Friday, March 8, 2013

You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)

I have that song on my Ipod. Sorry for the earworm. But it's a great song. :)

It's also perfect for today's reanimation, which uses the amazingly archaic phonebooks that continue to be delivered to my door. Yes, in 2013. Phonebooks.

Every time they show up, I recycle them into art. Not garbage. They are a wonderful source of nice, thin, collage-worthy paper with beautiful, finely detailed text.

Today's MIX-Ability challenge on Splitcoast - MIX6 is the keyword if you upload to our gallery - is to use gesso and newsprint - the most perfect combo in the world!

I used Trudy Sjolander's new release - Swirly Bird - since she is having her blog hop today! Her little bird looks so sweet tweeting people's phone numbers! :)

This was actually a really quick project. Here's what I did.

I painted one page of the phonebook with gesso and let it dry. Then I cut a 4 x 4 square to form the background. I rubbed this with Tempting Turquoise, Orchid Opulence and Pacific Point ink from Stampin' Up! I used a sponge to dab white acrylic paint on this after it dried for the clouds.

I cut two more 4" wide strips of the gesso'd paper and hand cut the hills out of them. I sprayed these with Stephanie Barnard Banana and Spearmint sprays and then rubbed Memento Pear Tart ink over them. You just have to experiment until you get the color you like.

Then I dotted red acrylic paint on (I used Golden Fluid Acrylics for this) for flowers onto the hills.

The hardest part is waiting for everything to dry before collaging.

I put it all together with matte ModPodge. Word to the wise - I was using water based mediums so the Mod Podge will transfer those. However, if you just keep a wet paper towel handy you can keep any colors from bleeding permanently.

Want to see the rest of the hop?

Check out all this amazing talent!

 >>>>> Lydia Fiedler <<<<<

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Imagine the Possibilities

Imagine the possibilities...

Imagine, for example, if your crafting space was NOT complete chaos, and the first version you made of your card for the Challenge Chicks  March challenge wasn't lost somewhere in it, never to be found.

Then imagine all the laundry and dusting you could have done while you re-made the card for today. 

Well, that's just ridiculous, because I can't imagine choosing laundry or dusting over anything, much less stamping.

Anyway, today's challenge is "It Ain't Easy Being Green," which I took in the reanimated direction.

After creating this project with my stamping class last month, I had many, many sheets that held those gorgeous yellow flower stickers left over, since each student got three flowers. 

Here's where not cleaning your desk very often really comes in handy! As these empty sheets I couldn't throw away hung out in my scrap pile, Anna came up with our green challenge for this month and BOOM - I had an idea. 

I trimmed four of the negative spaces left by the flowers into a square, added some rhinestones and one of the leftover stickers, a greeting and I really, really liked the result!
Still feeling crafty? Avoiding laundry and dusting? Head over to my papercrafting blog for an adorable twist on the All Dressed Up framelits, an awesome video and a big wish!