All That Glimmers

One of my mother's favorite idioms to throw at us was "All that glimmers is not gold."

(I'll show you how to do those leaves in just a minute.)

Mom was right. It's also aqua, rust, maroon, green, silver. Okay. Now I can feel her giving me The Look for being sarcastic. Amazing how she can do that from 2800 miles away.

So, let's just talk about Glimmer Spray, shall we? Or you can call it shimmer spray, or twinkle spray, or Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice if you prefer. Yeah. Let's call it that! You probably know the stuff I'm talking about though. You spritz a little on your paper craft project and Shazam! Suddenly your project shimmers like it fell into a vat of fairy dust.

Companies like to sell their name brands of Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice it for big dollars. The well-kept secret is that it's very inexpensive to make your own. Not only that, but by making your own, you can get exactly the color you want. You can even tailor it to match your ink pads (presuming you have bottles of re-inker to match them, and why wouldn't you?).

Here's what it takes to make your own Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice:

• Gum Arabic - available at any art supply store. I bought mine a couple of years ago for under $5 and I still have at least 2/3 of the little jar left.
• Re-inker -  any brand will do. In fact, I bought out a re-inker supply from a company that was going out of business. I knew I was going to use the ink just to play with and not to re-ink pads that I have, so it was a worthwhile and relatively inexpensive investment. I use re-inkers in all kinds of ways for all kinds of projects.
• Pigment Powder - I have several different kinds that I've had for several years. Pearl Ex, Perfect Pearls, etc. Go with whatever you've got. If you don't have any, for making Glimmer Spray, I recommend getting plain pearly white. It will blend fine with any color of ink and you don't necessarily have to match the powder color to the ink. 
• Small empty spray bottles - again, go cheap. Sure, you can get them from art suppliers and big brand names, but scout out the dollar store or dollar bin at your local pharmacy first.
• Water - straight from the tap will do.

The recipe is -

In a small spray bottle add:

• 1 part Gum Arabic
• 4 parts Pigment Powder
• Fill bottle about 2/3 of the way with water
• Add ink drops until you achieve the color you want.
• Shake well.
• Find all kinds of funtastic uses for it.

Note: Your homemade Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice will keep forever, but you will need to shake it well before each use. Occasionally, the pigment powder can clog the nozzle. Simply run it under hot water to unclog it.

Really, that's all there is to it and the possibilities are endless. Oh, I should warn you that mixing up those Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice potions can be a little addictive, not to mention using them. But look all the different things you can do with it!

You can simply spritz it on paper for a unique background. You can dip paintbrushes into it and use it like a watercolor. You can spritz it on your non-stick work surface or on a piece of plastic wrap, dip your stamps in it and then stamp on watercolor paper for a beautiful, shimmering image. Here's how I did the leaves pictured above...

Stamps used are from RubberMoon Art Stamps, from left to right: Carved Leaf, Oak Leaf, and Elm Leaf.

Oh, and once you're done dipping those stamps in and you have tiny blobs/smears of it left on your work surface? Don't just wipe it up - use it! I get some of the coolest backgrounds by dropping a piece of cardstock onto my "leftovers" and smooshing it around.

I told you, there's just no end to what kind of creativity you'll spark when you start playing. So, now that you know how to make your own Extra Special Sparkly Magic Juice, what will you do with it?

To see another example (pictured below) of how I used it in a project, please check out my post over on the RubberMoon Arts blog. It's scheduled to go "live" tomorrow, Friday, September 26th.

Paper Tiger

 I'm posting again for the Fitztown Design Team. What inspired me this week? A pile of crumpled napkins. *shrug* It's how I roll.

I submit for your review, the basic brown paper napkin. Dining and coffee establishments love to give everyone copious quantities of them. In my life, there is always a bunch of these things hanging around - jammed into my purse, stuck between pages of books as a marker, tossed aside on an end table - until I finally get tired of seeing them or digging around them and toss them.

Toss them? Not this time and probably never again! I went with, "Hmmm... crafting possibilities...?" So I taped one to a piece of printer paper to give it stability and printed out Fitztown's tiger (available here) on it.

So far, so good. Now what...? I decided to see if I could color on it without ripping it and see if I could then maybe decoupage it onto a blank coaster. I experimented with different mediums on a spare napkin. With dozens of them in residence, it wasn't too painful to sacrifice one. Some of the mediums I tried were too wet and tore the napkin or bled too much. So, I went (very gently) with crayons, a blender pen with distress ink for the leaves, and a white ballpoint pen to give ol' Tony some contrast.

Next up, I got out a blank coaster (this one is a 3.5" square) and my Liquitex gloss gel (I use the medium thickness). I also ripped the napkin down to an easier to manage size at this point.

I turned the napkin over and applied a coat of the Liquitex gel to the back of the image, coating only the image and not outside of it. I flipped it over again and adhered it to the coaster. I applied more Liquitex gel to the top of the image going slightly outside of the image, since my intention was to be able to rip away excess napkin.

As you can see, I used my finger to apply the Liquitex gel both to the back and the front of the image. I like getting messy. Plus, I find that I can control what I'm doing better by being completely "hands-on". But, for those of you who don't like to get messy, you could easily use a sponge or a brush - just be really careful not to tear the napkin.

Once the piece was mostly dry, I carefully tore away excess napkin. Then I swiped some of Ranger's Tarnished Brass Distress Stain around the edges and sponged over that in a scrubbing motion using Ranger's Crushed Olive Distress Ink. Finally, I went over the entire piece again with the Liquitex gel.

The piece seemed too dark to me and I wanted to lighten it up and give it a little extra interest. So, I used StazOn Opaque White and an old background stamp that I got from who-knows-where and stamped around the tiger.

And that, as they say, is that. I know it seems like a long, complicated process, but it really wasn't. Waiting for it to dry in between gel applications got a little tiresome, but that's what goofing around on Facebook is for... isn't it?

Look around you. Look at the stuff you normally toss out and try to come up with something creative to do with it instead. Let me know what you come up with.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

William Blake penned the following lines at the end of his poem, Tiger:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I will forgive Mr. Blake the blatant misuse of an adjective in place of an adverb if he will forgive me attempting to frame a tiger. Because that's just what I did for this week's Fitztown Design Team post.

For this card, I used Fitztown's Tiger digistamp (available here).

I printed it out on ivory colored cardstock and then colored it in with Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. If you're not familiar with these amazing pencils, you are missing out! I love working with them - they can be used as regular old colored pencils or you can dip them in water for a more intense color, or brush over them with a wet paintbrush for a softer watercolor effect.

I colored in the tiger and the leaves and then very lightly went over much of it with a damp brush.

From there, it was time to move on to the frame. To cut it I used my trusty old Coluzzal... does anybody use those any more?! I don't have any of the fancy cutting/embossing machines, and this has always worked just fine for me for mini matting/framing needs. It also takes up no room on my desk!

I wanted to give the frame a little depth, so I used my Tim Holtz canvas stencil and sponged in a little distress ink. Then I put some darker brown spatter effect on it using an old Stampin' Up! stamp. To give it some good border and draw the eye back in, I went around the edges of the rectangle as well as the edges of the oval with a sponge that I'd swiped on the same brown ink.

All that was left was to assemble the card and trim off the excess ivory cardstock.

For those of you who aren't satisfied with a mere taste of William Blake's work (I never am!), I invite you to read the entire poem (here). I promise, you read the entire thing and you'll be checking behind you to make sure there's not a tiger crouching and ready to pounce.

Give Peas A Chance!

My first post is up over at the RubberMoon Arts blog (read it here)!

I sound like a broken record (or glitchy mp3 for those of you too young to understand the implications of a broken record), because I keep saying "I'm so excited to be part of this Creative Dream Team!" But I am. Not only is it a wonderfully supportive group, but Holy Inspiration, Batman! I can only sift through the blog posts for so long before my head is so full of ideas that I feel like I'm going to explode.

The above card is what I designed for my first post and you can read up on how I did it by following the link above.

Stay tuned, because I have all kinds of fun new RubberMoon stamps to play with!

Viva Las Vegas Stamps - August Challenge

There I was, complaining about the Summer heat (as usual). I was trying to find a way to distract myself from my sweaty puddle of discomfort when I saw the August challenge over at the Viva Las VegasStamps blog. I decided to play along. The prompt was the color orange, and summer and girls and well, pretty much anything goes. So I designed the above card using three different VLVS stamps:
Leapfrog Lady
Diving Lady
and the quote.

I stamped the images and quote using StaZon Jet Black Ink on glossy white cardstock. Then I colored in the images with water-based markers and sponged around the edges with an orange-y water-based ink. Just to add some bling - because that's how I roll - I "colored in" the diving woman's top with yellow Stickles.

It should be noted that I have been a huge fan of Viva Las VegasStamps practically since the day I began stamping. They offer tens of thousands of different stamps. Really. They cater to every rubber stamp need you can imagine, including my own penchant for sarcastic and whimsical stuff. They also have a great variety of naughty stamps - as naughty as you can think it. I'm a fan of that, too. Go figure.

In 2006, a couple of years after I'd fallen headlong into the addictive world of rubber stamps, I was fortunate to meet up with a group of friends for a rubber stamp convention in Las Vegas. One afternoon, we ditched the convention and made the trip to the VLVS store. I am not joking at all when I say that the place is a stamper's wonderland. My friends and I happily fell down that rabbit hole and whiled away that entire afternoon looking at rubber stamps. It goes on record as one of the top ten afternoons of my life and it's probably why I can't use a VLVS stamp without breaking into a somewhat enigmatic grin.

After all, I'm trying to not take this non-permanent life so seriously. Rubber stamps help.

Can You Digi It?

Hello, Crafty People! Uh... maybe that should be Crafting People...?

This is my first post as a new member of the Fitztown Creative Team; the challenge is "Anything Goes". It's been a busy week, and I will admit that I'm sliding this one in like it's bottom of the ninth and the score is tied. On that note, I apologize that I don't have step-by-step pictures to go with this post as was my intention. I just didn't have the time.

This really was a new endeavor on my part. I have never used digital stamps (aka digistamps) before, so I wasn't quite sure what my real reaction was going to be. My reaction was that I like it. The cool thing about digistamps is that once you receive the image, you can resize it to be whatever you want. The flower vase above could have been an entire 8.5 x 11" page, or I could have reduced it to half an inch (or smaller, I suppose). That's a pretty neat feature because when it comes to standard rubber stamps, the size you've got is the size you get.

The image I chose is Fitztown's Garden 9. Once I resized this image to fit the 3.75 x 5" piece that I wanted it to be, I printed it out and went to work. I began by coloring in the leaves, flowers, and the vase. I dabbed some cinnamon colored Stickles in the centers of the flowers for a little shimmer effect, and set it aside to dry.

If you're at all familiar with my work, you know that I like messy. Some people call that distress, but I don't like the word distress. It sounds too frantic for a process that is so much fun. So then, my next step was to get messy. I schmeered some Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint (made by Ranger) over the image. Again, I set it aside to dry.

As soon as it was dry, I sponged a light turquoise ink over the entire piece to bring out the crackle effect and to give it a more country antique look. That's all there was to it.

I encourage you to try out some digistamps. I can already see that I'll have plenty of fun with them.

Have a craftastic weekend!

Hurricane Barb Strikes Again

Hello! I thought I'd start you off with a project that I worked on in June. Otherwise, there's nothing significant about the picture above. Well, nothing except that someone commissioned it, didn't like it (which is absolutely fine), whereupon it was immediately snatched up by someone else. There's a lesson there for you hesitant artists and crafters. Art is subjective. Someone is going to hate it, someone is going to love it. Don't let anyone's opinion of your work get you down.

But. That's not why we're here today. We're here today because I have huge news! I have been asked (and of course I've accepted) to be on two... count 'em... 1, 2 (wooHOO!) Creative Design Teams. I am so thrilled that I'd be dancing if it didn't get in the way of trying to sip coffee and make art. (Note: Jitterbugging is not a friend of the finely drawn line. It does, however, make for some fascinating abstract.) Anyway. Yes. I'm now on two design teams and I couldn't be more excited. I will be designing cards and crafty projects using stamps from RubberMoon and from Fitztown. Of course, I'll also be blogging about those projects and giving you helpful how-to's and stuff like that. What's cool about it for me is that I get to be part of a couple of amazingly creative teams - I can't wait to see what my co-conspirators cook up each month.

So, life just got busy. Very busy.

Here's what my desk looks like mostly clean and waiting for me to begin.

Here it is six cards and a little over two hours later.

And, just in case you need an aerial shot...

That's it for today, my friends. I have a bigger mess to make, and never enough time in which to make it. I encourage you to get messy. Some of my best stuff has come from accidentally getting paint or ink slopped in the wrong place... now I do it on purpose and people think I'm a genius.

Now, about all that jitterbugging... remember the old Fats Waller tune, The Joint Is Jumpin'? Well, in the same vein of passion and abandon and joy, this studio is stampin'!