SOS420: Oh the Places You'll Go

I love making art and cards based on a specific place, so this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is definitely for me! We want to see projects that have a travel theme OR reference a specific location OR feature a map. I've got two outta three, see?

cocktail, pineapple and aloha stamps: avery elle; stamped in black ranger archival ink and colored with gansai tambi watercolors; flower, foliage and shell stickers plus faux polaroid frames: doodlebug design; sheet music and map from my stash of vintage goodies... scanned and printed slightly smaller to fit on my A7 card; patterned paper: basic grey + dcwv; sticky pearls: eyelet outlet; adhesives: elmers brand glue tape, 3m foam tape

I went with Hawaii for my location because I knew I had some cool older Doodlebug tropical collections plus my brand new Avery Elle "Aloha" mini stamp set that I was dying to use. I've even worked in bits of a vintage Honolulu tourist map and some sheet music, though both of those are actually scans so that I could resize them slightly smaller. I have less than half a sheet left of Doodle Bug's Spring Garden paper with the colorful faux polaroid frames, and I am going to miss them when they are gone, lol. Usually I make little scenes inside them, but this time I just used the stacked shapes to hold my little cluster of stickers and called it good.

Be sure to check out all of the beautiful and exotic DT creations at SOS and then start planning the Places You'll Go! ♥

Plants For Mom

Hello and Happy Mother's Day to everyone who is celebrating from the gang at The Ink Pad, and Happy Sunday to the rest of us! Here's a pretty card based on Hero Arts' Greenhouse Peek-a-Boo Stamp which could be sent to a mom, a dad, a plant lover, a cat lover or... well... pretty much anyone! On The Ink Pad Blog today!

Jingle Bells/Belles

We're celebrating BELLS at Jingle Belles this fortnight, so break out the sleigh bells, the church bells and of course the jingle bells and make a card with us!

all papers are authentique holiday selection from various years, purchased at paper anthology; brads and bling: eyelet outlet; 25 sticker: idea-ology; holly: prima; corner rounder: we r memory keepers; frayed burlap distress ink for edges: ranger; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, glue dots

This card took an embarrassingly long time to make, considering it consists only of panels of Authentique patterned paper from my lss, Paper Anthology (who, btw, have just added an awesome online storefront!) which you would think would seriously limit how much dithering a person (even me!) could do. But alas, no. I fell in love with this week's awesome Sketch Saturday (#608) and became obsessed with finding exactly the right image to go in each shape. Note to self: lighten up!!! Having said all of that, I am really pleased with the result and there are worse things than wallowing for an hour or so in your collection of beautiful holiday papers, right?

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's lovely card and start planning how YOU will "ring in" this challenge!

Sequins and Sarcasm

What do you get when you combine Dyan Reavley's signature snark with super-glam Pretty Pink Posh embellies? A card that's elegant and fun ...and on The Ink Pad Blog today!

Highly Koala-fied!

If you're looking for KOALA-tee embellishments, you'll definitely want to check out the adorable new Eyelet Outlet Koala (and Sloth) Brads! Here are a couple of cards that I made, complete with especially diabolical puns!

But first, the Diabolical Puns, which I made myself, using a variety of free fonts. I've made them into jpgs, so that anyone as silly as I am can right-click, save and print them out. They'll also be on the EO Blog Freebies Page.

For my first card, I swapped out part of the sentiment for alphabet stickers and a white Heart Brad, that I placed below the diecut window holding a foliage forest in which my Koala Brad is climbing. 

For my second card, I wanted to convey the idea of the two Koalas being apart, so I used nested dies to cut a bunch of different sized stars from an abstract leafy paper, then scattered them across the front of the card. I placed each little dude inside his own star, climbing up a few wavily handcut stalks of bamboo.

Like everyone else who's been sidelined for over a month, I miss spending KOALA-tee time in the outside world! But if I have to be stuck at home, it's awesome to have lots of cute and inspiring Eyelet Outlet Brads to play with!

Scribble Stick Mandala Monday

Have you been watching Dina Wakley's Demo With Dina series on her Art of Dina Wakley FaceBook page? If not, you need to pencil in some time at 1pm Eastern on Tuesdays and Thursdays because not only is Dina a wonderful, inspiring teacher; she's very funny and entertaining. She is also a true friend and supporter of independent art stores, so each session she's added a feature called Store Spotlight. Can you guess who the featured store was this past Thursday, April 30th? Here's a hint: it was The Ink Pad! If you missed the live streaming session it's archived HERE. I recommend it, not just because it featured TIP (tho that was cool!); but also, Dina was making art with her Scribble Sticks, and I was so inspired that I immediately had to get mine out and have a play, using some of the tips and techniques Dina used in the demo.

 
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that at the moment, The Ink Pad does not currently have any Scribble Sticks in stock. They're on order from Ranger, all three sets, including the third one which contains the metallic colors Dina used in the demo. On the plus side, at the moment, anything you buy from TIP that's backordered, will ship to you for free!

At the moment, I only own the first set of Dina Wakley Scribble Sticks, though I can tell you that five minutes into Dina's demonstration, I had already texted Anna to say I neeeeeeeeeeeded the rest, lol! But the limited palette did not stop me from having a blast. For my first experiment, I worked on plain Canson Watercolor Paper, and basically just tried different ways to lay down the color to blend the shades, to add and subtract water, etc. I found that a wet crayon lays down color that is much more blend-able, but also a bit sheer. Scribbling with a dry crayon and then going over with a wet brush will result in a much harder line, though you can still "pull" some of the pigment around. At the end of my play session, I couldn't resist adding what Dina calls The Pox... those awesome splatters that you get by getting a Scribble Stick thoroughly wet and flicking it at your paper! When the entire page was bone dry, I added details with a fine-tipped, black Pigma Micron pen. (This worked because I had blended my Scribble Stick pigment quite a bit, so it was pretty flat to the page. If you have beautiful lumps of pigment, you'll want to avoid using a pen with a "cloggable" nib; stick with a Stabilo Pencil, a Posca Paint Pen, or a fountain pen!)

My second page is entirely a fluke. I started drawing a mandala with the Scribble Sticks on vintage ledger paper and discovered almost immediately that it was not going to hold up to more than the most minimal contact with water. So I put it aside, let it dry, and basically just used it as a "test" page to try out colors of my Dina Wakley Media Heavy Body Acrylics; to see what the Gel Press Petite Butterfly from Sally Lynn MacDonald's Sweet Nature set would look like, stamped with  inside a circle; to see what Michelle Ward's Manhole Hex stamp would look like inside the butterfly, and so forth. But... as I worked away without any expectations... I found that I quite liked where it was going and instead of switching to a "real" piece I just kept going. I added the word, "fly" using a sponge dauber dipped in Dina's Evergreen HB Acrylic, with Stencil Girl's Vintage Typewriter Alphabet (Lowercase). Then Dina's Spaced Dots stencil with the even drier daubers that had a bit of blue or green paint on them. After the page was entirely and completely dry I decided to try one more experiment: rolling it into my vintage Royal typewriter and adding --in the more sparsely painted areas-- a quote I found online, "Flying starts on the ground. The more grounded you are, the higher you can fly".

As a matter of fact, I didn't plan to make my two pieces be two half circles that would fit together, but when I saw that it was serendiptiously happening, I confess that I made the most of it by limiting the palette (mostly Night, Turquoise, Sky and Lime); by echoing some of the same shapes and by trimming the two pieces so they would line up perfectly. I'm both surprised and pleased by the result!

I hope you'll check out Demo With Dina and then afterwards, that you'll be inspired to make some art of your very own! ♥

Merry Sketch-mas to You

At Jingle Belles, we're still making cards based on Stephanie's beautiful sketch, and you're still invited to join the fun, which we hope you will!

A reminder that you can swap the shapes, play with the proportions, flip or rotate the sketch, just make sure we can see "the bones" of it! Here's what I made this week:

snowman and flake diecuts: pebbles inc; patterned paper: my mind's eye, elle's studio; snowflake brad: doodlebug design; ancient deco tape: heidi swapp; equally ancient ribbon: my mind's eye; pearl flourish and tiny pearls in jar: eyelet outlet; border punch: recollections; adhesives: elmers gluetape, 3m foam tape, scor-tape to secure ribbon at back of panel

I've had the pack of Pebbles diecuts from which this sweet snowman-in-a-jar came, for more years than I'd like to admit to, lol! I think it's the perfect thing for this sketch, though, so I swapped him for the tag shape. I used suitably winter-ish layers of patterned paper, skinny tape and grosgrain ribbon and added an Eyelet Outlet Pearl Bling Swirl that I cut apart and rebuilt in a shape that fit better on my card. 

Ski, snowshoe, sled, or fly your reindeer over to Jingle Belles to check out what Stephanie made this week and to link up your own Sketc-centric creation! ♥