine; flair button: october afternoon; deco tape: oriental trading; twine: doodlebug; embroidery floss: dmc; cloud punch: fiskars; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

some of the wooden shapes in that collection had little pierced holes around the edges-- including the arrow i wanted to use. i decided that meant you were supposed to stitch around the perimeter with embroidery floss. so i did! :)

my lovely friend amy tsuruta is one of the july guest designers at CASE study, and the current inspiration (#198) is VERY cool indeed, so i had to jump in and play along with that. you can see i was inspired by the sketch, the clusters of smaller items, and the bright colors:

speaking of inspiration there is a ton of it to be found at SOS so why not drop by and get some?! ♥

"je connais" tiny stapled collage

i'm super-excited to be the guest ICAD artist on the daisy yellow blog today. thank you very much, tammy, for inviting me! when i started thinking about making this card, i knew immediately that i wanted to make a stapled collage. i also thought it would probably a neatly stacked one, as inspired by this gorgeousness; but lately i've been realllllllllly into torn layers, too. then it occurred to me to wonder, "wouldn't both of those ideas work pretty well together?!" ummm... YEAH!!! see?

this card has a little bit of pretty much EVERYTHING i love! well, ok, it isn't pink, which is obviously a drawback, lol. but other than that it's got all my faves: vintage sheet music, torn layers, foreign text, doily scraps, a butterfly diecut from an old book of green stamps that stephanie shared with me... and it's all held together with a staple. ok, technically, there are in fact two staples, but the second one is just decorative! :)

i heartily recommend that you check out daisy yellow generally, the index card a day project in particular, and the flickr group especially! ciao, darlings, you can thank me later! ♥

have i mentioned how much i ♥LOVE♥ jane maxwell?

i'm sure i have; i've been lucky enough to see a few of her one-woman shows at the campton gallery in new york, and her large scale collages just totally blow my mind; especially when she combines vintage paper with really clean, modern silhouettes. why am i telling you all this? because the other night it occurred to me that i could try making something inspired by jane maxwell for one of my ICAD's... so i did:

031: inspired by jane maxwell

i found an index-card-sized lady in a magazine with a nice silhouette... stapled her to a couple of nice contrasting layers... and cut the whole thing out. then i layered her on top of punched circles covered with transparent sewing pattern to get an appropriately maxwellian background. i have to tell you that making this was soooooooooo much fun, i guarantee there will be 

MORE OF THESE!!! :)

032: namaste collage

if you ever make inkjet image transfers, you know that sometimes they come out well and sometimes they just don't, for no reason you can fathom. this one of pink waterlillies came off in irregular strips, so i decided to fool around with tearing some hindi newspaper bits to fill in the blank spaces. and it worked! (ok yeah, it's odd looking... but in a good way, imo!)

033: rainbow lei

here's an idea that didn't work out the way i wanted. at all. but the best part of ICAD is you can try new things every single day! (actually, if i don't produce at least a few total clunkers, i start feeling like i'm playing it way too safe. so this card makes me oddly happy!)

034: rainbow strips

conversely, this came out even better than i expected. go figure!

035: denim stapled collage

remember the card from last week with the denim panel? well, there was some extra denim! also a bit of vintage doily, a tag from japanese yarn, and some very small sequins that i painstakingly tacked into place with a small amount of gluestick and then machine stitched over. fussy to do, but i love how it looks!

if you're not checking out daisy yellow and the flickr group during ICAD, you are missing some spectacularly creative art! off you go, darlings! ♥

shopping our ♥JINGLY♥ stash!

it's a red-letter day at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ because this fortnight we've invited the lovely ladies of shopping our stash to join us for a super fun christmas-in-july crossover! what does that mean? well, for one thing, there are prizes... but more on that later. something else it means is that you can make *ONE* card and link up at both blogs... which is always nice, right? so what are the requirements of the card? well, it has to be christmassy, o'course; and it has to use something from your stash that's at least one year old. but other than that, anything goes! and the prizes? well, to find out about those you're going to have to check out the special posts at SOS and at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ but seeing as how both blogs are full of gorgeous and inspirational holiday cards, you probably wanted to do that already, am i right? yeah. thought so! but before you go, check out my card:

(patterned paper--mostly scraps, woohoo: basic grey, dcwv, october afternoon, echo park; sentiment strip and brads: my mind's eye; dimensional tree: recollections; ink: colorbox; circle punch: ek success; deco scissors: michaels; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

i'm pretty proud of this for being a flat, mailable card (always my biggest challenge!) and also for being composed almost entirely of older stash items! the brads and sentiment were from a "crafty steal" of my mind's eye mini-kits at least three years ago; the basic grey background is from a 6x6" nordic holiday paper pad i bought right after that line was released; and the rest of the papers are SCRAPS, woohoo! the dimensional tree is kind of cool because it's both old AND new-- see, it's from a packet of recollections stickers that i have bought over and over (and over!) at michaels from the time i started making christmas cards; so while this particular one is new, it's the latest in a long line of little rhinestone trees!

i used this week's retro sketch (#121) to guide my layout:

remember to check out the gorgeous designer cards by stephanie, leslie, alica, barbara, chris, donna and jessi. plus, you can have a look at the lovely prizes whilst you're over at SOS and at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥. then c'mon back and link your stash-using holiday masterpiece with both blogs!

motherload of ICAD!

it's been a heck of a week, which involved an emergency trip to the dentist*, an emergency trip to the chiropractor**, and a birthday with a zero in it.*** there were ICADs made, but not posted. and there still are. but this is how many are ready to go right now, so as cathy zielske wisely said, "sometimes good enough is good enough". words to live by, no?! here are the cards:

023: mehndi doodles

i wanted to see if i could draw some stylized, indian-inspired, 

tattoo-like graphics... and i could! score!

024: m is for marilyn

strangely enough, all of these little bits and bobs were "leftovers" on my worktable one night. 

025: scrappy rainbow with stitched circles

i traced a few of the circle outlines before i started machine stitching; i freehanded a few more when i got going.

026: pink transparency layers

the weird thing about the FIVE (!) layers i've assembled here... (magazine lady's face, fussy-cut flamingos, the word "city", my own photoshopped and tinted statue of liberty photo, fussy cut pink flower) ...is that they almost blend together too well, become visual mush. also, i forgot to print the transparency in reverse, so lady liberty is holding the torch in the wrong hand. ah well, all's fair in love and ICAD! :)

027: rose collage

more random layers. what can i say? i like random layers. 'specially vintagey ones!

028: mehndi doodles and spray ink

one of these cards had random inks on it before i started, the other i painted and sprayed and smooshed around with different colors afterwards. i was not intentionally creating a pair... but that's what happened!

 

029: collage of stitched squares

i was inspired by tammy, who's been making some amazing collages that are basically squares and stitching (and magic! and awesomeness!); this is why i never worry about "copying"... my stuff NEVER looks like the thing i'm trying to re-create anyway, lol. which is a good thing, i suppose.

030: "etuden" collage

more random but serendipitous paper scraps; but this time... with WORDS!

*one of my (many, expensive) crowns fell out. fortunately, i didn't swallow it. even better, the dentist decided the tooth underneath didn't need anything else done to it and he just glued it back in there. as dental emergencies go, this was mercifully minor.

**for the first time in a (happy, grateful) long time, my back went totally out. luckily i had a comfortably carpeted floor, a backlog of netflix, and a very sweet husband on hand to help me cope. also, a great chiropractor, who's got me-- knock wood-- on the mend!

***rhymes with "nifty"! i thought i might be really freaked out, but as it turns out, not so much. of course, i did spend pretty nearly the entire month of june scoopin' up lovely birthday treats, which HELPS!! :)

red, white and ♥YOU♥!

that's what we want to see at shopping our stash this week. ok, technically it's red, white and blue for those of us celebrating independence day this fourth of july; if that doesn't happen to apply, you can use the colors of your own country's flag. you don't necessarily have to make anything patriotic, though. i made a totally non-specific get well card for my mother-in-law, who's just had a knee replacement, but is recovering nicely!

Not many official products in this one, actually. The denim is from an old pair of jeans i threw in the rag bag; lace is vintage; velvetty flowers came off a holiday centerpiece that had seen better days. the glossy white cardstock is by paper accents and the brads are my mind's eye, though.

before you ask, YES, that is real denim, from an old pair of jeans that i'd saved in my fabric bin. are you wondering how i got it to lay flat and smooth so i could cut it into a neat and un-fray-ed square on the card? as a matter of fact, it's pretty easy to make your own custom fabric paper; you don't even need wonder-under* or any other sewing supplies!

step one: 

trim fabric to approximately 8.5x11" (you'll see why in a minute)

step two:

run an 8.5x11" (told ya!) sheet of cardstock through a xyron machine loaded with a permanent adhesive cartridge

OR

apply a thin, even, coating of whatever fairly strong dry adhesive you like best (ATG, spray mount, etc) all over one side of a sheet of cardstock 

step three:

place the adhesive side of the cardstock face up on the table and carefully stick the denim on top, smoothing out any wrinkles as you go

step four:

cut a project-sized panel from the now securely "fused" denim/cardstock.

note: with lightweight fabric i was able to trim the fused sheet using my ordinary 12x12" guillotine-style trimmer. for the thick denim i had to mark out the size and shape i wanted, then cut carefully along the lines with a very sharp pair of scissors.

i've also used the same "fused fabric" method for diecutting, and it's pretty awesome! for best results i recommend lighter weight fabric and the thick, heavy, sizzix-style dies that work with a mechanical die cutting machine, like cuttlebug. you will *DEFINITELY* want to experiment on some scrap fabric, as you may need to play around with the cutting sandwich and possibly roll through more than once. 

in this case, i just used scissors to cut a neat 5.75" square panel, that i wrapped with lace and machine stitched to the front of my card. at the very end i attached the flower layers with some nice strong brads, et voila! 

and now, why not take a gander at the creations my fellow SOS dt members have cooked up for you, then start planning your own bid for red, white and blue domination! ♥

*i've used fusible web for papercrafting projects like this in the past and it works really well; i just didn't happen to have any on hand this time.